Mary and Jeff Bell Library

Charles F.H. Von Blucher (standingfar right)surveying crew, 1876.

Conrad Blucher Surveying Collection

The Conrad Blucher Surveying Collection (CBSC) represents a major research and educational resource at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi. Assembled by three generations of Nueces County surveyors belonging to the historic Blucher family, the CBSC contains a voluminous number of surveying documents covering over a century of South Texas development (1840s-1950s.)

The CBSC represents the work of Felix A. von Blucher, his son Charles F.H. von Blucher, and grandson Conrad M. Blucher.

A German immigrant to Corpus Christi in the 1840s, Felix Blucher served as Nueces County’s first elected County Surveyor. After he died in the 1870s, Felix was replaced by his son Charles, who served until 1933, when he relinquished the position to his son Conrad. Over the years, these three professionals generated over four hundred survey field books and either created or accumulated thousand of maps, making the CBSC a monumental record of private land ownership in South Texas. These materials are accessible through an extensive four volume set of indexes compiled by the Blucher Engineering Company before Conrad Blucher retired in 1953. These indexes are in alphabetical order according to clients’ names. The CBSC covers such South Texas counties as Nueces, San Patricio, Kleberg, Jim Wells, Brooks, Duval, Willacy, Kenedy, and others.

The CBSC was donated to Texas A&M-Corpus Christi by the Blucher family. It was housed at the Nueces County Surveyor’s office where it was utilized and maintained by County Surveyor William W. Green, Conrad Blucher’s protégé, until he retired in 1994. In that year, the entire collection was transferred to the University where it is now part of the non-circulating holdings of Special Collections & Archives of the Bell Library. A treasure of South Texas surveying, the CBSC especially enhances the University’s Geographic Information Science Program, as well as serves the needs of the larger community.