Devine: Named for a Judge Who Never Lived Here

When the International-Great Northern Railroad pushed its tracks southwest from San Antonio toward Laredo in eighteen eighty-one, it needed towns along the route. One stop in Medina County was named Devine, after Judge Thomas Jefferson Devine, a prominent San Antonio attorney and former district judge who served as legal counsel to the railroad.

Judge Devine had a remarkable life. Born in Nova Scotia in eighteen twenty, he came to San Antonio in eighteen forty-four, became city attorney, served as a Confederate diplomat during the Civil War, and later sat on the Texas Supreme Court. He died in San Antonio in eighteen ninety. He never lived in the town that bore his name. Devine incorporated in nineteen oh four with just over five hundred residents, and surrounding lands went under irrigation in nineteen fifteen from Medina Lake, turning the area into productive farmland. Today Devine is a small city of a little over four thousand people.