This Day In Texas History - August 31

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1839 - The schooner San Bernard, a warship of the Navy of the Republic of Texas, was built in Baltimore and christened Scorpion. The ship was sixty-six feet long and 21½ feet across the beam; she displaced 170 tons and had a draft of eight feet. Fully manned, she carried a crew of thirteen officers and sixty-nine sailors and marines. The ship's armament consisted of four twelve-pound medium and one twelve-pound long cannons.

The San Bernard was commissioned at Galveston on August 31, 1839 with Lt. Downing H. Crisp, serving as captain. President Mirabeau B. Lamar ordered his fleet to Yucatán. Crisp sailed the San Bernard from Galveston on December 13, 1841, and arrived at Sisal on January 6, 1842. Once again he patrolled between the Yucatán port and Veracruz and occasionally as far north as Tuxpan; he participated in the capture of the Mexican merchant vessel Progreso on February 6 and the Dolorita and the Dos Amigos in April.

Off Tampico, Crisp and his ship were ordered back to Galveston with dispatches and reports but returned to Commodore Edwin Ward Moore and the rest of the Texas fleet on April 24. At the end of this cruise Crisp returned to Galveston, where, in early September, he reported his ship badly worm-eaten. He was authorized to have her repaired at New Orleans, but no funds were provided to pay for the work.

Later that month the San Bernard was driven ashore by a gale, and for want of $500 required to refloat her and have her repaired she became a deserted, rotting hulk in Galveston harbor. Finally, after repair, the ship was transferred to the United States Navy, on May 11, 1846, but when the United States fleet found no place for her she was sold for $150.

1852 - William Thomas Waggoner, rancher and oilman, was the son of Nancy (Moore) and Daniel Waggoner. He was born on the family stock farm in Hopkins County, Texas, on August 31, 1852. From an early age, Tom Waggoner determined to follow his father's footsteps and "run the best cow outfit" in the country. In 1870 the Waggoners drove a herd of cattle to market in Abilene, Kansas, and netted the profit that became the foundation of the Waggoner Ranch, operated by D. Waggoner and Son.

Tom Waggoner married Ella Halsell, a younger sister of his stepmother, in 1877; they had two sons and a daughter. By 1879 Waggoner was manager of the ranch's China Creek headquarters. Over the next two decades he gradually extended his holdings, and by 1900 he was able to give each of his children 90,000 acres of land and 10,000 head of cattle. Oil was discovered on his ranch in 1903, and development after 1911 resulted in the Waggoner Refinery and other oil interests, which increased his fortune to one of the largest in the Southwest.

About 1904 Waggoner moved to Fort Worth, where he was a director of the First National Bank and the builder of two office buildings, but he continued to divide his time between his home at Decatur, the ranch in Wilbarger County, and Fort Worth. In 1931 he had the old home at Decatur restored. At about the same time, at his farm between Fort Worth and Dallas, he built Arlington Downs Racetrack.

It was largely through his efforts and backing that the 1933 Texas parimutuel racing bill was passed and signed into law by Governor Miriam A. Ferguson. He died in Fort Worth from a second stroke on December 11, 1934, and was buried there near the grave of his longtime friend and neighbor, Samuel Burk Burnett.

1861 - When the Civil War erupted,Denman William Shannon, lawyer wasted little time. He formed the Grimes County Rangers at Navasota in Grimes County on August 19, 1861, for a length of service of the entire war. Riding 200 miles to San Antonio, the unit arrived on August 31, 1861 where they were sworn in at the Plaza House and incorporated as Company C into the Fifth Texas Cavalry with Shannon placed as captain of the company. Soon the unit joined with Gen. Henry H. Sibley on an expedition to conquer New Mexico.

By the end of 1865, Shannon had returned to Grimes County and resumed his law practice in Navasota. However, times proved difficult. Although he had twenty acres and a horse in 1865, by 1866 he had sold his horse, and by 1867 he was reduced to only six acres. Records show his continued habitation in Navasota until 1871. After that he practiced law in Houston and Dallas. The date of his death is not known, but the best evidence is that he was killed by Indians near Wichita Falls in 1879, while on a surveying expedition. [ https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fsh72 ]

1923 - What is believed to be the last legal hanging in Texas occurred in Angleton on August 31, 1923.

1943 - The University of Texas Dental Branch at Houston, located in the Texas Medical Center, has been a component of the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston since October 1972. It began as Texas Dental College, which was founded on February 11, 1905, by a small group of businessmen, physicians, and dentists in Houston. It was a proprietary school until August 31, 1943, when it officially became part of the University of Texas.

1944 - During World War II Cuero Field, located at Cuero Municipal Airport, two miles west of Cuero in DeWitt County, was a United States Army Air Forces training field. It was approved by the government as a primary training facility in January 1941 and established on February 6, 1941. All instructors and mechanics were civilian, though the army rigidly supervised the training. The nine-week course included classes in meteorology, navigation, aircraft identification, and aircraft engines.

Training included five hours on the Link simulation trainer and sixty-five hours' actual flying time. The capacity was 290 cadets. Thousands of pilots who graduated from Cuero Field went on to serve in World War II. The commanding officers of Cuero Field, until the date of its deactivation on August 31, 1944, were Capt. James H. Price and majors Shepler W. Fitzgerald and Timothy F. O'Keefe. After the school closed, the government retained one hangar to repair and service army planes, and Brayton, an aviation pioneer, moved to Houston to become president of Red Arrow Freight Lines.

1946 - Camp Bowie was established at Brownwood in September 1940 as an infantry and artillery training center for the Thirty-sixth Infantry Division, Texas National Guard, and was named in honor of the Texas patriot James Bowie. It was the first major defense construction project in Texas in World War II.

By October 1942 Camp Bowie had expanded from an original 2,000 acres to a total of 120,000 acres and was occupied, in addition to the Thirty-sixth Division, by the 113th Cavalry of the Iowa National Guard, the Eighth Army Corps with its headquarters, and troops of the Third Army under Gen. Walter Krueger. A rehabilitation center to serve all posts and camps of the Eighth Service Command was set up in January 1942, and in August 1943 a prisoner of war camp with a capacity of 3,000 prisoners was established within the post . Camp Bowie was declared surplus by a War Department order, effective August 31, 1946.

1947 - Jonathan Mayhew (Skinny) Wainwright, army officer, entered West Point, graduated in 1906, and took his first troop command with a cavalry unit on the Texas border. During his forty-five years of army service he was stationed at Texas forts in the cavalry at various times. He was promoted through the grades to brigadier general by 1938. In October 1940 he was assigned to duty in the Philippines under the command of Gen. Douglas MacArthur.

When MacArthur left Bataan, the command was turned over to Lieutenant General Wainwright, who was taken prisoner by the Japanese at the surrender of Corregidor. Wainwright spent 3½ years in Japanese prison camps. He returned to the United States at the end of World War II, at which time he was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor and made a full general in September 1945.

He was assigned command of the Fourth Army at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas, in January 1946, and retired from that command on August 31, 1947. Having formed an affection for Texas during his tours of duty there, he decided to make it his home. On September 2, 1953, Wainwright died at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio. He was buried with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery.

1965 - As of August 31, 1965, the public school fund had received a total of $599,534,721 from mineral-lease bonuses, rentals, and royalties. This can be broken down as follows: bonuses, rentals, and royalties from minerals other than oil and gas, totaling $36,862,101; oil and gas lease bonuses from submerged lands, totaling $212,645,651, and on-shore lands (including riverbeds), amounting to $46,019,750; oil and gas lease rentals from submerged lands, totaling $26,466,174, and on-shore lands (including riverbeds), equaling $17,980,129; oil and gas lease royalties from submerged lands totaling $122,211,488, and on-shore lands, $137,349,428.

As of the same date the University of Texas permanent fund had received a total of $449,177,887 from the sale of the original fifty leagues and mineral-lease bonuses, royalties, and rentals derived from the 2,104,909 acres of West Texas lands granted by the Constitution of 1876 and the legislature in 1883.

1968 - On August 31, 1968, Dr. Michael E. DeBakey and his team performed the first simultaneous multi-organ transplant, removing two kidneys, a lung, and a heart from one donor and implanting them into four different patients.