This Day In Texas History - February 9

[joe817]

1836 - William B. Harrison, commanding officer of the company known as the Tennessee Mounted Volunteers, which included David Crockett arrived at the Alamo. This company traveled to San Antonio de Béxar and then on to the Alamo by way of Washington-on-the-Brazos. Harrison died in the battle of the Alamo

1854 - Samuel K. Lewis finally received payment for two beeves he had furnished to the Army of the Republic of Texas in November 1842. Lewis, whose place and date of birth are unknown, had moved to Texas in 1838. He was issued an unconditional grant for land in Brazoria County in 1841 and was living in or near La Grange by 1842. In that year, president Sam Houston and Congress were pursuing a policy of retrenchment and economy. Despite their efforts, by the time Texas was annexed to the United States, in 1845, the money owed Lewis was part of a $12 million public debt. Lewis, also represented Austin County in the House of Representatives of the Ninth Congress (1844-1845).

1902 - Juanita Shanks Craft was born in Round Rock, Texas. She was appointed Dallas NAACP membership chairman in 1942 and in 1946 was promoted to Texas NAACP field organizer. She and Lulu Belle White of Houston organized 182 branches of the NAACP in Texas over a period of eleven years. In 1944 Mrs. Craft became the first black woman in Dallas County to vote. Her work with the youth unit became a prototype for other NAACP youth groups throughout the country, as she challenged a series of educational barriers.

1914 - On this date, the "Texas Troubadour," Ernest Tubb was born in Crisp (Ellis Co). His biggest hits include "Walking the Floor Over You" and "Waltz Across Texas".

1939 - The saxophonist and composer Herschel Evans died of heart disease in New York City. Evans, a native of Denton, Texas, was only thirty at the time of his death, but had already established a formidable reputation in the jazz world. His cousin Eddie Durham, himself a legendary musician, convinced a young Evans to switch from alto to tenor sax. After spending some years in Kansas City, Evans returned to Texas in the 1920s. By the mid-1930s he was a featured soloist with Count Basie's big band, and his musical duels with Lester Young, as on the Basie hit "One O'Clock Jump," are considered jazz classics. Evans also recorded with Teddy Wilson and composed the hit songs "Texas Shuffle" and "Doggin' Around."

1850 - Fort Polk was abandoned. On March 6,1846 Maj. Gen. Zachary Taylor's men established a military depot near the Brazos Santiago arsenal and named it Fort Polk, in honor of the president of the United States. The fort was also known as Fort Brazos Santiago. Fort Polk was garrisoned from 1848 until 1850 by Capt. F. C. Hunt's company of the Fourth United States Artillery regiment.The location was used as a transit depot for materials for Fort Brown in 1852, and on February 21, 1861, at the outbreak of the Civil War, it was seized by a Confederate artillery company from Galveston. Long afterward, the United States Army Corps of Engineers straightened the channel and installed jetties in the pass, obliterating the site of both the Mexican fort at Brazos Santiago and Fort Polk. It was located on the north end of Brazos Island in what is now Cameron County, six miles north of the Rio Grande at Brazos Santiago Pass.

1861 - Gen. David E. Twiggs,in San Antonio, surrendered all United States forts and military equipment in Texas, and move them north to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

1869 - The King Ranch registered its famous "running W" brand as the official brand for the King Ranch–a mark that is still used today. The 825,000-acre King Ranch, in Nueces, Kenedy, Kleberg, and Willacy counties, had its beginning in 1852, when Richard King and Gideon K. Lewis set up a cattle camp on Santa Gertrudis Creek in South Texas. Formal purchase began in 1853, when they bought a Spanish land grant, Rincón de Santa Gertrudis, of 15,500 acres on Santa Gertrudis Creek in Nueces County. [for a fascinating read: http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/onli ... /apk1.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; ]

1972 - As part of its decision to close many small local offices around the country, Western Union closed the first telegraph office it had established in Texas at Marshall, which had been in operation since February 14, 1854.