This Day In Texas History - June 21

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1819 - The Long expedition, named for its commander, James Long, was an early attempt by Anglo-Americans to wrest Texas from Spain. The expedition, the last of a series of early filibustering campaigns that included the Gutiérrez-Magee expedition and the expedition led by Francisco Xavier Mina, was mounted by citizens in the Natchez, Mississippi, area who were opposed to the boundary of the Louisiana Purchase as set up in the Adams-Onís Treaty. Financed by subscriptions said to total about $500,000, the expedition attracted recruits with a promise of a league of Texas land to every soldier. An advance force of 120 men, led by Eli Harris, crossed the Sabine River on June 8, 1819, and went on to Nacogdoches, where Long, a Natchez merchant and doctor who had been placed in command, arrived on June 21.

1836 - Nicholas Lynch, was brevetted captain of Company C of Millard's First Regiment of the Army of the Republic of Texas by order of Gen. Thomas J. Rusk. When the Texas revolution started he enlisted as a private in Capt. William M. Logan's company of Col. Sidney Sherman's Second Regiment, Texas Volunteers; he was subsequently appointed adjutant of Lt. Col. Henry Millard's Regular Infantry and saw action with the battalion at the battle of San Jacinto. After the war Lynch lived in Galveston, where he entered local politics.

1845 - The Kate Ward was the first steamboat to operate on the Colorado River. The Kate Ward arrived in Matagorda, near the mouth of the Colorado, on June 21, 1845.

1854 - Andrew Jackson Houston, politician, son of Sam Houston and Margaret (Lea) Houston, was born at Independence, Texas. In 1898 Houston gathered a troop of Rough Riders for Theodore Roosevelt, and in 1902 he accepted President Roosevelt's appointment as United States marshall in East Texas, a post in which he served until 1910. After the death of United States senator Morris Sheppardqv on April 9, 1941, Governor W. Lee O'Daniel wanted to replace Sheppard as senator himself, but was required to appoint an interim senator to serve until election time. He had to find someone of some prominence who would like to be senator but would not run against him in the special election. O'Daniel selected Houston, who was two months short of his eighty-eighth birthday and disabled by illness. At that time Houston was the oldest person ever to serve in the United States Senate. There was some doubt that he would even enter the Senate chamber, since his daughters did not want him to risk the long trip. He did, however, travel to Washington a few weeks after his appointment. There he died after attending one committee meeting. On June 26, 1941, Houston's body was returned to Texas.

1901 - The Choctaw, Oklahoma and Texas Railroad Company was chartered on June 21, 1901, by the Choctaw, Oklahoma, and Gulf Railroad Company. The Choctaw ran from Memphis, Tennessee, through Oklahoma City to western Oklahoma. The CO&T was organized to extend the CO&G from the Oklahoma-Texas border near Texola to Amarillo. The capital was $1,680,000, and the business office was in Amarillo.

1902 - Percy Eugene Foreman, criminal-defense lawyer, the son of Ransom Parson and William Pinckney (Rogers) Foreman, a Polk County sheriff, was born on June 21, 1902, in a log cabin near Cold Springs, Texas. Foreman, who was known for his unconventional trial strategies, handled society divorces, and in sixty years of practice defended more than 1,000 accused murderers, only one of whom was executed. Among his most famous clients were James Earl Ray, whom he persuaded to plead guilty to the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., in exchange for a life sentence.

1913 - Julien Paul Blitz was founding conductor of the Houston Symphony Orchestra and conducted the orchestra's first trial concert on June 21, 1913, at the 600-seat Majestic Theatre at Texas and Milam.

1917 - Exxon Company, U.S.A., a division of Exxon Corporation, manages the corporation's oil and gas interests in the United States. Exxon U.S.A. traces its descent from the Humble Oil Company, which was chartered in Texas in February 1911 with a capital of $150,000 (raised to $300,000 in 1912). The company was incorporated on June 21, 1917 as the Humble Oil and Refining Company with a capitalization of $1 million based on 40,000 shares at $100 par value.

1940 - San Angelo Field was designated as a site for United States Army Air Corps pilot training on June 21, 1940. The first class of aviation cadets arrived for basic flight training in BT-13 aircraft in January 1941. Members of the Women's Airforce Service Pilots began duty in June 1943. In September 1945 the mission was changed to primary flight training. The base was deactivated in May 1947. It was later named Goodfellow Air Force Base, in honor of a former San Angelo resident and native of Fort Worth, John J. Goodfellow, Jr., who was killed while serving with the Twenty-fourth Aero Squadron in France during World War I. It reopened in December 1947 as a basic pilot-training school of the newly independent United States Air Force. In June 1954 the base mission was changed to multi-engine flight training in B-25 twin-engine Mitchell light bombers. Secretary of the Air Force Donald A. Quarles announced in February 1956 that Goodfellow had been designated a permanent military installation. The flight-training mission at San Angelo came to an end on September 3, 1958, with the graduation of the last pilot class. Almost 20,000 officers and cadets had been trained at the Texas base.

1956 - St. Paul’s Hospital of Dallas took the historic step of giving Dr. William Knox Flowers, Jr. and six other black doctors the status of staff membership. They were the first African-American physicians to achieve staff membership in a Dallas hospital.