This Day In Texas History - January 25

[joe817]

1834 - The first Baptist church meeting in Texas took place at Daniel Parker's home in present Anderson County. Parker, who came to Texas in 1833 to apply for a land grant, realized that a Baptist church could not be organized in Texas without breaking Mexican law. By 1841 they had established eight churches in Texas. Pilgrim Church had met in many different locations since 1834, and in 1848 the members voted to build a meetinghouse where Parker had been buried, at the present location of Pilgrim Church, 2½ miles southeast of Elkhart.

1839 - The President of Texas, Mirabeau B. Lamar, approved the adoption by the Texas Congress of the Texas national flag, the familiar red, white and blue Lone Star flag which is now the state flag. Also approved was the national coat of arms; a white star of five points on an azure ground encircled by olive and live oak branches. The national seal bore these arms encircled by the words Republic of Texas. In 1845 the designation was altered from Republic to State.

1845 - The US House voted to admit Texas into the Union. The bill will work its way through the Senate, but finally, on December 29th, Texas became the 28th State. By February 1846, government of the Republic of Texas will replaced by a governor and state officials.

1878 - The Denison Daily News printed the story of John Martin's January 2nd siting of "A Strange Phenomenon" while out hunting near his Denison farm. Unfamiliar with this type of reporting, the newspaper quotes Martin almost entirely. At one point, Martin refers to the phenomenon as being like "a large saucer" going through space "at wonderful speed." After it had stopped directly above him for a time, "It went as rapidly as it had come and was soon lost to sight in the heavenly skies." The newspaper summarizes "Mr. Martin is a gentleman of undoubted veracity and this strange occurrence, if it was not a balloon, deserves the attention of our scientists."

1905 The Texas legislature passed a resolution ordering the governor to purchase that part of the old Alamo fortress occupied by a business concern. It was further ordered that the governor should deliver the property thus acquired, with the property then owned by the state (the chapel of the Alamo), to the Daughters of the Republic of Texas.

1919 - Rancher C. C. (Lum) Slaughter died, precipitating a tangled family financial scandal. About 1877 he established one of the largest ranches in West Texas, the Long S, on the headwaters of the Colorado River, and around 1898 he bought almost 250,000 acres in Cochran and Hockley counties and established the Lazy S Ranch. Frequently titled the "Cattle King of Texas," Slaughter became one of the country's largest individual owners of cattle and land (over a million acres and 40,000 cattle by 1906) and was for years the largest individual taxpayer in Texas. Less than a week after his death, however, his younger brother, Bill, with whom he had had a long and strained financial relationship but who managed the Long S, was accused of fraud.

1934 - The Daughters of the American Revolution donated The O. Henry Museum to the city of Austin. Originally it was the home of writer William Porter (O. Henry).

1962 - Texas Instruments, still booming from its new invention, the microchip, announced a plan to build a new plant in north Dallas.

1965 - The worst dust storms in ten years cover west Texas from the Northern Panhandle to the Mexican border. One rain guage in Abilene recorded 3 inches of fine sand. [If you've ever been in a dust storm, you know how unpleasant it is.]

1969 - Ground is broken and construction begins on the new 58,000 seat Irving Stadium, future home of the Dallas Cowboys. It was imploded in the spring of 2010, with Kraft Foods sponsoring the event.

[ELB]

...
1839 - The President of Texas, Mirabeau B. Lamar, approved the adoption by the Texas Congress of the Texas national flag, the familiar red, white and blue Lone Star flag which is now the state flag. Also approved was the national coat of arms; a white star of five points on an azure ground encircled by olive and live oak branches. The national seal bore these arms encircled by the words Republic of Texas. In 1845 the designation was altered from Republic to State...

The history of Texas flags, like everything else about the history of Texas, is rather convoluted once you start digging in. During the revolutionary period there were a number of flags proposed and used, some of them quite complicated and ... ghastly, in my opinion. However it seems the simpler the design, the more popular and long-lived the design. Thankfully.

The Handbook of Texas online has this to say about the first official flags of the Republic of Texas:

The first official flag, the "National Standard of Texas," was passed by the Congress of the republic and approved by President Sam Houston on December 10, 1836. It consisted of an azure ground with a large golden star central. This flag, known as David G. Burnet's flag, served as the national flag until January 25, 1839, and the war flag from January 25, 1839, to December 29, 1845. President Burnet proposed the national standard, as well as the 1836 national flag for the naval service, in a letter of October 11, 1836, to Congress. The second official flag was the 1836 national flag for the naval service, or war ensign. This was the same flag Burnet adopted for the navy at Harrisburg on April 9, 1836. It was similar to the United States flag and showed thirteen stripes and a blue canton with a single white star. It was passed by Congress and approved by Houston on December 10, 1836, and remained in use until January 25, 1839.

However, other sources note that relatively few people realized that the Burnet flag, the blue one with the gold (or sometimes white) star in the middle was the official national flag. A lot of people in and out of Texas thought that the naval flag or war ensign was the national flag of Texas. This is the flag I am currently using as my avatar -- 13 red and white horizontal stripes and a single large white star on a blue canton. According to Wikipedia, there is evidence that the "Lone Star and Stripes" was used at the Alamo, Goliad, and San Jacinto. Wikipedia also states that "...Texas Senator Oliver Jones, who led the 1839 committee which approved the Lone Star Flag, was unaware that the Lone Star and Stripes was not the current official flag."

Wikipedia also points to a source in Philadelphia that in 1837 published a illustration of flags of the world, and for the Republic of Texas, it shows the Lone Star and Stripes. Now this publication was meant to be a reference for ships' captains to identify other ships' nationalities, so it probably should show the naval ensign, but it probably also led many to believe this was THE national flag of Texas. You can see the illustration here: https://www.flagcollection.com/itemdeta ... tem_ID=256

Due to the revision of Texas state laws in the wake of the Civil War, Texas actually had no official state flag from 1879 to 1933, when a new flag act was adopted (and this seems to coincide with a national movement regarding state flags). I doubt that anyone noticed the lack of legislation, nor had any doubts about what the state flag of Texas was, tho.

In yet another iteration of Texas flags, the Handbook of Texas also says that "The Mexican National Museum of Artillery has two revolutionary Lone Star flags, one dating from 1836 and the other from 1835 to 1837. Both of these flags display the red stripe over the white stripe, but otherwise resemble the 1839 national flag."

As I said, the history of the flag(s) of Texas seems to resemble the history of Texas in everything else: it appears everyone knows something about it, but when you dig into the details, the actual events and facts are far more complicated and interesting than the legends.

p.s. Someone asked me why I had the Liberian flag as an avatar. This was a pretty good guess, the Liberian flag is also modeled after the Stars and Stripes, with a single big white star in place of the many stars of the US flag. However, the Liberian flag has only 11 red and white horizontal stripes, representing the signatories of the Liberian declaration of independence.

[joe817]

Fascinating ELB! You dug much deeper than I did. Thanks for the addition to an interesting tidbit of Texas history!

[ELB]

I decided I needed a new avatar, and thought I'd like to use an early Texas flag, so I went researched it a little bit. Thus I was primed for today's "Today".

[ELB]

Oh, and by the way, in the Wikipedia entry for the Texas Flag, it says:

"In 2001, a survey conducted by the North American Vexillological Association rated the Texas state flag second best in design quality out of the 72 Canadian provincial, U.S. state and U.S. territory flags ranked. The flag earned 8.13 out of 10 possible points."

Inexplicably, the NAVA rated the New Mexico flag as the best design.

[Jago668]

Well it is simple, bold, and easy to see. Now I personally don't like it as much, but I assume it was for something along those lines.