When the troops were nearing Matamoros on June 8, José de Urrea, who, unknown to Filisola, had replaced him as commander of the Mexican forces, sent orders for Andrade to return to Goliad. The retreat was continued, however, and on June 12 Filisola was notified that Urrea had replaced him. Since Urrea was not with the force, Filisola resigned his command to Andrade. Although the order for Andrade to return to Goliad was repeated on June 12, Andrade thought that the safety of the troops depended on their reaching Matamoros. He therefore defied his orders and took his command into Matamoros on June 18, 1836, thus ending the campaign.
1877 - On this date in 1877, shortly after the Indians had been moved to reservations in Oklahoma and New Mexico, Charles Goodnight and John Adair form the J.A. Ranch, the first ranch in the Panhandle. In the months that preceded, Goodnight moved his 1,600 head of cattle from New Mexico to the Palo Duro Canyon in the Texas Panhandle, thinking that the canyon would form a natural shelter and help contain the cattle. Goodnight would help to establish several of the cattle trails between Texas and the railheads in Kansas. Over the next few years, windmills, rodeos and eventually barbed wire would become a regular part of life in West Texas. [ https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/apj01 ]
1881 – D.C. Cantwell registered the peculiar brand for his new Key-No Ranch. By September of the following year, the ranch held approximately 1,300 head of cattle.
1915 - Legendary oil well fire fighter Paul Neal(Red) Adair was born in 1915. He extinguished well fires around the world, some burning for as much as six months. He was among the first to put out the well fires in Kuwait in 1991 at the end of Desert Storm. John Wayne played him in the 1968 action film, "Hellfighters". Paul Neal "Red" Adair, the Texas oil well firefighter, was born on June 18, 1915, in Houston, Texas.
1921 - Turney W. Leonard, Medal of Honor recipient, was born on June 18, 1921, in Dallas, Texas. He entered the military service there. First Lieutenant Leonard was a member of Company C of the 893rd Tank Destroyer Battalion at Kommerscheidt, Germany, in November 1944. During a fierce engagement on November 4–6 of that year, while commanding a platoon of mobile weapons, he repeatedly exposed himself to heavy enemy fire while directing the fire of his tank destroyer from exposed dismounted positions.
He went on lone reconnaissance missions and on one occasion eliminated an enemy emplacement with a hand grenade. When a German attack threatened to overwhelm friendly positions, he moved through fire to reorganize infantry troops whose officers had been killed and exhorted them to hold firm. Although wounded early in the engagement, he continued to direct fire until his arm was shattered by a high-explosive shell. Leonard, who was personally responsible for directing the fire that destroyed six enemy tanks, was last seen alive at a medical aid station that was later captured by the enemy. He is thought to have died on November 6, 1944, and is buried at Grove Hill Memorial Park in Dallas.
1924 - In an effort to clear her husbands name, who was impeached while Governor, Mrs Miriam A Ferguson (Ma Ferguson) opened her campaign to run for governor herself, on this date in 1924.
1961 - On this date in 1961, Beaumont got its second television station when KBMT went on the air.
1971 - Southwest Airlines began service from Dallas's Love Field. The airline's first flight came after three years of legal battles with rivals Braniff Airways, Continental Airlines, and Trans-Texas Airways that included a 1970 decision by the United States Supreme Court upholding Southwest's right to fly. Southwest became embroiled in yet another legal controversy in 1972, when the new Dallas-Fort Worth Regional Airport (now Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport) and the cities of Dallas and Fort Worth sued in an attempt to force the carrier to move to the new airport. Southwest eventually won the right to remain at Love Field as long as the field was a commercial airport, and the company's low fares continued to attract customers and force other airlines to discount their fares.
1990 - A civil action was filed in United States District Court in Dallas on behalf of a German church seeking the return of a number of medieval objets d'art that had disappeared at the end of World War II. During the war, the Lutheran Church of St. Servatius in Quedlinburg, Germany, had placed the objects in a mineshaft for safekeeping, but reported their loss in June 1945.
After one of the objects appeared on the market in Europe in 1987, a German investigator traced the remaining pieces to Whitewright, Texas, where a former U.S. Army lieutenant named Joe Meador had settled. In 1945 Meador had served in the occupation of Quedlinburg. Fellow soldiers reported seeing him carrying mysterious bundles out of the mine. Meador was discharged from the army in 1946; after his death in 1980, his brother and sister began trying to sell the objects. The suit was settled in 1991, when the Germans announced that they would pay the Meador family $2.75 million for the return of the treasures. In 1998, however, the Internal Revenue Service announced it was seeking more than $50 million in federal taxes, penalties, and interest from the estate. The Meadors settled the case two years later by agreeing to pay $135,000.
[ https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/kjqem ]