This Day In Texas History - September 4
Posted: Wed Sep 04, 2019 9:30 am
1798 - Albert Clinton Horton, the first lieutenant governor of Texas, son of William and Mary (Thomas) Horton, was born in Hancock County, Georgia, on September 4, 1798. He arrived in Texas in April 1835 and became an early and active supporter of the Texas Revolution. He traveled to Alabama to recruit volunteers; the company became known as the Mobile Grays and were outfitted at Horton's own expense.
He also organized a company of cavalry volunteers in Matagorda in February 1836. Colonel Horton's company joined Col. James Walker Fannin, Jr.'s command in South Texas in early March. From 1836 to 1838 Horton, a Democrat, served as senator in the First and Second congresses of the republic, representing Matagorda, Jackson, and Victoria counties. He campaigned unsuccessfully for the vice presidency in 1838.
In January 1839 he was chosen by the Republic of Texas Congress to chair the committee to select the site of the new capital. On March 7, 1842, Horton was recruited to serve as captain under Colonel Owen, to defend against Rafael Vásquez, and his force of 500–700 Mexican soldiers, who had seized San Antonio. Horton served as a delegate to the Convention of 1845 and subsequently consented to run for lieutenant governor. On May 1, 1846, Horton was declared the first lieutenant governor of the new state.
1813 - Hamilton Stuart, publisher and editor, was born on September 4, 1813, near Louisville, Kentucky. He learned the printing trade in Georgetown, Kentucky, where he published and edited a local newspaper at the age of twenty-two. After his physician advised him to try a more favorable climate, Stuart traveled with his wife to Texas with letters of introduction to many prominent Texans. The couple arrived in Houston in January 1838 and met Sam Houston, with whom Stuart formed an alliance that lasted until Houston's death in 1863.
He joined an old friend from Kentucky, Levi Jones, and Robert A. Irion, secretary of state in Sam Houston's cabinet, to launch the Galveston Civilian on May 8, 1838. When Houston moved to Galveston that year for his health, Stuart followed and renamed his newspaper Civilian and Galveston City Gazette. The paper appeared weekly in its small four-column folio, printed on an old Ramage press at first, but after 1857, on the first steam-powered press in Texas.
Stuart's editorials were closely read by Texans interested in Sam Houston, to whose ideas and personality Stuart was devoted. Since Galveston was the leading Texas city, Stuart's paper represented Texas to many people outside the state. Stuart attempted to present the state as favorably as possible, a fact that may account for his avoiding the feuds with rival editors that characterized many Texas newspapers of this era.
Stuart was mayor of Galveston from 1849 to 1852. Although production of the Civilian was suspended during the Civil War as a consequence of Stuart's ardent unionism, he revived the paper in 1865. Nine years later he sold his interest in the newspaper to join the editorial staff of his former rival, the Galveston News.
1829 - Milton Slocum began the publication of a newspaper named the Nacogdoches Mexican Advocate. It is not known exactly when the first edition of the paper appeared, but it was in print by September 4,1829 and thus antedated the Austin Gazette, published at San Felipe de Austin, by more than three months. No copies of the paper, which was written in both English and Spanish, are known to exist, but published excerpts suggest that it was aimed at attracting prospective settlers. The paper ceased publication about the time of the Law of April 6, 1830, which barred further immigration from the United States.
1839 - The small river steamer Cayuga, the first commercially successful steamboat in Texas, played an important role during the Texas Revolution. She carried supplies for the revolutionary army, transported government officials and refugees, and was the floating capitol of Texas in April 1836. The Cayuga, an eighty-eight-ton side-wheeler, was built in 1832 in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania. She was 96'11" long, 17'4" wide, and 5'4" deep. The Cayuga had one deck, two boilers, a high-compression engine, a cabin on deck, a plain head, and a pointed stern.
The Cayuga was the only steamer in Texas at this time. In April 1836 David G. Burnet, ad interim president of the new Republic of Texas, impressed the Cayuga for public service. The ship began transporting provisions to the Texas army and rescuing officials and citizens fleeing the advancing Mexican armies. On April 15 Captain Harris, in command of the steamer, evacuated Harrisburg just ahead of Gen. Antonio López de Santa Anna and his troops. The refugees included President Burnet, his cabinet, and all the inhabitants of the town.
After stopping at Lynch's Ferry and New Washington the Cayuga preceded to Anahuac and Galveston, where the passengers disembarked. The cabinet members remained aboard and on April 19 were rejoined by Burnet, who had left the steamer at Lynch's Ferry to get his family and had narrowly escaped being captured by the Mexicans at New Washington. The business of the republic was conducted through April 26 on the Cayuga, the temporary capitol. During this time the republic bought the steamer for $5,000 from Harris.
The Republic of Texas spent $300 for repairs on the Cayuga and by the end of the year authorized the secretary of the navy to sell it. The new owners refitted the vessel and renamed her the Branch T. Archer; she was thus one of two Texas ships named after Branch Tanner Archer. The Archer remained in the Houston-Galveston trade during 1837 and 1838.
The last mention of the little steamer was a Liberty County sheriff's sale on September 4, 1839, advertising all the right, title, and interest of John Huffman in the steamboat Pioneer, the late Branch T. Archer, together with the tackle and furniture. The vessel lay near the residence of Robert Wiseman in the Old River. The sale was to settle claims of John E. Ross and Robert Adkinson.
1897 - The Texas, Arkansas and Louisiana Railway Company was chartered on September 4, 1897, by a group of Cass County businessmen who wanted to connect the Texas and Pacific Railway Company at Atlanta with the Kansas City, Pittsburg and Gulf Railroad Company at Bloomburg, a distance of eight miles all within Cass County. The company secured a contract with the Wells Fargo Company to carry express and another with the Kansas City, Pittsburg and Gulf to obtain freight cars. The road carried produce of area farmers and lumbermen and some passengers. In 1918, the last year the line filed an annual report with the Railroad Commission, the company showed a deficit of $423. The road was abandoned in 1920.
1913 - Love Field, a major commercial airport in Dallas, began as a World War I army airfield in 1914. It was named for Lt. Moss L. Love, who was killed during a training flight at San Diego, California, on September 4, 1913. In August 1927 the city of Dallas purchased 167 acres of the field for $325,000 for use as a private airport. In 1928 passenger service to San Antonio and Houston was begun, with three or four passengers on a flight. Love became an army field again in 1942 and served during World War II as headquarters for the United States Air Transport Command.
The facilities were greatly expanded by the army air corps, and by 1964 Love Field was the largest air terminal in the Southwest. In 1973, with seven million enplanements, Love Field was the sixth busiest airport in the United States. By the next year, however, it had lost all its carriers except Southwest Airlines to the new facility, DFW International Airport.
The Civil Aeronautics Board had ordered all carriers to use the new airport. Southwest, an intrastate carrier, refused to do so and won a subsequent lawsuit in the matter. Love Field continued to operate as a municipal airport and in 1992 was one of the four Texas airports that accounted for 81 percent of Texas air travel.
1925 - Asa Earl Carter [pseud. Bedford Forrest Carter], part Indian, segregationist, politician, speech-writer, and novelist, one of five children of Ralph and Hermione (Weatherly) Carter, was born in Anniston, Alabama, on September 4, 1925. By 1972 Carter was in Sweetwater, Texas. He adopted the pseudonym Bedford Forrest Carter and assumed the role of a largely self-taught, part-Cherokee novelist named after Nathan Bedford Forrest, the colorful, uneducated Confederate general.
He used the resources of the City-County Library to work on his first novel, Gone to Texas (1973). The highly successful film version starring Clint Eastwood is entitled The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976). Carter received various honors, one of which was an appearance at a Wellesley luncheon in Dallas in 1978 with J. Lon Tinkle, Barbara Tuchman, and Elizabeth Forsythe Hailey.
Carter was a masterful storyteller whose prose style is characterized by sparsely phrased, often fragmentary sentences and fast-paced plot. The influence of the Civil War and his Cherokee heritage are evident, and from these he drew his themes of courage, honor, kinship, and blood-feud.
1943 - Johnnie David Hutchins, Medal of Honor recipient, was born at Weimar, Texas. He attended Eagle Lake High School and enlisted in the naval reserve at Houston in November 1942. Seaman First Class Hutchins, United States Navy, was on board a landing ship tank, the USS LST 473, during a landing assault on Lae, New Guinea, on September 4, 1943.
His vessel was under a hail of enemy fire from shore batteries and aerial bombardment when a torpedo bore down on the ship. The helmsman was dislodged by a bomb blast, and Hutchins was mortally wounded. Fully aware of the dire situation, he grasped the wheel and with his last strength maneuvered the vessel clear of the advancing torpedo.
He succumbed to his injuries still clinging to the wheel with his final thoughts on the safety of his ship. A destroyer escort vessel, the USS Johnnie Hutchins, was launched in May 1944. Hutchins's mother was sponsor at the launching, and his fiancée, Ruby Mae Butler, was maid of honor. Hutchins is buried in Lakeside Cemetery at Eagle Lake, Texas.
He also organized a company of cavalry volunteers in Matagorda in February 1836. Colonel Horton's company joined Col. James Walker Fannin, Jr.'s command in South Texas in early March. From 1836 to 1838 Horton, a Democrat, served as senator in the First and Second congresses of the republic, representing Matagorda, Jackson, and Victoria counties. He campaigned unsuccessfully for the vice presidency in 1838.
In January 1839 he was chosen by the Republic of Texas Congress to chair the committee to select the site of the new capital. On March 7, 1842, Horton was recruited to serve as captain under Colonel Owen, to defend against Rafael Vásquez, and his force of 500–700 Mexican soldiers, who had seized San Antonio. Horton served as a delegate to the Convention of 1845 and subsequently consented to run for lieutenant governor. On May 1, 1846, Horton was declared the first lieutenant governor of the new state.
1813 - Hamilton Stuart, publisher and editor, was born on September 4, 1813, near Louisville, Kentucky. He learned the printing trade in Georgetown, Kentucky, where he published and edited a local newspaper at the age of twenty-two. After his physician advised him to try a more favorable climate, Stuart traveled with his wife to Texas with letters of introduction to many prominent Texans. The couple arrived in Houston in January 1838 and met Sam Houston, with whom Stuart formed an alliance that lasted until Houston's death in 1863.
He joined an old friend from Kentucky, Levi Jones, and Robert A. Irion, secretary of state in Sam Houston's cabinet, to launch the Galveston Civilian on May 8, 1838. When Houston moved to Galveston that year for his health, Stuart followed and renamed his newspaper Civilian and Galveston City Gazette. The paper appeared weekly in its small four-column folio, printed on an old Ramage press at first, but after 1857, on the first steam-powered press in Texas.
Stuart's editorials were closely read by Texans interested in Sam Houston, to whose ideas and personality Stuart was devoted. Since Galveston was the leading Texas city, Stuart's paper represented Texas to many people outside the state. Stuart attempted to present the state as favorably as possible, a fact that may account for his avoiding the feuds with rival editors that characterized many Texas newspapers of this era.
Stuart was mayor of Galveston from 1849 to 1852. Although production of the Civilian was suspended during the Civil War as a consequence of Stuart's ardent unionism, he revived the paper in 1865. Nine years later he sold his interest in the newspaper to join the editorial staff of his former rival, the Galveston News.
1829 - Milton Slocum began the publication of a newspaper named the Nacogdoches Mexican Advocate. It is not known exactly when the first edition of the paper appeared, but it was in print by September 4,1829 and thus antedated the Austin Gazette, published at San Felipe de Austin, by more than three months. No copies of the paper, which was written in both English and Spanish, are known to exist, but published excerpts suggest that it was aimed at attracting prospective settlers. The paper ceased publication about the time of the Law of April 6, 1830, which barred further immigration from the United States.
1839 - The small river steamer Cayuga, the first commercially successful steamboat in Texas, played an important role during the Texas Revolution. She carried supplies for the revolutionary army, transported government officials and refugees, and was the floating capitol of Texas in April 1836. The Cayuga, an eighty-eight-ton side-wheeler, was built in 1832 in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania. She was 96'11" long, 17'4" wide, and 5'4" deep. The Cayuga had one deck, two boilers, a high-compression engine, a cabin on deck, a plain head, and a pointed stern.
The Cayuga was the only steamer in Texas at this time. In April 1836 David G. Burnet, ad interim president of the new Republic of Texas, impressed the Cayuga for public service. The ship began transporting provisions to the Texas army and rescuing officials and citizens fleeing the advancing Mexican armies. On April 15 Captain Harris, in command of the steamer, evacuated Harrisburg just ahead of Gen. Antonio López de Santa Anna and his troops. The refugees included President Burnet, his cabinet, and all the inhabitants of the town.
After stopping at Lynch's Ferry and New Washington the Cayuga preceded to Anahuac and Galveston, where the passengers disembarked. The cabinet members remained aboard and on April 19 were rejoined by Burnet, who had left the steamer at Lynch's Ferry to get his family and had narrowly escaped being captured by the Mexicans at New Washington. The business of the republic was conducted through April 26 on the Cayuga, the temporary capitol. During this time the republic bought the steamer for $5,000 from Harris.
The Republic of Texas spent $300 for repairs on the Cayuga and by the end of the year authorized the secretary of the navy to sell it. The new owners refitted the vessel and renamed her the Branch T. Archer; she was thus one of two Texas ships named after Branch Tanner Archer. The Archer remained in the Houston-Galveston trade during 1837 and 1838.
The last mention of the little steamer was a Liberty County sheriff's sale on September 4, 1839, advertising all the right, title, and interest of John Huffman in the steamboat Pioneer, the late Branch T. Archer, together with the tackle and furniture. The vessel lay near the residence of Robert Wiseman in the Old River. The sale was to settle claims of John E. Ross and Robert Adkinson.
1897 - The Texas, Arkansas and Louisiana Railway Company was chartered on September 4, 1897, by a group of Cass County businessmen who wanted to connect the Texas and Pacific Railway Company at Atlanta with the Kansas City, Pittsburg and Gulf Railroad Company at Bloomburg, a distance of eight miles all within Cass County. The company secured a contract with the Wells Fargo Company to carry express and another with the Kansas City, Pittsburg and Gulf to obtain freight cars. The road carried produce of area farmers and lumbermen and some passengers. In 1918, the last year the line filed an annual report with the Railroad Commission, the company showed a deficit of $423. The road was abandoned in 1920.
1913 - Love Field, a major commercial airport in Dallas, began as a World War I army airfield in 1914. It was named for Lt. Moss L. Love, who was killed during a training flight at San Diego, California, on September 4, 1913. In August 1927 the city of Dallas purchased 167 acres of the field for $325,000 for use as a private airport. In 1928 passenger service to San Antonio and Houston was begun, with three or four passengers on a flight. Love became an army field again in 1942 and served during World War II as headquarters for the United States Air Transport Command.
The facilities were greatly expanded by the army air corps, and by 1964 Love Field was the largest air terminal in the Southwest. In 1973, with seven million enplanements, Love Field was the sixth busiest airport in the United States. By the next year, however, it had lost all its carriers except Southwest Airlines to the new facility, DFW International Airport.
The Civil Aeronautics Board had ordered all carriers to use the new airport. Southwest, an intrastate carrier, refused to do so and won a subsequent lawsuit in the matter. Love Field continued to operate as a municipal airport and in 1992 was one of the four Texas airports that accounted for 81 percent of Texas air travel.
1925 - Asa Earl Carter [pseud. Bedford Forrest Carter], part Indian, segregationist, politician, speech-writer, and novelist, one of five children of Ralph and Hermione (Weatherly) Carter, was born in Anniston, Alabama, on September 4, 1925. By 1972 Carter was in Sweetwater, Texas. He adopted the pseudonym Bedford Forrest Carter and assumed the role of a largely self-taught, part-Cherokee novelist named after Nathan Bedford Forrest, the colorful, uneducated Confederate general.
He used the resources of the City-County Library to work on his first novel, Gone to Texas (1973). The highly successful film version starring Clint Eastwood is entitled The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976). Carter received various honors, one of which was an appearance at a Wellesley luncheon in Dallas in 1978 with J. Lon Tinkle, Barbara Tuchman, and Elizabeth Forsythe Hailey.
Carter was a masterful storyteller whose prose style is characterized by sparsely phrased, often fragmentary sentences and fast-paced plot. The influence of the Civil War and his Cherokee heritage are evident, and from these he drew his themes of courage, honor, kinship, and blood-feud.
1943 - Johnnie David Hutchins, Medal of Honor recipient, was born at Weimar, Texas. He attended Eagle Lake High School and enlisted in the naval reserve at Houston in November 1942. Seaman First Class Hutchins, United States Navy, was on board a landing ship tank, the USS LST 473, during a landing assault on Lae, New Guinea, on September 4, 1943.
His vessel was under a hail of enemy fire from shore batteries and aerial bombardment when a torpedo bore down on the ship. The helmsman was dislodged by a bomb blast, and Hutchins was mortally wounded. Fully aware of the dire situation, he grasped the wheel and with his last strength maneuvered the vessel clear of the advancing torpedo.
He succumbed to his injuries still clinging to the wheel with his final thoughts on the safety of his ship. A destroyer escort vessel, the USS Johnnie Hutchins, was launched in May 1944. Hutchins's mother was sponsor at the launching, and his fiancée, Ruby Mae Butler, was maid of honor. Hutchins is buried in Lakeside Cemetery at Eagle Lake, Texas.