This Day In Texas History - August 16

[joe817]

1719 - Jean L'Archevêque married Manuela Roybal, the daughter of Ignacio de Roybal, the alcalde of Santa Fe. This was just one of many colorful episodes in L'Archevêque's storied life. He had been born in France in 1672, and had traveled to the New World with La Salle, whose activities in Texas kept the Spanish on edge for years. L'Archevêque was a member of the group that assassinated La Salle, after which he and five other Frenchmen stayed with the Hasinai Indians.

1798 - Future President of the Republic of Texas, Mirabeau B Lamar was born in Louisville, Georgia.
[ https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fla15 ]

1828 - John McMullen and James McGloin received a contract from the Mexican government authorizing the two to introduce 200 families to an assigned territory along the left bank of the Nueces River. The Irish-born empresarios went to New York in the summer of 1829 to recruit colonists, principally new Irish immigrants. They accompanied the first group of Irish colonists from New York to Texas on the Albion and the New Packet in October 1829.

In October 1831 the colonists laid out a town on the east bank of the Nueces, which they called San Patricio de Hibernia (St. Patrick of Ireland). The original contract was considered suspended by the Law of April 6, 1830, but in 1834 the empresarios secured a four-year extension, and by the outbreak of the Texas Revolution a total of eighty-four titles had been issued.

1856 - The Texas and Pacific Railway Company was the only railroad in Texas, and one of the few in the United States, to operate under a federal charter. The Texas company was originally chartered as the Texas Western Railroad Company on February 16, 1852, and the name changed to the Southern Pacific on August 16, 1856.

1915 - On this date in 1915, a hurricane hits Galveston killing 275 and causing $56 million in damages. Downtown is flooded. A worse disaster was averted, however, by the new seawall, erected as a response to the terrible storm of 1900.

1931 - The largest earthquake in Texas occurred on August 16, 1931, near Valentine in Jeff Davis County; it measured about 6.0 on the Richter Scale, causing extensive damage to homes, schools and businesses. All non-frame houses in Valentine received some damage, and all brick chimneys toppled over. The schoolhouse, part cement, part brick, was completely destroyed. The earthquake was felt as far away as Dallas.

1931 - Louisiana Gov. Huey Long sent a telegram to Texas Gov. Ross Sterling pleading for his help in stabilizing the collapsing market for cotton. With the Depression nearing its nadir, cotton prices had collapsed. Louisiana Gov. Long, a populist considered an anti-capitalist demagogue by business interests, tried to organize a summit meeting of nine cotton-state governors in New Orleans to increase cotton prices by freezing production.

Texas Gov. Sterling -- an extreme conservative who was as straight-laced as Long was flamboyant -- would have none of it. After a week of avoiding Long's request, he sent a telegram to the Louisiana governor claiming he was ill and would not attend Long's meeting.

1960 - Civil rights attorney Romeo Marcus Williams died when his car was struck by a railroad switching engine in Marshall. Williams was born on the outskirts of Marshall in 1919. An outstanding student, he attended Bishop College and was the first African-American to pass the Army Air Corps examination. He entered the Tuskegee Army Flying School in 1941. Notables from across Texas attended Williams's funeral at New Bethel Baptist Church in Marshall. Milton K. Curry, president of Bishop College, eulogized Williams as a man dedicated "to the cause of human dignity ... the struggle for freedom."