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1831 - A Masonic and military ceremony marked completion of the foundation for Fort Anahuac on May 14, 1831. The exterior walls were 100 by seventy feet and enclosed two redoubts diagonally opposite on the southwest and northeast corners. Inside the perimeter was a reinforced-brick building about fifty by thirty-five feet. The southwest redoubt, overlooking Trinity Bay, was named Fort Davis (for Bradburn); it was manned by a maximum of fifty men and defended by a six-pound cannon, while its twin on the northeast guarded the land approach. The cavalry tethered its horses between the two redoubts. An excavated passage connected the enclosure with the powder magazine on the east side, where two bulwarks named Hidalgo and Morelos (for martyrs of the Mexican independence movement) near the sites of the brick kilns, each with a sixteen-pound cannon, guarded the compound. It is located in a Chambers County park on State Highway 563 one mile south of Anahuac.

1836 - In the aftermath of the decisive Texan victory at San Jacinto, ad interim president David G. Burnet and Gen. Antonio López de Santa Anna signed two treaties at the town of Velasco. The public treaty was to be published immediately, and the secret agreement was to be carried into execution when the public treaty had been fulfilled. The public treaty, with ten articles, provided that hostilities would cease, that Santa Anna would not again take up arms against Texas, that the Mexican forces would withdraw beyond the Rio Grande, that property confiscated by Mexicans would be restored, that prisoners would be exchanged on an equal basis, that Santa Anna would be sent to Mexico as soon as possible, and that the Texas army would not approach closer than five leagues to the retreating Mexicans. In the secret agreement, in six articles, the Texas government promised the immediate liberation of Santa Anna on condition that he use his influence to secure from Mexico acknowledgment of Texas independence; Santa Anna promised not to take up arms against Texas, to give orders for withdrawal from Texas of Mexican troops, to have the Mexican cabinet receive a Texas mission favorably, and to work for a treaty of commerce and limits specifying that the Texas boundary not lie south of the Rio Grande. Both the governments of Texas and Mexico then proceeded to violate the terms of the treaties, and their conflict continued.

1849 - On the death of Col. William J. Worth, General William Selby Harney assumed command of Military Department Number Five, which comprised almost all of the settled portion of Texas.

1854 - Texas Germans gathered to discuss the national crisis over slavery. At the the annual Staats-Saengerfest (State Singers' Festival), held on May 14 and 15, delegates from various local political clubs of German citizens in western Texas met in San Antonio and, following the lead of the Freier Mann Verein (Freeman's Association) organized by fellow Germans in the Northern states, adopted a mildly worded plank declaring that slavery was an evil and that abolition was the business of the states. The resolution went on to maintain that a state should be able to obtain help from the federal government to effect abolition. By "help" the convention meant that the state would ask the federal government to pay the owners for freed slaves. The declaration, along with more strongly worded antislavery newspaper articles in the German language press, led many Anglo-Texans to question the loyalty of their German neighbors on the slavery question, and eventually helped fuel mistrust when Texas joined the Confederacy in 1861.

1888 - On this day in 1888 began a week-long celebration dedicating the present Capitol building of Texas. Unfortunately, the Capitol Board refused to accept the structure because its copper roof leaked and because of several other minor problems. After builder Gustav Wilke repaired the roof and made other corrections, the board accepted the building on December 6 of that year.

1923 - 23 people were killed and over 100 injured when tornado's hit Howard and Mitchell Counties in West Texas, on this date in 1923.