This Day In Texas History - June 9

[joe817]

1837 - Huntsville was founded in 1835 or 1836 by Pleasant and Ephraim Gray as an Indian trading post and was named for Huntsville, Alabama, former home of the Gray family. The city originally lay within the northeast section of Montgomery County, which was organized in 1837. It was designated the seat of Walker County when the county was organized in 1846. Huntsville acquired a post office on June 9, 1837, with Ephraim Gray as the first postmaster.

The Grays' trading post was well situated to trade with the Bidai, Alabama, and Coushatta Indians. Relations between these groups and the early settlers around Huntsville appear to have been peaceful. As trade along the Trinity River grew and as colonists arrived to exploit timber and rich alluvial bottomlands, Huntsville became the center of increasing activity. Huntsville was also the home of many prominent early Texans, including Sam Houston, Henderson King Yoakum, Samuel McKinney, Robert Goodloe Smither, and Anthony Martin Branch.
[ https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/heh03 ]

1861 - Sidney Smith (Sid) Johnson enlisted on June 9, 1861, in Capt. D. Y. Gaines's Company K of the Third Texas Cavalry and was elected third lieutenant of his company. He was elected captain a year later and served with this rank until the end of the Civil War. The regiment served in Arkansas and Missouri with Ben McCulloch's Army of the West until McCulloch's death. Johnson fought at the battles of Oak Hill and Elkhorn Tavern. East of the Mississippi River he was elected captain, served during the siege of Corinth, and was in the battle at Iuka, Mississippi, where the Third Texas distinguished itself.

After Corinth, he and his company served the remainder of the war in Lawrence Sullivan Ross's Texas Brigade, which saw action in the capture of Holly Springs, Mississippi, and the engagement at Thompson's Station, and later in the Georgia campaign from Resaca to Atlanta and Jonesboro. In the Georgia Campaign Johnson was severely wounded at Lovejoy Station. He campaigned the rest of the war in Tennessee under generals Nathan Bedford Forrest and W. H. Jackson. After the war he was admitted to the bar in Tyler, where he practiced law from 1866 until about 1880.

1870 - A Mr. Tuck, the grand master of the Masonic Lodge of Texas, laid the cornerstone for Temple B'nai Israel at Galveston. Rabbi Jacobs of the New Orleans Portuguese Synagogue officiated. It is believed that this was the first time an ordained rabbi functioned in Texas, though a Jewish congregation was meeting in Galveston as early as 1856. Temple B'nai Israel is the oldest Reform Jewish congregation in Texas. Under the leadership of Rabbi Henry Cohen, the temple played a role in welcoming Jewish immigrants to Texas during the Galveston Movement in the early twentieth century.

1870 - Rains County, which he helped to survey in 1869, was established from Wood County on June 9, 1870, and named Emory Rains, early legislator in his honor. He helped to survey in the county in 1869, and Rains was established from Wood County.

1894 - A water-well contractor accidentally discovered the Corsicana oilfield, the first in Texas to produce oil and gas in significant quantities, while seeking a new water source for the city of Corsicana. Civic leaders of Corsicana needed a dependable water supply to promote commercial development. They contracted with the American Well and Prospecting Company to drill three water wells. The drillers took the first well to a depth of 1,027 feet, where they encountered oil.

The first modern refinery in Texas, operated by the J. S. Cullinan Company, opened at the field in 1898. During its first century of operation, the field produced about 44 million barrels of oil; annual production peaked in 1900 at more than 839,000 barrels. The Corsicana field established the potential for commercial oil production in Texas; the industry has had incalculable effects on the state's subsequent development, public revenue, and culture.

1923 - The Asphalt Belt Railway Company was chartered on June 9, 1923. The railroad was planned to run from a point on the San Antonio, Uvalde and Gulf in Zavala County to the mines of the Texas Rock Asphalt Company and of R. L. White in Uvalde County. The capital of the AB was $20,000. The principal place of business was San Antonio. Although the Asphalt Belt kept its corporate identity, it was operated as a part of the Missouri Pacific lines until 1956, when it was merged into the Missouri Pacific. Throughout its life the Asphalt Belt owned no equipment and never offered passenger service. Extensive flood damage in late 1986 destroyed a bridge near Farm Road 481 and led to the dismantling of the former Asphalt Belt in 1987.

1927 - Texas poets Vaida Stewart and Whitney M. Montgomery married. Vaida was born in Childress in 1888; Whitney was born near Eureka, Texas, in 1877. They established their home in Dallas and in May 1929 launched Kaleidoscope (later Kaleidograph), which they issued monthly until 1954 and quarterly from 1954 to 1959. Both Vaida and Whitney Montgomery won numerous prizes from the Poetry Society of Texas and from the Texas Institute of Letters, of which Whitney was president in 1940.