This Day In Texas History - June 15

[joe817]

1836 - Richard Fox Brenham, physician and member of the Texan Santa Fe expedition and the Mier expedition, was born to Robert and Mary M. (Fox) Brenham about 1810 in Woodford County, Kentucky. He attended Transylvania College, then moved to Texas before the revolution. He served in the Texas army from June 15 to September 15, 1836, and received a 320-acre tract in Cooke County for his services.

He may have never taken possession of this land, however. He lived part of the time between the revolution and 1841 in Austin, where he practiced medicine. In 1841 President Mirabeau B. Lamar selected Brenham to serve as one of the civil commissioners of the Texan Santa Fe expedition, which sought to bring the city of Santa Fe and at least a portion of the trade along the Santa Fe Trail under the control of the Republic of Texas. In 1844 the town of Brenham in Washington County was named in his honor. [There's much more to this story: https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fbr41 ]

1861 – Frank Taylor Ramsey, horticulturist, was born in Burnet County. Nicknamed “Fruit Tree,” he introduced many fruit varieties to Texas.

1892 - Tex Owens was born in Killeen, Texas. He recorded the hit song "Cattle Call" in 1935.

1901 - The Roberts family sold the Old Stone Fort in Nacogdoches to William and Charles Perkins, who dismantled the structure and put up a more modern commercial building on the site. The Old Stone Fort dated to 1779, when Antonio Gil Ibarvo, who laid out the town, built a two-story stone house to use in the trading business. It remained the tallest structure in Nacogdoches for nearly a century.

The Old Stone Fort assumed a quasi-public character over the following decades through several changes of ownership, and was the scene of many historic events. John S. and Harriet Fenley Roberts, who purchased it in 1838, operated a saloon there. When the Perkins brothers dismantled the building, they donated the materials to a local ladies' organization. In 1936 the state of Texas moved the materials to the campus of Stephen F. Austin State Teachers College, where a replica of the original structure was erected for the Texas Centennial celebration.

1902 - On this date in 1902, the Corsicana Oil Citys beat the Texarkana Casketmakers by the score of 51-3, in a Texas League game that still stands in the record books. It wasn't the score but the performance of Oil Citys catcher that made history that day. Corsicana blue laws prevented playing baseball on Sunday, so the previously scheduled game was moved to Ennis a few miles away. In the game, catcher JJ Clark hit 8 home runs for 8 at bats, thanks to an outfield fence in Ennis that was only 210 feet. Nonetheless, the 8 home runs still stand as a Texas League game record.

1921 - Bessie Coleman became the world's first licensed black pilot. The native of Atlanta, Texas, graduated from high school in Waxahachie and attended Colored Agricultural and Normal University in Oklahoma. After moving to Chicago, she went to France and attended the aviation school at Le Crotoy. The Federation Aeronautique Internationale issued her a pilot's license. She flew in her first air show at Curtiss Field near Manhattan in 1922. She afterward took part in many more shows while touring the country, and her daredevil stunts earned her the nickname "Brave Bessie." She was killed during a test flight on April 30, 1926, at Jacksonville, Florida.

1937 - Waylon Jennings was born in Littlefield.

1943 - Whites and blacks clashed in Beaumont after workers at a local shipyard learned that a white woman had accused a black man of raping her. On the evening of June 15 more than 2,000 workers, plus perhaps another 1,000 interested bystanders, marched toward City Hall. Even though the woman could not identify the suspect among the blacks held in the city jail, the workers dispersed into small bands and proceeded to terrorize black neighborhoods in central and north Beaumont. Many blacks were assaulted, several businesses were pillaged, a number of buildings were burned, and more than 100 homes were ransacked. Acting Texas governor A. M. Aikin, Jr., placed Beaumont under martial law. More than 200 people were arrested, fifty were injured, and two--one black and one white--were killed.

1946 - Midland Army Air Field was deactivated as a military installation, and returned to the city of Midland on July 1, 1947. Midland Army Air Field was a World War II United States Army Air Forces bombardier-training base on U.S. Highway 80 halfway between Midland and Odessa in Midland County. The first group of cadets, Class 42–6, arrived for training from Ellington, Texas, on February 6, 1942.

Midland reached a peak base population of more than 4,000 and graduated a total of 6,627 bombardier officers before all training ceased on January 1, 1946. In August 1943 the AAF Central Bombardier Instructor School was transferred from Carlsbad, New Mexico, to Midland.

The base pioneered the use of the highly secret Norden bombsight and at one time operated twenty-three bombing ranges across West Texas. Personnel from Midland AAF helped establish the "West Texas Bombardier Triangle" of bases at Big Spring (1942), San Angelo (1942), and Childress (1943), and were instrumental in developing photographic and sonic methods of scoring bomb hits and analyzing bombing proficiency.
[ https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/qbm02 ]

2003 - The San Antonio Spurs beat the New York Nets in Game 6 of the NBA Championship to win their second NBA Title in franchise history.