Hello fellow Texans and friends of Texas. Today is Monday, July 21, 2014. • • • • • • =+ -+ -+-+= Texans stepped up campaign to remove tribes in 1839< On July 21, 1839, Texans marched toward the headwaters of the Sabine River along the route taken by the fleeing Indians in the Cherokee War of 1839, the culmination of friction between the Cherokee, Kickapoo and Shawnee Indians and the white settlers in Northeast Texas. The Indians, who had obtained squatters rights to the land from Spanish authorities, were promised title to the land by the Consultation and on Feb. 23, 1836, a treaty was made by Sam Houston and John Forbes, who represented the provisional government. The treaty gave title to the lands between the Angelina and Sabine rivers and northwest of the Old San Antonio Road to the Cherokees and their associated bands. The treaty was tabled by the Texas Senate on Dec. 29, 1836, and was declared null and void by that body on Dec. 16, 1837, despite Houstons insistence that it be ratified. After the discovery, in May 1839, of a letter in the possession of Manuel Flores exposing plans by the Mexican government to enlist the Indians against the Texas settlers, President Mirabeau B. Lamar, supported by popular opinion, determined to expel the East Texas Indians. In July 1839, Kelsey H. Douglass was put in command of approximately 500 troops under Edward Burleson, Willis H. Landrum and Rusk, and was ordered to remove the Indians to Arkansas Territory. The army camped on Council Creek, six miles south of the principal Cherokee village of Chief Bowl and dispatched a commission on July 12 to negotiate for the Indians removal. The Indians agreed to sign a treaty of removal that guaranteed to them the profit from their crops and the cost of the removal. During the next two days they insisted they were willing to leave but refused to sign the treaty because of a clause that would give them an armed escort out of the Republic. A large part of the battle took place on July 24. Most of the Indians fled to Cherokee lands outside the Republic. During the winter a small group under Chief Egg and John Bowles, son of Chief Bowl, attempted to reach Mexico by skirting the fringe of white settlements. Burleson, on a campaign against the Plains Indians, intercepted the Cherokees and attacked them near the mouth of the San Saba River on December 25, 1839. Egg and Bowles and several warriors were killed, and 27 women and children were captured. It was the last important action against the Cherokees in Texas. • • • • • • =+ -+ -+-+= Overcrowding led to poor conditions at prison camp near Tyler< On July 21, 1863, the Trans-Mississippi Department of the Confederacy ordered the establishment of a prison camp at Camp Ford near Tyler and transferred the prisoners of war located at Shreveport to Tyler for confinement. A stockade was built enclosing an area of two to four acres. A large spring ran along the south wall of the stockade and served as a water supply for the prison camp. The prisoners were required to improvise their own shelter, which they fashioned out of logs and other primitive building materials. Until the spring of 1864, morale among the prisoners at Camp Ford was passable, and the ranking federal officers maintained a decent sense of order. Enterprising prisoners made goods for use and sale, including crude furniture, clay dishes, woven baskets, brooms, clothing, and other useful articles. Some of these were traded or sold to local citizens for food and clothes. Living conditions at Camp Ford became deplorable in April 1864, when the population was suddenly tripled by the addition of about 3,000 prisoners captured at the defeat of the Union army in Arkansas and the battles at Mansfield and Pleasant Hill, La. The stockade area was doubled in size in an effort to accommodate this influx. The 4,725 inmates were overcrowded and critically short of food, shelter and clothing. Escapes from Camp Ford were common, but no reliable estimate of the number is available. Postwar accounts of those attempts, some successful, were abundant among the members of the former Camp Ford inmates. After the war the former prisoners leveled charges against the Confederates for mistreatment and failure to provide humane living conditions at Camp Ford. Published accounts present many conflicting stories and viewpoints among the former prisoners. Nothing came of the charges. About 6,000 prisoners were confined at Camp Ford over the two years of its existence, making it the largest Confederate prison camp west of the Mississippi River. Of this number, 286 died there. After the surrender of the Confederate Trans-Mississippi Department, the 1,200 remaining prisoners left Camp Ford, on May 17, 1865, bound for Shreveport. The remains of the prison compound were destroyed in July by a detail of the Tenth Illinois Cavalry. • • • • • • =+ -+ -+-+= Texas native served as nurse during Pearl Harbor attack< On July 21, 2000, Capt. Winnie Gibson, a member of the U.S. Navy Nurse Corps, died in Dallas. Born in Itasca on Dec. 15, 1902, Gibson graduated from Seton Hospital in Austin in May 1923. She worked in civilian hospitals for seven years and became a registered nurse in December 1930. After joining the Navy Nurse Corps in 1930, she served at Naval Hospital, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and Naval Hospital, New York City. In January 1934, she attended the School of Nursing, Graduate School of Medicine at University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia for instruction in anesthesia. In May 1934, she became operating room supervisor and anesthetist at Naval Hospital, New York City. In 1937, she was assigned to the USS Relief. She was at Naval Hospital, Pearl Harbor, on Dec. 7, 1941. She is buried at Restland Memorial Park in Dallas. • • • • • • =+ -+ -+-+= Also on July 21 in Texas: • In 1841, the Peoples Advocate was discontinued by July 21, 1841, and was succeeded by the Galveston National Intelligencer. The paper was a pro-Sam Houston journal published by John OBrian and edited by Charles W. Moore. • In 1901, Homer Garrison, Jr., longtime Texas Ranger chief and director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, was born in Kickapoo in Anderson County. When the Department of Public Safety was founded in 1935, Garrison became the first assistant director. He soon became director of the agency and received numerous honors during the nearly 30 years he served as the head of the state law-enforcement agency. • 1906, Charles M. Ferguson, political leader, county official and civil servant, died in San Antonio. He was born in Houston about 1860 of mixed racial ancestry and was probably born a slave. He graduated from Fisk University at Nashville, Tenn., in 1880. He moved to Fort Bend County and with his brother, Henry Clay Ferguson, began a career of government service. He is buried in Olivewood Cemetery in Houston. • In 1908, the first train arrived in Scotland, 17 miles south of Wichita Falls in eastern Archer County, as the Southwestern Railway built west from Henrietta. A post office opened in the first general store in 1908, and a school began about 1909. In 1920, Scotland began declining when the rail line was abandoned. Oil discoveries of the 1920s in the area seem to have affected Scotland little. Population was 501 at the 2010 census. • In 1921, the property of Cherokee Junior College was sold to the school trustees of San Saba County for $20,000. The building was used as a public school until it burned on Jan. 30, 1945. In 1978, Cherokee High School stood on the site with the entrance to the old college incorporated in the new structure. • In 1937, the second incorporation of Cockrell Hill passed when the population was 459. A first attempt at incorporation in 1925 proved unsuccessful, and the following year a vote to disincorporate was approved. Cockrell Hill, a mile south of Interstate Highway 30, was named for either Wesley Cockrell or his cousin Alexander Cockrell, an early Dallas county pioneer. • In 1943, Gainesville native Charles William Paddock, Olympic sprint champion and newspaper executive, died in an airplane crash near Sitka, Alaska. A as sprinter he captured the gold medal in the 100-meter dash and silver medal in the 200-meter dash at Antwerp, Belgium. He also ran on sprint relay teams in the 1924 games at Paris and Amsterdam. He was vice president and general manager of the Pasadena Star-News in California. He served as lieutenant in World War I and captain during World War II. • In 1981, performer, and researcher Merrill Ellis died in Denton, Born in Cleburne on Dec. 9, 1916, he studied clarinet as a child and received bachelor of arts and master of music degrees from the University of Oklahoma. In 1963, he founded the North Texas State Computer Music Center. His body was cremated at the Roselawn Cemetery in Denton. Instead of funeral services, a concert was held in his honor at the UNT Intermedia School of Music. • • • • • • Texas History Day-by-Day is compiled by retired newspaper journalist Bob Sonderegger (anglebob61@yahoo). A primary source of information is Handbook of Texas Online. Your comments or additions are welcome.
Posted on: Mon, 21 Jul 2014 13:25:43 +0000
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