This Day In Texas History - July 26

[joe817]

1840 - The Austin, a sloop-of-war and flagship of the Texas Navy sailed for the Yucatán port of Sisal to assist the Federalist rebels against Mexico's Centralist government. The ship arrived on July 31, cruised the Bay of Campeche as far as Veracruz by August 23, and blockaded Tampico through October. In November she took part in the capture of the capital of Yucatán, San Juan Bautista; the navy earned for Texas $25,000 in ransom from the city. The Austin was 125 feet in length and thirty-one feet across the beam, with a displacement of 600 tons and a draft of 12½ feet. She carried a crew of twenty-three officers and warrant officers and 151 sailors and marines and was armed with sixteen medium twenty-four-pound cannons, two eighteen-pound medium cannons, and two eighteen-pound long cannons.
[ https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/qta02 ]

1845 - The United States flag is said to have been raised on St. Joseph Island by United States troops. This was the first time the U.S. flag was flown in Texas. St. Joseph Island is a sand barrier island in Aransas County. The troops were part of a force under Gen. Zachary Taylor sent to protect Texas from Mexican interference after annexation. After the detachment landed on the island, the main force landed on August 1 and camped by a massive live oak tree at the site of present-day Rockport. The tree is now known as the Zachary Taylor Oak.

1846 - John Baker Omohundro, also known as "Texas Jack", was born. He was a frontier scout, actor and cowboy. He is credited with introducing roping acts to the American stage. [ https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fom01 ]

1863 - On this date in 1863, former Governor and President of Texas, Sam Houston dies at his home, Steamboat House, in Huntsville. He served as Texas first President and served two terms, retiring in 1844. Once Texas joined the union in 1845, Houston was elected to the U.S.Seante. In 1859, Houston was inaugurated as Governor of Texas, but his opposition to Texas joining the Confederacy led to his forced resignation.

1870 - On this date in 1870, Charles Goodnight married Mary Ann (Molly) Dyer, a schoolteacher from Weatherford. The two first met at Fort Belknap(three miles south of Newcastle in Young County) about 1864. Goodnight, a veteran cattleman, helped blaze the Goodnight-Loving Trail in 1866. After their wedding, the couple settled on a ranch in Colorado for a few years before moving to the Palo Duro Canyon to help establish the JA Ranch. Charles managed the ranch, trailed cattle, and continued to upgrade the herds while Molly made a home on the solitary plains near the canyon. Her husband invented a two-horned sidesaddle so that she could more easily ride on the ranch. Though the couple had no children of their own, she became the “Mother of the Panhandle” to countless ranch hands. Her care for orphaned buffaloes encouraged her husband to establish a domestic buffalo herd. In later years the ranching couple supported numerous schools, churches, and other organizations, and they established Goodnight College in 1898.

1877 - Capt. Nicholas Nolan and First Lt. C.S. Cooper led a party of forty Tenth U.S. Cavalry troopers and twenty-four buffalo hunters from a supply base at Double Lakes, Lynn County, to pursue marauding Indians and recapture stolen horses. When the Indian trails diverged, the pursuit was abandoned and a search for water was begun. Nolan turned back toward Double Lakes. The buffalo hunters turned southwest and found water. But Nolan marched another thirty-eight hours before reaching Double Lakes, eighty-six hours since his men had last had water. Four men were dead or missing, along with twenty-five horses and four pack animals. At the future site of Lubbock, the buffalo hunters found the horses and learned that the Indians were returning to Indian Territory. It is believed that this event was the last Comanche raid in Texas.

1887 - The Union Stock Yards were chartered in Fort Worth, which had earned the nickname "Cowtown" for its commerce in livestock, and opened their 258-acre facility north of the Trinity River in midsummer 1889.. The Fort Worth livestock market became the largest in Texas and the Southwest, the biggest market south of Kansas City, and ranked between third and fourth consistently among the nation's large terminal livestock markets for five decades, from about 1905 to the mid-1950s.
[ for a fascinating read on the Ft.Worth Stockyards: https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/dif04 ]

1923 - Hillsboro born, blues singer Maggie Jones, aka Fae Barnes, became the first Texan to be recorded. In her short career, she would record with such greats as Louis Armstrong, among others. As the Great Depression set in, she moved to Dallas where she eventually became lost to history.

1939 - Thomas J. (Red, T. J.) Golemon, legendary outlaw of the Big Thicket, and Francis Alva Smith walked into the Hull State Bank, locked two women employees in the vault, and escaped with $12,000 in cash. The two men fled west to Hobbs, New Mexico. This bank heist is where Golemon gained his first widespread notoriety. [ https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fgo33 ]