Moments in Texas History ~ 9.2.2011

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Texan signs peace treaty with Japan

September 02, 1945

On this day in 1945, Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz signed the treaty with Japan that ended World War II. Nimitz, born in 1885, was the descendant of German pioneer settlers of Fredericksburg. He was named commander in chief of the Pacific Fleet shortly after Japan's 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, and later commander in chief of Pacific Ocean Areas as well. With authority over the entire Pacific theater except for Gen. Douglas MacArthur's Southwest Pacific sector and the inactive southeast, Nimitz coordinated the offensive that brought the Japanese to unconditional surrender. He signed the peace treaty aboard the battleship Missouri in Tokyo Bay. Nimitz later spent two years as commander in chief of the United States Fleet, and also served as a roving ambassador for the United Nations and chairman of the Presidential Commission on Internal Security and Individual Rights. He died in 1966. In 1964 a local citizens' group established the Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz Memorial Naval Museum in the old Nimitz Hotel in Fredericksburg. The project evolved into the National Museum of the Pacific War.

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"Wolf of the Washita" born in Tennessee

September 02, 1840

On this day in 1840, gunfighter Clay Allison was born on a Tennessee farm. After serving in the Confederate Army during the Civil War, Allison moved to the Brazos River country in Texas. He soon signed on as a cowhand with Oliver Loving and Charles Goodnight and was probably among the eighteen herders on the 1866 drive that blazed the Goodnight-Loving Trail. In 1870 he left Texas and was involved in a number of violent incidents, including lynchings, brawls and gunfights, in Colorado, Kansas, and New Mexico during the 1870s. In January 1876 a drunken Allison wrecked the office of the Cimarron News and Press because of a scathing editorial. He allegedly later returned to the newspaper office and paid $200 for damages. By 1880 Allison had settled as a rancher in Hemphill County, Texas. Though he married and served as a juror, his reputation as the "Wolf of the Washita" was kept alive by reports of his unusual antics. Once he was said to have ridden nude through the streets of Mobeetie. In the summer of 1886 a dentist from Cheyenne, Wyoming, drilled the wrong one of Allison's teeth, and Allison got even by pulling out one of the dentist's teeth. In December 1886 he bought a ranch near Pecos and became involved in area politics. Allison died in a wagon accident the following year.

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Republic of Texas makes treaty with North Texas Indians

September 02, 1838

On this day in 1838, Holland Coffee, an Indian agent appointed by President Sam Houston, enacted a treaty between the Republic of Texas and the Kichai, Tawakoni, Waco, and Tawehash Indians near the site of present Denison. The treaty was part of Houston's peace policy. Coffee was a Red River trader and a representative in the Texas House of Representatives (1838-39). He developed the town of Preston and provided supplies given to the Indians by the Comanche treaty of 1846. He was stabbed to death on October 1, 1846, and is buried in the Preston Cemetery.

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Surveyor shoots lawyer in Austin colony feud

September 02, 1830

On this day in 1830, Seth Ingram, a surveyor and merchant, shot and killed John G. Holtham in San Felipe de Austin, the center of Stephen F. Austin's colony. Ira Ingram, Seth's brother and business partner, had quarreled with Holtham, a lawyer of unsavory reputation, over the latter's drunken intrusion into Ira's yard. Holtham demanded an apology for being expelled from the premises. When Ira ignored him, he circulated handbills defaming Ira as a "coward, a rogue, and a man without honor." Seth Ingram confronted Holtham as he was posting one such notice in the streets of San Felipe and ordered him to remove it. When Holtham refused, pistols were drawn, and Ingram killed Holtham. Ingram was arrested along with another business partner, Hosea H. League, who had been a bystander during the incident, and both were confined almost incommunicado for sixteen months, chained to the walls of the half-completed meetinghouse of the San Felipe ayuntamiento. They were eventually acquitted and released.

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posted by Jeff - 9.2.2011 -  The Texas State Historical Association