This Day In Texas History - June 28

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1880 - John Burwell Omohundro Jr., better known as Texas Jack, died of pneumonia, in Leadville, Colorado. Omohundro, born in Virginia in 1846, traveled to Texas while still a teenager and worked trailing cattle. He served as a scout and spy under Gen. J. E. B. Stuart during the Civil War. By 1866 he had resumed his life as a Texas cowboy and rode in several early cattle drives, including a drive across Arkansas to Tennessee, where he received his nickname “Texas Jack.” After he moved to Cottonwood Springs, Nebraska, in 1869 he met William F. (Buffalo Bill) Cody, and they engaged in buffalo hunts and Indian skirmishes.

In Chicago in 1872 the two made their debut in The Scouts of the Prairie, one of the original Wild West shows, and Texas Jack was credited with introducing roping acts to the American stage. Throughout the 1870s Omohundro divided his time as a stage actor in the East and a hunting guide on the Great Plains. After his death, the Texas Jack legend was popularized in “dime novels” until the early 1900s. [ https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fom01 ]

1892 - On this date in 1892, first Battleship Texas was launched from the Navy shipyard at Norfolk, Virginia. It was the first commissioned American steel-hulled battleship and was 309 feet long. During the battle of Santiago on July 3, 1898, the USS Texas helped in the defeat of the Spanish squadron commanded by Admiral Pascual Cervera. The USS Texas brought home the bodies of those killed on the Maine. In 1908 it was used as a station ship in Charleston, South Carolina. Its name was changed to USS San Marcos in 1911 so that the name Texas could be assigned to a new, more modern battleship. The San Marcos became a gunnery target in 1920 and was eventually sunk in Chesapeake Bay, seven miles south of Tangier Island, by the USS New Hampshire. While a target the ship was bombed from the air by Gen. William L. (Billy) Mitchell in 1921.

1899 - The Calvert, Waco and Brazos Valley Railroad Company was chartered on June 28, 1899. The line was initially projected to extend from the International-Great Northern Railroad at Lewis Switch to Waco. By the end of 1900 the company had completed sixty-six miles between Bryan and Marlin and a branch from Calvert Junction to Calvert. In that year the charter was amended twice, ultimately raising capitalization to $2,830,000 and changing the projected route to run from Spring, just north of Houston, to Fort Worth. On February 12, 1901, the legislature authorized the International and Great Northern to acquire the Calvert, Waco and Brazos Valley. The two lines merged on May 1. The International and Great Northern completed the line between Spring and Fort Worth in 1902.

1919 - The Texas Senate ratified the national amendment granting women the right to vote. Texas thus became the first Southern state to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment and the ninth in the nation. Woman suffrage had been discussed in Texas as early as the Constitutional Convention of 1868. The short-lived Texas Equal Rights Association (1893-96) helped organize a suffrage movement. The Texas Equal Suffrage Association, a state chapter of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, led the fight for suffrage from 1913 on, and achieved one of its key goals when it won the right for women to vote in primary elections in 1918. Feelings ran strong on both sides of the issue; some women joined the Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage. In June 1919 a woman suffrage amendment was sent to the states for approval. The Texas House passed the amendment on June 23 and the Texas Senate on June 28.

1930 - Stamford (north of Abilene) held its first Texas Cowboy Reunion.

1941 - The Texas Weekly, running through seventeen volumes, was edited by Peter Molyneaux and published in Dallas from March 19, 1930, to June 28, 1941. The title varied; from March 1930 to October 1940 it was called the Texas Weekly, and from November 1940 to June 1941 it was the Texas Digest. On October 4, 1930, the magazine absorbed the Texas Monthly and assumed its volume numbering. In 1941 it was united with the Southwestern Banker to become the Southwestern Banker and Industry. According to an editorial in the first issue, the periodical was designed to be "a weekly interpreter of the current of Texas life."

1962 - A jury awarded Texas humorist John Henry Faulk $3.5 million, the largest libel judgment in history to that date. Faulk, born in Austin in 1913, became a popular radio personality in the late 1940s. In 1955 he ran afoul of AWARE, Inc., an influential anti-Communist watchdog firm, in a dispute over control of the entertainers' union. In retaliation, AWARE branded him a Communist. When Faulk discovered that the charge prevented a radio station from making him an employment offer, he sought redress in the courts. Despite his vindication, years passed before he worked again as a media entertainer. He recounted his ordeal in his 1963 book Fear on Trial. Faulk served on the steering committee for his former mentor J. Frank Dobie's Paisano Ranch.

1994 - On this date in 1994, a record high temperature of 120° set in August 12, 1938, was tied at Monahans. Monahans, is located at 2,660 ft elevation along I-20, in west Texas and is home to Monahans Sand Hills State Park.