Today In Texas History - March 22

[joe817]

1836 - William Ward, who with Amon B. King had been defeated in the battle of Refugio, surrendered near Dimitt's Landing on the terms accorded Fannin, and he and about eighty of his men of the Georgia Battalion were added to the Goliad prisoners on March 25.

1836 - The sixty-ton armed Texas schooner Liberty, commanded by William S. Brown, seized the U.S. brig Durango in Matagorda Bay. The Durango was owned by a New Orleans mercantile house with a longstanding interest in the Texas trade, which makes it unlikely that she was carrying war contraband designed to assist the Mexican army. A more likely explanation for the seizure is that the fledgling Texas Navy simply needed the vessel and her supplies; the Liberty had been the first ship purchased by the republic, only two months before. The Durango incident was closed officially in 1838, when Texas and the United States entered into a convention of indemnity. The total settlement, which also made provisions for the Pocket claims, was for $11,750 plus accrued interest.

1862 - At the outbreak of the Civil War Peter Cavanaugh Woods raised a company of cavalry, primarily from Hays County, later to become Company A of the Thirty-sixth Texas Cavalry regiment. This regiment was mustered into Confederate service at Camp Woods on Salado Creek, and Woods was elected colonel when the regiment was organized. The Thirty-sixth (often called the Thirty-second) Texas Cavalry regiment was recruited within a fifty-mile radius of San Antonio

1866 - The Texas State Central Committee of Colored Men met in Austin. It was the first of at least ten such conventions held in Texas from Reconstruction through the 1890s to express the concerns of African Americans in an era before the existence of groups that focused upon the economic, political, and civil rights of minorities. Often these state meetings sent delegates to national conventions seeking the same goals.

1879 - British-born Willy Hughes started a ranch near Boerne. He amassed 7000 acres of land and was among the first to breed Oxford Downs sheep and Angora goats in Texas.

1894 - A contingent of "Coxey's Army" arrived in El Paso. In the wake of the 1893 panic Jacob Sechler Coxey of Massillon, Ohio, a businessman and reformer, led an army of jobless men to Washington to induce Congress to provide assistance. A group from Los Angeles arrived in El Paso on the evening of March 22, and, after marching on the city hall, were given food and allowed to camp for the night. Hoping for transportation from the railroad, they camped alongside the tracks for two days. They boarded a Southern Pacific train that uncoupled their car 70 miles east of El Paso, leaving them stranded in a barren region without food or water. After an order from Governor James S. Hogg, and negotiations with the railroads and the citizens of El Paso, the "army" was finally transported to Washington, arriving weeks after Coxey had been arrested. [ for more info: http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/onli ... /vfc1.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; ]

1910 - At 8:30 AM, a fire destroyed the main building of Texas Christian University with had only located to Waco 8 years before. Fort Worth made a generous offer of assistance, and for the 1910-11 school year classes were held in rented space until the new campus was built. On September 6, 1911 the new campus was opened at its present location in Fort Worth.

1922 - Oilman James Abercrombie invents the oil well blowout preventer