This Day In Texas History - January 30

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1862 - Maine native Leonard Pierce arrived in Matamoros, Mexico, to take up his post as United States consul. As the Civil War raged to the north, Matamoros became a center of Confederate commerce. Texans shipped cotton from the unblockaded port, while Unionist refugees fleeing Texas collected in the town. Pierce's principal responsibilities were the care of refugees from Confederate territory and the military enlistment of Union sympathizers. During his service he relocated about 700 refugees and sent about 300 men to enlist in the Union army. These men served in the First and Second Texas Cavalry regiments, which were eventually merged into the First Texas Volunteer Cavalry.

1886 - A group of Dallas businessmen chartered the Dallas State Fair and Exposition as a private corporation. Later it became known as the State Fair of Texas.

1890 - Louis Jordan is born in Fredericksburg. He becomes an All-American football player and the first officer killed in World War I.

1925 - The first all woman State Supreme Court convened to hear court procedure reviewed by Chief Justice C. M. Cureton and to determine if a writ of error would be granted in the case of W. T. Johnson et al. v. J. M. Darr et al. The case focused on whether trustees of the fraternal organization Woodmen of the World (Darr et al.) were entitled to two tracts of land in El Paso. Soon after the All-Woman Supreme Court began its work, the state's first woman governor, Miriam A. Ferguson, took office. The novelty of an all-woman court, believed to have been the only such court to exist in the country, and the election of a woman to the state's highest office, gave some distinction to the role of women in Texas politics. It was some thirty years later, however, before Texas women were allowed to serve on juries. And it was not until 1982 that a woman was named to serve full-time on the state Supreme Court, when Gov. William Clements appointed a woman to fill an unexpired term on the court.

1915 - Rice and Baylor play basketball in the first competition of the fledgling Southwest Conference.

1951 - Children's television heros Hopalong Cassidy and his trusted horse Topper, appear in at the Houston Fat Stock show parade. Topper was originally a movie double for his horse Nappy, who had been injured earlier.

1958 - The first two-way moving sidewalk was put in service at Love Field in Dallas, TX. The length of the walkway through the airport was 1,435 feet.

1982 - Blues singer Sam (Lightnin') Hopkins died of cancer. Hopkins was born in Centerville, Texas, in 1912. During the early 1960s he played at Carnegie Hall with Pete Seeger and Joan Baez, and by the end of the decade was opening for rock bands. He was also the subject of a documentary, The Blues According to Lightnin' Hopkins, which won a prize at the Chicago Film Festival in 1970. Hopkins recorded a total of more than eighty-five albums and toured around the world.