This Day In Texas History - April 14

[joe817]

1689 - Alonso De León, Spanish governor of Coahuila, discovered and named the Guadalupe River at the approximate future site of Victoria, while leading his fourth and final expedition to find and destroy the French settlement at Fort St. Louis. De León, an early advocate of establishing missions along the Texas frontier, blazed much of the Old San Antonio Road in the course of his expeditions. Eight days after discovering the Guadalupe, he and his party of 114 men, which included Damián de Massenet, came upon the ruins of the French settlement on the banks of Garcitas Creek. De León left Texas for the last time in 1690 and died in Coahuila a year later, probably around the age of fifty-two. In 1721 the Spanish built Nuestra Señora de Loreto de la Bahía Presidio on the site of Fort St. Louis.

1788 - Future ad interim President of the Republic of Texas, David G. Burnet was born.

1825 - Haden Edwards received his empresarial grant on April 14, 1825. It entitled him to settle as many as 800 families in a broad area around Nacogdoches in eastern Texas. Like all empresarios he was to uphold land grants certified by the Spanish and Mexican governments, provide an organization for the protection of all colonists in the area, and receive a land commissioner appointed by the Mexican government. He arrived in Nacogdoches on September 25, 1825, and posted notices on street corners to all previous landowners that they would have to present evidence of their claims or forfeit to new settlers. This naturally offended the older settlers. This led to much controversy. The controversy did not settle down, and by the time the news reached Saltillo and federal authorities in Mexico. Troops were sent in, and this ultimately led to the "Fredonian Rebellion" [ http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/onli" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; ... /jcf1.html ]

1836 - Following two weeks of intense training at Groce's plantation near San Felipe, the Texas army breaks camp and crosses the swollen Brazos River at Groce's Ferry, using the steamboat "The Yellow Stone". Just a few miles downstream at the same time, the Mexican Army under Santa Anna had already made their crossing of the Brazos at Thompson's Ferry, and were heading for Houston's position. They will meet just days later at San Jacinto.

1836 - Santa Anna and his advance units reached Harrisburg at midnight on April 14 and, after a day of looting, set fire to the settlement on the sixteenth.

1845 - At a mass annexation meeting in Brazoria, Stephen W. Perkins was appointed to a committee to draft an "Address to the People of Texas" favoring annexation. In 1844 he was elected to represent the county in the House of Representatives of the Ninth Congress of the Republic of Texas, the congress responsible for overseeing the mechanics of the annexation of Texas to the United States.

1865 - Shortly after 10 o'clock in the evening, on this date in 1865, a Good Friday, John Wilkes Booth, entered the box at the Ford Theatre in Washington where President and Mrs Lincoln were attending a play, fired his gun at the back of Lincoln's head, mortally wounding the President. Just one week before the shooting, the Civil War ended with the surrender of General Robert E Lee. But the celebration of the War's end, suddenly halted with the assassination of President Lincoln. Booth managed to escape, but was located in a barn in Virginia. With Booth refusing the surrender, the barn was set fire. Booth was shot as he attempted to escape. There is now mounting evidence that Booth may not have been killed in Virginia, but in fact, fled to Texas and Oklahoma. On his death bed in Glen Rose, he confessed to a preacher that he shot Lincoln and where the fateful weapon was hidden. The weapon was quickly recovered, but unfortunately, so did Booth, who quickly fled. In Bandera he taught school, until his wedding plans included the invitation of the brides U.S. Marshall cousin. Booth fled again, first to Eden, then to Enid Oklahoma, where in 1903, he committed suicide. While on the run, Booth used the name John St. Helen.

1878 - A band of about forty Mexicans and Kickapoo, Lipan Apache, and Seminole Indians crossed the Rio Grande from Mexico into Webb County, Texas, about forty-five miles north of Laredo. After killing two vaqueros shortly after the crossing, the band headed south on the main road following the Rio Grande, murdered another man along the way, and stole his horses and equipment. A small party of Texans followed the raiders and requested help from Fort Ewell, but to no avail. Military and law-enforcement bodies had made little attempt to respond to the raiders, who were in Texas for six days, during which they murdered at least eighteen people—men, women, and children.

1885 - Cattle baron and founder of the King Ranch, Richard King died. Together, he and his wife Henrietta had five children. During the 1850s, King used the wealth from his riverboat business along the Rio Grande to acquire land in South Texas. At the time of his death, King had acquired 160,000 acres and amassed 100,000 head of cattle.

1933 - The Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum, the first state museum in Texas, opened in Canyon. The museum was an outgrowth of the Panhandle-Plains Historical Society, founded in 1921 by faculty and students of West Texas State Teachers College, and is a cooperative effort between the society, which owns and controls the collections, and the State of Texas, which provides and maintains the facilities through West Texas A&M University and the Texas A&M University Board of Regents. In addition to its major anthropology, geology, paleontology, and natural history collections, the museum has extensive materials on the ranching industry, the Plains Indians, and the oil and gas industry, and galleries devoted to American and European art with an emphasis on such Texas artists as Frank Reaugh and Harold Bugbee.

1935 - A great dust storm covered the Texas Panhandle town of Pampa, inspiring Woody Guthrie to write the song "So Long, It's Been Good To Know You." Guthrie had moved to Pampa in 1929. Performing with bands at nightclubs and radio stations in the Panhandle, he found his calling as lyricist and musician and began developing skills that later gained him a reputation as a writer, cartoonist, and down-home philosopher. He married a Pampa girl, Mary Jennings, in 1933 and experienced the pain of the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression, sources of his many songs that appealed to his fellow sufferers. When the great storm of April 14, 1935, occurred, some Pampans thought that the end of the world was upon them and that there was just time for final goodbyes.

1942 - A pleasure pier being built along the Galveston Sea Wall was put on hold by a vote of the citizens of Galveston. In a city wide election, the citizens of Galveston voted to divert steel being used to build the pleasure pier, be diverted instead to the war effort.

1995 - The second largest earthquake in recorded history in Texas, occurred on this , when a 5.7 magnitude earthquake struck near the town of Alpine. The city sustained some damage and several aftershock, but no injuries were reported.