This Day In Texas History - September 20

[joe817]

1802 - Moseley (Mosley) Baker, pioneer legislator and soldier, was born in Norfolk, Virginia, on September 20, 1802. Baker founded and edited the Montgomery Advertiser. In 1829 he was elected to the state legislature from Montgomery County and served as speaker of the House. According to some accounts, three years later he moved to Texas. These reports have him living in San Felipe as early as 1833. He and his wife, Eliza (Ward), and their daughter certainly moved to Liberty, Texas, in March 1835. On October 9 Baker secured a league and a labor of land in Lorenzo de Zavala's colony on the east shore of Galveston Bay. As a leading advocate of Texas independence from Mexico, Baker claimed to have made the first speech in favor of disunion. He was one of nine men whom Col. Domingo de Ugartechea ordered arrested at San Felipe in July 1835. As a member of the Consultation of 1835 Baker delivered a speech calling for the dissolution of that body. This proposal was met by a stern response from Sam Houston who, "drawing his majestic figure up to his full height," declared "I had rather be a slave, and grovel in the dust all my life, than a convicted felon!" Baker was one of the military leaders of the Texas Revolution. (Note: This man led an interesting life. There's much more to his story)
[ https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fba37 ]

1835 - The long-abandoned port, and later town, of Copano was at what is now called Copano Point on the northwestern shore of Copano Bay, thirty miles north of Corpus Christi in southeastern Refugio County. The townsite is practically inaccessible by land, but can be reached by boat from Bayside, the nearest town, five miles to the south. Copano was named for the Copane Indians who frequented the area and during the Spanish and Mexican eras was known as El Cópano. The town is believed to have served as a port and rendezvous for pirates and smugglers and may have been in use as a port as early as 1722. The port played an important role during the colonial and revolutionary periods. In 1834 Gen. Juan N. Almonte, on an inspection tour for Mexican president Antonio López de Santa Anna, reported Copano to have the deepest port in Texas.

The port of Copano became strategically important to both the Mexican and Texas armies during the Texas Revolution. On September 20, 1835, Mexican general Martín Perfecto de Cos and his army landed at Copano on their way to Goliad and Bexar. The next month Gen. Sam Houston issued orders that Copano be fortified. The Texans held the site and used it as a port of entry for supplies and provisions until March 1836, when the port fell to the Mexicans under Gen. José de Urrea. When Maj. William P. Miller and his Nashville Company of volunteers anchored at Copano in late March 1836, they were captured by the Mexicans. The port was used by the Mexicans to receive reinforcements and to evacuate their wounded and prisoners. After they withdrew from the area in May 1836, the Texans once again gained control of the port. The famous "Horse Marines" incident occurred on the beach at Copano on June 3 and June 17, 1836, when Maj. Isaac W. Burton's Mounted Rangers captured Mexican vessels, men, and supplies. [ https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/hvc74 ]

1865 - Jacob Friedrich Brodbeck, pioneer school supervisor and sometimes considered the first man to fly in an airplane, was born in the duchy of Württemberg on October 13, 1821. He attended a seminary in Esslingen and taught school for six years in Württemberg before sailing for Texas with his brother George on August 25, 1846. He reached Fredericksburg in March 1847. Brodbeck served as Gillespie county surveyor and district school supervisor in 1862 and was a county commissioner from 1876 to 1878. He is best remembered, however, for his attempts at powered flight almost forty years before the famous success of Orville and Wilbur Wright. Brodbeck had always had an interest in mechanics and inventing; in Germany he had attempted to build a self-winding clock, and in 1869 he designed an ice-making machine. His most cherished project, however, was his "air-ship," which he worked on for twenty years. In 1863 he built a small model with a rudder, wings, and a propeller powered by coiled springs.

That year he also moved to San Antonio, where he became a school inspector. Encouraged by the success of his model at various local fairs, Brodbeck set about raising funds to build a full-sized version of his craft that would be capable of carrying a man. He persuaded a number of local men, including Dr. Ferdinand Herff of San Antonio, H. Guenther of New Braunfels and A. W. Engel of Cranes Mill, to buy shares in his project, promising to repay them within six months of selling the patent rights to his machine. There are conflicting accounts of what happened next. One says that Brodbeck made his first flight in a field about three miles east of Luckenbach on September 20, 1865. His airship, which featured an enclosed space for the "aeronaut," a water propeller in case of accidental landings on water, a compass, and a barometer, and for which Brodbeck had predicted speeds between 30 and 100 miles per hour, was said to have risen twelve feet in the air and traveled about 100 feet before the springs unwound completely and the machine crashed to the ground. Another account, however, says that the initial flight took place in San Pedro Park, San Antonio, where a bust of Brodbeck was later placed. Yet another account reports that the flight took place in 1868, not 1865. All the accounts agree, however, that Brodbeck's airship was destroyed by its abrupt landing, although the inventor escaped serious injury. After this setback, his investors refused to put up the money for a second attempt, so he embarked on a fund-raising tour of the United States. His papers were stolen in Michigan, however, and he failed to persuade his audiences to invest in his scheme. Brodbeck returned to Texas and lived on a ranch near Luckenbach until his death, on January 8, 1910, six years after the Wright brothers' first flight at Kitty Hawk. No drawings or blueprints of Brodbeck's craft have survived, and his aviation achievements remain shrouded in doubt. He was buried on his farm near Luckenbach.

1948 - The tidelands controversy between the United States and Texas involved the title to 2,440,650 acres of submerged land in the Gulf of Mexico between low tide and the state's Gulfward boundary three leagues (10.35 miles) from shore. Texas, first acquiring this land by establishing and maintaining itself as an independent nation, reserved this as well as all other unsold land when it entered the Union in 1845. Ownership of the property by the state of Texas was recognized by officials of the United States for more than 100 years. After oil was discovered under state leases, applicants for cheaper federal leases and federal officials began to assert national ownership in the same manner as they had done against California and other coastal states. The contest was not confined to Texas. All states became concerned over their long-recognized titles to lands beneath their navigable waters. It became a national issue, resulting in three Supreme Court decisions against the states, three acts of Congress in favor of the states, two presidential vetoes against the states, and a major issue in a presidential campaign, before the states finally won the victory. It was the most serious conflict of the century between the states and the federal government. The federal claims were branded as an attempted "expropriation" and "steal" by outraged officials of Texas and many of the other states. In 1949 a statewide public opinion poll reported that the people of Texas considered it to be the most important public issue facing the state. Public indignation ran higher in Texas than elsewhere because this land had been dedicated to and was a source of revenue for the public school fund.

During the presidential campaign, President Truman said in Austin on September 20, 1948: "Texas is in a class by itself; it entered the Union by Treaty." Even former Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes, a champion of the fight against state ownership, said in a national television address, on October 14, 1948: "Parenthetically, Texas may have the legal right to its tidelands, because it came into the Union voluntarily and as an independent country." In the presidential campaign of 1952 Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower made special recognition of the rights of Texas under the Annexation Agreement as well as the long-recognized rights of the other states under earlier Supreme Court decisions. He declared in favor of state ownership legislation and said he would sign the bill if it were enacted again by Congress. The Republican platform agreed. On the other hand, the Democratic nominee, Adlai Stevenson, said he would veto such a bill if enacted again by Congress. In Texas this became the foremost issue in the 1952 campaign. The state Democratic Convention placed Stevenson's name on the ticket but then passed a resolution urging all members of the Texas Democratic party to vote for Eisenhower, and Eisenhower carried the state in the November election.
[ https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/mgt02 ]

[JALLEN]

Fascinating, again.

I intend to learn more about the tidelands issue. I have always thought Texas voted for Eisenhower on his own merits. After all, everybody like[d] Ike!

It's a pity all that money from tidelands leases, and it must be a staggering sum in the 6 decades since, has been wasted on education.

[ELB]

20 Sep was my first day of active duty back in 1982. I arrived at Tinker AFB, Oklahoma City, with one complete service dress (Class A for you Army types), a couple extra blue shirts, and a pair of butter bars, plus one for my flight cap. Spent the next week finding a place to live, setting up a checking account, buying uniforms, and hoping I could figure out what I was supposed to be doing. :)

[joe817]

To JAllen: When I read the Tidelands Controversy article, I found it very complicated but also very interesting. There was so many important things that happened, and the controversy that surrounds it, that I had to leave out(because of the length of the article) that it behooves someone who has the least interest in what happened to read the full article in the link.

To ELB: I remember Tinker AFB. When my dad retired from the general construction business(in Fort Worth) in 1958, he did one more job after we moved up to the ranch. That being the construction of the BOQ at Tinker. I went up there a couple of times with him & was fascinated watching the planes take off and land. Thanks for the memories!

And thanks to everyone for taking a look!