This Day In Texas History - July 13

[joe817]

1824 - The Coushatta Trace was a road from Louisiana into Texas that was used by the Coushatta Indians in their hunting and trading activities. It was an important middle road between the better-known and Spanish-patrolled Atascosito Road along the Texas coast and the Old San Antonio Road farther inland. In the field notes for a survey of a tract of land now in Polk County a Mexican surveyor called a section of this trail a sendal or footpath. It led to the best crossings of streams or rivers and proceeded straight across the country. Gen. Sam Houston chose the route at its crossing of the Brazos in his retreat in 1836. There is no indication that the Coushatta Trace was ever patrolled by Spanish or Mexican military units, and it probably was a favorite route for contraband traders. Also, the trail was used by several early settlers coming into Stephen F. Austin's colony. The deed records of Austin County for July 13, 1824, show that land about a quarter league above the Coushatta crossing of the Brazos was granted to William Smeathers. Although the Coushatta Trace and the Atascosito Road were the most important roads through Austin's colony, the actual route of the Coushatta Trace has been discovered only generally and recently. This trail became so traveled that the Mexican government erected Fort Teran in 1831 at the Coushatta Trace crossing of the Neches River as a means of controlling the movement of settlers into Texas.
[ https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/exc05 ]

1830 - On June 25, 1830, Lt. Col. José Francisco Ruiz was dispatched from Bexar in command of 100 cavalrymen of the presidial company of Álamo de Parras, with orders from Gen. Manuel de Mier y Terán to establish a fort at the strategic point halfway down the Old San Antonio Road, where the thoroughfare crossed the Brazos River en route to Nacogdoches. Ruiz reached the Brazos on July 13 and established temporary headquarters on the east bank about a half mile below the Old San Antonio Road.

1846 - Philip Minor Cuney was elected brigadier general of the First Brigade of the Fourth Division of the Texas Militia. Also in 1846 he was elected to the state Senate and represented Austin and Fort Bend counties in the First and Second legislatures until 1848.

1846 - The first county elections for Comal county were held on July 13, 1846. It is estimated that by 1850 New Braunfels was the fourth largest city in Texas.

1859 - Juan Nepomuceno Cortina shot Brownsville city marshal Robert Shears, who had brutally arrested a former employee of Cortina's, and set off what became known as the first Cortina War.[ https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fco73 ]

1882 - John Peters Ringold, also known as "Johnny Ringo" was found dead in Morse's Canyon, Arizona, leaning against a tree with a bullet in his head. Some say Buckskin Frank Leslie killed him, others believe he shot himself as his deeds in Mason County finally took their toll on him. In November 1876, Johnny Ringo, Scott Cooley, John Baird and George Gladden were major instigators in the Mason County HooDoo Wars of 1875. Gladden was convicted of Murder and pardoned in 1884. Cooley, who died at the age of 21 in a Fredericksburg restaurant, had served several years in jail before his release. John Baird fled to New Mexico where he was killed. Johnny Ringo was aquitted and headed for Arizona, where he participated in a famous shootout with the Earp brothers at Tombstone.[ https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fri51 ]

1919 – Oil was discovered at the Hart Ranch in Palo Pinto County. The discovery lead to the creation of a boom town, which was named Jerehart in honor of the ranch’s owner.

1919 - On this date in 1919, Governor William P. Hobby ordered Texas Rangers and Guardsmen to Longview to secure Longview County, a small, rural cotton and lumber community in Northeast Texas after several days of racial unrest and arson in the county. Tension arose after two local black leaders, Samuel L. Jones and Dr. Calvin P. Davis, advised black farmers to sell directly to buyers in Galveston, eliminating white middlemen in the process. This collective act of commercial protest, coupled with the recent murder of Lemuel Walters, a young black man, heightened African American frustration in Longview.