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This Day In Texas History - February 24

Posted: Sun Feb 24, 2019 10:52 am
by joe817
1816 - Swante Magnus(Swede) Swenson was born in Jönköping, Sweden. In 1838 he became the first Swedish immigrant to Texas. Thereafter he encouraged many Swedes to immigrate. Swenson founded the SMS Ranches, became one of the largest landholders in the state, and headed extensive mercantile enterprises. He also served two terms as a Travis county commissioner and was the first treasurer of the State Agricultural Society. As an outspoken Unionist, he moved to Mexico during the Civil War, then in 1865 to New York. He and a handful of others became known as the Texas cattle barons.

1817 - Samuel H. Walker, Texas Ranger and Mexican War veteran, son of Nathan and Elizabeth (Thomas) Walker, was born at Toaping Castle, Prince George County, Maryland, on February 24, 1817. He traveled to Galveston in January 1842, where he served in Capt. Jesse Billingsley's company during the Adrián Woll invasion. He then enlisted in the Somervell expedition and took part in the actions around Laredo and Guerrero. He also joined William S. Fisher's Mier expedition. Walker escaped at Salado, was recaptured, and survived the Black Bean Episode. In 1844 Walker joined John C. Hays's company of Texas Rangers and participated in the battle of Walker's Creek near the junction of Walker's Creek and West Sister Creek northwest of present-day Sisterdale in Kendall County. During the engagement the rangers, using new Colt revolvers, successfully defeated about eighty Comanches.

When Gen. Zachary Taylor requested volunteers to act as scouts and spies for his regular army, Walker enlisted as a private and was mustered into federal service in September 1845. In April 1846 he formed his own company for duty under Taylor. On April 28 Walker was ambushed with his company en route to join Taylor at Port Isabel. He reached Taylor's camp on April 29; his reports caused Taylor to move his encampment. Walker performed exemplary duty as a scout and courier on numerous other occasions. His company was the only Texas unit at the battles of Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma. He was presented a horse by the grateful citizens of New Orleans in the spring of 1846 for his numerous exploits with Taylor's army. Walker served as captain of the inactive Company C of the United States Mounted Rifles until the outbreak of the Mexican War. When the First Regiment, Texas Mounted Riflemen, was organized in June 1846, Walker was elected lieutenant colonel. He fought in the battle of Monterrey in September and on October 2, 1846, mustered out of federal service, activated his commission as captain of the mounted rifles, and proceeded to Washington, D.C., to begin recruiting for his company. <B><s></s>During his recruitment excursion Walker visited Samuel Colt. Colt credited Walker with proposed improvements, including a stationary trigger and guard, to the existing revolver. The new six-shooter was named the Walker C
[ For the full story: "https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fwa23 ]

1820 - Elisha Everett Lott, statesman and orator, son of John Lott, was born in Mississippi on February 24, 1820. At the age of twenty he married Mary E. Lott, and the couple moved to Harrison County, Texas. In 1842 Lott was elected to replace Isaac Van Zandt as a representative in the Eighth Texas Congress. He fought vigorously against the Cherokee Land Bill in 1844 and moved to the disputed area at the end of his term. He is sometimes called the founder of Smith County. In 1846 he served on the official commission that laid out the boundary of the new county and selected the site of the county seat, Tyler. According to postal records, Lott was the first Tyler postmaster, a position he held from 1847 to 1850. He represented Smith County in the state House of Representatives from 1847 to 1853 and in the Senate from 1857 to 1861. He served as a delegate to the national Democratic convention at Baltimore in 1852; his constituents asked that he run for governor in 1857, but he declined. With the coming of the Civil War, Lott resigned to serve as a lieutenant colonel in the Confederate Army. His health failed from his overexertion on the battlefront, and he died on January 17, 1864, at his home in Starrville, north of Tyler, and was buried there. After the death of his first wife, he had married Anna Cook in 1856, and she and their five children survived him. He was a Mason and a Methodist.

1821 - Vicente R. Guerrero and Agustín de Iturbide proposed a blueprint for independence called the Plan de Iguala, for the Independence of Mexico from Spain. The plan offered three guarantees— preservation of the Catholic Church's status, the independence of Mexico as a constitutional monarchy, and equality of Spaniards and criollos(person's born in the New World to Spanish-born parents). Although viceregal authorities tried to resist, the plan met with widespread approval both in civilian and military quarters. By the end of July 1821, when Juan O'Donoju arrived to take over the reins of colonial government, the loyalists controlled only Mexico City and Veracruz. Recognizing that all was lost, O'Donoju met with Iturbide at the town of Córdoba, where on August 24, 1821, he signed a treaty granting Mexico independence.

1827 - Robert Inglish, merchant and state legislator, was born on February 24, 1827, in Arkansas, son of Bailey Inglish and Jane (Sloan) Inglish. Bailey Inglish and his family moved to Texas in 1836; around 1837 he founded the town of Bonham. During the Civil War Robert Inglish joined the Sixteenth Texas Cavalry and served as a private in Company C. Inglish resigned from service to take a seat in the Texas House of Representatives from 1863 to 1866. Inglish married Julia Covington Lowry on May 24, 1866, in Hempstead County, Arkansas. By 1880 they had four children and were living in Fannin County where Inglish was listed as a merchant. Inglish died on November 29, 1889, and was buried in Bonham's Inglish Cemetery, sometimes referred to as the Old Pioneer Cemetery.

1836 - George Washington Cottle, early Texas colonist and Alamo defender, son of Jonathan and Margaret Cottle, may have been born in Tennessee or in Hurricane Township, Missouri, in 1811. His parents came to Texas on July 6, 1829, to settle in Green DeWitt's colony on the Lavaca River. He married his first cousin, Eliza Cottle, on November 7, 1830, but the marriage was annulled on October 7, 1831. They had one daughter. Cottle received a league of land at the headwaters of the Lavaca River near Gonzales on September 12, 1832. Records indicate that on January 4, 1835, he married Nancy Curtis Oliver. They had twin sons, born after Cottle's death. When Mexican troops arrived south of Gonzales in September 1835, Cottle was one of the messengers sent to gather reinforcements. He returned to fight in the battle of Gonzales on October 2. In February 1836 he lent a yoke of oxen to Capt. Mathew Caldwell's company. He enlisted in the Gonzales Company under Lt. George C. Kimbell on February 24 and rode with thirty-two others to the Alamo on March 1. Cottle was killed on March 6, 1836, at the battle of the Alamo, alongside his brother-in-law, Thomas Jackson. Cottle County was named for him.

1836 - William Barret Travis, commanding the Texans under attack in the Alamo, wrote his famous letter addressed "To the People of Texas and All Americans in the World." (The actual text will follow this post)

1836 - James Bowie, commander of the volunteers and co-commander at the Alamo, takes ill, and relinquishes his share of command at the Alamo to William Travis. Bowie had been ordered to San Antonio to destroy the presidios that might be found useful to the approaching Mexican Army. When he arrived however, he met Colonel William Travis who had his own orders to defend San Antonio at any cost. His illness was diagnosed as pneumonia or typhoid pneumonia but probably was advanced tuberculosis.

1844 - President Sam Houston honorably discharged all officers not required for the minimum maintenance of the mothballed ships, in the Republic of Texas Navy and Republic of Texas Marine Corps.

1885 - The future Commander of the United States forces in the Pacific, Chester A Nimitz was born in Fredericksburg. He would lead the Pacific forces throughout World War II. His boyhood home, the Nimitz hotel, would become the Nimitz Memorial Museum of the Pacific War.

1899 - In Corsicana, J. S. Cullinan and Co opened the first oil refinery west of the Mississippi river. The name was later changed to Magnolia Oil, and still later, Mobil.

1969 - Approximately 100 Texas Rangers, local lawmen, and state police were dispatched to Wiley College, the oldest black college west of the Mississippi River, in response to a series of nonviolent student demonstrations on the Marshall campus. The students were demonstrating over faculty hiring practices, primitive dormitory facilities, and cutbacks in the intercollegiate athletic program. The lawmen undertook a massive search for concealed weapons in the dorms; the search was fruitless, but the school was closed down for several weeks. Wiley College was founded in 1873 and chartered in 1882.

1979 - Swine breeder Russ Braize of Stamford sold a pig for the highest price ever recorded at the time: $42,500. Glacier(the pigs name) held the world record for the most expensive boar of all breeds for 18 years. The pig, a duroc boar, was sold to William and Myron Meinhart of Hudson, Iowa.

1991 - The Second Armored Division(stationed at Fort Hood) entered Iraqi-held Kuwait. In 100 hours allied forces had taken back the emirate.