This Day In Texas History - September 24
Posted: Tue Sep 24, 2019 7:21 am
1771 - Joseph Grigsby, early settler and congressman in the Republic of Texas, son of Nathaniel and Elizabeth (Butler) Grigsby, was born on Bull Run in Loudoun County, Virginia, on September 24, 1771. The Grigsbys moved west to Daviess County, Kentucky, in 1817, where Joseph developed a prosperous 1,000-acre cotton plantation on the Green River.
In 1828 they moved to the Mexican province of Texas, where they settled first in Lorenzo de Zavala's colony in Jasper County. After the Texas Revolution in 1836 Grigsby built a large plantation on his Neches River grant in Jefferson County and built the first horse-driven cotton gin in the area.
The community of Grigsby's Bluff became a busy trading stop for side-wheelers and flatboats on the Neches. Grigsby acquired over 10,000 acres extending from the site of present-day Port Neches to Mesquite Point on Sabine Pass and became the wealthiest person in Jefferson County. He and three other prominent citizens gave 200 acres of land and laid out the townsite of Beaumont in 1837.
He was elected land-office commissioner for Jefferson County and a representative in the Second, Third, and Fifth congresses of the Republic of Texas. He died at Grigsby's Bluff on September 13, 1841, and was buried on his plantation. His estate was administered by his son-in-law, George W. Smyth, a signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence.
1790 - James Kerr, soldier, attorney, surveyor, and physician, was born near Danville, Kentucky, on September 24, 1790. In 1808 his Baptist minister father moved the family to Missouri. Kerr fought in the War of 1812 under Nathaniel Boone and achieved the rank of lieutenant. Thereafter he was sheriff of St. Charles County, Missouri. In January 1825 Kerr was appointed surveyor general of the Texas colony of Green DeWitt. In April or May he took his family and about eight slaves to Brazoria, where he joined the colony of his close friend, Stephen F. Austin.
Later that year his wife and two of his children died of cholera at their camp on the San Bernard River. Leaving his surviving three-year-old daughter with friends in San Felipe, he set out with Erastus (Deaf) Smith and five other men to select a site for the capital of the DeWitt colony. In August 1825 the men built cabins on Kerr's Creek near the junction of the San Marcos and Guadalupe rivers and made plans for the establishment of Gonzales. The next year the makeshift huts were destroyed by Indian raiders.
In May 1827 Kerr signed a treaty with the Karankawa Indians. Kerr was the Lavaca delegate at the Convention of 1832. The next year, as a member of the Convention of 1833, he made a memorandum of the full list of representatives; he also took enough time from public service to marry Sarah Fulton, a foster daughter of John J. Linn.
In June 1835 Kerr reported the political news in Mexico and the rise of Antonio López de Santa Anna to Gail Borden, Jr. In October 1835 Austin wrote Kerr requesting that he and John Alley sign a letter to the American colonists of Texas confirming the advance of Gen. Martín Perfecto de Cos and his Centralist army. Kerr was elected a delegate to the Consultation of 1835 but did not serve because he was involved in a campaign against the Lipan Apaches.
During the period of the Republic Kerr represented Jackson County in the House of the Third Congress and introduced antidueling legislation and a bill to make Austin the capital. Though he was admired and respected by his associates, even his family members admitted that he was not much for looks.
One day when he was visiting a saloon, a homely stranger approached him and announced, "I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to kill you." Kerr calmly asked the man why such drastic action was necessary, whereupon the visitor explained, "I have always said if I ever saw a man uglier than I am, that I was going to shoot him." Kerr invited the man over to the window and, after inspecting the man in the daylight, wryly commented: "Shoot away, stranger, if I'm any uglier than you I don't care to live!" Kerr spent his last years practicing medicine. On December 25, 1850, he died in his Jackson County home. In 1856 Kerr County was named in his honor.
1835 - Lewis Johnson, Alamo defender, was born around 1813, one of five known children of James Johnson, Sr., a Virginian who moved to Texas in 1829 with his family. On September 24, 1835, Lewis, from the Trinity jurisdiction, entered service as a volunteer in Capt. Robert M. Coleman's First Company of the revolutionary army.
He undoubtedly was one of the thirteen privates in that company at Camp Cibolo on October 17, 1835, and one of the eighteen noncommissioned officers and privates of that company in the First Division of Col. John H. Moore's regiment at Camp Salado on October 21, 1835. He and his brother Frank participated in the siege of Bexar, after which his brother was honorably discharged and returned to his family in the Nacogdoches Municipality.
Lewis, who was unmarried, chose on November 24, 1835, to remain at Bexar under the command of Gen. Edward Burleson. On December 14, 1835, he volunteered to garrison Bexar under the command of Lt. Col. James C. Neill. In February 1836 he was one of those at the Alamo who participated in the election ordered by the General Consultation for members of the coming convention. On March 6, 1836, Lewis was killed at the battle of the Alamo.
1862 - Fort Sabine was off Farm Road 3322 and State Highway 87 one mile south of the Sabine Pass Battleground State Historical Park and fifteen miles south of Port Arthur in southeastern Jefferson County. Fearing a Union invasion during the Civil War, the citizens of Sabine Pass decided to build a fort to protect their town. Local residents, including many slaves, constructed a dirt and timber earthwork overlooking the Sabine River.
The post was garrisoned by local militia, the Sabine Pass Guard, and later by the Sixth Texas Infantry Battalion. On September 24, 1862, the fort was shelled by Union gunboats and severely damaged. With the fort's ability to continue functioning already in doubt, yellow fever broke out among the remaining troops, and Maj. Josephus S. Irvine ordered the guns spiked and the position abandoned.
The following March, Maj. Julius Kellersberg inspected the remains of Fort Sabine and determined that the site was no longer useful. Consequently, he ordered the construction of a new fort, several miles away, which became Fort Griffin. Fort Griffin was completed in August 1863, when the two thirty-two-pound guns from Fort Sabine were installed and reactivated.
1877 - Lawson Daniel Gratz, African-American Civil War veteran and Buffalo Soldier, was born a slave in Kentucky. When he gained freedom and volunteered for service in the Union Army on June 24, 1864, enlisting officers recorded his birthplace as Fayette County, Kentucky, and his age as thirty, making 1834 possibly the year of his birth.
Gratz (or Gratts, as his name was written at times) became a sergeant in Company C of the 114th United States Colored Troops, a unit that was ordered to Virginia in January 1865 and participated in Gen. Ulysses S. Grant’s campaign that forced the surrender of Gen. Robert E. Lee’s Confederate army at Appomattox in April. The 114th USCT remained in Virginia until July 1865 and were then ordered to the Rio Grande as part of the United States Army guarding the border with Mexico. Gratz and his fellow soldiers were mustered out of service in April 1867.
Gratz moved for a brief time to Washington, D.C., before joining the newly-created Tenth United States Cavalry in August 1867. The Tenth Cavalry under the command of Col. Benjamin Grierson campaigned against the Plains Indians, especially the Comanches, from 1867 to 1875 and earned the nickname “Buffalo Soldiers” for their skill and tenacity. Gratz suffered an accidental wound that destroyed vision in his right eye in 1868, but he learned to aim with his left eye and remained in the Tenth Cavalry until 1872, when he was discharged at Fort Richardson, Texas.
Following his discharge, Gratz moved to Albany, Shackleford County, Texas. He worked as a farmer and as a teamster, hauling hides eastward to Fort Worth and Dallas. On September 24, 1877, Gratz married sixteen-year old Rosa Ann (or Rosanna) Cass in Shackleford County, and the couple began a family that eventually included fourteen children. The family moved to a small farm near Annetta, Parker County, in 1892. The 1900 United States census listed Gratz (age sixty) with his wife Rosa and nine children in the household. They lived in Annetta until Gratz’s death from a heart attack on June 18, 1909.
1897 - There were two unrelated railroads in Texas known as the Texas Transportation Company. The first was chartered on September 6, 1866, to construct a railroad along the south side of Buffalo Bayou from Houston to a point near Bray's Bayou. Although some construction was done, the backers were unable to complete the line, and the project languished for several years. The second Texas Transportation Company, located in San Antonio, began as a private corporation in 1887 and was chartered on September 24, 1897.
In 1932 the company was recognized as a common carrier by the Railroad Commission. The Texas Transportation Company was owned by the Pearl Brewing Company and the approximately 1.3 miles of track served as an electric switching line for Pearl's San Antonio brewery. In the 1990s the railroad had two electric locomotives and remained one of the last freight-hauling electric lines in the United States.
The train consisted of an average of twenty-five to thirty cars per day that operated over a six-day week. The Texas Transportation Company ceased operations on June 30, 2000, and Pearl Brewing Company closed in the spring of 2001.
1913 - The Daily Texan, student newspaper of the University of Texas at Austin, began as a weekly in 1900, when two privately owned campus newspapers, the Calendar and the Ranger, were joined to form the Texan, with Frederick Garland (Fritz) Lanham as the first editor. In 1904 the student assembly took charge of operating the paper, and by 1907 the Texan was published twice a week.
A student referendum in 1913 made the Texan a daily newspaper, and its first issue as such appeared on September 24, 1913; on that date the Daily Texan became, according to its editors, the first college daily in the South. The Daily Texan fostered both the university song "The Eyes of Texas" and the name "Longhorns" for the university football team.
Over the years the newspaper, with the aid of national news-gathering sources, provided the university community with coverage of local, state, national, and international news. By 1925 the newspaper was eight pages long and had a circulation of 5,500. In the early 1990s the Texan had a circulation of 32,000 in the fall and spring and 21,000 during the summer sessions. It employed 250 to 300 persons during the fall and spring semesters, and 125 to 150 persons in the summer.
In 1828 they moved to the Mexican province of Texas, where they settled first in Lorenzo de Zavala's colony in Jasper County. After the Texas Revolution in 1836 Grigsby built a large plantation on his Neches River grant in Jefferson County and built the first horse-driven cotton gin in the area.
The community of Grigsby's Bluff became a busy trading stop for side-wheelers and flatboats on the Neches. Grigsby acquired over 10,000 acres extending from the site of present-day Port Neches to Mesquite Point on Sabine Pass and became the wealthiest person in Jefferson County. He and three other prominent citizens gave 200 acres of land and laid out the townsite of Beaumont in 1837.
He was elected land-office commissioner for Jefferson County and a representative in the Second, Third, and Fifth congresses of the Republic of Texas. He died at Grigsby's Bluff on September 13, 1841, and was buried on his plantation. His estate was administered by his son-in-law, George W. Smyth, a signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence.
1790 - James Kerr, soldier, attorney, surveyor, and physician, was born near Danville, Kentucky, on September 24, 1790. In 1808 his Baptist minister father moved the family to Missouri. Kerr fought in the War of 1812 under Nathaniel Boone and achieved the rank of lieutenant. Thereafter he was sheriff of St. Charles County, Missouri. In January 1825 Kerr was appointed surveyor general of the Texas colony of Green DeWitt. In April or May he took his family and about eight slaves to Brazoria, where he joined the colony of his close friend, Stephen F. Austin.
Later that year his wife and two of his children died of cholera at their camp on the San Bernard River. Leaving his surviving three-year-old daughter with friends in San Felipe, he set out with Erastus (Deaf) Smith and five other men to select a site for the capital of the DeWitt colony. In August 1825 the men built cabins on Kerr's Creek near the junction of the San Marcos and Guadalupe rivers and made plans for the establishment of Gonzales. The next year the makeshift huts were destroyed by Indian raiders.
In May 1827 Kerr signed a treaty with the Karankawa Indians. Kerr was the Lavaca delegate at the Convention of 1832. The next year, as a member of the Convention of 1833, he made a memorandum of the full list of representatives; he also took enough time from public service to marry Sarah Fulton, a foster daughter of John J. Linn.
In June 1835 Kerr reported the political news in Mexico and the rise of Antonio López de Santa Anna to Gail Borden, Jr. In October 1835 Austin wrote Kerr requesting that he and John Alley sign a letter to the American colonists of Texas confirming the advance of Gen. Martín Perfecto de Cos and his Centralist army. Kerr was elected a delegate to the Consultation of 1835 but did not serve because he was involved in a campaign against the Lipan Apaches.
During the period of the Republic Kerr represented Jackson County in the House of the Third Congress and introduced antidueling legislation and a bill to make Austin the capital. Though he was admired and respected by his associates, even his family members admitted that he was not much for looks.
One day when he was visiting a saloon, a homely stranger approached him and announced, "I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to kill you." Kerr calmly asked the man why such drastic action was necessary, whereupon the visitor explained, "I have always said if I ever saw a man uglier than I am, that I was going to shoot him." Kerr invited the man over to the window and, after inspecting the man in the daylight, wryly commented: "Shoot away, stranger, if I'm any uglier than you I don't care to live!" Kerr spent his last years practicing medicine. On December 25, 1850, he died in his Jackson County home. In 1856 Kerr County was named in his honor.
1835 - Lewis Johnson, Alamo defender, was born around 1813, one of five known children of James Johnson, Sr., a Virginian who moved to Texas in 1829 with his family. On September 24, 1835, Lewis, from the Trinity jurisdiction, entered service as a volunteer in Capt. Robert M. Coleman's First Company of the revolutionary army.
He undoubtedly was one of the thirteen privates in that company at Camp Cibolo on October 17, 1835, and one of the eighteen noncommissioned officers and privates of that company in the First Division of Col. John H. Moore's regiment at Camp Salado on October 21, 1835. He and his brother Frank participated in the siege of Bexar, after which his brother was honorably discharged and returned to his family in the Nacogdoches Municipality.
Lewis, who was unmarried, chose on November 24, 1835, to remain at Bexar under the command of Gen. Edward Burleson. On December 14, 1835, he volunteered to garrison Bexar under the command of Lt. Col. James C. Neill. In February 1836 he was one of those at the Alamo who participated in the election ordered by the General Consultation for members of the coming convention. On March 6, 1836, Lewis was killed at the battle of the Alamo.
1862 - Fort Sabine was off Farm Road 3322 and State Highway 87 one mile south of the Sabine Pass Battleground State Historical Park and fifteen miles south of Port Arthur in southeastern Jefferson County. Fearing a Union invasion during the Civil War, the citizens of Sabine Pass decided to build a fort to protect their town. Local residents, including many slaves, constructed a dirt and timber earthwork overlooking the Sabine River.
The post was garrisoned by local militia, the Sabine Pass Guard, and later by the Sixth Texas Infantry Battalion. On September 24, 1862, the fort was shelled by Union gunboats and severely damaged. With the fort's ability to continue functioning already in doubt, yellow fever broke out among the remaining troops, and Maj. Josephus S. Irvine ordered the guns spiked and the position abandoned.
The following March, Maj. Julius Kellersberg inspected the remains of Fort Sabine and determined that the site was no longer useful. Consequently, he ordered the construction of a new fort, several miles away, which became Fort Griffin. Fort Griffin was completed in August 1863, when the two thirty-two-pound guns from Fort Sabine were installed and reactivated.
1877 - Lawson Daniel Gratz, African-American Civil War veteran and Buffalo Soldier, was born a slave in Kentucky. When he gained freedom and volunteered for service in the Union Army on June 24, 1864, enlisting officers recorded his birthplace as Fayette County, Kentucky, and his age as thirty, making 1834 possibly the year of his birth.
Gratz (or Gratts, as his name was written at times) became a sergeant in Company C of the 114th United States Colored Troops, a unit that was ordered to Virginia in January 1865 and participated in Gen. Ulysses S. Grant’s campaign that forced the surrender of Gen. Robert E. Lee’s Confederate army at Appomattox in April. The 114th USCT remained in Virginia until July 1865 and were then ordered to the Rio Grande as part of the United States Army guarding the border with Mexico. Gratz and his fellow soldiers were mustered out of service in April 1867.
Gratz moved for a brief time to Washington, D.C., before joining the newly-created Tenth United States Cavalry in August 1867. The Tenth Cavalry under the command of Col. Benjamin Grierson campaigned against the Plains Indians, especially the Comanches, from 1867 to 1875 and earned the nickname “Buffalo Soldiers” for their skill and tenacity. Gratz suffered an accidental wound that destroyed vision in his right eye in 1868, but he learned to aim with his left eye and remained in the Tenth Cavalry until 1872, when he was discharged at Fort Richardson, Texas.
Following his discharge, Gratz moved to Albany, Shackleford County, Texas. He worked as a farmer and as a teamster, hauling hides eastward to Fort Worth and Dallas. On September 24, 1877, Gratz married sixteen-year old Rosa Ann (or Rosanna) Cass in Shackleford County, and the couple began a family that eventually included fourteen children. The family moved to a small farm near Annetta, Parker County, in 1892. The 1900 United States census listed Gratz (age sixty) with his wife Rosa and nine children in the household. They lived in Annetta until Gratz’s death from a heart attack on June 18, 1909.
1897 - There were two unrelated railroads in Texas known as the Texas Transportation Company. The first was chartered on September 6, 1866, to construct a railroad along the south side of Buffalo Bayou from Houston to a point near Bray's Bayou. Although some construction was done, the backers were unable to complete the line, and the project languished for several years. The second Texas Transportation Company, located in San Antonio, began as a private corporation in 1887 and was chartered on September 24, 1897.
In 1932 the company was recognized as a common carrier by the Railroad Commission. The Texas Transportation Company was owned by the Pearl Brewing Company and the approximately 1.3 miles of track served as an electric switching line for Pearl's San Antonio brewery. In the 1990s the railroad had two electric locomotives and remained one of the last freight-hauling electric lines in the United States.
The train consisted of an average of twenty-five to thirty cars per day that operated over a six-day week. The Texas Transportation Company ceased operations on June 30, 2000, and Pearl Brewing Company closed in the spring of 2001.
1913 - The Daily Texan, student newspaper of the University of Texas at Austin, began as a weekly in 1900, when two privately owned campus newspapers, the Calendar and the Ranger, were joined to form the Texan, with Frederick Garland (Fritz) Lanham as the first editor. In 1904 the student assembly took charge of operating the paper, and by 1907 the Texan was published twice a week.
A student referendum in 1913 made the Texan a daily newspaper, and its first issue as such appeared on September 24, 1913; on that date the Daily Texan became, according to its editors, the first college daily in the South. The Daily Texan fostered both the university song "The Eyes of Texas" and the name "Longhorns" for the university football team.
Over the years the newspaper, with the aid of national news-gathering sources, provided the university community with coverage of local, state, national, and international news. By 1925 the newspaper was eight pages long and had a circulation of 5,500. In the early 1990s the Texan had a circulation of 32,000 in the fall and spring and 21,000 during the summer sessions. It employed 250 to 300 persons during the fall and spring semesters, and 125 to 150 persons in the summer.