Charlotte Scott Sidbury was born Charlotte Matilda Cook in North Carolina on August 2, 1830. She and her family moved to Texas sometime before the Texas Revolution of 1836.
Her father owned a large, prosperous ranch near Georgetown, Texas. She married John Wesley Scott in 1848 and moved to his large ranch near Beeville. The Scotts had two children: James Ferguson Scott and Mollie (later Mrs. R. R. Savage). When Mr. Scott died in 1867, Charlotte continued running the large ranch.
On January 29, 1875, the widowed Charlotte Scott married Mr. Edward D. Sidbury, a wealthy lumber dealer in Corpus Christi. Charlotte sold the ranch and moved into the Sidbury home on North Carancahua.
(In March 1875, Charlotte and her daughter, Mollie, were captured by bandits in the infamous raid on Nuecestown, but managed to escape their captors).
In 1881, Charlotte lost her second husband. On August 17, Edward Sidbury passed away, leaving his new wife a fortune and a booming lumber business. She assumed control over the business, which she ran with great success.
By 1891, she had amassed a wealth of over $200,000. She became a principal stockholder and director in the Corpus Christi National Bank and donated large sums of money to her Methodist Church and toward the construction of the Aransas Pass Railroad.
Another investment by Mrs. Sidbury was the construction of two identical rental houses on the Bluff at Upper Broadway and Leopard Street in 1893. One of those houses, known today as the Sidbury House, still exists and is on display in Heritage Park. It is the only remaining Corpus Christi home built in the Queen Anne High Victorian style.
It was sold after Mrs. Sidbury's death and moved to its present location on Chaparral in 1926. Mrs. Sidbury owned but never lived in this house.
In 1979, the house was purchased by the City and restored by the Junior League. It would become the nucleus of what is now known as Heritage Park.
Charlotte Sidbury’s home, from the time of her marriage to Edward Sidbury in 1875 until her death on November 12, 1904, was what is today called the Sidbury-Savage house, located at 1402 N. Chaparral (at the corner of Palo Alto and Chaparral).
During her lifetime, the house was located on N. Carancahua "up on the bluff". When she died in 1904, the house was inherited by her grandson, Rayburn Savage. He and his family lived in the house until he died in 1941. In 1946, his widow (the former Alice Richlefsen) had the house moved to Chaparral Street. The location had been the site of her parents' home, which had been destroyed in the 1919 hurricane.
Charlotte Scott Sidbury was an extraordinarily successful and charitable woman during a time when women were not generally afforded the opportunity to be so. She is buried in Rose Hill cemetery, beside her second husband, Edward.
Robert Parks is a special contributor to KRIS 6 News. Parks was a history teacher at Carroll High School for 19 years and is now retired. His knowledge of Corpus Christi history makes him a unique expert in the subject.
