1853 - Captain Ripley Allen Arnold was killed at Fort Graham on September 6, 1853, by Josephus Murray Steiner, in an exchange of shots. Civil and military authorities disputed jurisdiction in the case, and Steiner was ultimately acquitted by both court-martial and a civil jury. He was represented by future governor Richard Coke and future Confederate general William H. Parsons, who established that Arnold had been procuring United States government horses under questionable circumstances and selling them for his own profit.
Steiner's attorneys claimed that their client had known of this practice and planned to expose it. One witness swore that Arnold had threatened, "I will put him out of the way; he shall not give evidence against me." Arnold was first buried at Fort Graham, then disinterred and removed to Fort Worth, where he was buried in the Pioneer's Rest Cemetery, within a mile of old Fort Worth and near the graves of his two infant daughters. He was said to have received the first Masonic rites ever performed in Fort Worth. Arnold founded Camp Worth, later to be named Fort Worth.
1853 - In March 1853 the Thirty-second Congress authorized a number of surveys of potential routes for a transcontinental railroad. One of these expeditions, commanded by United States Army Lt. Amiel Weeks Whipple, would proceed westward along the thirty-fifth parallel. The Whipple expedition, a wagon train with about seventy men, left Fort Smith, Arkansas, on July 15, 1853.
On September 6, 1853, the wagon train made its first camp in Texas, just beyond the 100th meridian that denoted the western border of Indian Territory. During the journey across the Panhandle, members of the expedition saw plenty of game and shot their first buffalo. They glimpsed their first field of cacti, and on September 17, in a hard day's march of nearly twenty-eight miles, crossed the Llano Estacado, a "level table land without sign of bush or shrub," noted one of the expedition's diarists.
The Whipple expedition laid the foundations for change in the southwest region it explored for more than eight months. Though no transcontinental railroad would follow the thirty-fifth parallel in its entirety, a federal wagon-road program established in 1856 led to improvement of the Whipple trail. Eventually short railroad lines moved along the Marcy-Whipple route near the Canadian River, and the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway followed Whipple's trail for much of the way from Albuquerque to California.
The Whipple expedition served another purpose by expanding scientific knowledge about the mysterious West. Along with those from the other railroad surveys, its reports were published in twelve massive volumes, the Pacific Railroad Reports. The expedition's maps contributed to the production of a map in which the contours of the trans-Mississippi West clearly emerged for the first time. Whipple expedition, and the diaries kept by some of its members, remain fascinating archives, conveying a rich history of a region long since changed and of a way of life forever lost.
1863 - D. B. Martin held rank as brigadier general commanding the Tenth Brigade, Texas State Troops. On September 6, 1863, Martin was appointed “Commandant of Camp of Instruction” for the Northern Subdistrict of Texas in addition to his duties as chief enrolling officer. Martin’s appointment was made by Gen. E. Kirby Smith who described him to Brig. Gen. Henry McCulloch as “an active, energetic officer” and predicted that Martin’s appointment to McCulloch’s command would “work harmoniously and effectively.” On May 2, 1864, Martin was promoted to the rank of colonel and appointed Commandant of Conscripts, District of Texas, a rank and position he held until the end of the war. Martin was paroled in Marshall, Texas, on July 6, 1865.
1864 - Thomas C. Cater became the first commander of Cater's Texas Cavalry battalion with the rank of major. The battalion was organized in mid-1864. Cater's Battalion took part in one skirmish at Palmito Ranch near Brownsville, Texas, on September 6, 1864. Officially, Cater's battalion surrendered at Galveston in June 1865, but it is doubtful that the unit was still in existence at that time.
Most likely, the unit decided not to surrender formally, and there is at least one unofficial source that indicates that a detachment of Cater's Texas Calvary battalion crossed the Rio Grande into Mexico in mid-May 1865 rather than capitulate. Thomas Cater, however, surrendered with the forces of Gen. Edmund Kirby Smith at Galveston. He received parole and was released in Austin on July 27, 1865.
1866 - There were two unrelated railroads in Texas known as the Texas Transportation Company. The first was chartered on September 6, 1866, to construct a railroad along the south side of Buffalo Bayou from Houston to a point near Bray's Bayou. The second Texas Transportation Company, located in San Antonio, began as a private corporation in 1887 and was chartered on September 24, 1897.
In 1932 the company was recognized as a common carrier by the Railroad Commission. The Texas Transportation Company was owned by the Pearl Brewing Company and the approximately 1.3 miles of track served as an electric switching line for Pearl's San Antonio brewery. In the 1990s the railroad had two electric locomotives and remained one of the last freight-hauling electric lines in the United States.
1875 - The Constitutional Convention of 1875 was the result of the determination of the Democrats of Texas to eliminate the radical Constitution of 1869. A strong movement to have the changes in that document made by a legislative joint committee and then submitted to the voters failed in the House of Representatives because of a belief that the electorate would resent such a centralized method of providing a new organic law.
The legislature then called an election in August 1875, in which voters approved a convention to prepare a new constitution and elected three delegates from each of the state's thirty senatorial districts. The time before the constitutional convention was marked by a number of Democratic measures designed to undo many Republican acts previously passed. The centralized school system was weakened. State salaries and expenditures were cut, and the governor was stripped of his powers to appoint some state officers and declare martial law. The convention, presided over by Edward B. Pickett, met in Austin on September 6, 1875, and adjourned on November 24.
Standing committees, each consisting of five to fifteen delegates, were appointed and covered issues including federal relations, suffrage, education, crime, railroads, and public lands. Agricultural and law-oriented interests controlled much of the agenda. In an effort to reverse the perceived Republican excesses of the previous years, restrictions were placed on salaries, expenditures, taxes, and the state debt. State banks were abolished, some activities of corporations and railroads were limited, and term limits were placed on many public offices.
The majority of the convention believed so firmly in economy that they refused to employ a stenographer and would not allow the proceedings of the convention to be published. The document that they prepared provided for short terms of office, low salaries, and limited powers for officials and indicated generally a lack of faith in government. These features were the results of the reaction of the members of the convention to the events of the Civil War and Reconstruction, through which they had just passed.
1881 - By an act of March 30, 1881, an election for location of the University of Texas was ordered, government was vested in a board of eight (later nine) regents, and provisions were made for admission fees, coeducation, and nonsectarian teaching. On September 6, 1881 Austin was chosen for the site of the main university and Galveston for the location of the medical department.
1886 - Daileyville, on Escondido Creek eight miles south of Helena in central Karnes County, was founded by the brothers C. P. and David Dailey. A post office was established at the fork on July 5, 1870. The same year Professor Shives of Goliad built a store and named it Shives Store. For a short while it was operated by J. A. Addington, who called the place Addingtonville. But the name Daileyville prevailed, and by 1884 the community had a population of fifty served by a gristmill and cotton gin.
That same year, however, the local post office was discontinued, and its records were moved to Helena. On September 6, 1886, the Butler-Elder feud erupted at the Daileyville store; it eventually resulted in the death of a Karnes County sheriff and several others. The Dailey brothers operated their store there for another year, then moved to Kenedy Junction in 1887.
1893 - Claire Lee Chennault, aviator and air force general, son of John Stonewall Jackson and Jessie (Lee) Chennault, was born on September 6, 1893, in Commerce, Texas. With the American entry into World War I, he was commissioned a first lieutenant and became a flight instructor. From 1919 to 1923 he was with the border patrol; from 1923 to 1926 he served with the Hawaiian Pursuit Squadron; and from 1930 to 1936 he was a member of the United States Pursuit Development Board and leader of the Air Corps Exhibition Group ("Three Men on a Flying Trapeze").
Deafness and disagreements with his superiors over tactics forced his retirement in 1937. In the same year he became advisor to Chiang Kai-shek and the Chinese Air Force. In 1941 he organized the American Volunteer Group (Flying Tigers) in China. March 1943 Chennault was promoted to major general and to command of the Fourteenth Air Force. His tour was marked by conflicts with the theater commander, Lt. Gen. Joseph Stilwell. Chennault was retired against his will in July 1945, as the defensive tactics he favored were regarded as obsolete by air corps strategists.
He was the author of an autobiography and several works on fighter tactics. Among his many decorations were the Distinguished Flying Cross with cluster; Army and Navy Air Medal with cluster; Chinese Army, Navy, and Air Force Medal; Commander of the British Empire; Legion of Honor; Croix de Guerre with Palm; and Chevalier Polonia Restituta. Monuments were erected to him in Taipei, on the grounds of the Louisiana State Capitol at Baton Rouge, and at Chennault Air Force Base, Lake Charles, Louisiana.
A state historical marker was placed at his birthplace in Commerce, Texas, in 1968. On October 14, 2015, in a collaborative effort with Texas A&M University-Commerce, a second marker at the site was dedicated in two translations of Mandarin. It is the first state historical marker in Texas in Chinese.
1946 - Olin Earl (Tiger) Teague, military hero and Congressman as discharged from the army on September 6, 1946, with the rank of colonel. He took part in the allied landing in Normandy, France, on D-Day in 1944, and in the next six months he became, after Audie Murphy, the most decorated U.S. combat soldier of World War II.
His decorations included three purple hearts, three silver stars, three bronze stars, the Combat Infantryman's Badge, the Army Commendation Ribbon, the Croix de Guerre with palm (France), and the Fourragère (France). His unit (the First Battalion, 314th Infantry Regiment, Seventy-ninth Division) won the Presidential Unit Citation. Wounded six times during this period, Teague spent two years recuperating in army hospitals.
1984 - Ernest Tubb, country singer and bandleader, was born in Crisp, Texas. During his career Ernest Tubb recorded more than 250 songs and sold 30 million records. He was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1965 and the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1970. He owned a record store in Nashville and was known for his generosity to unknown artists who later became famous, including Hank Williams, Hank Snow, and Loretta Lynn.
As a singer, Tubb was unique but not necessarily great, perhaps because of his change in voice from the tenor yodels of Jimmie Rodgers to a granite baritone not always on key. "I don't care whether I hit the right note or not. I'm not looking for perfection of delivery—thousands of singers have that. I'm looking for individuality," he told an interviewer. He was often credited with the electric amplification of instruments, which he was not the first to try, but when he did go electric he soon personified the folksy and rowdy music, known as Texas honky-tonk, that was beginning to sell records and attract people to dance halls in the 1940s. Tubb died on September 6, 1984.