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Documents of Texas History
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Texas History Timeline

Click on Year to See Event

1528 1540 1541 1554 1687 1690 1693 1716
1718 1731 1766 1786 1793 1797 1798 1806
1807 1809 1818 1819 1820 1821 1822 1824
1826 1829 1830 1832 1833 1834 1835 1836
1837 1838 1839 1840 1842 1843 1844 1845
1846 1847 1848 1849 1850 1851 1852 1853
1854 1855 1856 1857 1858 1859 1860 1861
1862 1863 1864 1865 1867 1868 1869 1870
1871 1872 1873 1874 1875 1876 1877 1878
1879 1880 1881 1882 1883 1886 1888 1889
1890 1891 1893 1894 1895 1896 1897 1898
1899 1900 1901 1902 1903 1905 1906 1907
1908 1909 1910 1911 1912 1913 1914 1915
1917 1918 1920 1922 1923 1924 1925 1927
1928 1929 1930 1931 1932 1933 1934 1935
1936 1937 1938 1941 1942 1943 1944 1945
1947 1948 1949 1952 1953 1955 1956 1957
1958 1959 1960 1961 1962 1963 1964 1965
1966 1967 1968 1969 1971 1972 1973 1974
1975 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1989 1990
1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998
1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006

 

1528 November 6 Cabeza de Vaca is shipwrecked near Galveston. He begins an incredible journey that marks the white man's first exploration of Texas.
1540 April 22 The Coronado Expedition sets out for Texas in search of the seven cities of Cibola.
1541 May 23 Coronado gives thanks for having found friendly Indians in the Palo Duro Canyon; Texas has a Thanksgiving 79 years before the Pilgrims.
1554 September 22 Fourteen years after setting out for Texas, Coronado dies. He is one of the first white men to explore Texas, and leader of one of 20 Spanish explorations of the area.
1687 March 20 La Salle, a French explorer, lands in Texas instead of finding the mouth of the Mississippi.
1690 May 24 The Mission San Francisco de los Tejas is founded in east Texas.
1693 May 3 Don Gregorio de Salinas Varona leads an expedition into Texas, and reports that the land is unsuitable for settlement; a year later Spain abandons the Texas frontier.
1716 June 24 To celebrate the feast of St. John, soldiers of the Ramón expedition stage the first horse race in Texas.
TOP July 2 The Spanish build a presidio west of the Neches River. It marks the beginning of continuous settlement in the province of Texas.
1718 May 1 The Mission San Antonio de Valero (the Alamo) is founded.
1731 March 5 The Mission San Francisco de Ia Espada is established at San Antonio.
  March 9 Canary Islanders arrive in San Antonio to start a new life, and leave a grand imprint on Texas.
1766 September 4 The first recorded hurricane strikes the Texas coast near Galveston.
1786 August 17 David Crockett is born in Tennessee.
1793 March 2 Sam Houston is born in Virginia.
  November 3 Stephen F Austin is born in Virginia.
1797 July 17 Philip Nolan receives a passport to go to Mexican Texas.
1798 July 23 "Mother of Texas" Jane Wilkinson Long is born in Maryland.
TOP August 16 Mirabeau B. Lamar is born in Georgia.
1806 October 28 Juan Seguin is born in Spanish Texas.
1807 February 20 James Butler Bonham is born in South Carolina.
1809 August 9 William Barret Travis is born in South Carolina.
1818 September 12 A hurricane wrecks the fleet of pirate Jean Lafitte in Galveston.
1819 January25 Anna Raguet is born in Pennsylvania. She becomes Sam Houston's first great love in Texas.
  June 8 The Long Expedition crosses the Sabine to declare a "government" in Texas.
1820 December 23 Moses Austin seeks permission to colonize a part of Mexican Texas.
1821 January 17 The Mexican government gives Austin permission to settle 300 families in Texas.
  May 4 Jean Lafitte abandons Galveston.
  June 10 Moses Austin dies in Missouri before he can start his Texas colonization plan.
TOP October 13 Jacob Brodbeck is born in Wurttemberg, Germany. Later, as a Texan, he invents an airplane 40 years before the Wright Brothers.
  December 21 Jane Long gives birth to the first Anglo child born in Texas, a girl named Mary James.
1822 January 24 Jared E. Groce arrives on the banks of the Brazos to set up a home. Among his belongings is a supply of cottonseed - the first in Texas.
1824 July 10 Richard King, founder of the King Ranch, is born in New York.
1826 December 16 The Fredonian Rebellion begins in Nacogdoches.
1829 January 27 The Matagorda Colony is founded.
1830 April 6 Mexico enacts a law to stop American immigration to Texas. It is a prime seed that leads to the revolution six years later.
TOP September 30 Jim Bowie becomes a Mexican citizen.
1832 June 11 Lucy Pickens-"Lady Lucy, Queen of the Confederacy"-is born in Tennessee.
  June 13 The Turtle Bayou Resolutions, documents leading to the revolution of 1836, are adopted.
  June 26 The Battle of Velasco results in the first bloodshed of the revolution.
  November 1 Lyne Barret is born. He is the first to hit oil in Texas.
TOP December 2 Sam Houston first sets foot on Texas soil, at the Jonesboro Crossing on the Red River.
1833 April 1 Santa Anna is inaugurated president of Mexico.
  July 8 Stephen Austin reaches Mexico City with a plan to separate Texas from the state of Coahuila
1834 January 3 Austin is arrested for trying to start a revolution against Mexico.
1835 May 17 A. B. Dodson marries Sarah Bradley. She later gives him a - flag-a red, white and blue banner with a lone star - for his army company.
  June 30 Mexicans put down an uprising of colonists at Anahuac.
  October 2 The first shots of the revolution are fired at Gonzales.
  October 7 Greenberry Logan, a free Negro, joins the Texas army and later fights in the battle at Coocepci6n and is wounded in the siege of the Bexar.
TOP October 10 Gail Borden Jr. begins publishing the Telegraph and Texas Register.
  November 25 The Texas navy is created.
  December 4 Ben Milam and his men storm the Bexar to drive out the Mexican army.
1836 February 8 David Crockett and some of his "Tennessee boys" arrive at the Alamo.
  February 11 Col. James Neill leaves the Alamo; Travis takes command.
  February 29 William Oury is sent out of the Alamo with a plea for help from General Houston. (Oury dies in bed 50 years later.)
TOP March 1 Thirty-two men from Gonzales fight their way into the Alamo. No other volunteers come.
  March 2 The Texas Declaration of Independence is adopted at Washington-on-the-Brazos.
  March 3 Moses Rose chooses to leave the Alamo rather than stay and fight.
  March 4 Sam Houston is elected commander-in-chief of the Texas army.
  March 5 Charles Goodnight, trail driver, is born in Illinois.
  March 6 The Alamo falls.
  March 10 Sam Carson arrives late to sign the Declaration of Independence. A week later he loses by six votes becoming the president of Texas.
  March 11 Sam Houston assumes command of the army at Gonzales.
TOP March 13 Gonzales is burned as the Runaway Scrape begins.
  March 19 James Walker Fannin and his men lose the Battle of Coleto Creek.
  March 27 The Texas prisoners from Coleto Creek are massacred at Goliad.
  March 29 San Felipe is burned to prevent its falling into the hands of the Mexican army.
  April 15 Sam Houston turns his army toward San Jacinto.
  April 19 Houston appeals for help to fight the war.
  April 21 The Texans beat the Mexican army at San Jacinto.
TOP May 14 Santa Anna and President David Burnet sign the Treaty of Velasco.
  May 19 Nine-year-old Cynthia Ann Parker is captured by Indians; it will be 24 years before her rescue.
  June 3 Land-based Texas Rangers capture Mexican ships, earning the nickname "Horse Marines."
  August 26 The Allen Brothers buy the site for "Houston."
  October 22 Sam Houston is inaugurated president of the republic
  November 15 Texas patriot Lorenzo de Zavalla dies.
  December 27 Stephen F. Austin dies.
1837 January 26 The steamship Laura successfully navigates the Buffalo Bayou but misses the new city of Houston, due to dense vegetation.
  April 26 John J. Audubon comes to Texas to study bird-life and to paint birds for his famous work.
  October 10 Lt. A.H. Miles, who captured Santa Anna at San Jacinto, is killed by Indians.
  November 10 Ten Rangers and fifty Indians die in the Battle of Stone Houses in Archer County.
1838 October 20 Moses Lapham, who helped destroy Vince's Bridge at San Jacinto to cut off Mexican escape, is killed by Indians.
1839 January 16 The Texas senate votes to buy captured Mexican ships from the French to start a new navy.
  January 25 The Republic of Texas adopts its new flag.
TOP July 16 Chief Bowles of the Cherokee is killed at the Battle of the Neches
  August 29 The Colt-Walker pistol is patented. (date under review)
1840 March 19 Peace talks between the Comanches and the Texas government turn into a fight at the Council House in San Antonio.
  May 9 Sam Houston marries Margaret Lea.
  June 24 Col. Henry Karnes calls for a volunteer army to fight Indians, Mexicans and lawless elements on the frontier.
  August 12 The Battle of Plumb Creek near Lockhart sees the white man defeat the Comanche, pushing the Indians farther to the west.
1842 February 11 The crew of the San Antonio stages the republic's first, and only, mutiny
TOP March 2 Robert Potter, signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence, is murdered in the Regulator-Moderator War.
  April 20 Germans form a society to aid German immigration to Texas.
  September 18 Forty-two people are massacred by Indians at the Battle of Salado Creek.
  December 31 The Archives War: Austin citizens keep the state's papers from being moved to Houston.
1843 March 25 The prisoners of the Mier Expedition draw white and black beans from a pot; the 17 who draw black beans are executed by the Mexicans.
TOP December 28 Rebecca Cummings, who is engaged to William Travis when he goes away to the Alamo fight, marries another man, David Portis.
1844 August 15 President Houston calls out the militia to put down the Regulator-Moderator War.
  September 3 Henri de Castro founds Castroville.
  December 9 Anson Jones takes the oath of office as the last president of the Republic of Texas.
1845 February 1 Baylor University is founded.
  March 14 Prince Carl of Solms-Braunfels purchases the land that will become New Braunfels.
  December 29 Texas enters the union as the 28th state.
1846 February 19 The Republic of Texas is officially declared at an end.
  April 25 A border skirmish near Brownsville marks the beginning of the U.S. war with Mexico.
TOP May 8 The Battle of Palo Alto, the first major fight of the Mexican War, results in a U.S. victory.
  May 9 Gen. Zachary Taylor defeats the Mexicans at Resaca de Ia Palma.
  May 12 Norris Cuney, one of the most prominent black men in Texas, is born a slave in Waller County.
  September 21 Ranger Capt. Robert Gillespie dies leading a charge on the Bishop's Palace in Monterrey during the Mexican War.
1847 January 19 Nuns of the Ursuline order arrive in Texas.
TOP April 18 Gen. Winfield Scott and Santa Anna battle at Sierra Gorda. The American victors capture Santa Anna's wooden leg
1848 February 2 The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo is signed, ending the Mexican-American War.
  February 5 Belle Starr, the Texas bandit queen, is born in Missouri.
1849 June 6 Fort Worth is founded.
  August 11 Gov. George Wood sends three companies of Rangers to Corpus Christi to guard settlers from Goliad to the Rio Grande against Indian attacks.
  October 1 William Sansom becomes the first prisoner at the Huntsville state prison.
1850 February 10 Texas's first railroad, the Buffalo Bayou, Brazos and Colorado, is chartered.
  November 25 Texas accepts the Compromise of 1850, and gets $10 million in exchange for giving up a claim that stretches all the way to California.
1851 November 14 Fort Phantom Hill is established in Jones County to protect the settlers.
1852 December 24 The General Sherman goes into service as the first locomotive in Texas.
1853 November 23 James Henderson becomes governor and serves just 28 days
1854 January11 Fort Bliss is established to protect El Paso from the Indians.
  November 19 Sam Houston is baptized in a creek near Independence.
TOP December 3 One hundred Polish families arrive in Galveston, an event marking the start of major Polish immigration to Texas.
  December 10 Richard King marries Henrietta Chamberlain; together they make the King Ranch great.
1855 February 7 Charles Siringo, cowboy writer, is born near Matagorda.
  October 30 Prize saddle-maker Paul Bauer, the son of German immigrants, is born in Yorktown, Texas.
1856 April 29 The first camels arrive in Texas for use by the army in the West.
1857 March 3 Congress authorizes the Butterfield Mail and Stage Line
TOP July 9 The first mail leaves San Antonio for San Diego, marking the start of the first successful transcontinental mail route.
1858 January 9 Anson Jones, last president of the Republic of Texas, shoots himself.
1859 February l The Menger Hotel opens in San Antonio.
  June 5 Herman Lehmann is born in Loyal Valley. He is later captured by Apaches and adopted by them.
  July 13 An arrest in Brownsville starts the Cortina Wars.
  August 3 The Comanches are moved out of Texas and into Indian Territory.
  December 19 Mirabeau B. Lamar dies. He served as vice-president and president of the republic and is called the Father of Texas Education.
1860 March 12 Columbus "Dad" Joiner, who finds the East Texas Oil Field, is born in Alabama.
TOP May 7 Julius Real, who stages the legislative Whiskey Rebellion of 1911 to keep Texas wet, is born in the hill country.
  June 28 Southern Democrats nominate John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky for President.
  August 12 The first child born in the Governor's Mansion is Temple Houston.
1861 January21 Gov. Sam Houston submits the secession resolution to the legislature.
  February 1 The ordinance of secession passes.
  February 13 Robert E. Lee leaves Fort Mason on his way back to Virginia, to lead the South in the Civil War.
  February 16 Local secessionists in San Antonio force Gen. David Twiggs to surrender all U.S. equipment.
TOP April 13 Fort Sumter is fired upon; the Civil War begins.
  May 29 Henry Robinson, famed Indian fighter, is killed near Uvalde
  August 3 The U.S.S. South Carolina fires on Galveston.
  September 9 Col. Benjamin Terry organizes his "Texas Rangers."
  December 14 H. H. Sibley takes command of the "Army of New Mexico" at Fort Bliss and prepares for his ill fated attempt to conquer the Southwest for the Confederacy.
  December 17 Col. Ben Terry is killed leading a Rebel charge against the Union in Kentucky.
1862

March 7

 John Bell Hood assumes command of the "Texas Brigade."
  April 6 Albert Sidney Johnston is killed in battle at Shiloh, Tennessee.
TOP May 5 Cinco de Mayo; the Mexicans rout the French at Puebla.
  August 10 Vengeful Confederates attack German-American loyalists on the banks of the Nueces; 40 die.
  September 11 William Sydney Porter ("0'Henry"), who lives and writes for a time in Texas, is born in North Carolina.
  October The Great Gainesville Hanging. Nineteen men thought to be Union sympathizers are strung up on various days throughout the month in the aftermath of an incident known as the Peace Party Conspiracy.
  October 26 Federal gunboats blockade Pass Cavallo and take Indianola
  November 29 John Bankhead Magruder arrives in Texas to take command of the Confederate forces.
1863 January 1 The Confederates win the Battle of Galveston.
TOP July 1 Hood's Texas Brigade joins in the fighting at Gettysburg.
  July 26 Sam Houston dies at his home in Huntsville.
  September 7 Federal gunboats arrive off the bar at Sabine Pass where Dick Dowling and his men are waiting.
  October 31 Notorious outlaw "Black Jack" Ketchum is born in San Saba County.
  November 5 Pendleton Murrah becomes governor when Francis Lubbock resigns the office to fight the Yanks.
  November 13 Chipita Rodriguez, the only woman ever legally hanged in Texas, meets her Maker.
1864 April 8 Confederate forces blunt Union attempts to invade Texas, at the Battle of Mansfield.
TOP May 6 Texans rally behind Gen. Robert E. Lee in the Wilderness Campaign.
  June 25 "Rip" Ford's Confederates win one at Las Rucias. A year later he wins the last battle of the Civil War after the war ends.
  November 26 Kit Carson and his men defeat a band of Kiowas and Comanches in a battle at Adobe Walls.
1865 January 8 Indians win a battle at Dove Creek.
  June 11 Bandits try to rob the state treasury in Austin.
TOP June 19 Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger arrives in Galveston with word that slavery has been abolished.
  August 8 George Armstrong Custer leaves for a tour of duty in Texas.
  October 23 Federal forces reoccupy Fort McIntosh at Laredo.
  December 18 The Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is ratified; slavery is abolished.
1867 June 22 This is the worst single day of a yellow fever epidemic that sweeps coastal Texas in 1867.
  September 23 John A. Lomax, the Texas collector of folk music, is born in Mississippi. On the same day, William Marsh Rice is murdered in New York. His will sets up Rice University in Houston.
TOP September 25 Oliver Loving, the dean of Texas trail drivers, dies after an attack by Indians.
1868 March 4 Jesse Chisholm, famous trailblazer, dies of food poisoning in Oklahoma.
  November 24 Scott Joplin, of ragtime music fame, is born in Texarkana.
1869 September 17 Roy Aldrich, who serves longer as a Texas Ranger than any other man, is born in Illinois.
  October 16 A.D. Topperwein is born in Boerne. He is in the Texas Sports Hall of Fame as the greatest trick shooter of his day.
  November 21 William Henry "Alfalfa Bill" Murray, who later becomes governor of Oklahoma, is born in Toadsuck, Texas.
1870 January 8 Edmund Davis becomes the first Republican governor of Texas.
TOP July 12 The Sixth Cavalry engages the Kiowas in the battle of the Little Wichita.
1871 January 2 Boxing promoter "Tex" Rickard is born in Kansas City.
  April 17 Texas A&M is created.
  May 18 Satanta, Big Tree, and their warriors massacre seven men from a wagon train at Salt Creek.
  August 31 Gov. Jim Ferguson, who is the "Pa" of "Ma and Pa Ferguson" fame, is born in Bell County.
1872 February 29 Henry Lindsley is born. He becomes mayor of Dallas and the first national commander of the American Legion.
TOP April 20 An Indian battle at Howard's Well leads to the government's cancellation of hunting permits for Indians.
  December 8 Architect Nicholas Clayton comes to Galveston and builds it into a city of beautiful homes.
  December 12 John "Texas Jack" Omohundro goes to Chicago to star with Buffalo Bill in the Wild West Show.
1873 September 16 R. L. More is born in Decatur. He amasses the world's largest private collection of bird eggs in his lifetime.
1874 January 11 Gail Borden dies. He had published newspapers during the Texas Revolution, surveyed the wilderness, and condensed milk.
TOP January 17 Carpetbagger rule in Texas ends with the election of a Democratic government.
  April 5 Houston business tycoon Jesse Jones is born in Tennessee.
  May 2 John B. Jones is commissioned major in the Texas Rangers' Frontier Battalion.
  June 27 The Indians lose the second battle of Adobe Walls.
  August 30 The first fight of the Red River Indian War takes place in Palo Duro Canyon.
 

September 12

 The battle of "Buffalo Waller" begins in Hemphill County; six men hold off over 100 Indians for three days.

 

TOP

September 14

 The Sixth Cavalry arrives just in time to scare off Indians attacking Lyman's wagon train.
  September 28 Gen. Ronald MacKenzie led his men in one of the last major Indian battles in Texas, at Palo Duro Canyon.
  November 24 J.F Glidden patents barbed wire.
  December 26 Joe McComb stages the first commercial buffalo hunt in Texas.
1875 January 23 Molly Armstrong, the first woman optometrist in Texas, is born in Bell County.
  June 13 "Ma" Ferguson is born in Bell County. She later becomes first lady once and governor twice.
  June 14 Jefferson Davis is invited to serve as the first president of Texas A&M, but he declines.
TOP September 16 A hurricane destroys the city of Indianola.
1876 February 15 The Texas Constitution is adopted.
  June 22 Santa Anna dies of old age in Mexico City.
  September 27 Former Civil War Gen. Braxton Bragg drops dead as he crosses a street in Galveston.
  October 4 Texas A&M opens with 40 students and a faculty of six men.
  November 7 Mason County's "Hoodoo War" ends with the arrest of two men.
1877 February16 The first train to San Antonio arrives.
TOP June 18 Charles Goodnight and John Adair form the "J.A" Ranch, the first in the Panhandle.
  December 20 Sam Bass robs the Fort Worth-Cleburne stage.
1878 March 31 World Heavyweight Champion Jack Johnson is born in Galveston.
  July 21 Sam Bass is killed by Texas Rangers at Round Rock on his 27th birthday.
  October 11 Bill Longley, killer of at least 32 people, is hanged at Giddings.
1879 December 11 Fort Worth leading citizen Amon Carter is born in Crafton.
1880 September 13 Carlysle Raht, who fights Pancho Villa and later works on the atom bomb, is born in Gainesville.
1881 March 15 Abilene is born, with completion of the Texas-Pacific Railroad.
TOP May 31 Fort Griffin, headquarters for buffalo skinners in Shackelford County, is abandoned.
  July 11 William Buckley is born at Washington-on-the-Brazos. His son James becomes a senator from New York, and his son William Jr. is famous as a writer, magazine editor and television talk show host.
  December 15 America's second transcontinental railroad links up at Sierra Blanca in Hudspeth County.
1882 January 2 Jay Gould predicts the "end of Jefferson" after the town refuses to give his railroad right-of-way.
TOP January 6 Longtime Congressman and Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn is born in Tennessee.
  July 25 Judge Roy Bean opens his first saloon west of the Pecos.
  November 17 The cornerstone is laid for the first building at the University of Texas in Austin.
  November 28 A labor-union-called "holiday" on the Galveston docks protesting black laborers begins a segregation battle that lasts for years.
  December 21 Edith Wilmans is born. She is elected to the Texas House in 1922, the first woman to serve in that capacity.
1883 March 24 The first cowboy strike in Texas begins in the Panhandle.
TOP July 4 The first recorded rodeo in Texas is held at Pecos.
  September 15 The organizational session of the new University of Texas is attended by 221 students.
  November 12 Cattlemen meet in Gainesville to work out an end to the Fence-Cutting War.
1886 March 21 A shoot-out at Tascosa leaves four dead.
1888 March 20 Gov. Coke Stevenson is born in Mason County.
  April 4 Baseball great Tris Speaker is born in Hubbard.
  May 16 The state capitol is dedicated.
TOP July 2 The Jaybird-Woodpecker feud starts in Fort Bend County.
  September 26 Texas historian and man of letters J. Frank Dobie is born in Live Oak County.
1889 November 7 The Texas Hereford Association is organized in San Antonio.
1890 January 30 Louis Jordan is born in Fredericksburg. He becomes an All-American football player and the first officer killed in World War I.
  February 4 Fletcher Stockdale, acting governor for 34 days in the aftermath of the Civil War, dies in Cuero.
  March 11 Texas governor and U.S. senator W. Lee O'Daniel is born in Ohio.
  May 15 Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Katherine Anne Porter is born at Indian Creek.
TOP September 6 Gen. Claire Chennault, of World War II "Flying Tigers" fame, is born at Commerce.
  October 14 Thirty-fourth U.S. President, Dwight David Eisenhower, is born in Denison.
1891 January 13 Chemist Louis Weisberg, who helps develop the atomic bomb, is born in Waco.
  January 20 James Stephen Hogg becomes the first native-born governor of Texas.
1892 April 22 The first class graduates from the University of Texas Medical School in Galveston.
TOP June 28 The first battleship Texas is launched.
1893 March 23 SMU chancellor and president Umphrey Lee is born in Indiana.
  July 6 Kearie Lee Berry is born in Denton County. He becomes a great athlete at the University of Texas and a hero of the Bataan Death March of World War II.
1894 March 16 Killer John Wesley Hardin is given a full pardon while serving a sentence at the Huntsville State Prison.
  June 9 Oil is discovered in Corsicana.
1895 February 8 Hollywood film director King Vidor is born in Galveston.
  February 14 A rare Gulf Coast snowstorm dumps up to 20 inches of snow on the Houston-Galveston area.
1896 February 21 Judge Roy Bean stages the Fitzsimmons-Maher heavy weight title fight on a Rio Grande island.
TOP March 29 Robert J. Kleberg Jr., longtime manager of the King Ranch, is born in Corpus Christi.
  April 27 Baseball great Rogers Hornsby is born in Runnels County.
  May 25 The first meeting of the Daughters of the Confederacy in Texas is held.
  September 15 A stunt to wreck two trains near Waco results in the death of two spectators.
  December30 Homer Norton is born in Alabama. He becomes the leading football coach in Texas A&M history
1897 January 15 John Duval, the last survivor of Fannin's army, dies in Fort Worth.
TOP February 6 The Dalton Gang comes to the end of the trail.
  July 3 Blues singer Blind Lemon Jefferson is born near Wortham.
1898 May 15 Teddy Roosevelt arrives in San Antonio to train the Rough Riders.
  May 30 The Rough Riders leave San Antonio to charge up San Juan Hill.
  September 5 Emma Seelye, the woman spy of the Confederacy, dies at La Porte.
  October 21 Stanley Walker is born in Lampasas. He becomes a legendary New York City newspaper editor.
TOP December 6 Ben Boynton is born in Waco. He becomes the first native Texan to achieve All-American football status.
1899 January 7 Legendary Texas Ranger Bigfoot Wallace dies in Frio County.
  February 12 The temperature drops to -23°F in Tulia, the coldest day on record for Texas.
  June 17-28 A severe flood on the Brazos kills nearly 300.
  October 5 Ned Green drives the first car in Texas. It takes five hours to make the trip from Dallas to Terrell, a 6-mph average.
1900 May 26 The famous Frontier Battalion of the Texas Rangers is dissolved.
TOP September 8 The Great Galveston Storm destroys half the city and kills thousands.
1901 January 10 The Lucas Gusher hits at Spindletop; America enters the Oil Age.
  January 14 Clara Driscoll writes the San Antonio Express in a plea to save the Alamo.
  March 7 The bluebonnet is named the state flower.
  July 5 John Henry Kirby charters his lumber company.
1902 October 16 Carry Nation comes to the University of Texas to drive out the demon rum.
TOP October 27 Galveston begins construction of the seawall.
1903 May 12 "The Eyes of Texas" is performed for the first time, in a UT minstrel show.
  November 9 John Nance Garner walks into Congress for the first time. Thirty years later he becomes FDR's vice-president.
1905 January 7 The Humble Oil Field is discovered.
  January 12 Singer and film actor Tex Ritter is born in Panola County.
  August 20 Jack Teagarden, outstanding trombone player of the Big Band Era, is born in Vernon.
  September 19 Leon Jaworski is born in Waco. He becomes president of the American Bar Association and the Watergate chief prosecutor.
TOP December 24 Howard R. Hughes Jr. is born in Houston.
1906 January 22 Author Robert E. Howard is born in Peaster, Texas. His works include, "Conan the Cimmerian," for which he is internationally famous, and a number of Texas-based characters and stories, such as the larger-than-life Breckenridge Elkins. 
  May 2 Henry Bullock is born in North Carolina. He becomes the first black professor of arts and sciences at the University of Texas.
  August 21 Capt. Bill McDonald of the Rangers quells a race riot in Brownsville.
1907 June 29 Sculptress Elisabeth Ney dies and is buried at Liendo Plantation.
  July 8 The town of Post, founded by C.W. Post of "Toasties" fame, becomes the seat of Garza County.
  August 7 Outstanding Longhorn football coach Blair Cherry is born in Kerens.
  September 8 The world-famous Neiman-Marcus store opens in Dallas.
TOP September 29 Gene Autry is born in Tioga.
1908 February 7 Fred Gipson, who writes Old Yeller and other children's books, is born in Mason.
  March 23 Movie actress Joan Crawford is born in San Antonio.
  August 27 Lyndon B. Johnson, the 36th U.S. President, is born at Stonewall.
  October 5 Josh Logan, the great Broadway director and producer, is born in Texarkana.
  November 20 Howard R. Hughes Sr. applies for a patent for his rock bit, a drill bit that changes the oil patch.
1909 May 27 Major league baseball player and manager Michael " Pinky" Higgins is born in Red Oak.
TOP June 4 The Lone Star Gas Company files for a charter to become the first gas distributor in Texas.
1910 February 10 D.L. McDonald, the father of irrigation on the Texas
    High Plains, finds water near Hereford.
1911 January 3 The Slanton water well comes in, helping to transform semiarid west Texas into a breadbasket for the nation.
  April 7 Sarah Bernhardt plays Galveston in her farewell performance.
  May 10 Lt. George Kelly is the first military pilot to die in a plane crash; it happens in San Antonio.
TOP May 21 Dictator Porfirio Diaz resigns, bringing temporary calm to revolution-torn Mexico.
  July 7 Alphonso Steele, last survivor of San Jacinto, dies at his grandson's home near Kosse.
  November 4 Col. Edward House of Houston meets Woodrow Wilson and becomes his aide and confidant.
1912 March 8 Gov. Preston Smith is born in Corn Hill. March 15 Lightnin' Hopkins, of blues music fame, is born in Centerville.
  May 18 The second battleship Texas is launched.
  August 13. Golfer Ben Hogan is born in Dublin, Texas
TOP November 1 The last cattle of the XIT ranch are sold.
  December 22 Claudia Alta Taylor, the future Lady Bird Johnson, is born in Kamack.
1913 January 21 Thomas Munson, who helps the French save their wine industry, dies in Denison.
  February 14 The legislature passes a resolution recognizing Johanna Troutman as the Betsy Ross of Texas.
  September 24 The Daily Texan becomes the first daily college newspaper in the South.
  December 1 Mary Martin is born in Weatherford. She stars on Broadway in Peter Pan and South Pacific, and is the mother of "Dallas" star Larry Hagman
1914 February 9 Country and Western singer Ernest Tubb is born Ellis County in
TOP .  
  October 18 Joe Routt, the first All-American football player from Texas A&M, is born in Chappell Hill.
1915 January 30 Rice and Baylor play basketball in the first competition of the fledgling Southwest Conference.
  May 7 The sinking of the Lusitania: World War I is at hand, and Texas will send thousands away to die in the fighting.
  November 23 An Aggie prank creates "Bevo," the Texas mascot.
1917 June 21 The Humble Oil Company incorporates.
TOP August 5 The Simms-Sinclair No. 11 Sweet gushes in and becomes Goose Creek Oil Field's greatest producer.
  August 23 Seventeen people die in the Camp Logan race riots, when black soldiers clash with Houston police.
  August 25 Gov. Jim Ferguson resigns after being impeached.
  October 21 The "Roaring Ranger" Oil Field blows in.
1918 February 28 Texas ratifies the Prohibition Amendment.
1920 January 12 Civil rights leader James Farmer is born in Marshall.
1922 March 22 Oilman James Abercrombie invents the oil well blowout preventer
1923 May 28 The Santa Rita No. j gusher brings the University of Texas vast oil fortunes.
TOP July 30 Roy Mitchell is strung up in Waco; his is the last legal public hanging in Texas.
  November 8 Hubert Knickerbocker of Yoakum witnesses Hitler's beer hall putsch and begins a writing career that leads to the Pulitzer Prize.
1924 March 14 Charles Lindbergh starts pilot training at Brooks Field in San Antonio.
1925 January 20 Miriam Amanda "Ma" Ferguson becomes the first woman governor in Texas history.
1927 January31 The mockingbird is named the official state bird
TOP May 20 Lucky Lindy takes off for Paris.
1928 June 26 The Democrats open their national convention in Houston.
1929 April 17 The League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) is founded in Corpus Christi.
  April 28 The army air force carries out the first mass parachute drop in history, at Brooks Field in San Antonio.
  October 15 Two Rio Grande Valley nurserymen develop the Ruby Red grapefruit.
  October 29 "Black Tuesday". The stock market crashes and America is plunged into the Great Depression.
1930 May6 The weather bureau says this is the worst single day for tornadoes in Texas history.
TOP October 3 The Daisy Bradford well blows in, and the giant East Texas Oil Field is on its way.
1931 January 5 Dancer and choreographer Alvin Ailey is born in Rogers.
  June 5 David Browning Jr., Olympic diving champion from UT, is born in Boston, Massachusetts.
  June 23 Texan Wiley Post starts his flight around the world.
  July 27 Oklahoma Gov. Bill Murray sends the national guard to seal off the entrance to Texas via the Red River Bridge.
  October 25 The famed Texas prison rodeo is born.
TOP December 11 George Strake's Conroe Oil Field blows in.
1932 April 2 Black rodeo star Bill Pickett dies.
1933 April 30 Country and Western star Willie Nelson is born in Abbott.
  July 22 A record-breaking rainstorm hits Freeport.
  July 28 W.E. Morris becomes the first Texas farmer to be paid for plowing his cotton crop under.
1934 January 16 Clyde Barrow breaks into a prison to rescue his friend Raymond Hamilton.
  May 23 Lawmen ambush Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, who die in a hail of gunfire.
1935 April 14 During a great dust storm, folk singer and song-writer Woody Guthrie pens "So Long, It's Been Good to Know You."
1936 August 12 The temperature hits 120°F. in Seymour-the hottest reading ever recorded in Texas.
1937 March 18 A natural gas explosion at New London claims the lives of almost 300 students and teachers.
TOP April 10 Lyndon Johnson wins his first election.
  June 15 Country and Western singer Waylon Jennings is born in Littlefield.
  June 17 The Kilgore Oil Field is discovered.
1938 July 19 Douglas "Wrong Way" Corrigan of Galveston flies "by mistake" to Ireland.
  August 22 Sam Robertson, who fights with Pershing and wins Medal of Honor in World War I, dies in Brownsville.
1941 June 2 Andrew Jackson Houston, Sam's youngest son, is appointed to serve out a term in the U.S. Senate.
TOP August 4 W. Lee O'Daniel resigns his governor's post to become a senator; Coke Stevenson replaces him.
  October 24 Longtime Texas state treasurer Charlie Lockhart resigns.
  December 7 The bombing of Pearl Harbor plunges the U.S. into World War II.
1942 April 24 A war bond quota of more than $18 million is set for Texas
  May 16 Oveta Culp Hobby is sworn in as head of the WAACS.
1943 January 19 Singer Janis Joplin is born in Port Arthur.
  June 16 The national guard is called out to put down a race riot in Beaumont.
TOP July 14 Broadway singer and actor Jules Bledsoe of Waco dies in Hollywood.
  September 9 The 36th Division invades Italy
1944 June 6-7 The Allies invade Normandy.
  November 27 Macario Garcia, a Mexican national who lived in Sugar Land, wins the Medal of Honor for actions in the war in Germany.
1945 January 26 Audie Murphy wins the Medal of Honor for his courageous fighting on this day.
  May 8 V.E. Day the war is over in Europe.
  August 6 A Texan scouts out a clear spot over Hiroshima, and the first atomic bomb is dropped.
  August 14 The Texas "Lost Battalion" is liberated, after helping POWs build the bridge on the River Kwai.
TOP September 2 Adm. Chester A. Nimitz of Fredericksburg accepts the Japanese surrender to end World War II.
1947 April 16 The Texas City Disaster claims hundreds of lives.
  June 3 Margo Jones opens her Dallas Theatre-in-the-Round.
  November 18 The Alley Theatre opens in Houston.
1948 January 4 The Alford No. I comes in: oil is found in the Permian Basin.
TOP August 28 Lyndon Johnson wins his senate race by 87 votes, thanks to Box 13 in Jim Wells County.
1949 March 17 Glenn McCarthy celebrates the opening of his Shamrock Hotel in Houston with a party for 50,000 guests.
  July 11 Gov. Beauford Jester dies en route to Houston; he is the first governor to die in office.
  August 24 Herman Barnett, a black, becomes a student at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston.
  November 2 The Daughters of the Republic of Texas become custodians of the French Legation.
1952 June 12 Henry Cohen, founder of the Galveston Plan to settle European Jews, dies in Houston.
TOP August 14 The first leg of the Gulf Freeway connecting Houston and Galveston is dedicated.
1953 May 11 A terrible tornado rips through Waco.
  May 22 President Dwight Eisenhower signs the Tidelands Bill, giving Texas rights to its offshore oil.
1955 March 29 Football player Earl Campbell is born in Tyler.
1956 September 27 Babe Zaharias, America's greatest woman athlete, dies in Galveston.
  December 1 Runner Bobby Morrow of San Benito wins three gold medals at the Olympics.
1957 April 2 Ralph Yarborough is elected to the U.S. Senate.
  June 6 Attorney General Will Wilson raids Galveston to close down gambling.
1958 April 14 Texas pianist Van Cliburn wins the International Piano Competition in Moscow.
TOP July 24 Jack Kilby draws up the idea for the silicon chip at Texas Instruments in Dallas.
1959 February 3 West Texas's Buddy Holly dies with other rock music performers in an Iowa plane crash
  December 19 Walter Williams, last surviving veteran of the Civil War, dies at age 117.
1960 January 28 Two Dallas millionaires, Clint Murchison and Bedford Wynne, receive a franchise for an NFL team they name the "Cowboys."
1961 July 29 Oscar Fox, cowboy songwriter and hill country native, dies at age 82
  September 10 Hurricane Carla strikes the upper Texas coast.
TOP November 16 House Speaker Sam Rayburn dies, and is buried in Bonham.
1962 April 10 Major league baseball comes to Texas with the Houston Colt .45's 11-2 win over the Chicago Cubs.
1963 January 14 The border dispute between Mexico and Texas is finally settled with the Treaty of El Chamizal.
  June 1 Texas A&M allows women to enroll; the "Maggie" is born.
  November 22 President John F. Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas.
1964 July 31 Country and Western singer Jim Reeves of Carthage is killed in a plane crash.
1965 April 9 The Astrodome opens in Houston.
TOP June 3 Ed White of San Antonio becomes the first American to walk in space.
1966 August 1 Charles Whitman kills 17 people in a shooting spree from the University of Texas Tower.
1967 September20 A giant hurricane named Beulah hits the coast.
1968 October 6 The first international exposition in the South, the HemisFair, closes in San Antonio
1969 April 3 Texas-born horse trainer Max Hirsch dies at the age of 88.
  July 20 Apollo II lands on the moon.
1971 January 18 The Sharpstown Bank stock scandal breaks.
1972 September 1 La Raza Unida hold its first national convention.
1973 January 22 Texas native George Foreman knocks out Joe Frazier to win the world heavyweight title
TOP August 2 The famed Chicken Ranch at La Grange ceases operations.
1974 July 25 Congresswoman Barbara Jordan of Houston delivers her famous "We, the People" speech on the U.S. Constitution and impeachment.
  August 3 A prison siege at Huntsville comes to a bloody conclusion.
1975 May 13 Bob Wills of the Texas Playboys dies following a stroke.
1983 August 18 Alicia, the most expensive hurricane in U.S. history, hits Galveston and Houston.
1984    

 

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