This Day In Texas History - April 15

[joe817]

1825 - Haden Edwards, Green DeWitt, and Robert Leftwich received empresario contracts. The government of Mexico, which had gained independence from Spain in 1821, issued the contracts to encourage the settlement of Coahuila and Texas. The hopes of all three empresarios were frustrated. The Edwards Colony, near Nacogdoches, was plagued by conflicting land claims and other controversies which eventually caused Edwards to depart and resulted in the Fredonian Rebellion. The DeWitt Colony, on the Guadalupe River adjoining that of Stephen F. Austin, enjoyed some initial success, though DeWitt was unable to fulfill the terms of his contract by the time it expired in 1831. Leftwich's Grant, along the Navasota River, later became known as Robertson's colony, and was the subject of much legal disputation between Austin and Sterling C. Robertson.

1836 - Antonio López de Santa Anna and a detachment of his army halted at Stafford's plantation(located in present day Stafford, TX), during the march to Harrisburg. The famished Mexican troops feasted on Stafford's corn, sheep, and hogs. Before they departed Santa Anna ordered the plantation's buildings burned.

1836 - Sam Houston turns his army toward San Jacinto.

1836 - Captain William P. Harris, in command of the small river steamer Cayuga, evacuated Harrisburg just ahead of Gen. Antonio López de Santa Anna and his troops. For a short time it was the floating capitol of Texas. The refugees included President Burnet, his cabinet, and all the inhabitants of the town. After stopping at Lynch's Ferry and New Washington the Cayuga preceded to Anahuac and Galveston, where the passengers disembarked. The cabinet members remained aboard and on April 19 were rejoined by Burnet, who had left the steamer at Lynch's Ferry to get his family and had narrowly escaped being captured by the Mexicans at New Washington.

1841 - The Austin Lyceum, an early debating and lecture society, was dissolved. The Lyceum was organized in February 1840, when President E. L. Stickney presided over its first formal meeting. A charter, the first of its kind granted by the Republic of Texas, was secured on February 5, 1841; it stated that the purpose of the Lyceum was the cultivation of the minds of the young men of Austin. Membership fees and dues were to fund a library and museum. The Austin Lyceum was the forerunner of other such groups chartered at Galveston in 1845, at Houston in 1848, and at Brownsville in 1849.

1843 - The Austin, a sloop-of-war and flagship of the Texas Navy, sailed from New Orleans after refitting, sailed for the Yucatán, hoping to engage the powerful new Mexican steam warship Moctezuma and to break up a rumored amphibious assault on Galveston Island.

1877 - Jerry Nance, with ten cowboys, forty ponies, and a chuckwagon, left Hays County and headed north with 2,300 head of cattle. At Fort Worth they laid in supplies and drove on to Dodge City, Kansas. After three months on the trail, they disposed of the herd and ponies in Cheyenne, Wyoming,

1881 – A subpost to Fort Davis was established on a site six miles northwest of the abandoned Fort Quitman in West Texas.

1869 - The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Texas v. White that the state still had the right to sue in the federal courts despite having seceded in 1861. In a suit originally filed by the state in 1867, George Paschal argued on behalf of the state for an injunction preventing defendants George W. White, John Chiles, and others from transferring bonds they received from the secession-era Texas State Military Board for supplying the Confederate States of America during the Civil War. The most historically significant question involved was whether or not Texas, having seceded and not having completed Reconstruction, had status in the Union and therefore the right to sue in the United States Supreme Court. Paschal argued that the Union was indestructible and that the state's status in the Union therefore had been unchanged by the war.
The defense argued that Texas, by seceding from the Union and later waging a war against the United States, had lost the status of a state in the Union and therefore had no right to sue in the United States Supreme Court. In its five-to-three decision, read by Chief Justice S. P. Chase, the court held the Union to be indestructible and thus not dissoluble by any act of a state, the government, or the people. The court thus repudiated the doctrine of state sovereignty.

1968 - The longest scoreless game in baseball history was played at the Astrodome on this date in 1968. The Astros and Mets went 24 scoreless innings until in the bottom of the 24th, with the Astros loading the bases, a grounder slipped through the legs of Mets shortstop Al Weis to end the game. Weis was charged with the error, and the Astros the 1-0 win. After 20 innings, the Astrodome message board read "We hope you are enjoying tonight's third game as much as you enjoyed the first two."

1984 - The Dallas Memorial Center for Holocaust Studies opened its doors on the lower level of the Dallas Jewish Community Center. The purpose of the center is to keep the terrors of the Holocaust in the minds of present and future generations, so that they will never allow anything like it to occur again. Many individuals contributed to the establishment of the center, as did the Jewish Federation of Greater Dallas. In conjunction with Southern Methodist University, the center is involved in preserving the oral history of Holocaust survivors and liberators on videotape. A board composed partly of Holocaust survivors administers the center.

1991 - Gov. Ann Richards signed the "Robin Hood" plan for school financing into law. The fight over school equality and school funding continues.