This Day In Texas History - June 7

[joe817]

1842 - The Republic of Texas granted three million acres between the Llano and Colorado rivers to Henry Fisher, Burchard Miller, and Joseph Baker. The Fisher-Miller Grant, as the tract is called, was one of many colonization projects in early Texas that largely fizzled. The land was to be settled by one thousand families of German, Dutch, Swiss, Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian ancestry. When Fisher and Miller failed to colonize the grant within the allotted time, the Congress of the republic extended the deadline. Fisher got President Houston to appoint him consul to Bremen in 1843, and the next year he sold part of his interest to the Adelsverein, a German colonization society. In December 1845 both Fisher and Miller sold their remaining rights in the grant to the Germans. The Adelsverein managed to plant only a few colonists on the grant, however; only the settlement of Castell survived.

1857 - Camp Hudson, also called Fort Hudson was established. It was located on San Pedro Creek, a tributary of the Devils River, twenty-one miles north of Comstock in central Val Verde County, what was then Kinney County and named for Lt. Walter W. Hudson, who died in April 1850 of injuries he received in an Indian fight. The camp was one of several posts built between San Antonio and El Paso to protect travelers on the so-called Chihuahua Trail. The troops at Camp Hudson fought with Indians on several occasions and sometimes followed them into Mexico. In April 1876 Lt. Louis Henry Orleman was sent to Camp Hudson to take command of Company B of the Tenth Cavalry. In January 1877, however, Camp Hudson was permanently closed because the threat of Indian attacks no longer existed. In 1936 The Texas Historical Commission placed a centennial marker at the site of Camp Hudson. By the 1980s no buildings stood on the private property where the camp was once situated.

1863 - Albert Sidney Burleson, attorney, congressman, and United States postmaster general, was born in San Marcos, Texas.

1876 - Construction began on what was to become a permanent major military installation in northeast San Antonio. Citizens had long desired to secure a permanent military post. Over the years the army had leased many small areas of the city, most notably the Alamo and a plot where the Gunter Hotel now stands. A formal proposal made in 1870 was met with political opposition from Secretary of War Belknap. After his resignation in 1876 a contract for construction was let to the Edward Braden Construction Company. The quadrangular fort with only one entry gate was completed in 1878. In 1890 the post was designated Fort Sam Houston. Since that time Fort Sam Houston has grown to an installation of several thousand acres with hundreds of permanent structures. In 2000 it was host to many of the United States Army's major commands.

1979 - Asa Earl Carter, part Indian, segregationist, politician, speechwriter, and novelist, died as a result of a fistfight in Abilene. Carter was born in Anniston, Alabama, in 1925. After an unsuccessful run against Wallace in the Democratic gubernatorial primary in 1970, Carter gave up politics and left Alabama. He adopted the pseudonym Bedford Forrest Carter and settled in Sweetwater, Texas, where he used the resources of the City-County Library to work on his first novel, Gone to Texas (1973). The highly successful film version starring Clint Eastwood is entitled The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976). Carter wrote three other books, including the purported autobiography The Education of Little Tree (1976), before his untimely death.

1982 - In the 39th round of the Major League Baseball draft, the Texas Rangers pick Kenny Rogers, a left hander from Plant City High School in Florida. He only played ball in his senior year and then only as a short stop. In 1994, Rogers would become the only left-hander in American League history to pitch a perfect game.