This Day In Texas History - June 23

[joe817]

1601 - Juan de Oñate, explorer and founder of the first European settlements in the upper Rio Grande valley of New Mexico, set forth on an expedition that sent him and his men east beyond Pecos pueblo towards the Texas border in search of buffalo; they probably reached the headwaters of the Canadian River, twenty-five miles northwest of the site of present Amarillo. On June 23, 1601, Oñate began an expedition to Quivira in search of wealth and an outlet to the sea. He followed the Canadian River across the Texas Panhandle and near the Oklahoma border headed northeast. Probably in the central part of what is now Kansas, Oñate's expedition arrived at the first of the Quivira villages. The great settlements of Quivira proved to be a disappointment to men who had come looking for easy wealth, however, and they soon turned back. While Oñate was on this expedition, conditions deteriorated in the New Mexico colony because the land was poor, the Indians were troublesome, and there were no silver strikes.

1858 - Washington County Rail Road Company was chartered to construct a railroad from a connection with the Galveston and Red River Railway Company (later Houston and Texas Central Railway Company) to Brenham. Construction of the Washington County began at Hempstead on June 23, 1858, and by April 1859 the first section of slightly over eleven miles of track on both sides of the Brazos River had been completed. The company borrowed $66,000 from the Permanent School Fund and received a land grant of 236,160 acres. It remained in operation throughout the Civil War although its roadbed and rolling stock were badly in need of repair by the end of hostilities. William D. Sledge acquired the Washington County on March 17, 1862, in order to secure the payment of a $308,607 debt held by him. On June 2, 1868, Sledge purchased the line at foreclosure and sold it to the Houston and Texas Central on March 11, 1869. The former Washington County was subsequently rehabilitated and extended from Brenham to Austin by 1871. In 1961 and 1962 the Southern Pacific, as successor to the Houston and Texas Central, abandoned most of the track between Hempstead and Brenham, thus closing out over 100 years of operation.

1862 - John R. Woodward from Palestine in Anderson County, Texas, was a twenty-eight-year-old, joined the First Texas Infantry on June 23, 1862, as captain of its G Company. Joined to Hood's Texas Brigade, the First Texas Infantry participated in some of the most intense fighting of the war. The First, as a part of the Army of Northern Virginia, fought at Second Bull Run, Antietam, Fredericksburg, and numerous other battles in the year from Woodward's enlistment until the battle of Gettysburg. As described in Rags and Hope, the published memoirs of Val C. Giles, Woodward died shortly after The Battle of Gettysburg. On July 22, 1863, the captain, while fanning himself with his hat on a break from leading his men over a Blue Ridge mountain pass, suddenly collapsed to the ground. When his men went to help, Woodward indicated that his leg was broken. In fact, he had been shot in the hip with a small bullet.

1865 - The Twentieth Texas Cavalry was recruited and organized in Hill County, Texas, during the spring and summer of 1862. The unit was organized into ten companies of 850 officers and men that were primarily recruited from the counties of Anderson, Navarro, Kaufman, Henderson, Johnson, and Limestone. he Twentieth Texas Cavalry was assigned to the Trans-Mississippi Department and served almost entirely in the Indian Territory where it was confronted by Union forces. At times, it was the only non-Indian Confederate unit operating in the Indian Territory. The Twentieth Cavalry took part in more than thirty various engagements throughout the war in both the Indian Territory and Arkansas, the latter where it served on occasion. The Twentieth operated unattached to a brigade but part of Cooper's Indian Division, Army of the Trans-Mississippi. During this time the unit saw action at Prior Creek, Fort Gibson, Cabin Creek, and Boggy Station. On June 23, 1865, the Twentieth Texas Cavalry Regiment was included in the surrender of Confederate Indian troops at Doaksville in the Indian Territory.

1919 - The Texas House of Representatives approved the national woman suffrage amendment, on June 23, 1919, and the Senate unanimously voted it in on June 28. The NWP Texas branch engaged in fund-raising for ratification efforts in other states until the federal amendment became law in August 1920.

1931 - Wiley Hardeman Post, aviator, was born near Grand Saline in Van Zandt County, Texas, on November 22, 1898. His most famous accomplishment was to complete a flight around the world, a distance of more than 15,000 miles in the northern latitudes in which he chose to travel. The route took Post, accompanied by associate Harold Gatty, from New York to Newfoundland, England, and Germany, and then across Russia to Alaska (via Siberia) and back to New York City. They departed on June 23, 1931, and returned on July 1, covering the distance in eight days, fifteen hours, and fifty-one minutes. Aviation magazine, a leading spokesman for the aviation industry, ranked the flight as a superlative achievement, comparable to Charles Lindbergh's. Post, accompanied by humorist Will Rogers, died in an airplane crash near Point Barrow, Alaska, on August 15, 1935.

1950 - Whataburger, with headquarters in Corpus Christi, is a family operated business that began in 1950. Harmon Dobson was granted the "Whataburger" trademark by the Texas Secretary of State office on June 23, 1950. The first neon sign would flash in four stages: What…A…Burger…Whataburger.

1960 - Brooks Air Force Base is on State Loop 13 seven miles southeast of San Antonio, just west of Interstate Highway 37 in Bexar County. The site occupies about 1,300 acres. After the United States entered World War I in 1917, the army established the facility to train flying instructors in the Gosport System. According to that method, developed by the Royal Air Force, an instructor spoke to a student pilot through a tube and corrected the trainee in flight. From 1922 until 1931 Brooks served as the primary flying school for the army air corps; more than 1,400 pilots were trained there. Notable instructors and students included such aviation figures as Charles Lindbergh, Claire L. Chennault, Lester Maitland, and Jimmy Doolittle. In 1943 Brooks began training pilots of the new B-25 bomber for use in World War II. Starting in the summer of 1959, Brooks began a transition from a flight-training base to a center for medical research, development, and education. In November 1961 the center and school became part of the Aerospace Medical Division, which received the title Human Systems Division on February 6, 1987. The medical center has played a major role in the national space program; its accomplishments include the development of the capsule that carried the monkey Sam into outer space on December 4, 1959. On June 23, 1960, all flying at the facility ceased.

[ELB]

...

1960 - Brooks Air Force Base is on State Loop 13 seven miles southeast of San Antonio, just west of Interstate Highway 37 in Bexar County. The site occupies about 1,300 acres. After the United States entered World War I in 1917, the army established the facility to train flying instructors in the Gosport System. According to that method, developed by the Royal Air Force, an instructor spoke to a student pilot through a tube and corrected the trainee in flight. ...

The field was called Gosport field after the training system used there, and then the Air Service named it "Kelly Field No. 6" before ground was even broken. Shortly thereafter (Feb 1918) it was renamed again after Sidney Johnson Brooks, Jr., who died in his final training flight before graduation as a military pilot at Kelly Field. Brooks later took on the medical missions noted above, and the USAF School of Aerospace Medicine was there for a long time, as well as many other medical service units.

When I was assigned there, I found that a macabre medical service joke was that Sidney Brooks was the first "victim" of Aerospace Medicine. The morning of his last flight, a cross-country to Hondo and back, Brooks received a number of immunizations in preparation for his deployment to France. When he crashed just before landing at Kelly, observers noted that he simply nosed over and went straight in to the ground, as if he had passed out. The medical types theorized that he had passed out as a result of a reaction to one or more of his immunizations. Thus the "first victim" appellation...

He was awarded his wings and commission posthumously.

[joe817]

Thank you for the additional background info on Brooks ELB.

As you can imagine, sometimes the stories are so interesting, it could wind up being 2 pages long. But I think it's best to just keep it to a few paragraphs. And sometimes in doing so, I edit out a lot of interesting stuff.

Thanks for taking the time to read these posts, and feel free to interject more interesting stuff if I leave them out.

[Jaguar]

1990 - Mr and Mrs Jaguar entered into Holy Matrimony.

2015 - We celebrated our 25th Anniversary in Cancun.

[joe817]

Congratulation Jaguar!