This Day In Texas History - April 8

[joe817]

1817 - Jean Laffite, privateer, and menace to shipping along the gulf coast, organized a government for Galveston. A week later Laffite's officers swore allegiance to Mexico in it's struggle against Spanish rule.

1822 - A guard in Mexico City accidentally shot and killed James Long. Long was captured at La Bahia after mounting a raid in hopes of driving the Mexicans from Texas and declare an independent Republic of Texas. Unknown to Long, his wife who was abandoned by Long and the remaining settlers on the Bolivar Peninsula, had given birth to his third child.

1824 - Martin de Leon applied to the Mexican government for permission to establish a colony in Texas.

1836 - Jeremiah Brown, naval officer of the Republic of Texas, and commaned of the schooner-of-war Invincible arrived back in Galveston harbor with his spoils of war when his ship captured the Mexican brig-of-war, Bravo. He learned from captured documents that Santa Anna had plans to capture all Texas ports and to station 1,000 men on Galveston Island. Thus forewarned, the Texas government hastily fortified the island. The provisions captured aboard the Pocket ultimately were consigned to Sam Houston's army.

1837 - Sam Houston received a long awaited divorce from Eliza Allen. Under the laws of pre-revolutionary Texas under Mexico, divorces were illegal, but now as President of the new Republic of Texas, Houston approved a law legalizing divorce. The object of his affections for four years was Anna Raguet, but Anna didn't approve of his scruples and methods he used to secure his divorce from Eliza Allen, so she left Houston, and later married Robert Irion.

1861 - The Texas legislature voted to grant Cynthia Ann Parker a league of land and $100 a year for five years. Parker had been captured by Comanche as a young girl.

1864 - Confederate forces under Richard Taylor defeated a much larger Union force at the battle of Mansfield, Louisiana. Union general Nathaniel Banks had gathered an army of some 17,000 Federal troops to advance up the Red River to Alexandria and Shreveport, hoping to cut off the flow of supplies from Texas and to capture large quantities of cotton, and ultimately invade Texas. General Taylor, commanding a Confederate force of Texas and Louisiana units, attacked the long, 12,000-man Union column three miles south of Mansfield with an army of 8,800 men. Taylor's force killed or wounded 700 Union soldiers, captured 1,500, and took 20 Union cannons and 200 wagons. About 1,000 Confederates were killed or wounded. It was one of the most humiliating Union defeats of the war. The following day Taylor's army was repulsed when it attacked the Union army at Pleasant Hill. Nevertheless, stung by his defeat on the 8th and convinced that Taylor's army was much larger than it was, Banks gave the order to retire on the night of April 9.

1893 - Ten Texas women, mostly members of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, issued a call for a statewide woman suffrage convention. The Texas Equal Rights Association, the first such statewide organization, was chartered at the ensuing three-day convention in Dallas. Internal dissension plagued the TERA, which had been organized as a branch of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, and it ceased to operate by 1896. In 1903 Annette Finnigan helped organize a successor organization, the Texas Equal Suffrage Association, which helped lead the long and ultimately successful fight for woman suffrage. Texas women were finally granted the right to vote in primary elections in 1918, and in June 1919 Texas became the ninth state (and the first in the south) to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which extended full suffrage to women.

1922 - A tornado kills 52 people in Rowena (Runnels County).

1968 - A crowd of nearly 10,000 watched as Claudia Alta "Lady Bird" Johnson, wife of President Lyndon Johnson, dedicated Padre Island National Seashore. It is the longest seashore in the national park system and encompasses a portion of the largest barrier beach in the United States.

[USA1]

[joe817]

thank you.

[TLynnHughes]

Joe

I love these posts! Reading about a little Texas history each day is one of the reasons I keep coming back here. Thanks for taking the time!

T.

[joe817]

Thanks TLynn. I studied Texas History in elementary school, jr. high, high school and college. But doing this thing, I learn something every day. There is so much more that I could put in. It's all fascinating to me. Appreciate the kind words.

Gosh we are rich in history!

[USA1]

Joe, I'll bet your fingers are worn to the bone with all that typing everyday.

[surprise_i'm_armed]

1861 - The Texas legislature voted to grant Cynthia Ann Parker
a league of land and $100 a year for five years.
Parker had been captured by Comanche as a young girl.

Well, I didn't think many of us would know what a league of land is,
so here you go:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/League_(unit)

Whatever definition was used in her case she got a batch of land.

SIA

[joe817]

Joe, I'll bet your fingers are worn to the bone with all that typing everyday.

Not really. it's alllllll copy/paste! But I AM getting callouses on my first right finger! Other than editing on occasion(which is really hard to do to keep it all in context) it's pretty simple.

[USA1]

Joe, I'll bet your fingers are worn to the bone with all that typing everyday.

Not really. it's alllllll copy/paste! But I AM getting callouses on my first right finger! Other than editing on occasion(which is really hard to do to keep it all in context) it's pretty simple.

You should have just said yes. Now your secret is out.

[joe817]

Well, would it surprise you if I said it usually takes me an hour and a half to 2 hours to do it every day? And it does.

Most of that time is spent reading what happened on this day, and then trying to decide if or how I can work it in to the post.

I left a TON of stuff out today. Didn't want to. Like:

1861 - More on Cynthia Ann Parker: http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/onli ... fpa18.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

1864 - Walker's Texas Division, The only division in Confederate service composed, throughout its existence, of troops from a single state, it took its name from Maj. Gen. John George Walker, who took command from its organizer, Brig. Gen. Henry Eustace McCulloch, on January 1, 1863. During its existence it was commonly called the "Greyhound Division," or "Walker's Greyhounds," in tribute to its special capability to make long, forced marches from one threatened point to another in the Trans-Mississippi Department. Elements of the division attempted to relieve the siege of Vicksburg by attacking the federal troops at Milliken's Bend in June 1863 and took part in the battle of Bayou Bourbeau in Louisiana in November 1863. The high point of its service was during the early months of 1864, when it opposed federal Maj. Gen. Nathaniel P. Banks's invasion of Louisiana by way of the Red River valley. On April 8–9, 1864, it was committed with other Confederate forces in the battles of Mansfield and Pleasant Hill, halting Banks's advance on Shreveport and Marshall.

1895 - West Texas Normal and Business College, in the town of Cherokee in San Saba County, was the last name of several successive schools first organized by Francis Marion Behrns in 1889. On April 8, 1895, a cornerstone was laid for a three-story native-stone building, just to the southeast of the small frame building that had served the academy. Behrns(the founder) and a faculty of four offered eight courses of study: primary, preparatory, normal, scientific, classical, commercial, elocution, and music.

And the list goes on and on.

[seamusTX]

Well, would it surprise you if I said it usually takes me an hour and a half to 2 hours to do it every day?

No. That's why I declared my job finished after one year.

You came up with a different, creative approach.

A league of land is about 10 square miles. Early Texas governments handed out land like party favors. I doubt that any league of land is worth less than a million dollars today, and that would be only in some remote, barren part of the state.

- Jim

[joe817]

[USA1]

2009 - A young man had just taken his CHL class and was seeking more information on the World Wide Web.
He stumbled across a little website called TexasCHLforum. Out of curiosity he clicked the link.

He was bewildered at all the information and started reading. He couldn't believe how many gun nuts
there were...he found a home. He registered and browsed the endless topics much to his enjoyment.

It's been a year now and he still finds himself reading everyday.
He never really posts much , but he adsorbs the knowledge of others like a sponge.

[joe817]

Oh gosh! That means you are 1 year old(as a forum member)

Happy first birthday!

[SQLGeek]

Well, would it surprise you if I said it usually takes me an hour and a half to 2 hours to do it every day? And it does.

As I've said before, as a newer Texan, I really appreciate these posts. Now finding out how much time you spend on them, I REALLY appreciate these posts. Thank you, Joe.

USA1..."young"?