Posted: Thu, 22 Apr 2010 09:06 PM - 9,150 Readers
By: Houston Chronicle
Hello fellow Texans and friends of Texas. Today is Monday, April 22, 2010.
On April 26, the Yellow Stone, a United States ship involved in Texas trade, was commandeered by President David G. Burnet to house the cabinet at Galveston and on May 4 ordered to Buffalo Bayou, where the cabinet was to begin treaty negotiations with the defeated Santa Anna.
On May 9, on the return journey, additional passengers included Santa Anna and his staff, the wounded Houston and his staff, Gen. Martín Perfecto de Cos and eighty other wounded prisoners. The vessel then continued on to Velasco, where the treaty was being made.
In late 1835 the Yellow Stone, owned by Thomas Toby and registered in New Orleans, was outfitted for service in what was to become the Republic of Texas.
In November 1835 the boat arrived in Brazoria from New Orleans; it then ran cotton between San Felipe and Washington-on-the-Brazos. Manned by a crew from the United States and flying the United States flag, it cleared port on Dec. 31, 1835, with its cargo largely ammunition and its passengers mostly volunteers for the Texas army, including 47 men of the Mobile Grays. The ship arrived at Quintana at the mouth of the Brazos in early January 1836. On one trip, in February 1836, the vessel went up the Brazos River as far as San Felipe de Austin under the command of Capt. John E. Ross.
The boat was loading cotton at Groce's Landing above San Felipe when Sam Houston's army arrived on March 31, 1836, in a heavy rain and established camp on the west side of the Brazos. Houston got the Yellow Stone to ferry his army across the flooding river. He made an agreement with Ross and his crew of 16, pledging land in exchange for their services and promising indemnity to the boat's unspecified owners for wages and damages.
Before it disappeared, the Yellow Stone transported the body of Stephen F. Austin and mourners from Columbia Landing downriver to Peach Point Plantation in December 1836 and moved the Texas government and the press and staff of the Telegraph and Texas Register from the Brazos to Houston in the spring of 1837.
On April 26, 1854, the U.S. War Department ordered Randolph B. Marcy, in conjunction with Indian agent Robert S. Neighbors, to locate and survey land for Indian reservations in unsettled territory, preferably on timbered land of good soil adjacent to navigable water. The sites selected after consultation with the various Indian groups concerned were four leagues of land on the Brazos River below Fort Belknap for the use of the Caddos, Wacos, and other Indians, and another tract of the same size 40 miles away on the Clear Fork of the Brazos for the use of the Comanches. A third tract of four leagues adjoined the one on the Brazos and was intended for the use of the Indians living west of the Pecos River, chiefly the Mescalero and Lipan Apaches. These western Indians, however, failed to come in to the reservation, and this tract was added to the Brazos agency, making that reservation total eight leagues. Both reservations reverted to the state when the Indians were removed to the Indian Territory in 1859.
On April 26, 1968, PFC Milton Lee earned the Medal of Honor for heroism in action in Vietnam. After attending Harlandale High School in San Antonio, Lee enlisted in the army. He arrived in Vietnam in January 1968. On April 26 of that year, near Phu Bai, South Vietnam, he was serving as radio and telephone operator when his platoon came under intense fire. Lee rendered lifesaving first aid while under heavy enemy fire. During a subsequent assault on the enemy position he saw four enemy soldiers, armed with automatic weapons and a rocket launcher, lying in wait for the platoon. He passed his radio to another soldier, charged through heavy fire, overran the enemy position, and killed all the occupants. He continued his assault on a second enemy position. Though mortally wounded, he delivered accurate covering fire until the platoon destroyed the enemy position. Only then did he die of his wounds. The Medal of Honor was presented to his grandmother and guardian, Mrs. Frank B. Campion, by President Richard M. Nixon at the White House on April 7, 1970.
On April 26, 1874, the first of a series of 23 letters and poems signed "Pidge" was published in an Austin newspaper. They were actually the work of Thomas C. Robinson, and appeared in the Austin Statesman and State Gazette. Robinson, born in 1847, had come to Austin in 1874 after feuding with a neighbor in his native Virginia.
After enlisting in the Texas Rangers, he served under Leander H. McNelly during the Sutton-Taylor feud and battled Juan N. Cortina's raiders. Pidge's literary efforts describe Austin in the 1870s and provide a rare illustration of ranger service written from the field. They reveal literary knowledge, intelligence, and wit. Robinson returned to Virginia on leave to settle a feud with his former neighbor. In the resulting gunfight he was mortally wounded and died on April 4, 1876, just four days after the last Pidge letter was published in Austin.
On April 26, 1939, Lowell H. Lebermann Jr., who despite being blinded as a young man served as a University of Texas System regent and civic, cultural and business leader, was born.
Lebermann, three-term Austin City Council member, was renowned for his incisive intelligence and keen wit.
Lebermann was reared in the North Texas town of Commerce, where his father practiced medicine. At the age of 12, he lost the sight in his right eye in a gunshot accident. Vision in the other eye deteriorated as a repercussion of the accident until he was completely blind by age 23.
But his loss of sight did not stop him from academic achievement. A student in the Plan II Honors program at the University of Texas, he was elected student body president in 1961.
By then Lebermann already had set up his own real estate company.
He made an unsuccessful run for state representative in 1964 in Northeast Texas and returned to Austin, where his father's family had lived for four generations.
But to most Austinites, he was known for his work as a member of the Austin City Council in the 1970s. Then-Mayor Roy Butler dubbed Lebermann "the Green Panther" because of his environmental efforts.
Lebermann wrote the ordinance establishing the city's Office of Environmental Resource Management and pushed through a measure governing development on Lake Walter E. Long, Lake Austin and what is now Lady Bird Lake. He also wrote the city's creeks ordinance and its historic zoning ordinance.
His civic participation continued after he left office.
Today in Texas History is gathered by retired journalist Bob Sonderegger. A primary source of information is Handbook of Texas Online.
