Site of the 1863 Hanging of Chipita Rodriguez
Round Lake Road, Old San Patricio, San Patricio, TX 78368
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Free roadside historical marker. The marker and adjacent mesquite grove are visible from public roads.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Roadside marker; grass and gravel surroundings
Equipment
Photos OK
San Patricio de Hibernia was founded in 1829 when Irish empresarios James McGloin and John McMullen received a Mexican land grant to settle Catholic Irish immigrants on the Nueces River. The town became the seat of San Patricio County when Texas organized counties after statehood, though the county seat later moved to Sinton. Old San Patricio remains a small community along the Cotton Road, a 19th-century trade route that crossed the Aransas River nearby.
Josepha Rodriguez, known as Chipita, ran a roadside hostel along the Cotton Road where travelers could rent a cot on her porch in exchange for a modest fee. In August 1863, John Savage, a horse trader, lodged at her property and was later found dead in the Aransas River, his body recovered along with a quantity of gold. Chipita and her son Juan Silvera were indicted on circumstantial evidence. The jury found her guilty of first-degree murder but recommended mercy on account of her age and the limited evidence. Judge Benjamin F. Neal overrode the jury's recommendation and ordered her hanged at the San Patricio Courthouse on November 13, 1863. Period accounts describe the hanging as poorly executed, with Chipita reported to have died slowly by strangulation.
The Texas Legislature passed a resolution in 1985 formally absolving Josepha Rodriguez of the murder. A 2010 Texas Historical Commission marker was placed at the courthouse site near a grove of mesquite trees identified in local tradition as the hanging site.
Sources
The Chipita Rodriguez legend is among the oldest sustained ghost narratives in the Texas Coastal Bend. Local oral tradition, beginning in the immediate aftermath of her 1863 execution, describes a moan reported from her closed coffin during burial. Subsequent retellings recorded in Texas folklore collections describe a woman with a rope around her neck seen in the mesquite grove near the former courthouse, particularly around the November 13 anniversary of the hanging.
The legend gained renewed regional attention after the Texas Legislature's 1985 resolution exonerating Chipita, which formally framed her case as a miscarriage of justice. A 2010 historical marker at the courthouse site has made the location a regular stop on Texas Coastal Bend historical tours, including programming around Day of the Dead and the November anniversary.
Reports from visitors range from the visual to the auditory: a faint figure seen at dusk among the mesquite, distant sobbing, and the sense of being watched from the grove. The framing in most regional accounts emphasizes Chipita as a wronged woman whose persistent presence is interpreted as historical witness rather than as a threatening apparition.
Notable Entities
Media Appearances
Read the 2010 Texas historical marker erected at the site of the former San Patricio County Courthouse, where Josepha Chipita Rodriguez was hanged in 1863. The marker stands near the mesquite grove traditionally identified as the hanging site.
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