Texas Day by Day

On this day in 1904, influential artist and critic Harry Peyton Carnohan was born in Milford, Ellis County. Carnohan, who studied under Vivian Aunspaugh and Frank Reaugh, was a member of the Dallas Nine, a group of regionalist artists active in the 1930s and 1940s. He was more open to contemporary European styles than his peers Jerry Bywaters and Alexandre Hogue; his best-known work, West Texas Landscape (1934), was influenced by Surrealism. Carnohan joined the Columbia University faculty and moved to New York in 1940. Uncomfortable with the emerging emphasis on abstract art in that city, he left Columbia in 1953 and subsequently moved to La Jolla, California, where he worked as a furniture and antique dealer. He died in 1969.

On this day in 1952, J. P. Richardson, Jr., better known as "The Big Bopper," married Adrianne "Teetsie" Fryou. Richardson, a Beaumont deejay, recorded for Pappy Daily’s D Records and scored a rock-and-roll hit with his song "Chantilly Lace" in 1958. He also penned chart-toppers for George Jones with "White Lightning" and Johnny Preston with "Running Bear." The Bopper wowed audiences with his colorful zoot suits and flamboyant performances but kept his marriage secret to preserve his showy image to fans. He featured "Chantilly Lace" in a pioneering video production in 1958 and coined the term "music video." The Bopper recorded some twenty-one of his own songs--many of which were regarded as novelty tunes. After a performance on the "Winter Dance Party" tour on the night of February 2, 1959, Richardson, suffering from the flu, switched places on the bus with Waylon Jennings to instead take a charter flight with musicians Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens to the tour’s next destination. The ensuing plane crash that killed all passengers shocked grieving fans on a day that was immortalized as the "Day the Music Died."

On this day in 1842, Juan N. Seguín resigned as mayor of San Antonio. Seguín, a native San Antonian, was born in 1806; his father Erasmo was a prominent public figure who later served as alcalde. Juan fought in the Texas Revolution, escaping death at the Alamo when he was sent out as a courier shortly before the fall of the citadel. Seguín was elected to the Republic of Texas Senate in 1837--the only Mexican Texan to serve in that body--but resigned in 1840 and was then elected mayor of San Antonio. His tenure in that office was controversial; his continuing conflicts with Anglo squatters on city property and his business correspondence with Mexico incriminated him in Gen. Rafael Vásquez's invasion of San Antonio in March 1842. Fearing for his life, Seguín resigned and fled with his family to Mexico. He participated in Adrián Woll's invasion of Texas in September 1842 and fought against the United States in the Mexican War, but returned to Texas after the war. He died in Nuevo Laredo in 1890. The town of Seguin was named in his honor in 1839.