This Day In Texas History - February 10

[joe817]

1721 - The castaway François Simars de Bellisle reached the French post at Natchitoches after a year and a half of wandering across Texas. Bellisle was an officer on the Maréchal d'Estrée, which ran aground near Galveston Bay in the autumn of 1719. He and four other men were put ashore to ascertain their position and seek help, but were left behind when the ship floated free and sailed away.

1850 - Texas's first railroad, the Buffalo Bayou, Brazos and Colorado, is chartered.

1852 - The Texas legislature confirmed the work of the Bourland Commission, a group of three officials appointed to investigate land claims after the Mexican War. The war's outcome had brought into question the validity of numerous Spanish and Mexican land grants north of the Rio Grande. Against a complex backdrop that included agitation for making trans-Nueces Texas a separate country, Governor Peter Bell recommended that the legislature appoint a commission to investigate claims. The commission began its business in Laredo in mid-1850 and in February 1852 confirmed 234 grants in five South Texas counties to the original Spanish and Mexican grantees.

1852 - The state legislature, in an attempt to satisfy both the colonists and the land company, passed a compromise law ending the "Hedgcoxe War" of 1852, also known as the Peters colony rebellion. It was an armed uprising of colonists protesting what they viewed as an attempt by the land company to invalidate their land claims.

1899 - Andrea Castañón Villanueva (Madam Candelaria), who claimed to be a survivor of the battle of the Alamo, died at age 113 in San Antonio. She said she had been born in Laredo in 1785, though other sources say she was born at Presidio del Río Grande. She claimed to have been in the Alamo during the 1836 battle and to have nursed the ailing Jim Bowie. Since evidence of survivors is sparse, her claims may never be confirmed, but in 1891 the Texas legislature granted her a pension of twelve dollars a month for being an Alamo survivor and for her work with smallpox victims in San Antonio.

1910 - D.L. McDonald, the father of irrigation on the Texas High Plains, finds water near Hereford.

1923 - Governor Pat Neff signed the bill creating Texas Technical College, later to be known as Texas Tech. A search committee was sent to West Texas to look for a location, and when they got to Lubbock residents came out in droves. Lubbock was selected on the first ballot, and in August, the city celebrated. 30,000 people turned out for a party in a city of only a few thousand people. The first class in 1925 had 914 students.

1941 - The Forty-seventh Legislature authorized the Texas Defense Guard. The name was changed to Texas State Guard in May 1943. The state's emergency appropriation of $65,000 for the guard in 1941 was supplemented by city and county donations, as well as by individual and group contributions. The governor served as commander in chief, while the state adjutant general, appointed by the governor, acted as the administrative head. Fifty battalions were planned and activated to protect public utilities, transportation arteries, and war plants; to maintain law and order; to suppress subversive activities; and to repel invasion if necessary. Battalions consisted of four to six lettered companies with headquarters and service companies and a medical detachment. For the entire state there was a camouflage company and a training and research unit. Total authorized strength was 23,075 officers and men.

1957, Rudolf Ivanovich Abel, a soviet spy in Federal Custody, was flown to Brownsville, and then driven to McAllen to be detained awaiting trail for espionage. In August, 1957 he was flown to New York and stood trial.
On this date in 1962, Rudolf Abel was released to the Soviets in Berlin in exchange for captured U-2 Pilot Francis Gary Powers.

1995 - Chelsi Smith of Texas was crowned Miss USA on South Padre Island, Texas. She was the seventh Miss Texas to win the title and the first Texan to be crowned Miss Universe. She was the seventh American to be crowned Miss Universe.