This Day In Texas History - September 30

[joe817]

1672 - Jean L'Archevêque, explorer, soldier, and trader, was born on September 30, 1672, at Bayonne, France. In 1684, at the age of twelve, he joined the expedition of René Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, and accompanied him on his expedition to reach the Mississippi. They landed instead at Matagorda Bay on the Texas coast on February 20, 1685. A member of the group that assassinated La Salle, L'Archevêque was one of six members of the expedition that stayed with the Hasinai Indians. In 1689 he and Jacques Grollet were the only two who agreed to meet and be rescued by Alonso De León. Taken first to Mexico City and then to Spain, they were imprisoned for thirty months and then allowed to return to America upon swearing to serve the Spanish King. [ https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/flabc ]

1801 - George Moffitt Patrick, physician and soldier, was born on September 30, 1801, in Albemarle County, Virginia. In 1803 he accompanied his parents to Fayette County, Kentucky, where he received his primary education. He subsequently earned a medical degree at Transylvania University at Lexington, Kentucky. He immigrated to the Harrisburg district of the Austin colony, Texas, in January 1828 and established himself as a farmer. In 1831 he was elected second alcalde of Anahuac and in 1832 was chosen regidor. Patrick was among the volunteers under the command of Capt. William B. Travis who captured the Mexican fort and garrison at Anahuac in July 1835. He represented Liberty Municipality in the Consultation of 1835 and on November 13 signed the articles that established the provisional government of Texas. On November 30, with William A. Pettus, he reported "much dissatisfaction and inquietude pervading the army" but assured the council that "if their wants are supplied—no fears can be entertained of their abandoning the siege of Bexar." During the Runaway Scrape Patrick's farm, Deepwater, was for a time the seat of the Texas government, and as the Mexican army approached, he accompanied President David G. Burnet and his cabinet first to Morgan's Point and then to Galveston where, for a time, he served as captain of the schooner Flash. Following the battle of San Jacinto, Houston moved his army from the battlefield onto Patrick's farm on Buffalo Bayou because, according to Robert Hancock Hunter, "the dead Mexicans began to smell." He died at his home at Anderson on June 28, 1889. [ https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fpa49 ]

1858 - Henry Skillman, military scout, pioneer mail carrier, and stage driver, was born in New Jersey in late 1813 or early 1814, according to the El Paso County census of 1860. He first appears in written accounts as a courier on the old Santa Fe Trail in 1842, and he later drove the Santa Fe-to-Chihuahua route as a trader. In 1849 and 1850 Skillman was among the first horseback mail carriers between San Antonio and El Paso. In 1851 the United States postmaster general awarded him the first contract for mail delivery between Santa Fe and San Antonio. He ran the route bimonthly until March 1852, when it became a monthly run. That first run was made with six mules and a Concord coach and was accompanied by eighteen well-armed mounted men, but as time went on the route utilized freight wagons, often accompanied by horsemen leading pack mules. Henry Skillman is remembered as the driver of the first west-bound Butterfield Overland Mail stage, which arrived in El Paso on Thursday, September 30, 1858. Skillman took over the reins of the stage at the Horsehead Crossing station on Sunday morning and arrived in El Paso before dawn on Thursday, having spent ninety-six hours at his position, with no rest or relief. When the Civil War erupted, Skillman ran espionage for the Confederate forces between old El Paso del Norte and San Antonio. After several successful trips he was tracked and killed on April 15, 1864, at Spencer's Ranch, near Presidio, by a detachment from Company A, First California Cavalry, led by Albert H. French.

1861 - John Bell Hood, United States and Confederate States Army officer, was born at Owingsville, Bath County, Kentucky, on June 1, 1831. He was appointed to the United States Military Academy at West Point on July 1, 1849, and graduated forty-fourth in the class of 1853; his classmates included Philip H. Sheridan, James B. McPherson, and John M. Schofield. After service in Missouri and California, he was promoted on March 3, 1855, to second lieutenant and assigned to Company G of the elite Second United States Cavalry, with which he served on the Texas frontier. 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. Upon his resignation from the United States Army, he was commissioned a captain in the regular Confederate cavalry on March 16, 1861, and on September 30, 1861 was appointed colonel of the Fourth Texas Infantry, superseding Robert T. P. Allen. 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. After the war Hood moved to New Orleans, where he was involved in merchandising, real estate, and insurance businesses. He died there of yellow fever on August 30, 1879. His wife, the former Anna Marie Hennen, and eldest daughter preceded him in death by only a few days, and the couple left ten orphans. General Hood was originally buried in Lafayette Cemetery, New Orleans, but was reinterred in the Hennen family tomb at the Metairie Cemetery. His memoir, Advance and Retreat (1880), is one of the classics of Confederate literature. Hood County is named in his honor, as is Fort Hood in Bell and Coryell counties. [ https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fho49 ]

1862 - The Sixteenth Texas Cavalry Regiment was organized at Dallas in the spring of 1862 and was mustered into service in mid-April. The unit consisted of ten companies of nearly 1,000 men from Collin, Cooke, Grayson, Titus, and Washington counties. The regiment was known by several alternate names including Briscoe's Cavalry, Gregg's Cavalry, Fitzhugh's Cavalry, Diamond's Cavalry, Daugherty's Cavalry, Lassiter's Cavalry, and Jarrell's Cavalry. The Sixteenth Texas Cavalry primarily operated in the Trans-Mississippi and was involved in engagements in Louisiana and Arkansas. The regiment was ordered to dismount in September 1862, following reorganization, and many of the men were disappointed with the decision and reacted poorly. The men of the Lone Star State considered themselves natural equestrians, and slogging through dust and mud on foot was not the Texas way of fighting.On September 30, 1862, the unit was attached to the Second Brigade of the Second Division in the Trans-Mississippi Department. The Sixteenth Texas Cavalry Regiment participated in more than fifteen engagements from December 1862 through June 1864. The unit was one of the first units in what became Walker's Texas Division to engage in combat near Little Rock, Arkansas, in the spring of 1862. In March 1865 the Sixteenth Texas Cavalry Regiment was ordered to Camp Groce in Hempstead, Texas, where they disbanded in May 1865, following news of surrender of Confederate forces in the eastern theater. The unit officially surrendered with Gen. Edmund Kirby Smith on May 26, 1865.
[ https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/qks15 ]

1873 - The International-Great Northern Railroad Company was a major component of the Missouri Pacific lines in Texas. The railroad was formed on September 30, 1873, by the consolidation of the International Railroad Company and the Houston and Great Northern Railroad. At the time of the merger, the Houston and Great Northern owned 252 miles of track between Houston and Palestine, between Houston and East Columbia with branches from Phelps to Huntsville, and between Troup and Mineola. The International was chartered on August 5, 1870, and at the time of the consolidation operated 177 miles from Hearne to Longview. Despite the financial panic of 1873, the consolidated company continued to slowly expand, reaching Rockdale in 1874 and Austin on December 28, 1876. Building resumed in 1880, and the following year the railroad reached San Antonio and Laredo on December 1, 1881. The various predecessor companies of the International and Great Northern earned 6,432,000 acres of state land. This land was sold for a net of $4,668,850 or about seventy-two cents an acre. The charter of the International called for the State of Texas to grant $10,000 in bonds to the company for each mile completed. However, when the company applied for the bonds Comptroller Albert A. Bledsoe refused to sign and register the bonds. A compromise was worked out whereby the railroad was granted twenty sections of land per mile constructed rather than the normal sixteen sections. In addition, the railroad was exempted from state taxation for twenty-five years. The International and Great Northern entered receivership on April 1, 1878, was sold at foreclosure, and conveyed to a new company organized under the original charter on November 1, 1879. [ https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/eqi04 ]

1881 - The Rocking Chair Ranche Company, Limited, as it was designated by its British owners, encompassed northeastern Collingsworth County and extended into Wheeler County. The brand that gave it its name, however, was probably first used by Noah Ellis in South Texas during the early 1860s. It came to Collingsworth County in the fall of 1879, when John and Wiley Dickerson drove 2,000 cattle from the Llano River country to Dogwood Springs, on the South Fork of Elm Creek. By 1880 the Dickersons had established their headquarters at a site located south of a range of mesas subsequently named the Rocking Chair Mountains. In 1881 A. Conkle of Kansas City and John T. Lytle of Medina County acquired the brand; they registered it at Mobeetie on September 30, 1881. By November 1882 Conkle and Lytle had a herd of 14,745 head. The Rocking Chair Ranch was, however, without a legal home until February 17, 1883, when the partners bought 235(150,400 acres) sections of former Houston and Great Northern Railroad land from the New York and Texas Land Company.(There's much more to this interesting story) [ https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/apr01 ]

1905 - In 1900 Benjamin Franklin Yoakum, manager of the Frisco railroad system, developed a plan to extend the St. Louis, Brownsville and Mexico Railway from Houston to Brownsville. He recognized the agricultural potential of the area and soon collected a group of St. Louis capitalists to form the American Rio Grande Land and Irrigation Company with a capital stock of $1.25 million. A charter for the corporation was granted by the state of Texas on September 30, 1905. The main accomplishment of the American Company was integrating the development of irrigation, the coming of the railroad, the sale of farmland, and the establishment of the town of Mercedes. The developers were fully aware that irrigation would be unprofitable if there was no way to get the produce to distant markets; hence the railroad. Production required producers; hence the intensive recruitment of land buyers from the Midwest. Coordination of the operation required central facilities; hence the town. The first office of the company was a boxcar on a railroad siding; the second was a two-story building in Mercedes. W. F. Shaw served as chief engineer, vice president, and general manager from 1907 to 1930. He planned and developed the irrigation and drainage system for the project. A settling basin, a pumping plant on the river, a canal, and an electrical plant were built in Mercedes in 1906–07. The canals and river pump station began operation in 1908. By 1920 the system consisted of three large canals, five pumping plants, reservoirs and settling basins, and extensive drainage works.

On January 27, 1922, controlling stock in the company was bought by Harry L. Seay and Charles Linz of Dallas. In 1927 Hidalgo and Cameron Counties Water and Control District No. 9 was formed by the farmers who owned land in the district, and in 1929 they purchased the irrigation portion of the company.

1925 - Texas Technological College opened on September 30, 1925, with 914 students and six buildings. Initially it had four schools: Agriculture, Engineering, Home Economics, and Liberal Arts. In 1933 they were designated divisions, and in 1944 the name reverted to schools. Texas Technological College was founded on February 10, 1923, when Governor Pat M. Neff signed Senate Bill 103 to establish a college in West Texas to "give instruction in technological, manufacturing, and agricultural pursuits" and "to elevate the ideals, enrich the lives, and increase the capacity of the people for democratic self-government." The movement for a college in West Texas had begun before 1900, almost as soon as the first settlers reached the area. It finally resulted in the approval of a bill early in 1917 establishing the West Texas A&M College as a branch of Texas A&M, but the bill was repealed at the next legislative session after it was discovered that Governor James E. Ferguson had falsely reported Abilene as the locating committee's choice for the college. West Texans were thoroughly aroused and, led by the West Texas Chamber of Commerce, continued the fight. Finally, in 1923 a compromise bill authored by state senator William H. Bledsoe of Lubbock and state representative Lewis Carpenter of Dallas was approved. Lubbock was chosen as the site for the college after a locating board had visited the thirty-seven towns submitting briefs asking for the college. Some 2,008 acres of land just west of the city were purchased by the Lubbock steering committee and sold to the state. [ https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/kct32 ]

1944 - Arledge Field, at Stamford, was a contract primary flight school operated by the Lou Foote Flying Service to give primary flight training to army aviation cadets. It was established on March 15, 1941, and named for Roy Arledge, a member of the committee that selected and purchased the site. Commanding officers during the base's brief period of activity were Capt. Bob Arnold and majors James B. Knopf and John H. Enders. Cadets from the training school were entertained in homes, and the youth center at the Stamford library was converted into a cadet club. The base was deactivated on September 30, 1944.

1945 - The Pampa Army Air Field, a military installation of World War II, was established in the summer of 1942 on a site about eleven miles east of Pampa in Gray County. Construction of the base began in June of that year under the supervision of the Tulsa, Oklahoma, office of the United States Army Corps of Engineers. Col. Norman B. Olson directed the initial stages of operation, and offices were housed temporarily in the Rose Motor Company and Culberson-Smalling buildings in downtown Pampa. Col. Daniel S. Campbell assumed command of the base in September 1942, and within two months the first planes and aviation cadets had arrived. Pampa Army Air Field, known as the "Eagles' Nest of the High Plains," offered advanced twin-engine training in AT-10s.

Also stationed at the field were AT-9s, B-25s, and AT-17s. Sixteen B-25s from the field took part in the bombing of Tokyo; of them fifteen were lost, and one accidentally landed in Russia, where it remains. During its three years of operation the base graduated 6,292 cadets, trained 3,500 aircraft mechanics, and had one of the best safety records in the United States Training Command throughout the war. After its closing on September 30, 1945, the base was abandoned. In 1972 a reunion association was formed; its annual meetings continued in the 1980s. In addition, in the 1970s a Pampa Army Air Field Memorial Museum was incorporated. In 1982 a Texas Historical Commission historical marker was placed near the site, at the intersection of State Highway 152 and Farm Road 3302.

[joe817]

Well my friends, it is with a little sadness(and great jubilation ) that I have to announce, with this September 30 posting of the "This Day In Texas History" series, it is the final posting of the series.

I want to thank everyone who took the time to read these little glimpses into Texas' past, and went away with a little bit better understanding why we Texans are the way we are by studying the everyday history of the State. By highlighting the people, places and events, I have a much deeper appreciation of our tradition, values, and way of life. I hope you do as well.

[The Roy Rogers & Dale Evans song Happy Trails To You just popped into my mind. I'll be singing it in my head all day long!

God Bless Texas!

[Skiprr]

Thank you, Joe. The only consolation is that we can still search for and read the daily entries you previously posted.

But you had to mention Happy Trails. I'm sure it only affects folks of a certain age, but we now have that tune stuck in our heads.

[JALLEN]

Same to you, buddy!

I appreciate your diligence and effort in bringing these to us daily.

[ELB]

Thanks Joe, I am sorry to not have these to look forward to, but enjoy your "retirement." :)