1798 - Angelina Eberly was born. She prevented the removal of documents from the capital by firing a cannon in 1842. The event became known as the Archive War.
1862 - On this date in 1862, the Morrill Act was signed into law. The law was created to enable states to establish colleges where agriculture and mechanical arts are taught in additional to other sciences. By 1871, the Texas Legislature approved the formation of an Agricultural and Mechnical College, appropriated money, and land was donated for the new College.
Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas (AMC) would be located on land south of Bryan. Over the years the named changed to Texas Agricultural and Mechanical College and in 1963, the name was officially changed to Texas A&M (without any reference to what the A or M stood for). Today, Texas A&M is a land-grant, sea-grant, and space-grant college, one of the only colleges in America to be so designated.
1863 - On this day in 1863, Hood's Texas Brigade became a major participant in the battle of Gettysburg. The brigade had been organized in 1861 in Richmond, Virginia. It was composed of the First, Fourth and Fifth Texas Infantry regiments, the only Texas troops to fight in the Eastern Theater. Col. John Bell Hood had been commander of the Fourth. On July 2, 1863, the brigade led the assault at Devils Den and Little Round Top, the crucial action of the second day of the battle. A soldier of the First Texas called the assault on Devil's Den "one of the wildest, fiercest struggles of the war." After routing the Union forces at the Devil's Den, however, the brigade was unable to capture Little Round Top. A thirty-five-foot monument to the men of Hood's Texas Brigade stands on the south drive of the Capitol in Austin. [note: this was erroneously posted in the July 1 thread. dunno whahoppened.
]1883 - On this date in 1883, Architect Alfred Charles Finn was born in Bellville. Among his greatest designs was the seventeen story addition to the Rice Hotel in Houston (1926), the Galveston Post Office-Courthouse-Customs Building (1937), the 570-foot tall San Jacinto Monument (1939) and the Sakowitz Store in Houston (1951)
1888 - The Jaybird-Woodpecker feud starts in Fort Bend County. The Jaybird-Woodpecker War was a feud between two political factions for the control of Fort Bend County. The Jaybirds, representing the wealth and about 90 percent of the white population, were the regular Democrats who sought to rid the county of the Republican government that had gained control during Reconstruction. The Houston Light Guards arrived to establish martial law, and Governor Lawrence S. Ross and the Brenham Light Guards arrived on August 17. [for an interesting read: http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/onli ... /wfj1.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; ]
1948 - Ralphael O'Hara Lanier, who had earlier served five years as dean of Houston Colored Junior College and more recently as United States Minister to Liberia, became the first president of the Texas State University for Negroes (now Texas Southern University). The university was established by the Fiftieth Texas Legislature on March 3, 1947.
