Thus closes my notes for the month of December and also for the year just passed and gone and now numbered with the things that were. Whether the Almighty will spare me to chronicle the daily events of the incoming year is more than I know but trusting in Him I shall enter upon the pleasing task, which is useful as a reference and may be profitable to those who have an interest in me.
Monday, July 19, 2010
July 19th, 1860
On this date in 1860 . . . the Keeper of the Journal, aka James Madison Hall, is in New York with his father, Joshua James Hall . . . and there are no Journal entries for the rest of the month of July . . . but elsewhere in Texas . . .
150 years later . . . comments on the Texas Troubles of 1860
DAILY GAZETTE & COMET [BATON ROUGE, LA], July 19, 1860, p. 2, c. 1. The Town of Dallas, Texas Consumed. -- The Houston Telegraph gives an account of a destruction conflagation [sic] which visited Dallas on Sunday the 8th inst. With the exception of a few dwelling houses, the entire place is in ashes. The loss is estimated at $300,000.
TEXAS BAPTIST [Anderson, TX], July 19, 1860, p. 2, c. 5. The Drouth. We have just returned from Huntsville. The roads continue dry and dusty. Farmers are much discouraged. Corn crops are about a total failure in many fields, and the best is not half a crop. -- Cotton is now presenting a gloomy prospect, a few very small bolls have matured and are opening. The most of the young bolls and forms will soon fall off unless it rains soon. The cotton crop is likely to be a worse failure than the corn crop, in the counties we have seen. We hope our friends in the northern part of the State will pity us and send us some flour, and some small grain of different kinds to sow for our stock during the winter. We want Barley, Rye, Wheat and oats.
TEXAS BAPTIST [Anderson, TX], July 19, 1860, p. 2, c. 6. Fire at Dallas. -- We are sorry to learn that nearly the whole of the town of Dallas was destroyed by fire on the 7th instant, leaving not a hotel, store, or office hardly remaining. The loss is estimated at between $3000,000 [sic] and $500,000. The fire spread with such rapidity that very little was saved, and part of the goods taken out of some of the buildings were consumed. This will be a severe blow on that growing place, as we understand there was but little insurance. It is supposed to have been the work of abolition incendiaries.
