This Day In Texas History - September 1

[joe817]

1835 - The Texas schooner San Felipe, with the help of the steam tug Laura, captured the Mexican revenue vessel Correo Mexicano, which had been sent to Anahuac to restore order. The duel between the San Felipe and the Correo was the first engagement in the Texas Revolution, and the victory of the San Felipe cleared the Texas coast of the Mexican naval presence, thus guaranteeing, at least for a time, the unhampered importation of arms and volunteers for the struggle for independence. [ https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/qts03 ]

1835 - September 1, Stephen F. Austin arrived home from a long imprisonment in Mexico City.

1856 - The Houston Tap and Brazoria Railway Company was chartered on September 1, 1856, to run from Houston to Columbia in Brazoria County, with the right to also construct a line from Columbia into Wharton County. The road was authorized to acquire and took part of its name from the Houston Tap Railroad, which was begun earlier in 1856 by the City of Houston to connect the municipality with the Buffalo Bayou, Brazos and Colorado Railway Company.

The Houston Tap and Brazoria was merged into the Houston and Great Northern on May 8, 1873. The railroad was colloquially referred to as the Columbia Tap. Although line was never extended, it subsequently served as the original Houston entry for both the Galveston, Harrisburg and San Antonio and the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railway companies until these railroads build their own lines into the city. It later was also used by the Sugar Land and the Houston and Brazos Valley Railway Companies to reach Houston.[ https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/eqh13 ]

1862 - The Twenty-fourth Texas Cavalry, also known as the Second Texas Lancers, was organized partially from members of the Twenty-first Texas Cavalry Regiment at Camp Carter near Hempstead on April 16, 1862. The unit consisted of 900 men from Brazos, Comanche, DeWitt, Fayette, Fort Bend, Jasper, Karnes, Lavaca, Live Oak, McCulloch, Milam, Montgomery, Nueces, San Saba, Tyler, Waller, and Washington counties. Company H was originally organized as a spy company for Colonel Carter's Lancers prior to being dismounted.

The Twenty-fourth Texas Cavalry is known by several other names including: Wilkes's Cavalry, Taylor's Cavalry, Swearingen's Cavalry, Neyland's Cavalry, Weldon's Cavalry, Mitchell's Cavalry, Fly's Cavalry, and Jerold's Cavalry. The Twenty-fourth Texas Cavalry was assigned to Garland's Brigade in the Trans-Mississippi Department. The unit was dismounted at El Dorado, Arkansas, on July 28, 1862, by order of General Hindman against much protest and at Camp Holmes near Pine Bluff on September 1, 1862.

Most of the regiment was captured at the battle of Arkansas Post on January 11, 1863. Following their capture, the soldiers were sent to Camp Butler near Springfield, Illinois, and exchanged at Petersburg, Virginia, in April 1863. The Twenty-fourth Texas Cavalry participated in more than thirty-five engagements during the war. In 1863 they participated in the battles of Arkansas Post, Liberty Gap, Chickamauga, Chattanooga, Missionary Ridge, and Ringgold Gap. At Arkansas Post the unit lost fifty-four men and nearly 200 at Chickamauga. Pvt. Fred House recalled that his company "started in with sixty-three men and came out with twenty-eight." [ https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/qkt35 ]

1863 - Maj. Santos Benavides, the highest-ranking Mexican American to serve in the Confederacy, led seventy-nine men of the predominantly Tejano Thirty-third Texas Cavalry across the Rio Grande in pursuit of the bandit Octaviano Zapata. Union agents had recruited Zapata, a former associate of Juan N. Cortina, to lead raids into Texas and thus force Confederate troops to remain in the Rio Grande valley rather than participate in military campaigns in the east.

Zapata was also associated with Edmund J. Davis, who was conducting Northern-sponsored military activities in the vicinity of Brownsville and Matamoros. For these reasons, and because his men often flew the American flag during their raids, Zapata's band was often referred to as the "First Regiment of Union Troops." Benavides caught up with Zapata on September 2 near Mier, Tamaulipas. After a brief exchange of gunfire, the Zapatistas dispersed, leaving ten men dead, including Zapata. Benavides later defended Laredo against Davis's First Texas Cavalry, and arranged for the safe passage of Texas cotton to Matamoros during the Union occupation of Brownsville. He died at his Laredo home in 1891.

1881 - On September 1, 1881, The Southwest Telegraph and Telephone Company began telephone service in Fort Worth with approximately 40 customers. Just three months prior, Dallas received telephone service. Other cities that had phone service by this time were Galveston, Houston, San Antonio and Austin.

1889 - The Waco suspension bridge crossing the Brazos River opened as a free bridge. It had been a toll bridge before being sold to the city of Waco for $1.

1917 - William Ashton Vinson and James A. Elkins founded what was to become one of the largest and most profitable law firms in the world. The firm began in Houston as a small partnership. By 2001 it had grown to more than 780 lawyers, five domestic offices, and four foreign offices. Vinson and Elkins initially did business with the oil and gas industry, which continues to be the firm's mainstay. Over the years the firm has expanded to include business, energy and environmental regulation, international law, real estate, securities, and taxation.

1925 - Wheat oilfield, located in southwestern Loving County surrounding Mentone, Texas, began permanent commercial production on September 1, 1925, when the Pecos Valley Petroleum Company brought in the J. J. Wheat No. 1. Most of the production from the field flowed through the four-inch pipeline laid by Rio Grande Oil Company to the loading rack at Arno.

The railroad delivered it to the Rio Grande refinery in El Paso. he field made Rio Grande a strong independent oil company and several mineral owners wealthy from sixty-five years of royalty checks. Oil production from Wheat and other fields gave the small population of Loving County the highest county per capita income in the country at $34,173. At the end of 1994 there were 184 wells producing oil or gas. There were 235,204 barrels of oil produced, increasing the lifetime amount produced to 22,828,828 barrels of oil.

1927 - Love Field in Dallas, commenced commercial airline service as the first passengers were boarded.

1931 - On this date in 1931, Lecil Travis Martin, "Boxcar Willie" was born in Sterrett in Ellis County. He was a regular on the Grand Ole Opry. Later he was one of the first stars to settle in Branson, Missouri, where he died in 1999.

1961 - The first state sales tax in Texas history went into effect. It was called the Limited Sales and Use Tax.