This Day In Texas History - June 10

[joe817]

1821 - Moses Austin died in Missouri. Austin, was the first man to receive permission to bring Anglo-American colonists into Spanish Texas. In 1798, while consolidating his position as a pioneer in the American lead industry, he established the first Anglo-American settlement west of and back from the Mississippi River, at modern Potosi, Missouri. When the Bank of St. Louis, which he had helped found, failed in 1819, Austin found himself in financial difficulties and developed a plan for settling American colonists in Spanish Texas. He traveled to San Antonio in 1820 seeking permission for his plan. Spurned by Governor Antonio María Martínez, he chanced to meet an old acquaintance, the Baron de Bastrop, who returned with him to the governor's office and convinced Martínez to endorse the plan and forward it to higher authorities. On the trip out of Texas, Austin contracted pneumonia. Shortly after he reached home, he learned that permission for the colony had been granted, but he lived barely two months more. It was his deathbed request that his son, Stephen F. Austin, take over the colonization scheme.

1832 - A rebel force attacked Fort Anahuac(Chambers county) in the first armed clash between Anglo-Texans and Mexican troops. In 1830, Manuel de Mier y Terán ordered John Davis Bradburn to locate a site for a fort, military town, and customhouse, to be named Anahuac. Bradburn encountered hostility from his fellow Anglo-Americans when he tried to carry out his orders, which included inspecting land titles, issuing licenses to Anglo lawyers, and enforcing Mexican customs laws. The attack was a response to Bradburn's arrest of William B. Travis and other insurgent leaders. Bradburn agreed to exchange Travis and the other Anglos for nineteen cavalrymen held by the insurgents. The cavalrymen were released, but when Bradburn discovered that a number of rebels had remained in town overnight, he refused to free his prisoners and began firing on the town. The insurgents withdrew to Turtle Bayou, where they drew up a series of resolutions explaining their action. Bradburn appealed for help from other military commanders in Texas. Col. José de las Piedras marched from Nacogdoches, but met with Anglo insurgents near Liberty and agreed to remove Bradburn from command and free Travis and the others. [ https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/qbf01 ]

1870 - The Texas Military Institute, Austin opened. A thirty-two-acre campus was purchased in March 1870, and was relocated from Bastrop to Austin, as Austin residents had raised $10,000 in gold for relocation purposes. The institute modeled its disciplinary operations after the United States Military Academy at West Point, but it included instruction in literary subjects as well as the sciences. The military department existed only to provide exercise, not to train professional soldiers. All cadets were required to live in the barracks. In 1873 there were 150 students at the school. Tuition, board, and miscellaneous fees averaged $375 an academic year. The college, nonsectarian but religious in nature, operated successfully until 1879, when John Garland James, the president, and faculty were all employed by Texas A&M.
[ https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/kbt17 ]

1905 - Willie Lewis was born in Cleburne, Texas. He was a jazz clarinetist and became the first black expatriate jazz band leader in Europe.

1933 - Bonnie Parker(of Bonnie & Clyde fame) was burned after their car rolled over an embankment near Wellington, Texas, and was treated at a nearby farmhouse. Officials sent to investigate were kidnapped and later freed in Oklahoma.

1940 - Some 108 boys participated in the first annual Lone Star Boys' State program. The program, sponsored by the American Legion, provides teenage boys with training in functional aspects of citizenship and teaches constructive attitudes toward the American form of government. Nationally the program was begun in the 1930s to counter Fascist-inspired Young Pioneer Freedom camps. Participants are grouped into mock cities, form a mock state government, and elect state officers. The program is held each summer, usually in June, at the University of Texas at Austin. Two boys are chosen to attend Boys' Nation in Washington, D.C., each July. Bluebonnet Girls' State is a similar program for girls.

1942 - The WPB(Work Projects Board) gave approval for the first section of the Big Inch, which stopped in Illinois. The Big Inch and Little Big Inch were two pipelines laid during World War II from East Texas to the northeast states. Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes realized as early as 1940 that shipment of petroleum to the northeast by tanker ships would be impossible in time of war because of German submarines. In 1941, at Ickes's urging, oil industry executives began to plan the building of two pipelines–one, twenty-four inches in diameter, called the Big Inch, to transport crude oil, and another, twenty inches in diameter, called the Little Big Inch, to transport refined products. A ditch four feet deep, three feet wide and 1,254 miles long was to be dug from Longview across the Mississippi River to Southern Illinois and then east to Phoenixville, Pennsylvania, with twenty-inch lines from there to New York City and Philadelphia. Crude oil was delivered to the end of the first leg, Norris City, Illinois, on February 13, 1943. By August 14, 1943, the Big Inch had been completed. Together the pipelines carried over 350 million barrels of crude oil and refined products to the East Coast before the war in Europe ended in August 1945. [ A fascinating read and little known contribution to the War effort:
https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/dob08 ]

1949 - The name of the Waco Army Air Field was changed to Connally Air Force Base in memory of Col. James T. Connally, a local pilot killed in Japan in 1945. By 1951 the name had been changed to James Connally Air Force Base. Located seven miles northeast of Waco, was initially a basic pilot-training school. Later in WWII it became headquarters for the Army Air Force Central Instructors' School. The air force was sharing the base with the state of Texas by 1965, when James Connally Technical Institute (later renamed Texas State Technical Institute) was established. In January 1966 the Tactical Air Command assumed control of the base for headquarters of the Twelfth Air Force. The base was purchased by the state of Texas after the Twelfth Air Force moved its headquarters to Bergstrom Air Force Base at Austin. [ https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/qbj01 ]

1972 - Barbara Jordan became the first woman and first African American to serve as Texas governor -- for one day. Jordan's title was largely ceremonial. Both Governor Preston Smith and Lt. Governor Ben Barnes were out of state, on government business, that day. The Washington Post once referred to Jordan as the first black woman everything. Jordan, born in Houston on February 21, 1936, broke many barriers during her long career in Texas politics, a career that began in an era polarized by Jim Crow laws. In 1966, after a court ordered the redistricting of Harris County, Jordan ran and was the first African American since Reconstruction to be elected to the Texas Senate, winning 66 percent of the vote in the primary, including 34 percent of the white vote.[ https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fjoas ]