Volume 45 - No. 21
May 28, 2015
by lyle e davis
He came for her in that wagon. He loaded the frail old Chipita into the wagon. She sat on her coffin, made of cypress planks that had been nailed together that morning, smoking a corn husk cigarette, as the oxen team slowly transported her to the hanging tree. The wagon was pulled by oxen and people of the town walked behind. They were quiet -- the only noise was the creaking of the wagon. They didn't have far to go, less than 1,000 yards from the courthouse. The wagon stopped under a mesquite tree by the river. The people watched as a new hemp rope was placed around her neck. She was wearing a borrowed dress and a woman in town had fixed her hair. She showed no sign of fear. The people watched her, not talking. On that Friday, November the 13th, the crowd gathered on the Wier ranch on the banks of the Nueces River.
At the hanging tree, there was a faint murmur when the wagon moved forward, the rope jerked, and Chipita dropped, her feet inches from the ground. The oxen moved so slow, and her body was so frail, that the fall didn't break her neck. It took a long time for her to strangle to death. A woman watching fainted. A young boy ran away, crying. A man turned his back and said, "I've had enough of this."
The hangman cut her down and buried her in the cypress coffin at the foot of a mesquite and that ended the earthly existence of Chipita Rodriguez. Her ghost, they say, lives on. So does the legend. She had been hanged from a mesquite tree on Friday, November 13, 1863. She was 63 at the time of her death. Her last words were quoted with being, "No soy culpable" (I am not guilty).
At least one witness to the hanging claimed to have heard a moan from the coffin, which was placed in an unmarked grave. Her ghost is said to haunt San Patricio. Rodriguez is depicted as a spectre with a noose around her neck, riding through the mesquite trees or wailing from the riverbottoms.They went and hanged Josefa “Chipita” Rodriguez . . . and it turns out she wasn’t guilty. The Paper - 760.747.7119
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She was convicted of murder and hanged in San Patricio County, Texas at the age of 63.
It’s a sad tale out of which a legend was born . . . and creepy tales of “Chipita” wandering the area as a ghost . . . moaning, upset with the injustice done to her.
There has been two operas, a number of books, newspaper articles and magazine accounts all of which suggest that an innocvent woman was hanged. It happened a while ago.
In 1829, settlers began arriving to the new community of San
Hanging Chipita Continued on Page 2
Patricio, Texas. The Mexican government gave permission for this settlement in Texas in hopes of finding a place for 200 Irish Catholic families headed to the area. The original township was almost doomed from the beginning. The conflict between Texas and Mexico was brewing. In early 1836, the Battle of San