This Day In Texas History - April 8

[joe817]

1817 - Jean Laffite, privateer, and menace to shipping along the gulf coast, organized a government for Galveston. A week later Laffite's officers swore allegiance to Mexico in it's struggle against Spanish rule.

1822 - A guard in Mexico City accidentally shot and killed James Long. Long was captured at La Bahia after mounting a raid in hopes of driving the Mexicans from Texas and declare an independent Republic of Texas. Unknown to Long, his wife who was abandoned by Long and the remaining settlers on the Bolivar Peninsula, had given birth to his third child.

1824 - Martin de Leon applied to the Mexican government for permission to establish a colony in Texas.

1836 - Jeremiah Brown, naval officer of the Republic of Texas, and commaned of the schooner-of-war Invincible arrived back in Galveston harbor with his spoils of war when his ship captured the Mexican brig-of-war, Bravo. He learned from captured documents that Santa Anna had plans to capture all Texas ports and to station 1,000 men on Galveston Island. Thus forewarned, the Texas government hastily fortified the island. The provisions captured aboard the Pocket ultimately were consigned to Sam Houston's army.

1837 - Sam Houston received a long awaited divorce from Eliza Allen. Under the laws of pre-revolutionary Texas under Mexico, divorces were illegal, but now as President of the new Republic of Texas, Houston approved a law legalizing divorce. The object of his affections for four years was Anna Raguet, but Anna didn't approve of his scruples and methods he used to secure his divorce from Eliza Allen, so she left Houston, and later married Robert Irion.

1861 - The Texas legislature voted to grant Cynthia Ann Parker a league of land and $100 a year for five years. Parker had been captured by Comanche as a young girl.

1861 - The Galveston and Houston Junction Railroad Company was chartered on April 8, 1861, to link the Galveston, Houston and Henderson and the Houston and Texas Central railroads at Houston. In early 1865 the Junction Railroad built its line from Rusk Avenue in Houston to an end-to-end connection with the Houston and Texas Central, about two miles, using rails that had been bought from the Houston, Trinity and Tyler. This construction included the first railroad bridge over Buffalo Bayou. The Galveston and Houston Junction also supplied locomotives and other equipment for use on the Galveston, Houston and Henderson, and the two companies were combined in 1871.

1864 - Confederate forces under Richard Taylor defeated a much larger Union force at the battle of Mansfield, Louisiana. Union general Nathaniel Banks had gathered an army of some 17,000 Federal troops to advance up the Red River to Alexandria and Shreveport, hoping to cut off the flow of supplies from Texas and to capture large quantities of cotton, and ultimately invade Texas. General Taylor, commanding a Confederate force of Texas and Louisiana units, attacked the long, 12,000-man Union column three miles south of Mansfield with an army of 8,800 men. Taylor's force killed or wounded 700 Union soldiers, captured 1,500, and took 20 Union cannons and 200 wagons. About 1,000 Confederates were killed or wounded. It was one of the most humiliating Union defeats of the war. The following day Taylor's army was repulsed when it attacked the Union army at Pleasant Hill. Nevertheless, stung by his defeat on the 8th and convinced that Taylor's army was much larger than it was, Banks gave the order to retire on the night of April 9.

1893 - Ten Texas women, mostly members of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, issued a call for a statewide woman suffrage convention. The Texas Equal Rights Association, the first such statewide organization, was chartered at the ensuing three-day convention in Dallas. Internal dissension plagued the TERA, which had been organized as a branch of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, and it ceased to operate by 1896. In 1903 Annette Finnigan helped organize a successor organization, the Texas Equal Suffrage Association, which helped lead the long and ultimately successful fight for woman suffrage. Texas women were finally granted the right to vote in primary elections in 1918, and in June 1919 Texas became the ninth state (and the first in the south) to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which extended full suffrage to women.

1922 - A tornado kills 52 people in Rowena (Runnels County).

1954 - International Falcon Reservoir is located on the Rio Grande east of Zapata. The huge lake is bounded by Starr and Zapata counties, Texas, and the county and city of Nuevo Ciudad Guerrero, Tamaulipas, Mexico. The dam and reservoir provide for water conservation, flood control, hydroelectric energy, and recreation. The project is owned, authorized, and operated by the United States and Mexico through the International Boundary and Water Commission. The five-mile-long rolled earthfill and concrete embankment was completed on April 8, 1954.

1968 -Padre Island National Seashore, the longest seashore in the National Parks System, encompasses a portion of the largest barrier beach in the United States. It was dedicated on April 8, 1968, by Mrs. Lyndon B. Johnson before a crowd of nearly 10,000. Attending were state and national officials, eighty American and foreign journalists, and leaders of various civic, garden, and environmental groups. The national seashore includes a 67.5-mile-long portion of the barrier island, which is 130 miles long, and some of the island's backwaters the Laguna Madre. The seashore comprises 130,355 acres in Kleberg, Willacy, and Kenedy counties, bounded by Mustang Island on the north and the Port Mansfield Channel on the south.

The Gulf shore is a beachcomber's paradise. In places the variety of seashells is phenomenal, and everywhere innumerable natural and man-made objects are cast ashore, especially after storms. The island has always been a lonely place because few people, including the Indians, have been able to live there permanently. Like many such sparsely occupied areas, Padre Island has a rich folklore, which is based mainly on pirates, treasure-laden wrecked ships, and Indian conflict. Its status as a national park is designed to keep most of it free from further settlement and commercial development.