This Day In Texas History - August 24

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1835 - Coffee's Station, also known as Coffee's Trading Post, was operated by Holland Coffee and associates and occupied several locations on the Red River from 1834 to 1846. After leading a trapping expedition to the area of the forks of the Red River in early 1833, Coffee established the trading post near the "old Pawnee village."

This was probably the abandoned north bank village of the Pani Piques (Taovayas or Wichitas) that Athanase de Mézières had named San Bernardo, across the river from the site of present Spanish Fort(est.1759 in northern Montague county, east of Nacona). The post housed thirty men and was surrounded by a picket fence. It was considered to be within the Choctaw Nation. Contacts were conducted out of the post that convened the plains Indians for the Camp Mason treaty negotiations of August 24, 1835, held near the site of present Lexington, Oklahoma.

Mexican agents tried to force evacuation of the post, and in early 1836 it was moved upriver to the mouth of Cache Creek, near the site of present Taylor, Oklahoma. Although later proved to be much in error, Coffee contended that this site was in Texas by virtue of being west of the 100th meridian. The last and lowest river location catered more to various eastern refugees and the removed tribes.

Ransomed white captives were often brought to the post. In 1839 Coffee's Trading Post became a post office of the Republic of Texas, called Coffee's Station. The site of Coffee's Post in what became Grayson County was inundated by Lake Texoma in the 1940s. A historical marker commemorating the post is located near the Preston Bend Cemetery, just north of Pottsboro.

1891 - Lynn Wiley Landrum, journalist, was born in Whitewright, Texas, on August 24, 1891. He attended the University of Texas, where he received a law degree in 1917. He became managing editor of the Daily Texan on October 2, 1913. His first significant assignment from the News was an extended series of editorials attacking the Ku Klux Klan.

He continued on the editorial page until 1933, when he was made editor of the Dallas Evening Journal, sister publication of the News. His reorganization and imaginative conduct of the editorial page brought him to public notice. Landrum has been credited with doing much to break the hold of the one-party system in Texas.

He was also an outspoken foe of statism in all forms and was noted for his criticism of Southern Methodist University, the University of Texas, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and W. Lee O'Daniel. He is also remembered as the inventor and "leading Elder" of the "Episcobapterian Church, South of God, Unigational Synod." He was a member of the Methodist Church and the Bone Head Club. He died in Dallas on August 31, 1961.

1916 - The St. Louis-San Francisco Railway Company was chartered on August 24, 1916, as successor to the St. Louis and San Francisco Railroad Company. Both companies were commonly called the Frisco. On January 1, 1964, the Frisco merged a subsidiary, the St. Louis, San Francisco, and Texas Railway Company, into the parent company. This gave the Frisco three lines from the Red River into Texas, one serving Paris, one through Denison and Sherman to Dallas and Fort Worth, and one to Quanah. The Frisco was merged into the Burlington Northern Railroad Company on November 21, 1980.

1917 - With Maj. Gen. Edwin St. John Greble's new promotion, he became the first commanding general of the Thirty-sixth Infantry Division. Greble's promotion to major general came with orders directing him to proceed to Camp Bowie, Tarrant County, Texas, to reorganize the Texas and Oklahoma National Guards as the Thirty-sixth Division and to train it for combat. He assumed command of the new camp on August 24, 1917, supervised the reception of the guardsmen, and began the formation of the division.

1940 - The presence of the United States Navy in Orange dates from August 24, 1940, when the navy established the office of supervisor of shipbuilding to oversee the construction of twenty-four landing craft. Construction of other items such as destroyers, destroyer escorts, mine sweepers, and aircraft rescue boats was also planned. With the naval construction boom brought on by World War II, the Orange facility grew. Three shipyards in Orange received military contracts from the navy.

Consolidated Western Steel Corporation, Levingston Shipbuilding Company, and Weaver Shipyards produced more than 300 ships of various types during World War II, the first vessel being the USS Aulick completed on March 2, 1942. At the peak of production more than 22,000 workers were in the shipyards, and the population of Orange skyrocketed. At the end of World War II the Navy Department announced that Orange would be one of eight locations in which reserve vessels would be stored.

The mission of the naval station was to provide logistical support and berthing space for the inactivation ("mothballing") of the Texas Group, Atlantic Reserve Fleet. The station encompassed an area of 168 acres, and eventually approximately 150 vessels were moored there. In 1950 about thirty vessels were reactivated for service in the Korean War, and up to 850 military personnel worked at the station.

The naval storage facility was closed on December 28, 1975. By 1980 all of the ships were gone; some were transferred to various branches of the navy for alternate use, and others were sold to foreign nations. The piers and some adjacent land were sold to the Orange County navigation and port district. The navy retained 18½ acres-the site of the present United States Navy and Marine Corp Reserve Training Center.

1944 - Samuel David Dealey, Medal of Honor recipient, was born on September 13, 1906 in Dallas, Texas. He graduated from Oak Cliff (now W. H. Adamson) High School. He entered the United States Naval Academy in the spring of 1925. He failed to maintain adequate grades that year but reentered in 1926 and graduated in the middle of the class of 1930. After serving on various battleships, destroyers, and submarines, in December 1942 Lieutenant Commander Dealey became the first and only commander of the newly commissioned submarine USS Harder.

He took the ship in 1943 to the Pacific and made five highly successful patrols, but failed to return from a sixth. He was particularly noted for heading toward enemy destroyers and discharging the sub's forward tubes before making the standard maneuver of diving into silent running; this effective but dangerous maneuver, which Dealey used by permission from the commander of the Pacific Fleet, sank five Japanese destroyers in four days.

Dealey officially sank sixteen enemy vessels in all. He was Group Commander of a Submarine Wolf Pack consisting of the Harder, the Hake, and the Hado in waters off Luzon, Philippine. On August 24, 1944, the Harder was heavily and fatally depth-charged. Commander Dealey was declared missing in action and presumed dead on October 2, 1944.

During his command of the Harder in 1943 and 1944 he earned the Navy Cross with three gold stars, the army's Distinguished Service Cross (presented to him by Gen. Douglas MacArthur), two presidential unit citations, and a Purple Heart. He was commended for "sinking over 15,000 tons and damaging over 27,000 tons of enemy shipping," for "extraordinary heroism...in the presence of formidable concentrations of anti-submarine vessels," for rescuing an Allied pilot "from a rubber raft off a Japanese-held island despite harassing fire," and for many other acts of valor.

The Medal of Honor was presented to Dealey's widow on August 28, 1945, for acts that attested "the valiant fighting spirit of Commander Dealey and his indomitable command." For the Harder's sixth war patrol, Commander Dealey was awarded the Silver Star posthumously. The United States Navy named a destroyer escort in his honor. In 1994 a neglected plaque in his honor was moved from Seawolf Park in Galveston to the Science Place in Fair Park, Dallas, and dedicated in a ceremony.