This Day In Texas History - July 20

[joe817]

1836 - After leading a five-man militia unit in a week-long visit to Kickapoo, Shawnee, and Caddo camps in what is now the Sherman-Denison area in May, Daniel Rowlett(Fannin County pioneer and political leader) joined Capt. John Hart's Red River cavalry company on July 20, 1836. When the unit reached Nacogdoches on its way to join the Texas army at Victoria, Gen. Sam Houston appointed Rowlett quartermaster on August 5.

1847 - John O. Meusebach resigned as general commissioner of the Adelsverein, the society formed by German nobles to encourage the colonization of Texas. Meusebach, born Baron Ottfried Hans Freiherr von Meusebach in Dillenburg, Germany, in 1812, succeeded Prince Carl of Solms-Braunfels as commissioner and arrived in Texas in 1845. In just over two years, and despite facing numerous obstacles, including the Adelsverein's inept planning and management, Meusebach presided over the initial growth of New Braunfels and also founded the settlements of Fredericksburg, Castell, and Leiningen. He also successfully negotiated the Meusebach-Comanche treaty. Meusebach died in 1897.

1852 - Fort Lincoln, on the west bank of Seco Creek a mile north of D'Hanis in west central Medina County, was abandoned on July 20, 1852, after the frontier line had advanced westward. The buildings remained intact for some time, and the Texas Rangers made headquarters at the site. The barracks were torn down and transformed into residences east of Seco Creek at D'Hanis after being purchased by Irishman Richard Reily, who used the hospital building to raise his family. None of the buildings remains. On May 26, 1936, a dedication ceremony was held for the unveiling of a marker placed by the Texas Centennial Commission at the site. [ https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/qbf31 ]

1857 - John Bell Hood, commanding a reconnaissance patrol from Fort Mason, sustained an arrow wound to the left hand in action against the Comanches near the headwaters of the Devils River on July 20, 1857. This was one of the most severe fights engaged in by the Second Cavalry in Texas. Hood was promoted to first lieutenant on August 18, 1858, but resigned from the army on April 16, 1861. Dissatisfied with his native Kentucky's neutrality, Hood declared himself a Texan. On March 3, 1862, Hood was promoted to brigadier general and given command of what became known as Hood's Texas Brigade, perhaps the finest brigade of Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia.
[ https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/qkh02 ]

1910 - Texas boxer becomes first black world heavyweight champion: Galveston native Jack Johnson was recognized as the heavyweight champion of the world. He had won the Negro heavyweight championship in 1903. The reigning white champion, Jim Jeffries, refused to cross the color line, so Johnson had to wait until Jeffries came out of retirement to fight him in 1910. Johnson left the United States in 1913 to avoid arrest on charges of violation of the Mann Act. When he returned on July 20, 1920, he was arrested and jailed at Leavenworth. After his release he returned to boxing, but without success. He died in an automobile crash at Raleigh, North Carolina, in 1946.

1917 - Construction began on July 20, 1917 on Camp MacArthur, a World War I training camp named for Gen. Arthur MacArthur, was on the northwestern side of Waco. , and in September of that year 18,000 troops arrived from Michigan and Wisconsin. The campsite proper covered 1,377 acres, although the entire tract of land reserved for the camp's use encompassed 10,699 acres. Facilities at the camp included a base hospital, administrative offices, and a tent camp, supplemented by 1,284 buildings. Troop capacity was 45,074, although the average strength of the force stationed at MacArthur during any given month did not exceed 28,000 troops. The camp served as an infantry replacement and training camp, an officers' training school, and a demobilization facility. Among the units trained at the facility were the Thirty-second or Red Arrow Division, which saw combat in France in 1918. The camp was ordered salvaged on January 3, 1919, and materials from it were to be used in the construction of United States-Mexican border stations. The camp was officially closed on March 7, 1919, and the grounds became part of the city of Waco. A historical marker was placed at the former site of the camp headquarters in 1966.

1933 - Musician, songwriter, and early rock-and-roll singer Buddy Wayne Knox was born on a wheat farm northeast of Happy, Texas, on July 20, 1933.

1969 - On this date in 1969, while the entire world watched on television, astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin gently set down their moon lander, The Eagle, onto a plain called the Sea of Tranquility, on the surface of the moon. This was the culmination of a generation of effort by thousands of scientists, in Texas and around the world. Apollo 11, with Armstrong, Aldrin, and Michael Collins, who remained in the command module orbiting above the surface of the moon, had set down on the moon. From the Eagle, Neil Armstrong broadcasting to NASA and the rest of the world, spoke the first words ever spoken from the Moon, "Houston, Tranquility Base Here. The Eagle has landed". Thus "Houston" became the first word ever broadcast from the moon.

1979 - The Elissa is a restored nineteenth-century sailing ship that belongs to the Galveston Historical Foundation. She was designed as an iron-hulled, three-masted barque and built at the Clyde River shipyard of Alexander Hall and Company of Aberdeen, Scotland, for Henry Fowler Watt of Liverpool, England, and launched on October 27, 1877. Her overall length is 162 feet; her deck length is 152 feet. Her molded depth is sixteen feet, her beam twenty-eight. Her gross capacity is 430 tons. She carries nineteen sails made of 12,000 square feet of a synthetic material that resembles canvas. Her hull plates and forms are of iron, except where restored with welded steel. On June 25, 1979, she was towed out of Gibraltar and set sail for Texas; she arrived off Galveston on July 20, 1979.