This Day In Texas History - July 28

[joe817]

1852 - Randolph Barnes Marcy( United States Army officer and Western explore) and his party crossed a thousand miles of previously undocumented Texas and Oklahoma territory, discovering numerous valuable mineral deposits as well as twenty-five new species of mammals and ten of reptiles. Marcy also recorded a prairie dog town that covered 400,000 acres. He reportedly discovered the sources of both forks of the Red River, as well as the Palo Duro and Tule canyons, which he became the first white man to explore. The expedition encountered and documented the little-known Wichita Indians and compiled the first Wichita dictionary. It also returned with information on Cynthia Ann Parker. Marcy's 1852 expedition has been called the most significant of his career and "the best organized, best conducted, and most successful" venture into the region to that date. It was the first to locate the headwaters of the Red River.

1877 - With a very small force, Nelson Orcelus (Mage) Reynolds(Texas Ranger), arrested the leader of the Horrell faction and ten of its sympathizers and thus brought an end to the Horrell-Higgins feud of Lampasas County. This resulted in his being given the command of the newly formed Company E. He was responsible as commander for transporting and guarding the notorious John Wesley Hardin during his trial and incarceration in the Travis County Jail. Another well-known fugitive Reynolds had in custody was John P. Ringo, later famous in Tombstone, Arizona. Reynolds helped quiet the difficulties in San Saba County in 1878. Reynolds retired from the ranger service in 1879.
[ http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/onli" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; ... fre56.html ]

1908 - On this day in 1908, James Harper Gillett made his first appearance as a novillero, or apprentice matador, at the bullring in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico. Gillett, the son of Texas Ranger James B. Gillett, was born in Ysleta, Texas, in 1884. His parents divorced in 1889, after which he had no contact with his father for twenty-four years; his mother, the daughter of George W. Baylor, married Guadalajara resident Samuel M. Lee in 1895. Young James also moved to Guadalajara and began calling himself Harper Baylor Lee. Under the tutelage of his friend Francisco Gómez, El Chiclanero, a retired matador from Spain. Lee quit his railway construction job to try his hand as a professional torero. In 1910 he became the first American to attain the rank of matador de toros. He appeared as a professional matador in fifty-two corridas and killed 100 bulls. Twice he suffered nearly fatal gorings. His career was cut short by the chaos of the Mexican Revolution and its accompanying anti-American feelings. After reconciling with his father in 1914, he changed his name to Harper Baylor Gillett, and later owned and operated a poultry farm on the outskirts of San Antonio. Gillett died in 1941.

1933 - W.E. Morris becomes the first Texas farmer to be paid for plowing his cotton crop under.

1938 – An oil well in the Phillips Petroleum Company’s Midway Oilfield blew up and burned for several weeks. The crater created by the explosion is still a local landmark.

1973 - A "March for Justice" took place in protest against the killing of Santos Rodríguez in Dallas. While being questioned about a robbery, Rodríguez was killed by a Dallas policeman, Darrell Cain. Cain was subsequently tried for murder and convicted, and Rodríguez was exonerated. But the protest march turned into a riot in which widespread damage occurred, thirty-eight arrests were made, and five policemen were injured. Cain's brief sentence, only five years, also later became an issue, though a review of the case failed.

1973 - Young actress and native Texan, Farrah Fawcett, married the star of "The Big Valley", and "The Six Million Dollar Man", Lee Majors. Fawcett has appeared in several television series, including "Harry-O". By 1976, Fawcett landed the roll of Jill Munroe in "Charlie's Angels".