1940: Group forms organization to honor trusty steeds
On this day in 1940, livestock leaders met in Fort Worth to form the American Quarter Horse Association. Among those in attendance were rancher and quarter horse breeder Anne Burnett Hall and King Ranch president Robert J. Kleberg. The series of meetings led to a charter, by-laws, and election of officers of an organization to “collect, record and preserve the pedigrees of Quarter Horses in America….” The origin of the American quarter horse dates to colonial times when the speedy horses earned fame for their performance in quarter-mile races—hence the name. The quarter horse in Texas is forever linked with the history of the open range and the cowboy. After the Civil War cattlemen needed swift yet sturdy mounts to drive longhorns to northern railheads in Kansas and elsewhere. Quarter horses were mated with mustang mares to produce a strong, speedy equine with great endurance. No formal registry of the animals existed until the American Quarter Horse Association undertook its publication. Soon after the formation of the group, the King Ranch-bred Wimpy, grand champion stallion at the 1941 Southwestern Exposition and Fat Stock Show in Fort Worth, earned the designation of P-1 in the AQHA Stud Book.
See also:
- Quarter Horses
- Tandy, Anne Valliant Burnett
- Kleberg, Robert Justus, Jr. [III]
- Mustangs
- Southwestern Exposition and Livestock Show
1964: Ruby found guilty
On this day in 1964, Dallas night club owner Jack Ruby was convicted of the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald. On November 24, 1963, Ruby, then proprietor of the Carousel Club, had shot and killed Oswald, the accused assassin of President John F. Kennedy, in the basement of the Dallas City Jail, during Oswald’s transfer to the county jail. Millions of witnesses watched on national television. Although he was defended by Melvin Belli on the grounds that “psychomotor epilepsy” caused him to black out consciously while functioning physically, Ruby was convicted of murder with malice. His conviction was overturned by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, and Ruby was awaiting a retrial when he died in prison in 1967. Ruby denied involvement in any conspiracy, and maintained to the end that he shot Oswald on impulse from grief and outrage.
See also:
1874: Wildcatter born in Lithuania
On this day in 1874, Haymon Krupp, merchant and oil wildcatter, was born in Kozno, Lithuania. In 1890 he immigrated to El Paso, Texas, where he worked in a dry-goods store and soon opened his own men’s clothing store. In 1910 he established a large dry-goods house that became widely known throughout the Southwest. He pioneered what is now El Paso’s outdoor clothing industry with one of the first clothing factories in the Southwest. He became renowned for giving thousands of dollars’ worth of coal to the poor in El Paso and West Texas. In the 1920s he donated funds to build B’nai Zion Temple in El Paso. Krupp entered the oil business when he joined Frank Pickrell, also of El Paso, to buy a lease option to drill for oil on University of Texas lands in the Permian Basin. In 1919 Krupp and Pickrell organized the Texon Oil and Land Company, with Krupp as president and Pickrell as vice president. They capitalized Texon by purchasing three producing wells in Burkburnett and selling 685 certificates of interest in New York. On May 28, 1923, their first well, the Santa Rita No. 1, came in on their leased university-owned lands in West Texas. Krupp died on February 21, 1949.
See also: