This Day In Texas History - January 11

[joe817]

1836 - Sam Houston recommended that James Bonham be promoted to major, for "His influence in the army is great–more so than some who `would be generals'." Bonham probably traveled to San Antonio de Béxar and the Alamo with James Bowie and arrived on January 19, 1836. Bonham died in the battle of the Alamo on March 6, 1836. He is believed to have died manning one of the cannons in the interior of the Alamo chapel.

1854 - Fort Bliss is established to protect El Paso from the Indians.

1862 - The town of Sumpter, Texas, was incorporated. Sumpter served as the first seat of government after the establishment of Trinity County in 1850. Although a post office opened in 1851, the town was not formally laid out until 1855.

1862 - William DeRyee, a chemist, was appointed state chemist and put in charge of the Texas Percussion Cap Manufactory in Austin by the Texas Military Board. He was the only chemist west of the Mississippi who knew how to make fulminate of mercury, and he personally prepared all that was produced from the Texas Military Board.

1863 - The USS Hatteras was sunk by the CSS Alabama. The Hatteras, a converted merchant ship formerly named the St. Mary, was commissioned in October 1861 and first saw duty in the South Atlantic. After assignment to the blockading squadron in the Gulf of Mexico, she was raiding along the Confederate coast when she was sunk by Confederate captain Raphael Semmes. She lies in sixty feet of water twenty miles south of Galveston.

1863 - The remnants of the Fourth Brigade of Walker's Texas Division were captured intact at Arkansas Post. The division, organized in Arkansas in October 1862, was the only division in Confederate service composed throughout its existence of troops from a single state.

1874, Gail BORDEN, founder of Borden Milk, died at Borden, Texas (near Columbus). In 1856 he received US and British patents for his process of consensing milk in a vacuum.

1918 - For three days in 1918 (Jan 10-12), a blizzard holds Texas in its grips. Zero degree temperatures hit north Texas, while even in Rio Grande Valley, temperatures drop to the 20s.

1912 - Future baseball All-Star pitcher Thomas "Schoolboy" Rowe, was born in Waco. Lynwood "Schoolboy" Rowe won 24 games in his second season in the major leagues, helping the Detroit Tigers to the 1934 pennant. He retired with a fine .610 winning percentage and 158 victories.

1942 - Th Second Battalion, 131st Field Artillery, 36th Infantry Division(a Texas National Guard Unit), arrived in Surabaya, Java, to provide ground support for an army air force unit. Shortly, when the bomb group was ordered to Australia, the flyers asked their leaders to allow the Texans to accompany them to Australia, since they were desperately needed. But the Second Battalion was left in Java to support the morale of the people there. The unit earned the title of "Lost Battalion" because they were not evacuated with other military forces. The Dutch surrendered the islands on March 8, 1942. The Japanese imprisoned the Texans, along with 5,500 British and Australian troops, at a camp called TanJong Priok, near Batavia. Five weeks later the battalion marched to a new prison known as Bicycle Camp, where they encountered the first of many acts of Japanese brutality. 200 members of the battalion were transferred Thanbyuzayat, Burma, and immediately began work on the Japanese "Railroad of Death," which ultimately connected Burma to Bangkok, Siam. The unit labored in various work camps on the railroad, including assisting on the famous "Bridge over the River Kwai," and suffered numerous casualties and deaths. The battalion remained POW's until wars end.

1945 - Hugh McElroy, decorated black veteran, was honored by Henry Morganthau Jr., United States secretary of the treasury, for participating in bond drives as a speaker and poster model. The much-decorated veteran retired in 1927 to Houston. In 1968 he and his oldest son rescued two children from a burning house near his Houston home. The Texas Senate commended the McElroys for their bravery. McElroy died in 1971.

[seamusTX]

Gail Borden was a prominent figure in the history of the state of Texas, the city of Galveston, Fort Bend County, and other places. The guy was downright hyperactive.

http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/onli ... print.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
http://www.famoustexans.com/GailBorden.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

His former Galveston home at 3410 Avenue P is within pitching distance of my house.

- Jim

[joe817]

The guy that invented condensed has my hat's off to him, because that's what my wife uses to make her pecan pie we have at Thanksgiving!