This Day In Texas History - August 6

[joe817]

1726 - Antonio Margil de Jesús, early missionary to Texas, died in Mexico City. He was to have accompanied the Domingo Ramón expedition of 1716, charged with setting up Franciscan missions in East Texas. However, illness prevented his arrival in East Texas until after the founding of the first four missions. In 1717 Margil supervised the founding of Nuestra Señora de los Dolores de los Ais and San Miguel de Linares de los Adaes, which with the previously established Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe completed the missions under the control of the Zacatecan Franciscans. In February 1720 Margil founded at San Antonio the most successful of all Texas missions, San José y San Miguel de Aguayo.In 1722.

1840 - The sacking of Victoria and Linnville in August 1840 in what was then Victoria County was the strategic object of a great Comanche raid in 1840, the most terrifying of all Comanche raids in Southeast Texas. The attack originated as an aftermath of the Council House Fight in San Antonio in March 1840. In what became the largest of all southern Comanche raids, Buffalo Hump launched a retaliatory attack down the Guadalupe valley east and south of Gonzales. The band numbered perhaps as many as 1,000, including the families of the warriors, who followed to make camps and seize plunder. The number of warriors was probably between 400 and 500, though witnesses put the figure higher. The total included a good number of Kiowas and Mexican guides. The raiders first appeared at Victoria without warning on the afternoon of August 6, and upon crossing Spring Creek were mistaken at first for Lipans, members of a friendly group that often traded with settlers around the town. "We of Victoria were startled by the apparitions presented by the sudden appearance of six hundred mounted Comanches in the immediate outskirts of the village," wrote John J. Linn, who recorded the attack on Victoria and the burning of Linnville. They captured over 1,500 horses belonging to area residents and to some Mexican horse traders who had arrived with a large herd. The Indians surrounded the town, but the settlers' defensive efforts apparently prevented their sacking the town itself. [ For more info on this: https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/btl01 ]

1842 - The new British charge d'affaires to Texas arrived at the port of Galveston. He was Charles Elliot, British knight and retired naval officer. In this post he advocated abolition of slavery, worked for the establishment of free trade, and emphasized the importance of peace with Mexico. He became a personal friend of Sam Houston and Anson Jones, and worked with the British ambassador to Mexico for an armistice between Texas and Mexico in 1843. He was instrumental in negotiating the release of some of the prisoners from the Mier expedition. He opposed Texas annexation by the United States, and when Texans voted for annexation he was recalled.

1855 - Democratic Governor Elisha Pease was reelected over the American party candidate David Dickson by 10,000 votes to serve another term as the Governor of Texas.

1874 - Jim Reed, was killed at Paris, Texas. He was wanted for robbing passengers of the Austin-San Antonio stage of $2,500 in April of that year. Reed was shot while trying to escape from custody. His wife, Belle, refused to identify his body, preventing the deputy sheriff from collecting a reward. Following her husbands death, Belle would place their kids with relatives, move to the Indian territory (Oklahoma), and take up with the Younger brothers and Jesse James. She eventually married Samuel Starr in 1880. Belle Starr served time in prison for Horse Thieving. After prison, she was known as the "Bandit Queen". Belle Starr continued assisting her crimal associates, selling horsed they had stolen from her Dallas livery. She escaped prosecution, however, until February 3, 1889, when she was shot to death in Oklahoma, just two days short of her 40th birthday.

1880 - On August 6, 1880, forty miles north of the site of present Van Horn, black soldiers of the Tenth United States Cavalry and a detachment of the Twenty-fourth United States Infantry fought Victorio in the climactic engagement of the Apache leader's incursion into West Texas. Although scarcely more than a skirmish, the Battle at Rattlesnake Springs was important in convincing Victorio to abandon the Trans-Pecos. On August 7 Capt. Thomas C. Lebo reported to Col. Benjamin H. Grierson, commanding the Tenth Cavalry and the District of the Pecos, that four days earlier his Company K had located and destroyed the Indians' supply camp in the Sierra Diablo. Twice defeated, hungry, and denied access to water holes, Victorio abandoned his effort to return to New Mexico and fled back across the Rio Grande. On October 15 Mexican forces killed him in the Tres Castillos Mountains. Victorio's death ended the Indian threat to West Texas.

1893 - Wright Patman, lawyer and congressman, the son of John N. and Emma (Spurlin) Patman, was born near Hughes Springs in Cass County, Texas, on August 6, 1893. He coauthored the Federal Anti-Price Discrimination (Robinson-Patman) Act, a landmark antitrust measure prohibiting retail stores from restraining competition by charging unreasonably low prices. He was also instrumental in the passage of the Federal Credit Union Act of 1934. Patman began his political career in the late teens, as assistant county attorney for Cass County, and in 1920 he was elected to the Texas House of Representatives. In 1928 he won election as a Democrat to the United States House, representing the First Texas Congressional District, which included Marshall, Paris, and Texarkana. He wielded his foremost influence, however, as chairman of the Committee on Banking and Currency from 1963 to 1975. He was the first to call for the investigation of Penn Central (1970) and Watergate (1972). Altogether Patman was elected by his constituents to twenty-four terms in Congress.

1896 - The Marshall, Timpson and Sabine Pass Railway Company was chartered on August 6, 1896. The railroad was planned to connect Timpson in Shelby County with Carthage in Panola County. The capital stock was $20,000, and the principal place of business was Timpson. In 1898 the railroad completed twenty miles of track between Timpson and Carthage. On December 27, 1904, the company was purchased by the Texas and Gulf Railway Company.

1966 - Houston oilman Ralph A. Johnston signed the deed transferring Paisano Ranch to the University of Texas. The 254-acre ranch, fourteen miles southwest of Austin, was the country retreat of J. Frank Dobie. After Dobie's death in 1964, a group of his friends and admirers, including O'Neil Ford, Peter Hurd, J. Lon Tinkle, and John Henry Faulk, undertook to preserve Paisano as a writers' retreat. Johnston, to whom Dobie had dedicated his last book, bought Paisano to take it off the market. Since 1967, more than sixty native Texan writers have worked and lived at the ranch as recipients of Dobie Paisano Fellowships, awarded by the University of Texas at Austin and the Texas Institute of Letters.

1987 - General Ira Clarence Eaker(born at Field Creek, Texas) passed away at Andrews Air Force Base, Maryland. On March 22, 1945, Eaker was transferred to Washington to become deputy chief of the army air force under Gen. H. H.(Hap) Arnold. In that position, representing the air force, he transmitted the command from President Harry Truman to General Spaatz, who was then commanding the Pacific Air Forces, to drop the atomic bomb on Japan.