This Day In Texas History - May 29

[joe817]

1813 - Texas First Newspaper, Gaceta de Tejas, began publication on this date in 1813.

1831 - James Power and James Hewetson formed a partnership and applied for an empresario contract to colonize the Texas coast with Irish Catholic and Mexican families. On May 29, 1831, Power and Hewetson received control of the former lands of the abandoned Nuestra Señora del Refugio Mission. The assigned territory was extended from the Guadalupe to the Nueces.

1836 - The name Horse Marines was given to a volunteer ranger group of 1836. Anticipating that Mexican troops might land on the Texas seaboard, Gen. Thomas J. Rusk detailed mounted ranger companies to patrol the coast. On May 29, 1836, Maj. Isaac Watts Burton with about thirty men was ordered to scour the sector between the mouth of the Guadalupe and Mission Bay.

Walter Lambert, Nicholas Lambert, and John Keating, Refugio colonists who were with the army and knew the country, accompanied the rangers as guides. On June 2 Burton learned of a suspicious vessel in Copano Bay and hurried his force to that point. By daylight next morning he had his men in ambush near Copano. Two or three rangers made signals of distress. The vessel hoisted both American signals and Texan colors, but these were not answered; they then hoisted Mexican signals, which the men answered as distressed Mexicans.

The captain and four sailors, who came in a boat to their assistance, were immediately seized, and sixteen of the rangers took their places in the boat and rowed out to the vessel, the schooner Watchman, loaded with provisions for the Mexican armies. The crew, mistaking the rangers for their comrades, permitted them to come aboard without resistance.
One account states that Col. Juan Davis Bradburn, a passenger aboard the vessel, perceived the situation, jumped into a small boat, and rowed away safely. Burton prepared to send the Watchman to Velasco as a prize of war, but unfavorable winds delayed immediate departure.

The vessel lay in the harbor until June 17, when two more vessels were sighted off the bar. These schooners, the Comanche and the Fanny Butler, were also loaded with supplies for the Mexican army. The captain of the Watchman was required to decoy the captains of the Comanche and Fanny Butler aboard the Watchman. The officers were seized, and their ships and cargoes fell into the hands of the rangers without struggle. The three prizes were first taken to Velasco and then sent to Galveston, where the cargoes were condemned, but the vessels, being American owned, were eventually returned to their owners. Col. Edward J. Wilson of Lexington, Kentucky, wrote of the capture of three Mexican vessels by a troop on horses and said that he supposed they would be called "Horse Marines."

1861 - Henry Robinson, famed Indian fighter, is killed near Uvalde.

1865 - Following the Union's victory over the Confederacy ending the Civil War, U.S.President Andrew Johnson appointed Andrew J Hamilton on this day to be the provisional Governor of Texas. Texas will be run by a provisional government until they official readmitted the Union in March 1870.

1883 – St. Joseph Hospital was founded by J. M. Eddy of the Gould railroad system. The oldest hospital in Fort Worth, it was built for railroad workers.

1889 - The Texas Spring Palace opened in Fort Worth. This fair, promoted by Robert A. Cameron, immigration agent for the Fort Worth and Denver Railway, was designed to attract settlers and investors to Texas. Cameron wanted to advertise Texas by displaying all the natural products of the state under one roof. The completed Spring Palace, built in record time (thirty-one days) by the Fort Worth Loan and Construction Company, served as an educational, cultural, and entertainment center for Texas residents and guests throughout June. A second fair held in the building in 1890 ended when a sudden fire destroyed the place on the night of May 30.

1938 - Construction began on Morris Sheppard Dam, When finished the reservoir will be known as Possum Kingdom Lake. it was completed on March 20, 1941.

1939 - The State Soil Conservation Board was organized to implement state conservation laws and organize and assist soil-conservation districts across the state in response to the devastating Dust Bowl of the 1930s. State headquarters was established in Temple, and a five-member board served as the agency's policy-making body. Sixteen soil-conservation districts were organized by 1949. In 1965 the agency's name was changed to the State Soil and Water Conservation Board. By 2003 the number of conservation districts in Texas had grown to 216.

1947 - Hilton Hotels was incorporated under Delaware law. It later became the first hotel chain to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange. In 1919 Conrad Nicholson Hilton purchased his first hotel, the Mobley, at Cisco, Texas. This was the beginning of a hotel empire built in three stages: first, by leasing and renovating old hotels; next, by building new hotels on leased land, primarily in Texas; and, third, by buying existing hotels at low prices. Hilton opened a new Texas hotel every year between 1925 and 1930 and by the onset of the Great Depression owned a total of eight. Economic hardship lessened nationwide travel and forced him to close his El Paso hotel in 1933. He recovered, with the help of Shearn and William L. Moody, Jr., of Galveston and a number of other investors, and subsequently merged his hotels with the Moodys' operations to form the National Hotel Company, of which he was one-third owner and general manager. The merger failed, however, and in 1934 Hilton resumed his independent operation with five hotels. In 1938 he acquired the Sir Francis Drake Hotel in San Francisco, his first hotel outside of Texas. Hilton later established his corporate headquarters at Beverly Hills, California, and began to expand abroad, starting in Mexico. In all, Conrad Hilton eventually owned 188 hotels in thirty-eight United States cities, including the Shamrock Hotel in Houston, the Mayflower in Washington, the Palmer House in Chicago, and the Plaza and Waldorf-Astoria in New York, and fifty-four hotels abroad.

[ELB]

I found today's historical nuggets to be particularly interesting. Thanks Joe817.

[WildBill]

1947 - Hilton Hotels was incorporated under Delaware law. It later became the first hotel chain to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange. In 1919 Conrad Nicholson Hilton purchased his first hotel, the Mobley, at Cisco, Texas. This was the beginning of a hotel empire built in three stages: first, by leasing and renovating old hotels; next, by building new hotels on leased land, primarily in Texas; and, third, by buying existing hotels at low prices. Hilton opened a new Texas hotel every year between 1925 and 1930 and by the onset of the Great Depression owned a total of eight. Economic hardship lessened nationwide travel and forced him to close his El Paso hotel in 1933. He recovered, with the help of Shearn and William L. Moody, Jr., of Galveston and a number of other investors, and subsequently merged his hotels with the Moodys' operations to form the National Hotel Company, of which he was one-third owner and general manager. The merger failed, however, and in 1934 Hilton resumed his independent operation with five hotels. In 1938 he acquired the Sir Francis Drake Hotel in San Francisco, his first hotel outside of Texas. Hilton later established his corporate headquarters at Beverly Hills, California, and began to expand abroad, starting in Mexico. In all, Conrad Hilton eventually owned 188 hotels in thirty-eight United States cities, including the Shamrock Hotel in Houston, the Mayflower in Washington, the Palmer House in Chicago, and the Plaza and Waldorf-Astoria in New York, and fifty-four hotels abroad.

I stayed in a Hilton Hotel and in my room was a copy of the book written by Conrad Hilton called "Be My Guest".
It was a very interesting story.

[joe817]

Thanks ELB! Mucho appreciated!

WildBill, I was reading that book, and it got lost. Bummer. It was an interesting read though.