1767 - Pierre Marie François de Pagès, French naval officer, world traveler, and writer, crossed Texas on the first lap of a journey around the world. Leaving his naval vessel at Santo Domingo on June 30, 1767, he sailed to New Orleans, traveled by the Mississippi and Red rivers to Natchitoches, then across Texas and into Mexico by way of the Old San Antonio Road. He returned to France by way of the Far East and then wrote an account of his adventure. The English translation of his book, Travels Round the World, in the Years 1767, 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771 (1791), is perhaps the oldest description of Texas in an English-language book.
1835 - Mexican captain Antonio Tenorio, commander at Anahuac, Texas, formally surrendered his garrison to William B. Travis. Travis organized a company of twenty-five men to eject the regiment from the garrison. The terms of the surrender, arranged on June 30, included a pledge from the Mexican officers that they would not take up arms against Texas. In September Domingo de Ugartechea ordered him to return to his command at Anahuac. Ugartechea was military commandant of Coahuila and Texas in command of the forces at San Antonio de Béxar Presidio.
1836 - Hugh McLeod, entered the United States Military Academy at West Point on September 1, 1831, and graduated last in a class of fifty-six in 1835. He was brevetted second lieutenant in the Third United States Infantry on September 18, 1835, and ordered to Fort Jesup, Louisiana. On his way to his first posting, however, he visited Macon and there fell in with the Georgia Battalion volunteers for the Texas army-and accompanied it as far as Columbus, Georgia. Ardent in his desire to join the Texans, he resigned his United States Army commission, effective June 30, 1836.
In Texas McLeod advanced rapidly in rank, becoming adjutant general in the Army of the Republic of Texas in December 1837 and adjutant and inspector general in 1840. He served against the Caddos and Kickapoos in 1838, fought the Cherokees in 1839, and was wounded at the battle of the Nueces. He was appointed one of two negotiators with the Comanches before the Council House Fight in San Antonio in 1840. His official report on the fight is appended to the Journal of the Fifth Legislature of the Republic of Texas. After his tenure as adjutant general ended on January 18, 1841, McLeod was commissioned a brigadier general on June 17 and appointed commander of the military component of the Texan Santa Fe expedition by President Mirabeau B. Lamar.
During the Civil War he was elected lieutenant colonel of the First Texas Infantry Regiment of what was later became Hood's Texas Brigade. When the regimental commander, Louis T. Wigfall, was promoted to brigadier general, McLeod was promoted to colonel and assigned to command of the regiment. He died of pneumonia near Dumfries, Virginia, on January 2, 1862. His body was returned to Texas and is buried in the State Cemetery in Austin. McLeod was characterized as a "fat, jovial man" and said to have been popular, in spite of his violent attacks on Sam Houston.
1886 - The Great Southwest Strike, organized by the Knights of Labor in 1886, was the largest and most important clash between management and organized labor in the nineteenth-century history of the state. The conflict occurred only one year after the Knights of Labor won a successful strike against the Wabash Railroad, part of the southwestern system controlled by railroad baron Jay Gould. The 1885 walkout tied up the entire Wabash line in the Southwest.
According to the terms of a resulting agreement, Gould ceased to discriminate against the Knights, and union president Terence V. Powderly called off the strike and pledged no further walkouts prior to union-management discussions. This surprising and unprecedented union victory led to a major increase in the membership rolls of the Knights of Labor. In the year ending June 30, 1886, national membership increased from about 100,000 to over 700,000. The Dallas Morning News had claimed there were more than 30,000 members in Texas in 1885.
1922 - Eck Robertson, legendary fiddler and fiddler Henry C. Gilliland, recorded what most country music historians consider the first commercial recordings of country music, on June 30, 1922. The duets included the famous "Arkansas Traveler" and "Turkey in the Straw." The following day, Robertson returned to the studio without Gilliland and recorded six additional tracks solo, including "Sallie Gooden," as well as two tracks that were never released. The Victor Company issued a limited release of "Arkansas Traveler" and "Sallie Gooden" in September 1922, but not until April 1923 was the disc in wide circulation. Two other records were released later in 1923 and 1924. Robertson set the trend for future performers.
1941 - Construction of the Naval Air Station at Corpus Christi was completed on June 30, 1941. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed a $25,000,000 appropriations proposal. Construction began on June 30, 1940r, and the base was dedicated by the secretary of the navy on March 12, 1941. It had the main station at Flour Bluff and six auxiliary stations: Rodd, Cabaniss, Cuddihy, and Waldron at Corpus Christi, Kingsville Naval Auxiliary Field at Kingsville, and Chase Field at Beeville. The total station covered some 20,000 acres in three counties. 997 hangers and other buildings had been constructed, and the cost had run to more than $100 million.
A 980-foot rail-highway bridge and a 400-foot trestle bridge across Oso Bay had been built; a twenty-mile-long railroad was built in thirty-five days. A sixteen-inch cast iron water pipe was laid from Corpus Christi to Flour Bluff. Eight miles of 100 pair telephone cables for a permanent telephone system were laid in ten days. Also constructed was a permanent military highway consisting of eleven miles of twenty-two-foot concrete pavement with a 1,200-foot concrete bridge across Oso Bay, as well as a 4½-mile-long concrete access road to Cabaniss Field. On January 14, 1941, the project reached a peak employment of 9,348 employees and had a weekly payroll of $305,125.
The station was initially used to train aviation cadets as pilots, navigators, aerologists, gunners, and radio operators. By 1950 the Naval Air Station was training naval aviators in the advanced stages of flying multiengine land and sea planes. In addition, the United States Naval Hospital, the United States Naval School of All-Weather Flight, the Fleet Logistic Air Wing, Acceptance, Test, and Transfer Unit, and the headquarters for the Corpus Christi Naval Reserve Training Center were operating at the Naval Air Station.
1942 - Hereford Military Reservation and Reception Center occupied 800 acres of land in Castro and Deaf Smith counties 3½ miles southeast of Hereford. The second-largest of the United States POW camps built during World War II, it housed approximately 5,000 Italian prisoners and about 750 United States military personnel. Although it was designated a temporary camp, the reservation was constructed as a maximum-security facility. The War Department announced authorization on June 30, 1942, and actual construction began late in July. The first internees arrived in April 1943. All were Italians, with the exception of one group of Germans who were routed to the camp by mistake and quickly transferred after a full-scale riot erupted between compounds.
Rapid repatriation began with the end of the war, and in January 1946 the last 3,999 prisoners boarded special troop trains for their return to Italy. The camp was placed on the surplus list on February 1, 1946. Subsequently, all that remained was a sixty-five-foot water tower, minus the tank, and the remains of the small concrete chapel. The chapel sat abandoned and vulnerable to vandalism until the mid-1980s, when the Castro County Historical Commission launched efforts to restore it. On April 30, 1988, a ceremony was held in honor of the beginning of restoration of the thirteen-foot-square structure. A group of Italians, including sixteen former POWs, attended and donated money and original sketches and photographs for the restoration project. The restored chapel was dedicated on June 18, 1989, and received a state historical marker on May 8, 1993.
1942 - Audie Leon Murphy enlisted in the US Army on this day in 1942, ten days after his 17th birthday. Though his military records list his birthday as June 20, 1924 he was actually born in 1925 and used a falsified birth certificate signed by his older sister Connie to enlist. He attempted to enlist in the Marines and US Army in December 1941 after Pearl Harbor, but was turned down for being under age. Some may not know this son of Texas is the most highly decorated soldier in US history. (Courtesy of puma guy from June 30, 2016)
