Normanna

Normanna is near Medio Creek nine miles north of Beeville in Bee County. A Mexican land grant of eleven leagues, granted to José María Uranga in 1831, covered most of this area. The first settlement, located 2½ miles west of the present townsite, was named San Domingo after a nearby creek and was settled about 1848 by Ruben Holbien, Mat Nolan, Virginia O'Neal Hernández, and John Young. When San Domingo School Precinct No. 3 was formed, the families of John Nutt, D. A. Shieve, S. G. Davidson, M. G. Fellers, and Isaac Roberts were living in the community. In 1874 it was known as Walton Station after the sheriff of Bee County, D. A. T. Walton. In 1893 a Norwegian colony moved into the area and settled two miles east of Walton. The settlement is still called the Colony. A Walton post office was established in 1894, but another Texas town already had the name, so the town became Normanna, a Norwegian name meaning "far north, or one from the far north." Robert Yoward donated land for the railroad right-of-way to the San Antonio and Aransas Pass Railway Company. The railroad came through town in 1896, and San Domingo residents moved to the tracks. A local women's literary club organized by Mrs. C. I. (Caroline Dunham) Swan, joined the Texas Federation of Women's Clubs in 1911. The first broomcorn was introduced in South Texas by the Beck family in 1895, and the first broomcorn factory (1902) was located on the Beck farm. In the early days Normanna had three churches (Catholic, Baptist, and Lutheran), two doctors, two schools, a hotel, a weekly newspaper, five general stores, a drugstore, a gin, a barbershop, a tin shop, a saloon, and a dance hall. In 1990 Normanna had a post office, a store, and a service station. It also had a historical museum in the two-story building that had been successively the Chittim-Miller Ranch headquarters, a hotel, and the residence of the Bridge family for seventy-two years. Ranching, farming, and employment in the oilfield and at the Chase Field Naval Air Station were the major sources of income. Fifth and sixth generation descendants of settlers before 1895 still lived in the community. Normanna had a population of seventy-five in 1987 and 1990. The population grew to 121 in 2000.