This Day In Texas History - February 5

[joe817]

1840 - Zilpha (Zelia, Zylphia) Husk, a free black woman resided in Houston during the period of the Republic of Texas. Her residence in Texas was jeopardized by a bill approved on February 5, 1840, requiring all free blacks to leave Texas by January 1, 1842. When Congress reconvened in November 1840 it was deluged by petitions from free blacks seeking permission to remain. Among these petitions was one from Husk, endorsed by forty-one Houstonians. She stated that she had arrived in Texas in 1835 and that she worked as a washerwoman. Her plea was approved in consequence of a new law, enacted on December 12, 1840, granting the right of residency to "all free persons of color together with their families" who resided in Texas before the Texas Declaration of Independence (March 2, 1836).

1840 - Tariff policies of the Republic of Texas varied from an approximation of free trade to the imposition of high duties for revenue purposes. In general, East Texas wanted low tariffs or none at all, West Texas and President Sam Houston advocated high customs for revenue, and president Mirabeau B. Lamar favored abolition of all tariffs. An ordinance of the Consultation on November 13, 1835, granted power to the General Council to impose impost and tonnage duties and provide for their collection. Between 1835 and 1842, seven tariff bills were passed and signed into law and several were passed by Congress but vetoed by Houston.

The tariff act of February 5, 1840, was passed in accordance with the policy of low tariffs in recognition of independence. The rate was 15 percent on all but a few items on which a specific duty was charged and a few duty-free items. Most trade was with the United States. Imports for the year ending July 31, 1843, were worth $471,205, of which $412,983 came from the United States. Exports were $415,768, of which $281,342 went to the United States. The following year import ratios remained the same, but exports fell more than 50 percent because the United States needed no cotton. By 1844 the loss was made up by exports, mostly of cotton, to England. Of $615,119 in total exports between July 1843 and July 1844, $249,151 went to the United States and $205,345 to England.

1844 - John D. Anderson, early settler, soldier, and politician, the son of Dr. Thomas Anderson, was born in Pittsylvania County, Virginia. He arrived with his father and brother, Washington Anderson, at Port Lavaca, Texas, in February 1835 and afterward settled in Benjamin R. Milam's colony. He was a member of Jesse Billingsley's company but missed seeing action at the battle of San Jacinto because he had been assigned to the detail left at Harrisburg to guard the baggage. Anderson studied law at Webber's Prairie in the office of Barrie Gillespie, and on February 5, 1844, President Sam Houston appointed him district attorney for the Fourth Judicial District, an act that automatically rendered Anderson a member of the Supreme Court of the Republic of Texas. He served as a Gonzales delegate to the Convention of 1845 and fought in the Mexican War in 1846. Anderson apparently died in Guadalupe County on April 10, 1849, and was buried in the Erskine family cemetery near Capote Ranch, a few miles from Seguin.

1844 - The Central National Road of the Republic of Texas was planned by the Texas Congress, which, on February 5, 1844, established a five-man commission to select a right-of-way, see that it was cleared, and supervise the building of necessary bridges. George W. Stell of Paris was the surveyor. The road was to begin on the bank of the Trinity River not more than fifteen miles below the bank of the Elm Fork in Dallas County and run to the south bank of the Red River in the northwest corner of Red River County, opposite the mouth of the Kiamachi River. To the north and east the Central National Road connected with the military road to Fort Gibson and old roads connecting the Jonesborough area with settlements in Arkansas. At its southern terminus it connected with the road opened in 1840 between Austin and Preston Bend on the Red River, in effect making an international highway between St. Louis and San Antonio. The international role that Congress may have visualized for the road was never fulfilled, however, because of population shifts that came with the westward movement of the frontier and the subsequent development of new towns and increased importance of other routes.

1858 - New Braunfels Academy, in New Braunfels, was established about 1856. A twenty-year charter granted on February 5, 1858, provided that the school be governed by a board of six trustees, the mayor of New Braunfels, and the Comal county judge. It was supported by a city tax and tuition. New Braunfels is said to be the first city in Texas in which the citizens voted unanimously to impose a tax to support a school. In 1876 the school received support from the Peabody Fund. When the charter was about to expire in 1878, a legislative act to renew it was vetoed by Governor O. M. Roberts on the ground that the act establishing the academy was not in harmony with the constitution and laws of the state of Texas.

1861 - The First Regiment, Texas Mounted Riflemen, was the first regiment in Texas to be mustered into Confederate service in 1861. On March 4, 1861, Confederate secretary of war Leroy Pope Walker directed Benjamin McCulloch to raise a regiment of ten companies of mounted riflemen to protect the Texas frontier between the Red River and the Rio Grande. McCulloch, hoping for a command east of the Mississippi River, turned the colonel's commission over to his brother, Henry Eustace McCulloch, who, on February 5, 1861, had been appointed to the rank of colonel by the state Committee of Public Safety and already had five under-strength companies along the state's northwestern frontier to replace the United States troops withdrawn after secession.

In mid-March Henry McCulloch arrived in Austin, where he recruited men for five additional companies for the new regiment. By the early part of April he had his regiment organized with men recruited from Bexar, Travis, Gonzales, Bell, Comanche, Bosque, Rusk, Burleson, and Lamar counties. The men already on the frontier who wished to join the new regiment had to be mustered out of state service and into Confederate service. By mid-April McCulloch's new regiment entered Confederate service as the First Regiment, Texas Mounted Riflemen, also known as the First Texas Mounted Rifles. This was not only the first regiment in the state organized for Confederate service, but the original commission to Ben McCulloch was one of the first in the Confederacy. [ https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/search ]

1868 - The Legion Valley Massacre occurred on February 5, 1868, when a band of about fifteen Comanche Indians raided the home of John S. and Matilda Jane (Jones) Friend near the confluence of Sandy and Legion creeks, about fifteen miles south of Llano in Llano County. Eight related women and children had gathered at the Friend home in the absence of their menfolk. In addition to Matilda Friend, the group included Rebecca (Stripling or Stribling) Johnson and infant, Samantha (Johnson) Johnson and infant, Miss Amanda Townsend (who was about eighteen), and two children, Malinda Ann Caudle and Lee Temple Friend, both about eight years old. In resisting the raid, Mrs. Friend was stabbed, shot with arrows, badly cut across her hand, scalped, and left for dead as the marauders robbed the dwelling and rode off with the seven remaining members of the group as captives. Within a few miles of the Friend home, the two young wives, their infants, and Amanda Townsend were mutilated and killed by the Indians; the two children were held as captives. Malinda was recovered in about six months and returned to her parents.

1898 - William Harrison (Howdy) Martin, lawyer, Confederate officer, and congressman, son of Benjamin and Charlotte Martin, was born in Twiggs County, Georgia. He received his early schooling in Alabama and was admitted to the bar. In 1850 he moved to Athens, Texas, and started a law practice in Henderson County. From 1853 to 1858 he represented Freestone, Limestone, Henderson, and Navarro counties in the Texas Senate. He enlisted in the Confederate Army in July 1861 and served in Company K, Fourth Texas Infantry, Hood's Texas Brigade. Martin and his regiment fought in the Eastern theater of operations. In April 1864 he was promoted from captain to major. After the signing of the surrender terms at Appomattox, Major Martin and Capt. W. T. Hill led the remaining members of Hood's Texas Brigade back to Texas. In Texas, Martin resumed the practice of law.

He was elected district attorney for Kaufman, Henderson, Smith, and Anderson counties and served for two terms. In 1887 he was elected to the United States House of Representatives to complete the remainder of John H. Reagan's term, after Reagan was chosen United States senator. Martin was reelected and served in Congress until 1891, when he returned to his farm near Athens. In 1894 he moved to Hill County and lived on a farm near Hillsboro. Martin died at his home in Hill County on February 5, 1898, and was buried at the Hillsboro City Cemetery. He was a member of the Hill County Camp of Confederate Veterans. From 1883 to 1885 he served as president of the Hood's Texas Brigade Association at its annual meetings.

1906 - The Abilene and Northern Railway Company was fostered by Edward S. Hughes and his associate D. T. Bomar, who had been one of the promoters of the Wichita Valley Railway. On February 5, 1906, they obtained a charter to build from Hamlin southeastward to Brady, with a branch from a point near Anson to Stamford, the terminus of the Wichita Valley line. The construction contract was given to the Fidelity Construction Company of Wichita Falls, which in 1907 built the thirty-nine miles from Stamford via Anson to Abilene. The Abilene and Northern was open for service on January 1, 1907. By February 1908 the company had sold its securities to the Colorado and Southern Railway, another backer of the project. the Abilene and Northern was leased for operation to another Colorado and Southern subsidiary, the Wichita Valley Railway Company. The Abilene and Northern formed the south end of a through route between Wichita Falls and Abilene. The company was merged into the Fort Worth and Denver in June 1952.

1947 - Jack Wrather, oilman and entrepreneur, was born on May 24, 1918, in Amarillo, Texas, the son of Mazie (Cogdell) and John Devereaux Wrather, Sr. He was raised in Tyler and graduated from Tyler High School in 1935. He then went on to the University of Texas, from which he graduated cum laude with a bachelor of arts degree in 1939. On February 5, 1947, he married the movie actress Bonita Granville. They also had two children. Wrather spent his college summer vacations working in the oilfields of East Texas. From 1942 to 1947 he served in the United States Marine Corps Reserves before inheriting his father's oil company, Overton Refining Company, and expanding its holdings into a very successful business. Wrather produced a multi-million-dollar fortune in oil, movies, television, radio, and hotel resorts.

He produced his first movie, The Guilty, in 1946, and by 1955 he had produced six more. Beginning in the 1950s he produced Lassie for twenty years on network television. Wrather also produced the Lone Ranger television show from 1954 to 1957, and produced two Lone Ranger films. In 1957 Wrather owned the MUZAK corporation, which at that time owned one of the world's largest recording plants and library. Wrather also developed the Disneyland Hotel in Anaheim, California, along with the Twin Lakes Lodge in Las Vegas, Nevada, and the L'Horizon Hotel in Palm Springs, California. He spent $25 million restoring the Queen Mary and saved the Spruce Goose airplane from demolition in 1981 as a favor to his friend Howard Hughes. Because of his business dealings in California, Wrather became a close and trusted friend of Ronald Reagan. He was one of the first people to encourage Reagan to run for public office in California. He then served as a member of Reagan's "Kitchen Cabinet." Wrather was considered one of the leading entrepreneurs of his time. He died of cancer in California on November 12, 1984.

[ELB]

1844 - John D. Anderson, early settler, soldier, and politician, the son of Dr. Thomas Anderson, was born in Pittsylvania County, Virginia. He arrived with his father and brother, Washington Anderson, at Port Lavaca, Texas, in February 1835 and afterward settled in Benjamin R. Milam's colony. He was a member of Jesse Billingsley's company but missed seeing action at the battle of San Jacinto because he had been assigned to the detail left at Harrisburg to guard the baggage. Anderson studied law at Webber's Prairie in the office of Barrie Gillespie, and on February 5, 1844, President Sam Houston appointed him district attorney for the Fourth Judicial District, an act that automatically rendered Anderson a member of the Supreme Court of the Republic of Texas. He served as a Gonzales delegate to the Convention of 1845 and fought in the Mexican War in 1846. Anderson apparently died in Guadalupe County on April 10, 1849, and was buried in the Erskine family cemetery near Capote Ranch, a few miles from Seguin.

Gadzooks! This is in my AO. Especially Capote Ranch. Anderson was the first elected mayor of Seguin (the very first mayor was acting/appointed when the city was first chartered, until the first election). The first County Judge of Guadalupe County (which preceded the formation of the city) was a fellow named Erskine. Small world in those days.