This Day In Texas History - February 23

[joe817]

1836 - Santa Anna's army arrives at the Alamo. He hoists a blood-red flag, a Mexican symbol of no quarter, no surrender, no mercy. The siege at the Alamo begins. As Texans gathered in the Alamo, Travis dispatched a hastily scribbled missive to Gonzales.
[This letter will be posted in a follow up post. ]

1836 - Joseph Kerr, Alamo defender, son of General Kerr, was born at Lake Providence, Louisiana, in 1814. He and his brother, Nathaniel, traveled to Texas with Capt. S. L. Chamblis's Louisiana Volunteers for Texas Independence. In early February 1836 they were honorably discharged from Chamblis's company because their horses were disabled. The brothers continued on to San Antonio de Béxar, where Nathaniel died of a sudden illness. Joseph remained with the Texan garrison, entered the Alamo on February 23, 1836, and died on March 6 in the battle of the Alamo.

1836 - Damacio (Damasio) Jiménez (Jimenes, Ximenes, Gimenes), Alamo defender, was a member of Col. Juan N. Seguín's militia during the Texas Revolution. That he defended the Alamo was discovered in 1986, when a land petition was found that had been filed in the courts of Bexar County in 1861 by his surviving niece and nephew, Gertrudes and Juan Jiménez. Damacio was with Col. William B. Travis at Anahuac and was among those who helped bring an eighteen-pound cannon to Bexar in December 1835. This cannon was to become the centerpiece of the Alamo siege and the cannon with which Travis answered Mexican surrender terms on February 23, 1836.

1836 - Green B. Jameson, chief engineer of the Alamo, son of Benjamin Jameson of New Jersey, was born in Kentucky or Tennessee in 1809. His grandfather, John Jameson, was an early lieutenant governor of Virginia. Jameson, a lawyer, moved to Texas in 1830 and settled in Brazoria. He took part in the siege of Bexar in 1835, then remained in Bexar under the command of Lt. Col. James C. Neill as chief engineer of the garrison occupying the town and the Alamo. Jameson's correspondence with Sam Houston in the weeks before the Alamo siege began gave detailed descriptions of the Alamo's defenses. On the first day of the siege, February 23, 1836, Jameson was sent by James Bowie as a messenger to the Mexican forces. He died in the battle of the Alamo on March 6, 1836.

1836 - Sam Houston and John Forbes signed a treaty giving the Texas Cherokee, Choctaw, Quapaws and Biloxi indian tribes the rights of land between the Angeline River and Sabine River. After the war between Texas and Mexico, the government of the Republic of Texas sought to reduce friction between Texas and the Cherokees -- who had been on land north of San Antonio since 1819 -- so the tribe would not get angry and collaborate with Mexico. The treaty was submitted to the Texas Senate in December 1836 but was rejected on the grounds that it exceeded its powers in extending land rights to the tribe. Despite the rejection, Houston honored the commitment to the Cherokees. His policy honoring the treaty was reversed by Republic of Texas President Mirabeau B. Lamar. Lamar insisted the Cherokees and Comanches be driven out of Texas, even if their tribes became extinct.

1837 - The steamboat Laura left Columbia loaded with government officials and furniture heading for the new capital at Houston.

1848 - The Texas legislature formally created Gillespie County out of Bexar and Travis counties.

1861 - Voting in a statewide election, Texans voted by 46,153 to 14,747 in favor of secession from the Union. Governor Houston was against secession, having worked his whole life to get into the Union. Governor Sam Houston has consistently refused to take a loyalty oath to the Confederacy, and following this overwhelming vote by the people, was forced to resign. He returned to his home in Huntsville where he later died.

1911 - Quanah Parker, the last fighting chief of the Comanche in Texas, died from an undiagnosed illness in Oklahoma.

1941 - Camp Barkeley was located eleven miles southwest of Abilene in Taylor County. After the outbreak of war in Europe in September 1939, the U.S. Army began to rapidly expand as a precaution and needed temporary camps to train and house troops. The camp was named for David B. Barkley, a native Texan who received the Medal of Honor in World War I, but his name was misspelled. Construction started in December 1940 and was completed in seven months. It was initially a training camp for infantry and supply troops. The first to occupy the camp were 19,000 soldiers of the Forty-fifth Infantry Division under Maj. Gen. William S. Key on February 23, 1941. Before his later fame as a cartoonist for Stars and Stripes, Bill Mauldin was on the division’s newspaper’s staff. Camp Barkeley included the main camp of 2,500 acres, bivouac and maneuver areas of 58,000 acres, and combat ranges of 9,400 acres. Central Texas was favored because the climate allowed year-round training.

1944 - Roderick Random Allen was promoted to major general, Army of the United States. An army officer who served in three wars. Allen was born in Marshall, Texas, and spent his youth in Palestine, Texas. He graduated from Texas A&M in 1915.