This Day In Texas History - March 28

[joe817]

1836 - Sam Houston and his Texas army, on retreat from the Mexican Army under Santa Anna, arrive at San Felipe de Austin. In what little time he can, he will train his army before moving farther east.

1840 - Antonio Zapata and several Texans were captured in Mexico and on this day were tried for treason in a Mexican military court. The next day, as a lesson to others, Zapata's head was severed and stuck on a pike in front of his house.

1843 - The Tehuacana Creek councils were meetings between Texas officials and Indian representatives. The first in the series began in the spring of 1843. On March 28, 1843, a number of Indian tribes including the Caddos, Delawares, Wacos, Tawakonis, Lipan Apaches, and Tonkawas went to a council on Tehuacana Creek near the Torrey Brothers trading post south of the site of present Waco. The last council ended on November 16, 1845.

1846 - Following Texas admission into the United States, General Zachary Taylor, who was sent into the Rio Grande Valley to defend Texas from Mexico, begins erection of Fort Brown, at the future location of Brownsville.

1862 - Union and Confederate troops fought the key battle of the Civil War in the Far West at Glorieta Pass, New Mexico. When the Texans of Brig. Gen. Henry Hopkins Sibley's Army of New Mexico were defeated by Union forces, Confederate ambitions in the West were checked. In June 1987 a mass grave containing more than thirty bodies, casualties of the battle of Glorieta, was discovered. Only three bodies were identified, among them that of Ebenezer Hanna, the youngest fatality of the battle. All the bodies were reburied in Santa Fe National Cemetery in 1993. Hanna's journal is now in the Texas State Library.

1864 - Civil War guerrilla leader William Quantrill was arrested by Confederate forces in Bonham, Texas. The Ohio native, wanted for murder in Utah by 1860, collected a group of renegades in the Kansas-Missouri area at the beginning of the Civil War. He fought with Confederate forces at the battle of Wilson's Creek in August 1861 but soon thereafter began irregular independent operations. Quantrill and his band attacked Union camps, patrols, and settlements. While Union authorities declared him an outlaw, Quantrill eventually held the rank of colonel in the Confederate forces. After his infamous sack of Lawrence, Kansas, and the massacre of Union prisoners at Barter Springs, Quantrill and his men fled to Texas in October of 1863. There he quarreled with his associate, William "Bloody Bill" Anderson, and his band preyed on the citizens of Fannin and Grayson counties. Quantrill was killed by Union forces at the very end of the war.

1958 - Elvis Presley arrived at Fort Hood, TX, for basic training. He was stationed there for six months.

1961 - On this date in 1961, a rally was held at Houston's Memorial Auditorium for one of 72 candidates for the US Senate seat vacated when Lyndon Johnson became Vice President. Total attendance ... none.

1969 - Former President and commander of the Allied forces in Europe during WWII, Dwight D Eisenhower died at Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington. He was buried alongside his wife and first child, at a small chapel in Abilene Kansas. Eisenhower, born in 1890 in Denison, Texas, rose to prominence as commander of the Allied forces which defeated Nazi Germany in World War II. Following the war, he ran for President as a Republican. As President, he supported the 1954 Supreme Court decision "Brown vs Borad of Education of Topeka", leading to school integration. In 1957, he federalized the National Guard to enforce school integration in Little Rock Arkansas.

1971 - Barbara Jordan is elected as President pro tempore of the Texas senate. In 1967, Barbara Jordan became the first black woman ever to become a Texas state senator

[joe817]

Letters From The Past NOTE: the exact date is out of order. However, not by much.

Muster of the Texian Army and Evacuation of Gonzales, J.H. Kuykendall, Mar 1836.

I was in Mexico when hostilities commenced between her and Texas. I arrived at home between the 15 and 20 of February, 1836--a few days previous to which time my neighbors had organized themselves into a company---having elected Robert McNutt captain and Gibson Kuykendall and John Burleson lieutenants. [At San Jacinto, Robert McNutt was a Major in command of the rear guard and sick at the camp near Harrisburg. Gibson Kuykendall was a Captain in charge of the company at Harrisburg in which J.H. Kuykendall was a private--WLM].

A few days afterwards an express from Travis reached San Felipe with the intelligence that the Mexican army under Santa Anna had commenced siege of the Alamo, and urging his countrymen to repair to his assistance with all possible dispatch. Government responded to his call by ordering the various companies which had been organized to march forthwith towards San Antonio. Gonzales was designated as the point of general rendezvous. I enrolled myself in Capt. McNutt's company, which took up the line of march on the evening of the first day of March, 1836. On the morning of the 2d March, we formed a junction with Capt. Moseley Baker's company from San Felipe.

Both companies were infantry, and each had a baggage wagon. The night of the third of March, we slept at Rocky creek, twenty miles west of the Colorado where we were joined by Capt. Thomas J. Rabb's company from Egypt on the Colorado (see above footnote) and on the morning of the 6th March we reached Gonzales where we found two companies, to-wit: Capt. Billingsley’s from Bastrop and Capt. Sherman's from Kentucky. On the 7th March, another company, (Capt. Hill's) arrived from Washington-on-the-Brazos. The companies of Sherman and Billingsley were encamped on the west bank of the river. The other companies encamped in the bottom, on the east bank of the Guadalupe, about a mile below the village of Gonzales, and less than half that distance below the ferry.

Capt. Baker was chosen by the heads of companies to take charge of our little force until the arrival of a superior officer [An account by Dr. Labadie says that Colonel Neill was temporary leader-WLM]. We were in total ignorance of the fall of the Alamo, and hoped it would be able to hold out until we could relieve it. Parties were sent out in the direction of San Antonio (distant 70 miles), but they brought back no tidings of friend or foe.

Early History of Fayette County by L.R. Weyend and H. Wade explains that the company referred to above under Capt. Rabb "was recruited and organized by Thomas J. Rabb and he was captain in command until March 26, 1836, on which date Houston abandoned his position on the Colorado and continued his retreat eastward. This organization was officially designated Company F, First Reg. Tex. Volunteers and was commanded at the battle of San Jacinto by W. J. E. Heard.

Circumstances as to why Rabb vacated his position as captain and quit the army is left to us in the Memoirs of Mary Crownover Rabb, an extract covering this point is given here: 'Thomas J. Rabb was still with the army as they retreated on their way from San Antonio and T. J. Rabb kept telling old Sam Houston that he had better fight the Mexicans and not let them invade Texas any further that it would be worse and worse for us but old Sam was afraid and would not fight and when they got nearly to the Colorado Thomas Rabb told old Sam he had better fight the Mexicans and not let them invade Texas any further that it would be worse and worse for us but old Sam was (still) afraid and when they got nearly to the Colorado T. J. Rabb told old Sam that he had better drive them back but he still let them come on and when they got to the Colorado Rabb told old Sam that if be let the Mexicans cross the river that he would loose half of his men

--that they would leave him and go to their families. And he gave old Sam to understand that he for one would leave. Old Sam told Rabb that the Colorado should ran with blood before they should cross and Rabb said before daylight next morning the Mexicans were crossing the river and Rabb got on his horse and went to his family to move them on before the army. Rabb's wife lived only one day after they got home.'" Dixon and Webb in Heroes of San Jacinto say that that the Rabb company was disbanded and reorganized at Gonzales with W.J.E. Heard as Captain who had enrolled in the company at Egypt 1 Feb 1836 as a first lieutenant--WLM.