This Day In Texas History - May 17

[joe817]

1831 - John Henry Moore, one of the Old Three Hundred and a participant in the Texas Revolution, constructed a twin blockhouse. He called the blockhouse Moore's Fort at the site where La Grange was established. Moore lived at La Grange until 1838, when he built a home on his plantation nine miles north of the town. On September 25, 1835, the Committee of Safety at Gonzales asked Moore for reinforcements, and he marched to Gonzales to take command of the Texans in the battle of Gonzales on October 2. He is said to have designed the "Come and Take It" banner

1839 - Manuel Flores and his band were defeated on the North San Gabriel River by Texas Rangers. Flores had led an expedition from Matamoros carrying war supplies to Texas Indians whom the Mexicans were trying to organize as allies. After killing four members of a party of surveyors between Seguin and San Antonio on May 14, the Flores group was trailed by a company of rangers for two days. Some of the rangers, led by Lt. James O. Rice, confronted the Mexican group on the North San Gabriel on May 17 and routed them. Flores was reported among the dead. In the baggage removed after the skirmish the Texans found several documents that seemed to link the Cherokee Indians with a Mexican plot to conquer Texas. These documents prompted President Lamar to demand that the Cherokees leave Texas, and this precipitated the Cherokee War.

1865 - The last 1,200 Federal prisoners left Camp Ford, a Confederate prison camp located four miles northeast of Tyler. The camp, named in honor of Col. John S. (Rip) Ford, originally opened in 1862 as a facility for training Confederate conscripts, but the Trans-Mississippi Department ordered the establishment of a prison camp there in July 1863; the notorious John Pelham Border became commandant in May 1864. About 6,000 prisoners were confined at Camp Ford over the two years of its existence, making it the largest Confederate prison camp west of the Mississippi River. Of this number, 286 died there. The remains of the prison compound were destroyed in July 1865 by a detail of the Tenth Illinois Cavalry.

1871 - Longview incorporated, the first community in Gregg County to do so

1873 - 360 enlisted men and seventeen officers of companies A, B, C, E, I, and M, of the Fourth United States Cavalry combined with twenty-four Seminole scouts and fourteen civilians reached their staging area at the Rio Grande. The REMOLINO RAID will occur the following day:
[ https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/qfr03 ]

1873 - John Wesley Hardin killed Jack Helm in Albuquerque, Texas. In but one of a series of violent acts of the Sutton-Taylor feud. Albuquerque quickly declined after business activities shifted to a new village, Union (sometimes referred to as Union Valley), two miles south of the Albuquerque site. By 1912 only deserted structures remained at the town site. Albuquerque, Texas was on the Clear Fork of Sandies Creek two miles south of the junction of Gonzales, Wilson, and Guadalupe counties in Gonzales County. The site was believed to be in Wilson County until a 1914 survey showed it inside the Gonzales county line. The town's official life spanned the years 1870 through 1883.

1888 - In the newly organized town of Amarillo, H. H. Brookes began publication of the town's first weekly newspaper, the Amarillo Champion

1922 – Singer and composer Leon Roger Payne entered the Texas School for the Blind. His songs were later recorded by Elvis Presley and Dean Martin.

1965 - Austin is hit with the smallest tornado on record. Measuring the trail of debris, experts calculated the tornado to have been only 8 feet in diameter at the base.

2000 - The Eagles filed suit against the "Hotel California" restaurant in Dallas, TX, alleging trademark violations.