This Day In Texas History - March 14

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1836 - At the battle of Refugio, a greatly outnumbered Texian force under Amon B. King and William Ward held off a division(1,500 men) of the Mexican army led by Gen. José de Urrea. Although most of Ward's men escaped, all of King's contingent were either killed or captured. King, and the remnants of his force, were summarily executed in the Goliad Massacre .

1836 - Sam Houston appointed William Tennant Austin his aide-de-camp with the rank of major and ordered him to Columbia to requisition artillery and horses for the army.

1845 - Prince Carl of Solms-Braunfels purchases the land that will become New Braunfels.

1862 - Henry Eustace McCulloch organized the First Texas Cavalry, also known as McCulloch's Texas Cavalry, and served as its first commanding officer. He was given various assignments and commands throughout the war and received a promotion to the rank of brigadier general on March 14, 1862. The men serving in McCulloch's regiment came primarily from the counties of Bastrop, Bell, Hill, Dallas, and Gonzales. As originally mustered, the regiment had roughly 1,000 men in service.

1897 - The El Paso Southern Railway Company was chartered on March 14, 1897, with a capital stock of $100,000. The line was originally to extend from the international bridge over the Rio Grande five miles north to Mount Franklin in El Paso County, but the company actually laid only two miles of track. The railroad handled cars between the Mexico North-Western Railway and the three American lines in El Paso and in 1937 was reclassified by the Railroad Commission as a terminal operation. The El Paso Southern was merged into the Southern Pacific Company, and its corporate existence terminated at midnight, October 31, 1961.

1908 - Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary grew out of Baylor University's Theological Department. The department was established in 1901; Benajah H. Carrol, pastor of the First Baptist Church of Waco, was dean. By 1905 the department had become the Baylor Theological Seminary. Three years later the seminary separated from Baylor University and with a new name was chartered by the State of Texas on March 14, 1908. In 1910 Southwestern was moved from Waco to Fort Worth. Although the seminary was affiliated with the Baptist General Convention of Texas, which named a majority of the trustees, ten other state Baptist bodies also cooperated with Texas Baptists in providing trustees and some financial support. However, it remained a Texas Baptist institution. By 1926 the ownership of the school was transferred from the Texas Convention to the Southern Baptist Convention.

From its beginning the seminary's purpose has been to prepare men and women for vocational Christian ministry. Through the years the student body has become increasingly international and interdenominational. In 1988 forty-three different countries and forty-one denominations were represented in the student body. During 1988 4,784 students were enrolled in classes taught on the main campus and in five off-campus centers located in Dallas, Houston, Lubbock, San Antonio, and Shawnee, Oklahoma. By the close of 1988 the seminary had graduated 27,230. Southwestern resembles a university in its size and organization. It is divided into three schools—theology, educational ministries, and church music—each with its own faculty and degree programs.

1911 - Former President Teddy Roosevelt is the Guest of Honor at this years Fort Worth Stock Show. Going to the Fat Stock Show was not only a cattlemen's prerogative, it became a social event with gentlemen and ladies decked out in their finest western clothes, shined boots, ornate saddles and stetson hats.

1924 - Charles Lindbergh starts pilot training at Brooks Field in San Antonio.

1940 - Livestock leaders met in Fort Worth to form the American Quarter Horse Association. Among those in attendance were rancher and quarter horse breeder Anne Burnett Hall and King Ranch president Robert J. Kleberg. The series of meetings led to a charter, by-laws, and election of officers of an organization to “collect, record and preserve the pedigrees of Quarter Horses in America….” The origin of the American quarter horse dates to colonial times when the speedy horses earned fame for their performance in quarter-mile races—hence the name. The quarter horse in Texas is forever linked with the history of the open range and the cowboy. After the Civil War cattlemen needed swift yet sturdy mounts to drive longhorns to northern railheads in Kansas and elsewhere. Quarter horses were mated with mustang mares to produce a strong, speedy equine with great endurance. Soon after the formation of the group, the King Ranch-bred Wimpy, grand champion stallion at the 1941 Southwestern Exposition and Fat Stock Show in Fort Worth, earned the designation of P-1 in the AQHA Stud Book.

1964 - Dallas night club owner Jack Ruby was convicted of the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald. On November 24, 1963, Ruby, then proprietor of the Carousel Club, had shot and killed Oswald, the accused assassin of President John F. Kennedy, in the basement of the Dallas City Jail, during Oswald's transfer to the county jail. Millions of witnesses watched on national television. Although he was defended by Melvin Belli on the grounds that "psychomotor epilepsy" caused him to black out consciously while functioning physically, Ruby was convicted of murder with malice. His conviction was overturned by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, and Ruby was awaiting a retrial when he died in prison in 1967. Ruby denied involvement in any conspiracy, and maintained to the end that he shot Oswald on impulse from grief and outrage.