While parts of the United States were undergoing industrialization and the Gilded Age, Corpus Christi was a frontier land during John B. Dunn’s young adult years, the 1870s and 1880s. He was one of the earliest residents of the brand-new City of Corpus Christi, witnessed the bombardment during the Civil War, served as a Texas Ranger and then went on to live until WWII … what a life!
But to me, the thing that makes him stand out among others who lived similar lives on the frontier is a hobby he took up at age 17, when he started collecting items for a museum he’d work to build for the rest of his life.
Dunn’s collection wasn’t simply a collection of items on a single topic or theme; it was a wide variety of items—evidence of the life lived by him and others in early Nueces County. Fossils, guns, swords, art, household items, furniture, rocks, minerals … the list goes on. Dunn’s obituary called his museum “probably the largest privately owned collection in the United States.” I think they’re leaning hard on the word probably here, but it puts into perspective how shockingly large his collection was.
During his life, Dunn’s Museum was displayed at his homestead on Shell Road (now Upriver) and at the Corpus Christi College-Academy, for which he was a benefactor. Eventually, part of the collection was purchased by the Corpus Christi Museum of Science and History. If you’ve visited, you’ve likely seen one of these items collected by Dunn, a Corpus Christi pioneer … and so much more.
