Here’s what happened today in Texas history on February 20th.
In 1871, Texas Governor Edmund Davis imposed martial law in Walker County following the Walker County Rebellion, which occurred after the murder of a freedman and the attempted trial of four white suspects.
Three years later, in 1874, the Texas Senate confirmed the election of Walter Moses Burton, who had been brought to Texas as a slave from North Carolina in 1850 at the age of 21.
Jumping ahead to 1910, in Monterrey, Mexico, native Texan Harper Baylor Lee became the first American matador de toros (bullfighter) at a ceremony at the Plaza de Toros.
A quote by U.S. Senator John B. Kendrick on December 10, 1916, tells us, “The ‘Texas Trail’ was the highway over which a tide of cattle was moved from Southwestern and Western Texas to the northwestern states, including Indian Territory, Kansas, Western Nebraska, Colorado, Wyoming Territory, North and South Dakota, and Montana.”