This Day In Texas History - February 12

[joe817]

1787 - Green DeWitt, empresario of DeWitt's colony, was born on February 12, 1787, in Lincoln County, Kentucky. In 1821 he was inspired by Moses Austin's widely circulated success in obtaining a grant from the Spanish government to establish a colony in Texas. As early as 1822 he petitioned the Mexican authorities for his own empresario contract, but was unsuccessful. Having seen Texas and visited Austin, DeWitt journeyed in March 1825 to Saltillo, the capital of the Mexican state of Coahuila and Texas, where he petitioned the state government for a land grant. Aided by Austin and the Baron de Bastrop, he was awarded an empresario grant on April 15, 1825, to settle 400 Anglo-Americans on the Guadalupe River and was authorized to establish a colony adjacent to Stephen F. Austin's subject to the Colonization Law of 1824. DeWitt contracted a fatal illness, probably cholera. He died on May 18, 1835, and was buried there in an unmarked grave. Though he did not live to see the battle of Gonzales, which traditionally is considered the first skirmish of the Texas Revolution, his wife and daughter, Naomi, cut up Naomi's wedding dress to make the "Come and Take It" banner that his fellow colonists adopted as their battle flag.

1836 - Santa Anna's main army crossed the Rio Grande heading for San Antonio. Within a month the battle at the Alamo would take place.

1836 - During the Texas Revolution, several groups of volunteers for the army, particularly volunteers from Kentucky, wore the designation of "Ladies'" battalions or legions. On February 12, 1836, the Committee of Vigilance and Safety of San Augustine authorized Haden Edwards to go to the United States to solicit from women donations to be used to raise a battalion to be known as the "Ladies' Battalion." The names of the lady donors were to be preserved on parchment, and proper honor was to be accorded them in annual celebrations. When Edwards reached the United States, he read of the Runaway Scrape and the battle of San Jacinto so he changed his request for men into a request for money contributions for food for the refugees. The Ladies Legion of the city of Lexington was organized, probably in April of 1836, at the instigation of Mary Austin Holley, who had a group of ladies sew at her house twice a week to make clothing to send to Texas. Miss Henrietta Austin, daughter of Henry Austin, presented the Ladies Legion a silk flag of Texas designed by Stephen F. Austin. The ladies of Newport, Kentucky, presented a stand of colors to the Newport Volunteers. A corps of 200 volunteers styled the "Ladies' Cavalry" left Louisville, Kentucky, in June 1836, each of the officers being presented epaulets by a young lady when the group stopped at Shelbyville. When the groups reached New Orleans, they were told that troops were no longer needed in Texas, and many of them returned home.

1836 - The Red Rovers, a volunteer military company from Courtland, Ala., arrived in Goliad to take part in the Texas Revolution. The company earned its name from the red jeans that were part of the uniform. It had about 70 members. The Red Rovers were organized by Jack Shackelford, a surgeon and former Alabama state senator.

1836 - The Mobile Grays, a company of about thirty volunteers organized in Mobile, Alabama, in November 1835 by James Butler Bonham, Albert C. Horton, and S. P. St. John arrived at San Antonio, Texas, under command of David N. Burke three days after the surrender of Martín Perfecto de Cos. Upon the army's reorganization for the Matamoros expedition of 1835–36 in the last week in December the group, enlarged by transfers from the New Orleans Greys, proceeded to Goliad and, on February 12, 1836, became part of the Second, or LaFayette, Battalion of the Provisional Regiment of Volunteers under James W. Fannin, Jr. There may have been as many as thirty-eight Mobile Grays with Fannin at Goliad. If so, one was killed in action on March 19. Three escaped, four were spared on March 27, and thirty were killed in the Goliad Massacre on that day.

1837 - Charles Edward Hawkins, naval officer, served as a midshipman in the United States Navy until 1826, when he followed David Porter in submitting his resignation and accepting a commission in the Mexican navy. As captain of the Hermón he saw action in the Gulf against the Spanish fleet attempting to suppress the Mexican bid for independence. In 1828 he resigned from Mexican service and for a time worked as a river captain on the Chattahoochee.

In 1836 he visited Texas governor Henry Smithqv, seeking a commission in the new Texas Navy. Smith was impressed with his credentials and sent him to New Orleans, where he was given command of the newly acquired Independence, formerly the United States revenue cutter Ingham. He had returned to Texas with the ship by January 10, 1836. From that time until March 1 Hawkins cruised the coast between Galveston and Tampico, destroying "a considerable number of small craft, with all material on board that could be used to the injury of Texas." By March 12 he had taken the Independence to New Orleans for refitting. He then returned to Matagorda and was promoted to the rank of commodore and command of the entire Texas Navy.

With the Runaway Scrape and the retreat of Sam Houston's army after the twin disasters of the Alamo and Goliad, Hawkins was forced to move his home port up the Texas coast from Matagorda to Galveston. After the Texas victory at San Jacinto (see SAN JACINTO, BATTLE OF) he ordered his fleet to blockade Matamoros, but soon the need for repairs sent the Invincible and the Brutus to port and reduced his numbers to a single ship, his own. Even the Independence required refitting at New Orleans in mid-September. There, in February 1837, Hawkins died of smallpox at the home of a Mrs. Hale (he was buried on February 12).

1849 - Lt. William H. C. Whiting and Lt. William F. Smith, both Army engineers, under orders by Maj. Gen. William J. Worth, departed San Antonio to investigate the trail to Presidio del Norte to determine if there was such a practical route between El Paso and the Gulf of Mexico. They had a force of fifteen men. Accompanying them was an escort of nine men included experienced woodsmen and hunters well versed in frontier life. Whiting, only twenty-four years old, had no previous frontier or Indian experience.

1862 - Marcellus Clayton Cooper, the first black dentist in Texas, was born in the Dallas area on February 12, 1862. He was born a slave and spent his childhood on Caruth Farm, “a former plantation built in 1855 and located on the west side of the Dallas Northwest Highway at Interstate 75 across from the North Park shopping center.” For eleven years he worked at Sanger Brothers department store and saved money to attend dental school. He died on December 19, 1929, and was buried in Woodland Cemetery in Dallas.

1862 - Horace Randal, Confederate brigadier general, son of Sarah McNeil (Kyle) and Dr. John Leonard Randal, was born on January 1, 1833, in McNairy County, Tennessee. In 1839 the family moved to Texas and settled near San Augustine. In 1849 Horace Randal and James B. McIntyre became the first Texas appointees to the United States Military Academy at West Point. Randal spent five years at the academy because of a deficiency in mathematics and English and thus was the second Texas graduate from West Point. Randal resigned from the United States Army on February 27, 1861, went into the Confederate service, and was commissioned a first lieutenant in the cavalry.

He was commissioned a colonel of cavalry on February 12, 1862, and recruited the Twenty-eighth Texas Cavalry regiment (Dismounted) in and around Marshall. Randal recruited his father, brother, and brother-in-law as members of his regimental staff. On July 9, 1862, the regiment of twelve companies paraded through Marshall and left for Little Rock, Arkansas, to join what later became the Second Brigade of Gen. John G. Walker's Texas (Greyhound) Division. As a colonel, Randal was appointed brigade commander on September 3, 1862, and served in Arkansas and Louisiana. Horace Randal died of wounds received at the battle of Jenkins' Ferry, Arkansas, on April 30, 1864. He was first buried at the hamlet of Tulip, Arkansas, near the battlefield, and later his remains were removed to the Old Marshall Cemetery at Marshall. A state marker was erected at his grave in 1962. Randall County was named for him.

1888 - James Field Smathers was born on a farm near Valley Springs, TX. He invented and patented the electric typewriter in 1912.

1899 - Tulia, Texas reported the coldest temperature ever recorded in the state--minus 23 degrees Fahrenheit. This was part of the "Big Freeze," an infamous norther that killed 40,000 cattle across the state overnight. This temperature was matched in Seminole in 1933. The highest temperature recorded for Texas was 120.

1924 - The Texas Centennial Board of One Hundred was established at a meeting in Austin to plan a celebration to commemorate the Texas Revolution and at the same time to advertise Texas to the world.

1929 - The Rio Grande Compact was an interstate agreement to apportion equitably the water of the Rio Grande among Colorado, New Mexico, and Texas. A preliminary compact of February 12, 1929, provided for stream-gauging stations, for construction of a reservoir in Colorado, and for equitable dividing of the water of the river pending the signing of a permanent compact. The table worked out provided for Colorado and New Mexico to deliver water in accord with a formula based upon the flow of the Rio Grande and its tributaries at designated gauging stations above the state lines.

1929 - Emilie Charlotte (Lillie) Langtry, actress, was born on October 13, 1853, on the Isle of Jersey. She became a "professional beauty" and popular actress, who appeared in her first play at the Haymarket Theatre in London in 1881. Before long she was an internationally acclaimed personality, largely because of her beauty and her rich and prominent gentleman admirers, of whom the most prestigious was the Prince of Wales. In 1888 a transcontinental tour took her to the Southwest, where she displayed her talents and her wardrobe in Galveston, Austin, Houston, Fort Worth, and San Antonio. This brought her as close as she ever came to an ardent Texas admirer, Judge Roy Bean, who had become "the Law West of the Pecos," first at Vinegarroon and later at a hamlet near Eagle's Nest Springs just west of the Pecos River.

Although sources differ as to how it happened, Bean began worshipping at the Langtry shrine, struck up a desultory correspondence with her, and called his tavern the "Jersey Lilly" in her honor. When the village became eligible for a post office in 1884, he named it Langtry. Southern Pacific Railroad records say that the town was named by a construction foreman, but Bean took credit for naming it. He may well have seen her on stage at the time of her San Antonio appearance in 1888, but it is unlikely that they ever met. Mrs. Langtry never mentioned a meeting in her memoirs, although she gave considerable space to her pause at Langtry on January 4, 1904, in the course of another transcontinental tour. She spent a short time talking to the townspeople and accepting gifts, which included Roy Bean's six-shooter. Bean had been dead for ten months when she arrived. Lillie's biographers give the Bean connection little attention, but Texas newspapers made much of it, as do Bean enthusiasts. She died at her home on the French Riviera on February 12, 1929, of a heart attack brought on by influenza.

1943 - The first class of cadets arriving at Marfa Army Airfield graduated and received their silver wings. The base at first was designated Marfa Army Air Field, Advanced Flying School, but at the arrival in June of Hoyle's replacement, Col. George F. Hartman, the name was changed to Marfa Army Air Field, Army Air Forces Advanced Flying School.

1983 - Running as a Republican to fill the seat he resigned as a Democrat only a month before, Phil Gramm wins his own seat back on this date in 1983. Gramm was pressured to resign by Washington Democrats because of his support of Ronald Reagan for President. Reagan was inaugurated three week before.

[ELB]

OMG. I'm old enough to remember an historical event of Texas.

[joe817]

OMG. I'm old enough to remember an historical event of Texas.

Me too!