This Day In Texas History - April 4

[joe817]

1689 - Spanish explorer and governor Alonso De León, marching from Coahuila in response to news of a French settlement in Texas, crossed a river in what is now Dimmit or Zavala County which he named Río de las Nueces ("River of Nuts") for the pecan trees growing along its banks. The Nueces River, although not explored in its entirety until the eighteenth century, was the first Texas river to be given a prominent place on European maps. It is identifiable as the Río Escondido ("Hidden River"), which first appeared on a 1527 map attributed to Diogo Ribeiro, signifying the obscure location of the river mouth behind its barrier island. It was to this river that René Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle--confused by the period's inadequate maps--sailed in 1685, believing that it was the Mississippi. De León discovered the remains of La Salle's Fort St. Louis on Garcitas Creek eighteen days after crossing the Nueces.

1721 - Capt. Domingo Ramón of the Aguayo expedition established Nuestra Señora de Loreto Presidio, popularly called La Bahía, on the ruins of Fort St. Louis, probably on the west bank of Garcitas Creek about two miles above its mouth in what is now Victoria County.

1836 - Sarah Ann Horn was captured by Comanche Indians near the Nueces River. Her family was traveling from the failed Dolores settlement, in Beales's Rio Grande colony, hoping to reach the port of Matamoros. The Comanches killed several men, including John Horn, Sarah's husband. After capture, Sarah was separated from her children. In 1837 American traders ransomed her at a trading rendezvous in New Mexico. She moved in 1838 to Missouri, where writer E. House recorded her account of her captivity, published the following year as A Narrative of the Captivity of Mrs. Horn, and Her Two Children. Sarah Horn died in 1839 from injuries sustained during her captivity.

1868 - Jesse Chisholm, famous trailblazer, dies of food poisoning at Left Hand Spring, near the site of present Geary, Oklahoma.

1888 - Baseball great Tris Speaker is born in Hubbard.

1906 - Mabel Doss Day Lea died in Dallas. She was the first to own and manage a fully-fenced large ranch in Texas, and was instrumental in the passage of the law that made fence-cutting a state felony. No laws existed to stop free-grass cattle raisers from cutting fences, and in September 1883 the fence along the south side of the 40,000 acre pasture of the 85,000 acre Day Cattle Ranch had been cut to pieces. She lobbied in Austin, and got a law passed in 1884 that made fence-cutting a felony crime.

1917 - The day Congress declared war on Germany, U.S. Senator Morris Sheppard introduced the prohibition amendment, which was debated throughout the summer. Finally the senator negotiated a tactical move by offering to limit the time for ratification in order to get a vote on the amendment. His maneuver worked. By the end of 1917 the measure passed the House, and by 1919 the Eighteenth Amendment gained the requisite number of states for ratification. For the rest of his life, Sheppard gave an address on the anniversary of ratification. Sheppard, was born at the family farm near Wheatville, Morris County, Texas.

1962 - Billie Sol Estes' accountant, George Krutilek, was found dead from carbon monoxide poisoning. Krutilek had been questioned by the FBI about Estes the day before.

1943 - William Edwin Dyess and several other prisoners escaped from the Davao Penal Colony prisoner of war camp in the Philippines. He survived the Bataan Death March. They contacted Filipino guerillas who led them to the submarine Trout on July 23. After evacuation to Australia and a hero's welcome in the United States, Dyess briefed the War Department on Japanese warfare and confirmed the enemy's brutality to POWs. Soon after his death he was nominated for the Medal of Honor and was posthumously awarded the Soldier's Medal. Abilene Air Force Base was renamed Dyess Air Force Base in his honor in December 1956.

1969 - Dr. Denton Cooley implanted the first complete artificial heart in a human being. The device, developed at Cooley's Cullen Cardiovascular Laboratories in Houston, kept the patient, Haskell Karp, alive for sixty-four hours, until a suitable heart donor was found. That first artificial heart is now in the Smithsonian Institution in Washington. Two Houston surgeons, Cooley and Michael E. DeBakey, pioneered heart transplant techniques.

1981 - Henry Cisneros became the first Mexican-American elected mayor of a major U.S. city, which was San Antonio, TX.