This Day In Texas History - January 09

[joe817]

1790 - General Juan de Ugalde, along with Spanish forces and Indian allies, defeated the Apache in Sabinal River canyon. The city “Uvalde” is derived from his name.

1836 - In a letter to his daughter dated January 9, 1836 written from Nacogdoches, Davy Crockett, now in Texas, express his love of his new life and homeland. "I would rather be in my present situation than to be elected to a seat in Congress for life." Shortly afterward, Crockett enlisted in the Texas volunteers, with the promise of a large land grant upon six months service to Texas. Two months into his service, Crockett and 180 other Texans were killed by Santa Ana's army at the Alamo.

1836 - George Campbell Childress, the author of the Texas Declaration of Independence, arrived at Robertson's Colony, an area covered by all or part of seventeen present-day Texas counties- Bastrop, Bell, Brazos, Burleson, Burnet, Comanche, Coryell, Falls, Hamilton, Lampasas, Lee, Limestone, McLennan, Milam, Mills, Robertson, and Williamson.

1858 - Anson Jones, last president of the Republic of Texas, committed suicide at Houston. Jones, a physician born in Massachusetts in 1798, came to Texas in 1833 and served in the Texas Revolution. He was elected to the Second Congress of the Republic of Texas and also served as minister to the United States and in the Republic of Texas Senate before being elected president in 1844. In 1845 he ignored mounting pressures for annexation until he had a treaty of recognition of the republic from Mexico. The Texas Congress rejected the treaty with Mexico, approved the joint resolution of annexation, and adopted resolutions censuring Jones. In 1846, at the ceremony setting up the government of Texas as a state in the Union, Jones declared, "The Republic of Texas is no more." After an injury that disabled his left arm in 1849, he became increasingly moody and introspective. In 1857 he believed that the legislature would send him to Washington as senator, but he received no votes.

1859 - Governor Runnels issued a proclamation warning all Texans against engaging in hostilities against Indians. He ordered Col. John Henry Brown to the frontier with 100 men. Major Neighbors learned that an attack on Choctaw Tom's party was made by white men from Erath County. Their names were secured, and an examining trial was set to take place in Waco, but no indictments were made.

1892 - Fourteen scientists organized the first Texas Academy of Science at the University of Texas to investigate and report upon such scientific problems as might be submitted by the state. Edgar Everhart, a chemist, served as the first president. The organization became defunct in 1913, but was resurrected in 1929, and publishes the Texas Journal of Science, still distributed to members and institutional libraries worldwide.

1959 - The Television series Rawhide first aired. The television show depicted a team of cattle drivers running longhorn up the Texas Chisholm and related trails in the early days of the Old West. The series starred Clint Eastwood as Rowdy Yates. It ran 217 episodes from 1959 to 1965.

1984 - Veteran Texas newspaperman and chili aficionado Frank X. Tolbert died of heart failure. Tolbert's most popular work, A Bowl of Red (1962), was devoted to chili con carne. Soon after the publication of A Bowl of Red Tolbert founded the Chili Appreciation Society International, which is based in the ghost town of Terlingua, where annual chili-cooking contests are held.