This Day In Texas History - August 9

[joe817]

1809 - On this date in 1809, William Barret Travis was born in Red Banks, South Carolina. He was raised in Saluda County SC, as was James Bonham. William Travis was leader of the Texas forces that defended the Alamo against an overwhelming Mexican Army. Travis, Bonham and over 170 other defenders, would meet their fate in March 1836 in the battle of the Alamo.[ https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/ftr03 ]

1836 - A letter is made public in which Stephen F Austin gives his consent to run for President of the Republic of Texas. Austin will be defeated by the commander the San Jacinto victory, General Sam Houston.

1857 - The first overland mail stagecoach left San Antonio bound for San Diego

1860 - In a letter dated this date in 1860, Samuel Morse respectfully withdraws his offer of a Gift to Texas of the Telegraph, which was offered to Texas 20 years before, but never formally accepted by Texas as nation or state. [ https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/egt01 ]

1864 - The Ellison Springs Indian Fight took place on August 9, 1864, near Ellison Springs in Eastland County, in Maj. George Bernard Erath's Second Frontier District. It was typical of the kind of small-unit actions that occurred on the frontier during the Civil War.
[ https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/qfe01 ]

1908 - Blues pianist Robert Shaw was born in Stafford, Texas. His parents had a Steinway grand piano and provided music lessons for his sisters, but Shaw's father did not permit the son to play. In time, despite his father's opposition, he decided to pursue his dream of becoming a jazz musician. Shaw learned his distinct brand of "barrelhouse" piano playing from other musicians in the Fourth Ward, Houston, the center of black entertainment in the city. His career flourished in the 1920s and 30s, then suffered a thirty-year hiatus while he ran a grocery store in Austin. Shaw began performing again in 1967 and gained international recognition before his death in 1985.

1911 - Barbed wire promoter and oilman John Warne (Bet-a-Million) Gates died. Gates arrived in Texas as a barbed wire salesman for the Washburn-Moen Company in 1876. He rented San Antonio's Military Plaza, constructed a barbed-wire corral, and filled it with longhorn cattle to demonstrate the holding power of barbed wire. His demonstration resulted in orders for more wire than the factory could produce. Gates became a prominent industrialist and a notorious bon vivant.

He controlled the Kansas City Southern Railway and formed the Texas Company (now Texaco), in which he owned 46 percent of the stock, to finance the drilling efforts of Pattillo Higgins at Spindletop. Gates's nickname derived from his fondness for gambling at poker, the stock market, and horse races. According to rumor, he bet a cool million and won two million in a 1900 horse race in England; in actuality, he bet $70,000 and won $600,000. [ https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fga41 ]

1922 - Edgar B. Davis discovered oil on August 9, 1922, northwest of Luling. With extensive leases, he almost completely controlled the field at first but soon sold much of his interest to major oil companies. The field's annual production peaked at 11,134,000 barrels in 1924 and leveled off at an average of 2.5 million barrels annually in the 1930s. In the 1970s and 1980s annual production averaged between one and two million barrels.

1929 - The Shamrock Oil and Gas Company, today known as Diamond Shamrock, was founded in Amarillo, TX.

1946 - The last Confederate reunion was held at Camp Ben McCulloch. This Golden Jubilee included a memorial service for the camp's last two members, who had died the previous year. The camp, near Driftwood in Hays County, was organized in the summer of 1896 as a reunion camp for Confederate veterans and named for Confederate general Benjamin McCulloch. Annual three-day reunions were held at the camp, often with 5,000 to 6,000 persons attending. In 1930 Ben McCulloch was said to be the largest Confederate camp in existence. Subsequently, the camp became the location of the annual meetings of the Sons and Daughters of the Confederacy, with various activities and services spanning a week in early June. The campsite, on a branch of Onion Creek, also remains a popular picnic area for residents of northern Hays County.

1965 - It was announced that Austin would be the location of the President Lyndon B Johnson Presidential Library. The new LBJ Library would be located in a new building on the eastern edge of the University of Texas.