This Day In Texas History - September 29
Posted: Sun Sep 29, 2019 10:19 am
1837 - Tariff policies of the Republic of Texas varied from an approximation of free trade to the imposition of high duties for revenue purposes. In general, East Texas wanted low tariffs or none at all, West Texas and President Sam Houston advocated high customs for revenue, and president Mirabeau B. Lamar favored abolition of all tariffs.
An ordinance of the Consultation on November 13, 1835, granted power to the General Council to impose impost and tonnage duties and provide for their collection. Between 1835 and 1842, seven tariff bills were passed and signed into law and several were passed by Congress but vetoed by Houston.
On September 29, 1837, after calls for free trade, a special committee was appointed to report a bill replacing the tariff laws then in effect. This led to the law of December 18, 1837, designed to lower the cost of provisions and make some concessions to free-trade advocates. Staples such as sugar, coffee, and flour were added to the free list, and to the industrial free list were added such necessities as iron and steel, books, and lumber.
A comparison of prices before and a year after the act showed no marked difference, however. Price differences were due to fluctuation of currency, not to the tariff. From the bill of December 18, 1837, until 1940 there was no change, though the issue was before Congress each session, and though Lamar called for abolition of all tariffs. [ https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/mpt01 ]
1843 - Sánchez, translator and early settler, was born in Mexico around 1804 of mixed Spanish and Indian parents. He was living in Nacogdoches by 1822, when he took an oath of loyalty to the Mexican government. By 1831 he was listed in the Nacogdoches census as a worker, aged twenty-seven, with a wife, María de Pilar Caro, and two children.
Sánchez served intermittently between 1836 and 1850 as interpreter for the Texas and United States governments with six or seven Indian tribes. Sam Houston, who entrusted him with a number of assignments while endeavoring to conclude peace treaties with the various tribes, thought highly of his character and judgment. Along with Indian representatives, government officials, and other interpreters, Sánchez signed the Indian treaty made at Bird's Fort on September 29, 1843.
1856 - Panna Maria is on a plateau near the junction of the San Antonio River and Cibolo Creek where Farm roads 81 and 2724 meet, four miles north of Karnes City and fifty-five miles southeast of San Antonio in central Karnes County. It claims distinction as the oldest permanent Polish settlement in America and as the home of the nation's oldest Polish church and school.
In 1852 a young Franciscan missionary, Father Leopold Moczygemba, arrived in Texas to minister to German parishes in New Braunfels and Castroville. Soon he was writing his fellow Poles urging them to leave the harsh economic conditions and Prussian domination of Upper Silesia and join him in thriving Texas. In September 1854 the first group of immigrants, which included four of Moczygemba's brothers, traveled by train to Bremen, by ship to Galveston, and by foot and rented Mexican oxcart to San Antonio, to the waiting Father Moczygemba, who escorted them to the site he had chosen for their colony.
Contemporary estimates of the number of these original settlers vary from 150 to 800. With church funds Moczygemba purchased 238 acres, set aside twenty-five acres for a church, and parceled out the remainder to those who could not afford to buy farms. The settlers built a church and consecrated it on September 29, 1856. The town declined further in the twentieth century, and by 1988 was down to about ninety-six residents, four of whom carried the surname Moczygemba.
As the mother colony for the Poles in America, Panna Maria has occasionally attracted visitors numbering in the thousands to its celebrations, most notably in 1966 during the millennium of Polish Christianity and nationhood, when 10,000 people convened there for a Mass and barbeque; President Lyndon B. Johnson's gift on the occasion was Polish artist Jan E. Krantz's 12,000-piece mosaic of the Virgin of Czestochowa, which was put on permanent display in the church. [ https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/HLP04 ]
1863 - Fort Manhassett was located six miles west of Sabine Pass near State Highway 87 in southeastern Jefferson County. After the battle of Sabine Pass Confederate authorities feared that another Union invasion force might strike the upper Texas Gulf Coast near Sabine Pass. To block this threat, a series of five earthen redoubts was built on the ridges west of the city, thus preventing either a Union attack on the rear of Fort Griffin or a flanking movement aimed at Beaumont.
The defenses were named Fort Manhassett after the Union coal schooner Manhassett, which was beached nearby during a storm on September 29, 1863. Seven companies, commanded by Maj. Felix McReynolds, held Fort Manhassett in October 1863; the force had been reduced to 266 men by January 1, 1864. As late as March 1865 the post still had six heavy guns and two field pieces. Forts Griffin and Manhassett were both abandoned shortly before May 24. Excavations at the latter reveal that the Confederates buried their shells and gunpowder before the evacuation. A plaque now marks the location of the abandoned fort.
1863 - In early 1862 the Thirty-first Texas formed with Col. Trezevant C. Hawpe in command. Although most members came from Dallas County and the surrounding area, two companies were added from Travis and Bexar counties. In June the unit left for Arkansas where it joined a cavalry brigade, with the Twenty-second Texas and the Thirty-fourth Texas, under Col. D. H. Cooper.
The regiment skirmished successfully with Federal troops in Missouri near Newtonia in September. In February 1863, while the brigade marched through snow from Fort Smith to the Red River, Hawpe resigned as its commander. That spring orders sent the brigade to join Gen. Richard Taylor in Louisiana.
In May the Thirty-first Texas and another infantry regiment moved down to the Mississippi River where they harassed Union riverboats and outposts during the summer. On September 29, 1863 the brigade, including the Thirty-first Texas under Maj. Frederick Malone, defeated Federal troops at Stirling' Plantation in a surprise attack ordered by Gen. Thomas Green. In October, Gen. Camille de Polignac became commander of the brigade which was expanded by the return of the other dismounted cavalry regiments.
During February and March 1864, the brigade skirmished with Union forces at Vidalia and Harrisonburg before joining General Taylor in the Red River campaign. At Sabine Crossroads and Pleasant Hill on April 8 and 9, the regiment helped drive back the Federal advance. The regiment and the brigade harassed the Union withdrawal into May. After a failed effort to cross the Mississippi River in August, the brigade moved to Arkansas in September, then back to Louisiana in November. In March 1865 the Thirty-first Texas returned to its home state where it disbanded in May.
1864 - William H. Holland, soldier, legislator, and teacher, was born a slave in Marshall, TX in 1841. On October 22, 1864, Holland enlisted in the Union Army's Sixteenth United States Colored Troops, which was organized in Nashville, Tennessee, but included enlisted men from Ohio. Holland participated in the battles of Nashville and Overton Hill and in the pursuit of John Bell Hood to the Tennessee River.
His brother Milton enlisted in the Fifth United States Colored Troops, organized in Ohio, and won the Medal of Honor for his role in the battle of New Market Heights on September 29, 1864. The date of his move to Waller County is unknown, but in 1876 he won election to the Fifteenth Legislature as a representative from that county. In the legislature he sponsored the bill providing for Prairie View Normal College (now Prairie View A&M University). Holland died in Mineral Wells on May 27, 1907. [ https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fho30 ]
1867 - Francis McMullan, the leader of a group of Texans who moved to Brazil rather than remain under a Reconstruction government, the son of Hugh Milton and Nancy (Dyer) McMullan, was born in Walker County, Georgia, in 1835. His father was an early landowner, lawyer, and stockman in Hill County, Texas. Frank attended McKenzie College in Clarksville from 1858 to 1860.
He was described by a contemporary as "a man of cool courage...and undaunted resolution" who served as an officer under William Walker in the unsuccessful 1857–58 campaign to capture Nicaragua. After serving the Confederacy in Mexico during the Civil War, McMullan joined William Bowen in a plan to take advantage of liberal Brazilian immigration terms and take a colony of 154 from north central Texas to South America.
McMullan and Bowen left for Brazil in late 1865 to locate lands and decided on fifty square leagues on the headwaters of the São Lourenço River south of São Paulo. McMullan returned to Texas in June 1866. After harassment by port authorities in New Orleans and Galveston, the colonists sailed on the brig Derby on January 25, 1867.
His colony is credited with introducing the moldboard plow and modern agriculture to Brazil. In addition, colony members established a Baptist church there and made major contributions to Brazil's educational system. Frank McMullan was active in politics in Hill County before the Civil War and served as a delegate to the Texas Democratic convention in Galveston in 1860. He never married. He was a Mason and Methodist. He died at Iguape, Brazil, on September 29, 1867. [ https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fmcat ]
1867 - Pleasant Williams Kittrell, author of the bill to establish the University of Texas, son of Bryant and Mary (Norman) Kittrell, was born at Chapel Hill, North Carolina. At age thirteen he entered the University of North Carolina, from which he graduated at age seventeen. His great-grandfather, Judge John Williams, had helped establish the university.
In 1850 the Kittrells, along with the Goree family and their slaves, moved to Madison County, Texas. They later moved to Huntsville, where Kittrell's acquaintance with Sam Houston began. In Huntsville Kittrell continued his medical practice. He and Mrs. Kittrell had five children. Kittrell was twice elected to the Texas legislature. While serving as chairman of the Education Committee, he introduced and successfully fought for the bill to establish the University of Texas.
The bill, signed by Governor E. M. Pease on February 11, 1858, appropriated every tenth acre of state land for the university and $200,000 in cash, a portion of the $10 million received by Texas for relinquishing claim to parts of Colorado, New Mexico, Kansas, and Wyoming. In 1866 Governor James W. Throckmorton appointed Kittrell chairman of the board of administrators of the still nonexistent university.
After Houston died in 1863 Kittrell bought Houston's residence, the Steamboat House, and moved his family there. When the yellow fever epidemic struck Huntsville in 1867 he cared for fever patients until he too succumbed to the disease. He died at the Steamboat House, probably on September 29, 1867.
1872 - Ranald Slidell (Bad Hand) Mackenzie, army officer, was born on July 27, 1840, in New York City, the son of Alexander Slidell Mackenzie, a popular author and naval officer who had taken his mother's family name of Mackenzie, and Catherine (Robinson) Mackenzie. He received his education at Williams College and at the United States Military Academy, where he graduated on June 17, 1862, at the head of his class.
He was commissioned a second lieutenant and assigned to the Army of the Potomac. Within two years he had fought in eight major battles and been promoted to the rank of colonel. In 1867 Mackenzie accepted an appointment as colonel of the Forty-first Infantry, a newly formed black regiment reorganized two years later as part of the Twenty-fourth United States Infantry.
The unit had its headquarters at Fort Brown, Fort Clark, and later at Fort McKavett. On February 25, 1871, he assumed command of the Fourth United States Cavalry at Fort Concho and a month later moved its headquarters to Fort Richardson. That summer he began a series of expeditions into the uncharted Panhandle and Llano Estacado in an effort to drive renegade Indians back onto their reservations.
In October his troops skirmished with a band of Comanches in Blanco Canyon, where he was wounded, and on September 29, 1872, they defeated another near the site of the present town of Lefors. In 1873 Mackenzie was assigned to Fort Clark to put an end to the plunder of Texas livestock by Indian raiders from Mexico.[ https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fma07 ]
1907 - Gene Autry, the movie star known as the "Singing Cowboy," was born Orvon Gene Autry in Tioga, Texas, on September 29, 1907. At age twelve he received his first guitar lessons from his mother on a guitar ordered through the Sears and Roebuck catalog. As a young man Autry was hired as a telegraph operator for the Frisco Railroad in Chelsea, Oklahoma.
One evening in 1927, during Autry's shift, Will Rogers overheard the young telegraph operator singing and playing guitar. Rogers was so impressed that he suggested Autry move to New York and try to find work on radio. In 1931 he recorded his first hit, "That Silver-Haired Daddy of Mine," which eventually sold a million copies. The recording set an industry record for sales and became part of the first album in history to go gold (500,000 units sold).
In 1934 he began his Hollywood career as a singing cowboy in the Western movie In Old Santa Fe, starring Ken Maynard. The following year Autry played the lead in another Western named after his hit song "Tumbling Tumbleweeds." By 1942 he had established a successful career in recording, touring, and moviemaking.
All of these projects were put on hold, however, when he enlisted in the Army Air Corps during World War II. Autry returned in 1946 to his singing and acting career. He also began to invest some of his new-found fortune in television, radio, real estate, and other ventures. As the popularity of B Westerns declined, Autry broke new ground as the first film actor ever to become a major television star.
In 1949 he recorded "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer," which became the first record in history to go platinum (1 million units sold). In 1960 he expanded his financial empire further by purchasing the Los Angeles Angels (later the California and then the Anaheim Angels) baseball franchise.
Autry was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1969. In 1978 he published his autobiography, Back in the Saddle Again. At the time of his death on October 3, 1998, in Los Angeles, he had earned an unprecedented five stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. That same year he was inducted into the Texas Country Music Hall of Fame. [ https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fau25 ]
An ordinance of the Consultation on November 13, 1835, granted power to the General Council to impose impost and tonnage duties and provide for their collection. Between 1835 and 1842, seven tariff bills were passed and signed into law and several were passed by Congress but vetoed by Houston.
On September 29, 1837, after calls for free trade, a special committee was appointed to report a bill replacing the tariff laws then in effect. This led to the law of December 18, 1837, designed to lower the cost of provisions and make some concessions to free-trade advocates. Staples such as sugar, coffee, and flour were added to the free list, and to the industrial free list were added such necessities as iron and steel, books, and lumber.
A comparison of prices before and a year after the act showed no marked difference, however. Price differences were due to fluctuation of currency, not to the tariff. From the bill of December 18, 1837, until 1940 there was no change, though the issue was before Congress each session, and though Lamar called for abolition of all tariffs. [ https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/mpt01 ]
1843 - Sánchez, translator and early settler, was born in Mexico around 1804 of mixed Spanish and Indian parents. He was living in Nacogdoches by 1822, when he took an oath of loyalty to the Mexican government. By 1831 he was listed in the Nacogdoches census as a worker, aged twenty-seven, with a wife, María de Pilar Caro, and two children.
Sánchez served intermittently between 1836 and 1850 as interpreter for the Texas and United States governments with six or seven Indian tribes. Sam Houston, who entrusted him with a number of assignments while endeavoring to conclude peace treaties with the various tribes, thought highly of his character and judgment. Along with Indian representatives, government officials, and other interpreters, Sánchez signed the Indian treaty made at Bird's Fort on September 29, 1843.
1856 - Panna Maria is on a plateau near the junction of the San Antonio River and Cibolo Creek where Farm roads 81 and 2724 meet, four miles north of Karnes City and fifty-five miles southeast of San Antonio in central Karnes County. It claims distinction as the oldest permanent Polish settlement in America and as the home of the nation's oldest Polish church and school.
In 1852 a young Franciscan missionary, Father Leopold Moczygemba, arrived in Texas to minister to German parishes in New Braunfels and Castroville. Soon he was writing his fellow Poles urging them to leave the harsh economic conditions and Prussian domination of Upper Silesia and join him in thriving Texas. In September 1854 the first group of immigrants, which included four of Moczygemba's brothers, traveled by train to Bremen, by ship to Galveston, and by foot and rented Mexican oxcart to San Antonio, to the waiting Father Moczygemba, who escorted them to the site he had chosen for their colony.
Contemporary estimates of the number of these original settlers vary from 150 to 800. With church funds Moczygemba purchased 238 acres, set aside twenty-five acres for a church, and parceled out the remainder to those who could not afford to buy farms. The settlers built a church and consecrated it on September 29, 1856. The town declined further in the twentieth century, and by 1988 was down to about ninety-six residents, four of whom carried the surname Moczygemba.
As the mother colony for the Poles in America, Panna Maria has occasionally attracted visitors numbering in the thousands to its celebrations, most notably in 1966 during the millennium of Polish Christianity and nationhood, when 10,000 people convened there for a Mass and barbeque; President Lyndon B. Johnson's gift on the occasion was Polish artist Jan E. Krantz's 12,000-piece mosaic of the Virgin of Czestochowa, which was put on permanent display in the church. [ https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/HLP04 ]
1863 - Fort Manhassett was located six miles west of Sabine Pass near State Highway 87 in southeastern Jefferson County. After the battle of Sabine Pass Confederate authorities feared that another Union invasion force might strike the upper Texas Gulf Coast near Sabine Pass. To block this threat, a series of five earthen redoubts was built on the ridges west of the city, thus preventing either a Union attack on the rear of Fort Griffin or a flanking movement aimed at Beaumont.
The defenses were named Fort Manhassett after the Union coal schooner Manhassett, which was beached nearby during a storm on September 29, 1863. Seven companies, commanded by Maj. Felix McReynolds, held Fort Manhassett in October 1863; the force had been reduced to 266 men by January 1, 1864. As late as March 1865 the post still had six heavy guns and two field pieces. Forts Griffin and Manhassett were both abandoned shortly before May 24. Excavations at the latter reveal that the Confederates buried their shells and gunpowder before the evacuation. A plaque now marks the location of the abandoned fort.
1863 - In early 1862 the Thirty-first Texas formed with Col. Trezevant C. Hawpe in command. Although most members came from Dallas County and the surrounding area, two companies were added from Travis and Bexar counties. In June the unit left for Arkansas where it joined a cavalry brigade, with the Twenty-second Texas and the Thirty-fourth Texas, under Col. D. H. Cooper.
The regiment skirmished successfully with Federal troops in Missouri near Newtonia in September. In February 1863, while the brigade marched through snow from Fort Smith to the Red River, Hawpe resigned as its commander. That spring orders sent the brigade to join Gen. Richard Taylor in Louisiana.
In May the Thirty-first Texas and another infantry regiment moved down to the Mississippi River where they harassed Union riverboats and outposts during the summer. On September 29, 1863 the brigade, including the Thirty-first Texas under Maj. Frederick Malone, defeated Federal troops at Stirling' Plantation in a surprise attack ordered by Gen. Thomas Green. In October, Gen. Camille de Polignac became commander of the brigade which was expanded by the return of the other dismounted cavalry regiments.
During February and March 1864, the brigade skirmished with Union forces at Vidalia and Harrisonburg before joining General Taylor in the Red River campaign. At Sabine Crossroads and Pleasant Hill on April 8 and 9, the regiment helped drive back the Federal advance. The regiment and the brigade harassed the Union withdrawal into May. After a failed effort to cross the Mississippi River in August, the brigade moved to Arkansas in September, then back to Louisiana in November. In March 1865 the Thirty-first Texas returned to its home state where it disbanded in May.
1864 - William H. Holland, soldier, legislator, and teacher, was born a slave in Marshall, TX in 1841. On October 22, 1864, Holland enlisted in the Union Army's Sixteenth United States Colored Troops, which was organized in Nashville, Tennessee, but included enlisted men from Ohio. Holland participated in the battles of Nashville and Overton Hill and in the pursuit of John Bell Hood to the Tennessee River.
His brother Milton enlisted in the Fifth United States Colored Troops, organized in Ohio, and won the Medal of Honor for his role in the battle of New Market Heights on September 29, 1864. The date of his move to Waller County is unknown, but in 1876 he won election to the Fifteenth Legislature as a representative from that county. In the legislature he sponsored the bill providing for Prairie View Normal College (now Prairie View A&M University). Holland died in Mineral Wells on May 27, 1907. [ https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fho30 ]
1867 - Francis McMullan, the leader of a group of Texans who moved to Brazil rather than remain under a Reconstruction government, the son of Hugh Milton and Nancy (Dyer) McMullan, was born in Walker County, Georgia, in 1835. His father was an early landowner, lawyer, and stockman in Hill County, Texas. Frank attended McKenzie College in Clarksville from 1858 to 1860.
He was described by a contemporary as "a man of cool courage...and undaunted resolution" who served as an officer under William Walker in the unsuccessful 1857–58 campaign to capture Nicaragua. After serving the Confederacy in Mexico during the Civil War, McMullan joined William Bowen in a plan to take advantage of liberal Brazilian immigration terms and take a colony of 154 from north central Texas to South America.
McMullan and Bowen left for Brazil in late 1865 to locate lands and decided on fifty square leagues on the headwaters of the São Lourenço River south of São Paulo. McMullan returned to Texas in June 1866. After harassment by port authorities in New Orleans and Galveston, the colonists sailed on the brig Derby on January 25, 1867.
His colony is credited with introducing the moldboard plow and modern agriculture to Brazil. In addition, colony members established a Baptist church there and made major contributions to Brazil's educational system. Frank McMullan was active in politics in Hill County before the Civil War and served as a delegate to the Texas Democratic convention in Galveston in 1860. He never married. He was a Mason and Methodist. He died at Iguape, Brazil, on September 29, 1867. [ https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fmcat ]
1867 - Pleasant Williams Kittrell, author of the bill to establish the University of Texas, son of Bryant and Mary (Norman) Kittrell, was born at Chapel Hill, North Carolina. At age thirteen he entered the University of North Carolina, from which he graduated at age seventeen. His great-grandfather, Judge John Williams, had helped establish the university.
In 1850 the Kittrells, along with the Goree family and their slaves, moved to Madison County, Texas. They later moved to Huntsville, where Kittrell's acquaintance with Sam Houston began. In Huntsville Kittrell continued his medical practice. He and Mrs. Kittrell had five children. Kittrell was twice elected to the Texas legislature. While serving as chairman of the Education Committee, he introduced and successfully fought for the bill to establish the University of Texas.
The bill, signed by Governor E. M. Pease on February 11, 1858, appropriated every tenth acre of state land for the university and $200,000 in cash, a portion of the $10 million received by Texas for relinquishing claim to parts of Colorado, New Mexico, Kansas, and Wyoming. In 1866 Governor James W. Throckmorton appointed Kittrell chairman of the board of administrators of the still nonexistent university.
After Houston died in 1863 Kittrell bought Houston's residence, the Steamboat House, and moved his family there. When the yellow fever epidemic struck Huntsville in 1867 he cared for fever patients until he too succumbed to the disease. He died at the Steamboat House, probably on September 29, 1867.
1872 - Ranald Slidell (Bad Hand) Mackenzie, army officer, was born on July 27, 1840, in New York City, the son of Alexander Slidell Mackenzie, a popular author and naval officer who had taken his mother's family name of Mackenzie, and Catherine (Robinson) Mackenzie. He received his education at Williams College and at the United States Military Academy, where he graduated on June 17, 1862, at the head of his class.
He was commissioned a second lieutenant and assigned to the Army of the Potomac. Within two years he had fought in eight major battles and been promoted to the rank of colonel. In 1867 Mackenzie accepted an appointment as colonel of the Forty-first Infantry, a newly formed black regiment reorganized two years later as part of the Twenty-fourth United States Infantry.
The unit had its headquarters at Fort Brown, Fort Clark, and later at Fort McKavett. On February 25, 1871, he assumed command of the Fourth United States Cavalry at Fort Concho and a month later moved its headquarters to Fort Richardson. That summer he began a series of expeditions into the uncharted Panhandle and Llano Estacado in an effort to drive renegade Indians back onto their reservations.
In October his troops skirmished with a band of Comanches in Blanco Canyon, where he was wounded, and on September 29, 1872, they defeated another near the site of the present town of Lefors. In 1873 Mackenzie was assigned to Fort Clark to put an end to the plunder of Texas livestock by Indian raiders from Mexico.[ https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fma07 ]
1907 - Gene Autry, the movie star known as the "Singing Cowboy," was born Orvon Gene Autry in Tioga, Texas, on September 29, 1907. At age twelve he received his first guitar lessons from his mother on a guitar ordered through the Sears and Roebuck catalog. As a young man Autry was hired as a telegraph operator for the Frisco Railroad in Chelsea, Oklahoma.
One evening in 1927, during Autry's shift, Will Rogers overheard the young telegraph operator singing and playing guitar. Rogers was so impressed that he suggested Autry move to New York and try to find work on radio. In 1931 he recorded his first hit, "That Silver-Haired Daddy of Mine," which eventually sold a million copies. The recording set an industry record for sales and became part of the first album in history to go gold (500,000 units sold).
In 1934 he began his Hollywood career as a singing cowboy in the Western movie In Old Santa Fe, starring Ken Maynard. The following year Autry played the lead in another Western named after his hit song "Tumbling Tumbleweeds." By 1942 he had established a successful career in recording, touring, and moviemaking.
All of these projects were put on hold, however, when he enlisted in the Army Air Corps during World War II. Autry returned in 1946 to his singing and acting career. He also began to invest some of his new-found fortune in television, radio, real estate, and other ventures. As the popularity of B Westerns declined, Autry broke new ground as the first film actor ever to become a major television star.
In 1949 he recorded "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer," which became the first record in history to go platinum (1 million units sold). In 1960 he expanded his financial empire further by purchasing the Los Angeles Angels (later the California and then the Anaheim Angels) baseball franchise.
Autry was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1969. In 1978 he published his autobiography, Back in the Saddle Again. At the time of his death on October 3, 1998, in Los Angeles, he had earned an unprecedented five stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. That same year he was inducted into the Texas Country Music Hall of Fame. [ https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fau25 ]