This Day In Texas History - February 25

[joe817]

1707 - Coahuila governor Martín de Alarcón ordered Diego Ramón, commandant of the San Juan Bautista Presidio, to undertake an expedition north of the Rio Grande. The effort was to serve several ends: to punish hostile natives who had been raiding the Coahuila and Nuevo León settlements; to obtain a new crop of neophytes for the smallpox-ravaged Rio Grande missions; and to explore the country. With authority to proceed as far as the "San Marcos" River-identified as the present-day Colorado River-Ramón marched from San Juan Bautista on March 9, 1707, with thirty-one soldiers and citizens, 150 horses, and twenty pack mules. This became known as "The Ramon Expedition".

1749 - San Ildefonso Mission was established in present day Milam County.

1836 - Travis's call for help reached Goliad. Fannin planned to leave the next day with 320 volunteers and four pieces of artillery to join Travis, calling in Chenoweth's mounted men from Copano to hold the Cibolo crossing and Captain King's company from Refugio to strengthen the Goliad garrison, now left under Ira Westover. Fannin's march to relieve Travis at Bexar. However the relief comumn ended on the banks of the San Antonio River only two miles from Fort Defiance. Wagons broke down, oxen strayed, provisions were scarce, and the anxious volunteers all insisted on going along. Fannin's men lacked shoes and clothing-many were barefooted and nearly naked, and faced a well-provisioned and trained enemy of superior numbers; Fannin's aide-de-camp, John Sowers Brooks, wrote, "we can not rationally anticipate any other result to our Quixotic expedition than total defeat."

1836 - Antonio Cruz y Arocha, Alamo defender and courier, along with Juan Seguín, was sent out of the Alamo to rally reinforcements.

1836 - Samuel Colt, of Hartford, Connecticut, patented the Colt revolver. This invention, along with windmills and barbed wire, brought order to the Great Plains. It was eventually produced in numerous models, the most famous being that of 1871. In 1839 the Republic of Texas ordered 180 of the .36 caliber holster models for the Texas Navy. The Texas Rangers gave the Colt revolver its reputation as a weapon ideally suited for mounted combat. Frederick Law Olmsted remarked that "there were probably as many revolvers in Texas as there were males."

1839 - John Rhodes King, legislator, Texas Ranger, Confederate officer, participated in forming a joint-stock company to purchase and survey land for a new town, named Seguin in honor of Juan N. Seguín. He became the first mayor of Seguin.

1800 - Jean Marie Odin was born in Hauteville, France. Odin arrived in Texas in 1840 and for the next two decades worked tirelessly; his efforts produced such outstanding results that he has been acclaimed the founder of the modern Catholic Church in Texas. In 1847 Pope Pius IX established the Diocese of Galveston, which encompassed all of Texas, and named Odin the new diocese's first ordinary.

1870 - The Howard Bill, closely resembling earlier proposals in Congress, was introduced. It called for two territories, Jefferson east of the San Antonio River, and Matagorda west of the Colorado. The remaining portion of the state should retain the name Texas and be readmitted to the Union in accordance with Reconstruction plans. The two territories were to be admitted when they were deemed ready to exercise the functions of statehood. In Texas itself, Edmund J. Davis's regime came forth in 1871 with a proposal for a four-part division into western, northern, eastern, and southern. Congress failed to take final action, however, as did the Texas legislature.

1871 - Colonel Ranald Slidell (Bad Hand) Mackenzie assumed command of the Fourth United States Cavalry at Fort Concho.

1927 - WFAA in Dallas becomes the first radio station in Texas to be come affiliated with a national network, the National Broadcasting Company.

1942 - Trinity University moved from Waxahachie to San Antonio. Trinity had opened as a Cumberland Presbyterian college in 1869 in Tehuacana and moved to Waxahachie in 1902. Forty years later, the Synod of Texas voted to accept an invitation from the San Antonio Chamber of Commerce to move the university to the Alamo City.

[ELB]

1839 - John Rhodes King, legislator, Texas Ranger, Confederate officer, participated in forming a joint-stock company to purchase and survey land for a new town, named Seguin in honor of Juan N. Seguín. He became the first mayor of Seguin.

The area Seguin was laid out in was a popular camping spot for Texas Rangers and others. The Walnut Branch creek runs from north to south through the town, emptying into the Guadalupe River, and paralleling the most southern portion of Walnut Branch runs Camp Street, named after the Texas Rangers' camping site. The town was originally named Walnut Springs after the trees and water sources in area, but after about six months the name was changed to Seguin, and Juan himself was hosted in a parade to celebrate the occasion. Juan Seguin was of course a Texas revolutionary hero and on of the few to survive the siege of the Alamo, but there were lots of Texas heroes to name a town after. I suspect it did not hurt that at the time Juan was at the time a Senator in the legislature of the Republic of Texas (John Rhoades King was also in the Legislature). The town park is named Walnut Springs Park to commemorate the early name of the community. (ETA: looking at the timing, it appears that Walnut Springs was first laid out in August 1838. About six months later, or February 1839, is when the name was changed to Seguin.)

John Rhodes King came from Tennessee with one brother, who helped in establishing Seguin. John's mother and her second husband, and another brother later joined him. The King family is still here, owning the King Ranger Theater, our local movie house. There is also a King Street, and a family cemetery known as the King Family or King Ranger cemetery, since some of the folks buried in it were both Kings and Rangers. It is a tiny plot hidden on a very small back street, you have to work to find it.

John Rhodes King is not buried in it however -- he went on to do a great many things, among which was founding another town towards the end of his life. Stockdale is about 25 miles south of Seguin, and John Rhodes is buried in a cemetery there.

[joe817]

Fascinating ELB! Thanks for sharing!