Re: This Day In Texas History - March 18

[joe817]

1687 - On March 18, 1687, the French explorer René Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, was murdered by members of his own party near the confluence of Cedar Creek and the Navasota River, in Grimes county, as he searched for the Mississippi. Navasota is the largest town in Grimes County.

1836 - The Red Rovers, a volunteer military company that participated in the Texas Revolution as a unit of the Lafayette Battalion of James W. Fannin's regiment, was organized by its captain, Jack Shackelford, at Courtland, Alabama, in November 1835 and named for the fact that its members were uniformed in red jeans. The company, which mustered about seventy men, was equipped with rifles and military supplies from the Alabama state arsenal.The company reached Texas on January 19, 1836. The men remained at Dimitt's Landing until accepted for Texas service on February 3. They were publicly entertained when they arrived at Victoria on their way to Goliad. Dr. Joseph H. Barnard accompanied the unit from Matagorda to Goliad, where the Red Rovers arrived on February 12 and were assigned to the Lafayette Battalion. During the Goliad Campaign of 1836 they were sent on several local expeditions, including two to the Carlos Rancho. On March 18 they extricated Albert C. Horton's men from Aranama Mission, where they were besieged by the Mexicans. At the battle of Coleto the Red Rovers occupied the extreme right of the front side of the square and acquitted themselves like veterans. The unit was surrendered with Fannin's regiment, and most of the men sustained a common fate in the Goliad Massacre.

1836 - The new government of Texas began a three-day stay at Groce's Retreat, Jared E. Groce's plantation home, in what is now southwestern Grimes County. President David G. Burnet and his cabinet sought sanctuary there as they retreated from Washington-on-the-Brazos to Harrisburg. Groce's house was used as the capital of the Republic of Texas until March 21.

1848 - The Methodist Episcopal Church, South, purchased a piece of property at 2015 Broadway in Galveston. Soon a church and parsonage were erected and "given to the Slaves as the Negro Methodist Episcopal Church South." Increasing tensions between North and South, exacerbated by the moral debate over slavery, fueled the white congregation's decision to separate its black and white members. After the Civil War the church was reorganized as a member of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. In recognition of the service of Rev. Houston Reedy, who became the pastor in 1870, the congregation renamed the church Reedy Chapel. Also in 1870, the Reedy Chapel AME Church was involved in a lawsuit when the Methodist Episcopal Church, North, took possession of the chapel. Unable to worship at Reedy Chapel, the congregation rented an old soap factory for fifteen dollars a month. After a four-year battle the courts ruled in favor of the AME Church, and Reedy Chapel was restored to them. In 1885 the structure was destroyed by fire. The replacement church still stood in 2004.

1875 - The Corpus Christi, San Diego and Rio Grande Narrow Gauge Railroad Company was chartered on March 18, 1875, to connect Eagle Pass and Laredo with Corpus Christi by way of San Diego, Texas. As in many cases, the state land grant did not help the financing of the railroad because the land was worth little. On January 1, 1878, the railroad opened twenty-five miles of track between Corpus Christi and Banquete. In 1879 the line was extended twenty-seven miles from Banquete to San Diego. Richard King and Mifflin Kenedy ensured the continuation of the project, which was renamed Texas Mexican Railway Company on June 25, 1881.

1877 - The battle of Yellow House Canyon, near the site of present Lubbock, ended a brief Indian uprising known as the Staked Plains (Hunters') War. It also was the last fight with hostile Indians on the High Plains of Texas. In December 1876 a group of Quahadi Comanches led by Black Horse obtained a permit from the reservation agent at Fort Sill to hunt in Texas. Black Horse had been angered by the rapid decimation of the buffalo herds and planned to camp in Yellow House Canyon and attack every buffalo hunter he saw. On the morning of February 1, 1877, Marshall Sewell spotted a buffalo herd, left his buffalo hunting camp and set up a station, and, with his Sharps rifle, killed the animals one by one until he ran out of ammunition. Black Horse watched the slaughter, surrounded Sewell on his way to camp, and murdered and scalped him. On March 4, 1877, a group of forty-six men left Rath City to find the renegades. Today, the battle site is in Lubbock's Canyon Lake Project. [ For an interesting read on this: https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/qfy01 ]

1878 - Colonel A.H.Belo had a telephone line installed between his home and the Galveston News, which he owned. Belo would expand his new enterprise, which eventually became one of the largest news/broadcasting companies in America, the Belo Broadcasting Company. Soon the demand for telephone service in Galveston led to the first telephone exchange (switchboard) in August of 1879. Demand reached Houston, San Antonio and Dallas. By 1882, exchanges were open in Waco, Brownsville, Brenham, Cleburne, Colorado, Corsicana, Gainesville, Greenville, Jefferson, Marshall, Paris, Palestine, Sherman, Denison, and Texarkana.

1880 - Marvin Hunter, author, editor, and publisher, was born in Loyal Valley, Texas, on March 18, 1880. As an amateur historian, Hunter published three historical magazines, Hunter's Magazine, Hunter's Frontier Magazine, and Frontier Times, which began respectively in 1910, 1916, and 1923. Using his newspaper presses, he reprinted a few works, including John Wesley Hardin's autobiography in 1925 and Andrew J. Sowell's Life of "Big Foot" Wallace in 1927. In 1927 he founded the Frontier Times Museum. During his years in Bandera he promoted the town as a tourist attraction. Hunter died in Kerrville on June 29, 1957.

1914 - Author and publisher of Western Americana, Joe Austell Small, Sr. was born in Chriesman, Burleson County, Texas, on March 18, 1914. Small was a prominent figure in the publication and writing of Western Americana magazines. His passion for magazines began in grade school where he became fascinated with them. He sold his first article to Reader's Digest in 1946. Shortly thereafter he began his pursuit into magazine publication and used his bedroom as his office. He published magazines specializing in the frontier West. His most popular publication was True West, which he began issuing in 1953. True West featured stories that appealed to the popular culture, focusing on such subjects as the gunfighters and lawmen, and topics like vigilantism, Indian fights, and boom towns.

It gained broad circulation due to the popularity of television Westerns in the late 1950s and early 1960s. In addition to True West, Small also published the magazines Frontier Times which he purchased in 1955, Wanderlust, Old West, Relics, Gold!, Badman, and Horse Tales:True Stories of Great Horses, a publication devoted to the true stories of horses. Through his magazines he is credited with preserving much of western history in addition to giving many beginning writers a start. Small was well known throughout Texas and was friends with other prominent western writers such as Fred Gipson, the author of Old Yeller, Walter Prescott Webb, and J. Frank Dobie. He died on March 9, 1994, at the age of seventy-nine following a lengthy illness and is buried in Austin Memorial Park.

1937 -A spark from a sander in the manual arts lab of a new school in New London (Rusk Co), sets off gas from a leaky pipe, resulting in an explosion that lifted the roof off the school, and within seconds the sides of the school collapsed on students and teachers. Heavy equipment from nearby oil fields was brought in to assist in the rescue effort. Volunteer arrived from as far as Louisiana to do what they could to help. It was learned that the school tapped a gas line to save the school money. 298 are found dead in this, the worst school disaster in American History. Later, the Texas legislature would require a chemical be added to natural gas to give off an odor that would warn of leaks. Natural gas up until that time was distributed odorless.

1938 - The Rio Grande Compact was an interstate agreement to apportion equitably the water of the Rio Grande among Colorado, New Mexico, and Texas. The compact was signed at Santa Fe, New Mexico, on March 18, 1938, approved by the state legislatures, and approved by Congress on May 31, 1939. 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. A Rio Grande Compact Commission, consisting of one representative from each state, was established, the state engineers of Colorado and New Mexico serving ex officio and the Texas commissioner being appointed by the Texas governor. The United States designates a representative to sit with the commission.

1981 - The U.S. disclosed that there were biological weapons tested in Texas in 1966.