This Day In Texas History - March 16

[joe817]

1684 - San Clemente Mission was established near present day Ballinger.

1758 - Some 2,000 Comanches and allied North Texas Indians descended on Mission Santa Cruz de San Sabá, on the San Saba River near the present site of Menard. The mission had been established the previous year to Christianize the eastern Apaches. The attackers killed two priests, Fray Alonso Giraldo de Terreros and Fray José de Santiesteban Aberín, and six others, then looted and set fire to the log stockade. In late summer 1759 Col. Diego Ortiz Parrilla, commander of the nearby Presidio San Luis de las Amarillas, undertook a military campaign to punish the Norteños but suffered an ignominious defeat near the site of present-day Spanish Fort(in northern Montague county,between Gainesville & Wichita Falls). With French firearms and Spanish horses, the northern tribes now constituted a stronger force than the Spaniards themselves could muster. The attack on the mission marked the beginning of warfare in Texas between the Comanches and the European invaders and signaled retreat for the Spanish frontier.

1836 - The ad interim government of Texas operated from March 16 to October 22, 1836. The Convention of 1836 declared independence and framed the Constitution of the Republic of Texas, but the advance of the Mexican army made immediate ratification and establishment of constitutional government impossible. The last act of the convention was the selection of an ad interim government with David G. Burnet, president; Lorenzo de Zavala, vice president; Samuel P. Carson, secretary of state; Bailey Hardeman, secretary of treasury; Thomas J. Rusk, secretary of war; Robert Potter, secretary of the navy; and David Thomas,attorney general. This temporary government, without any legislative or judicial departments, fled with the people in the Runaway Scrape and was located successively at Washington-on-the-Brazos, Harrisburg, Galveston Island, Velasco, and Columbia; nevertheless, it continued to function until regular elections could be held and the constitution ratified. One of its major concerns was controlling the revolutionary army and dealing with low supplies and morale.

1836 - William Bryan, an agent of the Republic of Texas in New Orleans, took official possession of two cannons and their attendant equipment for Texas. [Note: This is a fascinating piece of history of what became known as the "Twin Sisters", and will be described in a later post]

1861 - Following a 3-1 vote by Texans to secede from the Union, Governor Sam Houston is forced to resign. He has consistently resisted the efforts to secede and refused to take an oath of allegiance to the Confederate States of America. Houston left Austin, and returned to Huntsville where the lived out the rest of his life.

1894 - John Wesley Hardin was pardoned, and admitted to the bar. He had served 16 years of a 25 year sentence at Huntsville for the murder of Charles Webb. One year later, in 1895 in El Paso, Hardin himself would be killed by a man Hardin hired to kill his lover's husband. It seems the man was never paid for the hit.

1903 - Judge Roy Bean took the train to San Antonio and drank himself almost into a coma. Friends of the Judge carried him back to his makeshift courthouse, the Jersey Lilly, and put him to bed. Judge Roy Bean died peacefully in his sleep on this date in 1903.

1916 - Gen.John J. Pershing's 50,000 man army punitive expedition crossed the Rio Grande at Columbus and entered Chihuahua in search of the border bandit Pancho Villa.

1939 - Carol O'Brien Sobieski, television and film writer, was born in Chicago, Illinois. When she was five the family moved to the Frying Pan Ranch in the Texas Panhandle near Amarillo. In 1964 she was hired as a scriptwriter for the television series "Mr. Novak." She also wrote scripts for "The Mod Squad" and "Peyton Place." Her writing credits for television movies included The Neon Ceiling, Sunshine,Sunshine Christmas, Amelia Earhart, and Harry Truman: Plain Speaking. In the 1980s Sobieski became known for her film screenplays, which included Annie, Winter People, Honeysuckle Rose and Fried Green Tomatoes.