This Day In Texas History - August 29

[joe817]

1540 - Hernando de Alvarado, captain of artillery on the Coronado expedition, saved the life of his commander during the storming of Hawiku pueblo. On August 29, 1540, he commanded a side expedition commissioned to explore the region to the east and the north for eighty days and to investigate the reports of cows or buffalo. Alvarado's command passed the Acoma pueblo, the land of the Tiguex Indians, and at the Pecos pueblo acquired El Turco as a guide to the cow herds.

El Turco's tales of gold and silver caused the group to lose interest in cows, but the Spaniards continued until buffalo herds had been sighted, thus becoming the first known Europeans to visit the High Plains. After rejoining Coronado at Tiguex, where he had moved for the winter at Coronado's suggestion, Alvarado went back to Pecos to demand some gold bracelets that El Turco reported had been taken from him at the time of his capture. No bracelets were found, and, feeling he had been deceived by the Indians of Pecos, Alvarado seized the Indian governor and his aide and put them in chains. This seizure of the Indian chief in violation of Spanish assurances of friendship caused the Indians to cease cooperation.
[ https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fal52 ]

1827 - Old Station, a receiving point for settlers bound for DeWitt's Colony, was located about six miles above the tidewater of the Lavaca River in the southern part of present-day Jackson County. It was also referred to as Lavaca Station or Lavaca Settlement. The settlement originated in 1825 and probably was intended only as a temporary establishment. The community began to take on a more settled aspect, however, as immigrants, unfamiliar with the interior and apprehensive about the Indians, congregated there.

By August 1826, when Green DeWitt appointed James Norton alcalde, the settlement numbered about forty individuals. That August, DeWitt also hired the schooner Dispatch for a term of four years to transport settlers bound for the colony. Old Station was in violation of the Mexican law that prohibited settlement by foreign colonists within ten leagues of the coast, and the political chief refused permission to establish a permanent community on the site.

In May 1827, however, he did sanction the permanent maintenance of a warehouse that the colonists had erected at the mouth of the river. For two years Old Station served as the nucleus of the colony. Concern, however, about the possibility of smuggling and of conflict with the nearby De Léon colonists caused the political chief on August 29, 1827, to order the abandonment of the community. By December 17 the settlement had been dissolved.

1860 - On August 29, 1860, Oliver Loving and John Dawson started a cattle herd of 1,500 toward Denver to feed the gold miners. They crossed the Red River, met the Arkansas, and followed it to Pueblo, Colorado, where the cattle wintered. In the spring Loving sold his cattle for gold and tried to leave for Texas. Since the Civil War had broken out, the Union authorities prevented him from returning to the South until Kit (Christopher) Carson and Lucien Maxwell interceded for him.

1862 - The California Column, a force composed of a few more than 1,500 men, chiefly California volunteer troops, was organized in 1862 under Col. James H. Carleton and moved eastward to discourage invasion of California by the Confederates. An advance party under Lt. Col. Edward E. Eyre arrived at Fort Thorne on the Rio Grande on July 4, 1862, and Carleton and the main body arrived in August. Detachments were sent to pursue the Confederates and reoccupy army posts as far east as Fort Davis, in Jeff Davis County, where the United States flag was raised on August 29, 1862.

After the war many of the California Column elected to remain in New Mexico and West Texas, and several of them played prominent roles in the history of the region. Charles E. Ellis, killed during the Salt War, was one member; Albert J. Fountain and Albert H. French became prominent in El Paso politics of the 1860s. When Texas cattlemen began to settle in the area in the 1870s and 1880s, the men of the California Column lined up with the native Mexicans against the invading Southerners in a number of disturbances.[ https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/qlc01 ]

1874 - Thomas Jefferson Taylor II, merchant, philanthropist, and father of Lady Bird Johnson, was born on August 29, 1874, in Autauga County, Alabama. He moved to Texas in the mid-1890s and opened a store in Karnack, Harrison County. In 1900 he married Minnie Lee Patillo of Alabama; they had two sons and a daughter, Claudia Alta, who married Lyndon Baines Johnson. Taylor amassed considerable wealth by using the profits from his store and other business ventures to advance money to needy farmers at ten percent and by investing heavily in real estate.

Very much a typical successful rural entrepreneur of his times, he was called "Cap'n Taylor" by his business associates. He was probably the largest landowner in Harrison County by the 1930s. In 1934 Taylor donated to the state about two-thirds of the land (some 385 acres) composing Caddo Lake State Park. He was one of his son-in-law's principal financial backers in his first race for Congress in 1937. At one time Taylor owned the land on which the Longhorn Ordnance Works (later the Longhorn Army Ammunition Plant) was constructed during World War II.

1905 - The Galveston Terminal Railroad Company was chartered on August 29, 1905, to provide a terminal at Galveston for the system of railroads then being developed by Benjamin F. Yoakum.

1916 - The Texas State Council of Defense, a branch of the National Council of Defense, established on August 29, 1916, resulted from a request of Secretary of War Newton D. Baker to Governor James E. Ferguson to have a state council formed to meet the national emergency resulting from World War I. The Texas State Council, composed of thirty-eight members appointed by Governor Ferguson. The council placed at the disposal of the nation the entire resources of the state, centralized and coordinated state war work, organized and directed local councils, and sponsored independent state defense activities.

It worked through ten committees: finance, publicity, legal, transportation, coordination, sanitation and medicine, labor, food supply and conservation, military affairs, and state protection. With over 240 county councils and about 15,000 community councils, its organization was at the disposal of each war loan drive and each Red Cross drive. It also sponsored the Texas Division of the Woman's Committee that promoted health, provided recreation, and aided in war drives.

Most groups established Home Guards-organizations to promote patriotism and provide militia support if necessary. The Texas State Council of Defense existed through World War I. Council work was also conducted for six months after the Armistice to render aid to returning soldiers. The last council meeting was on June 7, 1919. [ https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/mdt24 ]

1945 - The Dickson Gun Plant, operated during World War II by the Hughes Tool Company of Houston, produced centrifugally cast gun tubes of various calibers. The plant occupied 124 acres on the north shore of Buffalo Bayou and was constructed between March 1 and December 20, 1942, at a cost of $28,779,133. Operation ended on August 14, 1945, when the chief of artillery production for the United States Army ordered the plant's general manager, John Teer, to stop production. All 1,350 employees were absorbed by the main plant of Hughes Tool Company, which had been seized by the government on September 6, 1944. The army relinquished control on August 29, 1945.

1946 - On August 29, 1946, Odessa Junior College District was established.