This Day In Texas History - March 10

[joe817]

1756 - Bernardo de Miranda y Flores, lieutenant governor of Texas, returned to San Antonio after his expedition to Los Almagres Mine in present-day Llano County. He announced the discovery of “a tremendous stratum of ore,” and he proclaimed the promise of “a mine to each of the inhabitants of the province of Texas.” Diego Ortiz Parrilla, presidio captain at San Sabá, soon obtained more samples in an attempt to convince authorities that he should move his garrison to Los Almagres Mine. Those plans died with the destruction of the Apache mission and presidio in 1758. By the 1830s Stephen F. Austin depicted the legendary “lost” silver mine on maps. James Bowie was among the fortune hunters who tried to find the mother lode. Finally in the early 1900s, after examining Miranda’s journal, historian Herbert E. Bolton found the site near Honey Creek in Llano County. Even though geologists classified the mine as unproductive, romantic tales of Hill Country riches continued to abound.

1836 - Sam Carson arrives late to sign the Declaration of Independence. A week later he loses by six votes becoming the president of Texas. David G. Burnet was elected.

1836 - Sam Houston abandoned Gonzales and retreated eastward to avoid the advancing Mexican army. The exodus of settlers in the area was called the Runaway Scrape.

1842 - President Sam Houston declared a national emergency and ordered the archives removed to Houston, but the people of Austin refused to let the records be taken. When Houston issued a second order on December 10, the struggle known as the Archive War resulted. Mexico's refused to recognize the independence of Texas after the Treaties of Velasco, and invaded Texas again.

1848 - The U.S. Senate ratified the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ended the Mexican-American War and annexed most of California, New Mexico and Arizona to the U.S. The war from 1846 to 1848 sprang partly from the annexation of Texas to the U.S. American troops gradually took over more and more of Mexico in hopes of forcing Mexico to relinquish its claims to territory north of the Rio Grande and to sell California at a price desired by the U.S. American troops captured Mexico City in September of 1847, felling the government and leading to the resignation of Pres. Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna.

1890 - the John Sealy Training School for Nurses, the first formal nursing school in Texas, opened with eighteen students in Galveston's two-month-old John Sealy Hospital.

1898 – A group of Eagle Lake business men and planters chartered the Cane Belt Railroad, which was needed to transport sugar cane and other crops to market.

1902 - The process of rebuilding continues in Galveston after 18 months of cleanup following the most destructive storm ever to come ashore in the United States. Plans are now being implimented to raise the level of the city by up to 15 feet and adding an enormous breaker along the beach that will hopefully absorb the force of any future storms. Construction on this new "Sea Wall" will begin later this year.

1922 - The Sealy and Smith Foundation for the John Sealy Hospital was chartered under the laws of Texas as a charitable corporation. The corporation was formed by Galveston entrepreneur John Hutchings Sealy and his sister, Jennie Sealy Smith.