This Day In Texas History - September 7

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1841 - James S. Mayfield, lawyer, legislator, and soldier, was born in Tennessee in 1809 and moved to Texas in 1837. In January 1839 he was practicing law in Nacogdoches with J. M. White and later that year was chosen to go with Albert Sidney Johnston to propose to the Cherokee Indians that they leave Texas upon payment for their improvements by the republic.

From February 8, 1841, to September 7, 1841, Mayfield served as secretary of state under Mirabeau B. Lamar, except for the period from April 30 to September 7, when Joseph Waples and Samuel A. Roberts served consecutively in his place.

1865 - The USS Sachem, a screw steamer built in New York City in 1844, was purchased by the United States Navy on September 20, 1861, and saw action along the Texas coast and in the battle of Galveston during the Civil War. The Sachem escorted the USS Monitor from New York to Hampton Roads, Virginia, and was present on March 9, 1862, during the Monitor's famous battle with the former USS Merrimac, rechristened CSS Virginia by the Confederates.

The Sachem then steamed to Galveston on December 29 and was in Galveston harbor when the Confederate forces launched a surprise attack on the Union ships there on January 1, 1863. During the ensuing battle of Galveston the Harriet Lane surrendered, and the Sachem escaped to sea through heavy artillery fire. She reached New Orleans two days later with one propeller shot off. After the two Confederate strongholds of Vicksburg and Port Hudson fell in July, the Sachem returned to Berwick Bay and then in early September joined an expedition assembling in New Orleans to attack Sabine Pass, Texas.

She arrived at Sabine Pass on September 7 and entered the harbor the next day with the Clifton, the Arizona, and the Granite City. Four Union gunboats including the Sachem attacked the Confederate batteries at Fort Griffin, but the Sachem was disabled by a shot through the boiler. Lieutenant Johnson ordered the thirty-pound Parrott gun spiked, the magazine flooded, the signal book destroyed, and the white flag hoisted.

The Confederate steamer Uncle Ben towed the Sachem to Sabine City. On October 17 the Sachem sailed for Orange, Texas, where she served under the Texas Marine Department in support of the Confederate Army. In March 1864 the Sachem was again at Sabine Pass and in April was said to be under the command of John Davisson of Galveston, a blockade runner, but no further record of the ship has been found.

1866 - Brevet Major George W. Smith commanded a detachment of United States Seventeenth Infantry stationed outside Brenham following the Civil War. Friction between federal officials and local citizens resulted in the shooting of two soldiers by local residents and the burning of buildings in Brenham.

Major Smith's soldiers were charged with setting fire and looting several local stores on September 7, 1866. Smith maintained the innocence of his men and refused to turn them over to local officials. After lengthy hearings by both federal and state officials, the issue of guilt remained unresolved. Smith was transferred shortly after this incident to Seguin.

1876 - Joseph Graves Olney, rancher, feudist, and outlaw, son of Joseph and Mary Katherine (Tanner) Olney, was born in Burleson County, Texas. In 1875 he was drawn into the Mason County War by the killing of Moses Baird. During the rest of 1875 and 1876 he was opposed to the "mob" faction of Mason and Llano counties. On September 7, 1876, he engaged in a gunfight with two deputies in which one of them, Samuel Martin, was mortally wounded. Olney fled to New Mexico and established a ranch near Mimbres under the alias of Joe Hill.

By 1879 he was in Arizona, and in July 1880 was noted as having "hurrahed" Maxey, Arizona, after driving a herd of cattle to the San Carlos Indian Reservation. In November he was said to be in Texas. On March 8, 1881, he was present at Camp Thomas, Arizona, when Dick Lloyd was killed.

Contrary to folklore, he took no part in the shooting. Wyatt Earp attempted to link Olney to cattle theft and stage robberies between 1880 and 1882, but there is no evidence to indicate his guilt. In the fall of 1881 Olney moved from his ranch at San Simon to Bowie. There he was killed on December 3, 1884, when his horse fell on him.

1881 - Fort Worth University was chartered as Texas Wesleyan College by the Northern Methodist Church on June 6, 1881, and authorized to maintain the usual curricula and departments of a college and to confer the corresponding degrees. It opened in temporary quarters in Fort Worth on September 7, 1881, and was moved five years later to a site south of the city, where three stone buildings were erected on a ten-acre campus. The institution was affiliated with the Methodist Episcopal Church from 1881 to 1911.

1901 - Until 1900 raw cotton grown in Hill County had to be shipped to the coast and from there to the East for processing. The Itasca Cotton Manufacturing Company was organized at Itasca to meet the need for a local processing facility. It began production with 100 bales of cotton on September 7, 1901, and operated with 6,000 spindles and 200 thirty-six-inch plain Mason looms powered by steam engines.The plant was shut down in 1959. The company dissolved on March 27, 1967.

1936 - Buddy Holly, rock-and-roll pioneer, was born Charles Hardin Holley on September 7, 1936, in Lubbock, Texas. Buddy made his debut at the age of five, when he appeared with his brothers in a talent show in nearby County Line and won five dollars for his rendition of "Down the River of Memories." In February 1957 he formed the Crickets. From this point Holly's career took off. Brunswick Records signed the Crickets. The next few months were busy ones for Holly and his band.

They appeared on television on American Bandstand, The Arthur Murray Dance Party, and The Ed Sullivan Show and on a number of package tours and concert bills with some of the most famous rock-and-rollers of the day. In late December, Holly's second solo single, "Peggy Sue," backed with "Everyday," reached Number 3 on the pop and R&B charts.

The Crickets' second single, "Oh Boy!," backed with "Not Fade Away," was released in October 1957 and sold close to a million copies. Buddie Holley, along with Ritchie Valens, J. P. (the Big Bopper) Richardson died in a plane crash at about 1:50 a.m. on the morning of February 3, 1959.

1944 - San Jacinto Ordnance Depot was a World War II facility located on a 4,954-acre reservation on the Houston Ship Channel fifteen miles south of Houston. Its functions were to receive, store, and inspect all classes of ammunition (other than smoke) destined for shipment through its docks or through the New Orleans port and to receive, inspect, recondition, and store ammunition received from posts, camps, stations, and overseas theaters of operations.

The first commercial vessel was loaded at San Jacinto on September 7, 1944. The depot supplied both the army and the navy; by December 31, 1945, it had received over 329,000,000 pounds of ammunition and had shipped over 208,000,000 pounds. The San Jacinto Ordnance Depot continued to ship army and navy supplies between 1945 and 1950, but plans had been made for phasing out activities as soon as the decreasing need for war materials would allow. In 1959 the depot was declared surplus, and the United States Army Corps of Engineers took custody. In October 1964 all facilities of the San Jacinto Ordnance Depot were sold to the Houston Channel Industrial Corporation for somewhat more than ten million dollars.

1956 - Sam Rayburn Reservoir, formerly known as McGee Bend Reservoir, is dammed eighty miles north of Beaumont. It is fed by the Angelina River and lies in Jasper, Angelina, Sabine, Nacogdoches, and San Augustine counties. Construction at the McGee Bend site began on September 7, 1956, and deliberate impoundment of water began on March 29, 1965.

1965 - Sump'n Else, a television program aimed at a teenaged audience, aired from September 1965 to January 1968. Hosted by local radio personality Ron Chapman, the show debuted on September 7, 1965, and was broadcast after school, from 4:00 P.M. to 5:00 P.M. on WFAA-TV Channel 8, an ABC affiliate, in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. The program dominated the ratings in its time slot.

Dick Clark's American Bandstand didn't air in Dallas-Fort Worth, leaving an opening for a local version. As it was the only live show in the afternoon, Chapman was favored by visiting celebrities for interviews. Jerry Lewis, Dick Clark, Sonny & Cher, Jefferson Airplane, James Brown, Peter & Gordon, Chad & Jeremy, Tom Jones, Paul Revere and the Raiders, and the Monkees were some of those who regularly visited and gave live interviews. Ron Chapman called the Five Americans, a Dallas group whose hit song was "Western Union," “almost a house band” because they played on the show so frequently.