This Day In Texas History - June 5

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1823 - John Smith was one of the first Texas Rangers and a member of Stephen F. Austin's Old Three Hundred. As a member of the first Texas Rangers he was required to furnish his own horse, rifle, and ammunition. John Smith and his companions were sent to the mouth of the Colorado River to build boats and blockhouses. Their job was to stop the Karankawa Indians before they reached the settlements on the river. The rangers used their guns to defend against the Indians and also to supply their food, since they existed solely on game.

On June 5, 1823, Lieutenant Morrison's duty roster stated that John Smith had only ten loads of powder and balls for his rifle. Two months later he reported that the Karankawas were in sight of their camp and that the rangers were completely out of ammunition and could neither defend themselves nor procure food. The men were ordered to return to the settlements on the river; they fought some battles with the Indians during the late summer and fall and were then disbanded. There is no record that John Smith and the other rangers were ever paid for this service.

1836 – By this date, between 75 to 100 men had been recruited in Cincinnati as volunteers in the Texas Revolution. They were called the “Buckeye Rangers.”

1837 - The Congress of the Republic of Texas granted a charter to the citizens of Independence, Washington County, for the establishment of a nonsectarian, nonpolitical "seminary." The charter was a response to a petition presented a month before by John P. Coles, a large landowner and Old Three Hundred settler who had founded Coles' Settlement, later Independence. In order to carry out the charter, the young Henry F. Gillette bought an existing girls' school from Frances Thompson. Hugh Wilson, a Presbyterian minister, taught at the new academy. In 1839 the institution, known as Independence Female Academy, enrolled more than fifty students taught by a Miss McGuffin.

1837 - In the young Republic of Texas, the matter of marriages was not initially addressed. But marriages were performed nontheless. On this date in 1837, the Congress of the Republic of Texas legalized all marriages performed before the Republic had authorized anyone to perform marriages.

1837 - The city of Houston was incorporated. It had been founded on August 30, 1836.

1837 - Washington-on-the-Brazos, the site of the signing of the Texas Declaration of Independence, writing of the Republic of Texas Constitution, and establishment of an interim government was incorporated by the Texas Congress on June 5, 1837.

1856 - Memucan Hunt died at his brother's home in Tennessee. He had come to Texas just after the battle of San Jacinto. President Houston appointed him agent to the United States to assist William H. Wharton in securing recognition of the Republic of Texas. That task successfully accomplished in March 1837, Hunt became Texan minister at Washington. Although his proposal of annexation was rejected by the United States (1837), he succeeded in negotiating a boundary agreement in 1838. Hunt served under President Burnet as secretary of the Texas Navy. In 1841 he ran unsuccessfully for vice-president. Hunt served briefly in the Mexican War and after annexation served one term in the Texas legislature. Hunt County is named in his honor.

1859 - Herman Lehmann is born in Loyal Valley. He is later captured by Apaches and adopted by them.

1865 - Col. Walter Leman Mann, colonel of a regiment of cavalry, referred to as both Mann's Cavalry, was with this unit in Galveston at the surrender of the city on June 5, 1865.

1880 - Myra Maybelle (Belle) Shirley Reed, the "Bandit Queen," married her second, or possibly third, husband, Sam Starr, in the Cherokee Nation. Belle Starr was born near Carthage, Missouri, in 1848. During the Civil War her family supported Confederate irregulars such as the raider William Clarke Quantrill. By 1864, after Carthage was burned, the family had migrated to Scyene, Texas, near Dallas. There, in July 1866 Cole, Jim, Bob, and John Younger and Jesse James, Missouri outlaws who had ridden with Quantrill, used the Shirley home as a hideout.

Her first husband, Jim Reed, became involved with the Younger, James, and Starr gangs, which killed and looted throughout Texas, Arkansas, and the Indian Territory. After Jim Reed was killed by a deputy sheriff at Paris, Texas, in 1874, Belle may have married Bruce Younger. If that relationship existed, it soured before she married Sam Starr. Belle and Sam Starr were later charged with horse stealing, and she received two six-month prison terms. In 1889, while Starr was living in the Choctaw Nation, near the Canadian River, an unknown assassin killed her from ambush with a shotgun.

1894 - The Wichita Falls Railway Company was chartered on June 5, 1894, by Joseph A. Kemp of Wichita Falls. Kemp was looking for a way to bring additional rail service to his town. He built the eighteen miles of track to connect with the Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railroad (Katy) in Henrietta that began operating in May 1895. The Wichita Falls Railway was sold to the Katy in 1911 and operated under lease until 1969, when it was merged into the parent company. The eighteen miles of the former Wichita Falls Railway was abandoned in 1970.

1896 - The El Paso and Northeastern Railroad Company was chartered on June 5, 1896. It was to connect El Paso with a point on the boundary line between Texas and New Mexico twenty miles northeast of the city. According to an amendment to the original articles of incorporation the railroad had a capital stock of $300,000.

1932 - At a depth of 5,026 feet, the Strake Oil Corporation in partnership with Humble Oil and Refining Company, brought in the No. 2 . It flowed 900 barrels of oil a day and was considered the discovery well in the Conroe field because it sank into the Main Conroe sand and produced large quantities of oil. Although there were other operators in the field, Strake and Humble delayed the drilling of additional wells for several months.