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February 25, 2022
Today in Texas History
By Bandera Spirits of Texas
On this day in 1942, Trinity University moved from Waxahachie to San Antonio. Trinity had opened as a Cumberland Presbyterian college in 1869 in Tehuacana and moved to Waxahachie in 1902. Forty years later, the Synod of Texas voted to accept an invitation from the San Antonio Chamber of Commerce to move the university to the Alamo City.
The Southwest Texas Conference of the Methodist Church and the board of trustees of the University of San Antonio transferred the property of the University of San Antonio to the board of trustees of Trinity University. In 1952 Trinity moved to a new campus, designed by O'Neil Ford and Bartlett Cocke, on the north side of San Antonio.
Trinity served a full century as "the college of the Synod of Texas," first of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church and, after 1906, of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America.
One hundred years after its founding, in 1969, the university and the synod adopted a covenant that dissolved the legal ties between the two.
On Feb. 24, in 1836, William Barret Travis, commanding the Texans under attack in the Alamo, wrote his famous letter addressed "To the People of Texas and All Americans in the World." In the letter, he pledged that he would "never surrender or retreat" and swore "Victory or Death."
The predominant message, however, was an entreaty for help: "I call on you in the name of Liberty, of patriotism & everything dear to the American character, to come to our aid, with all dispatch."
Travis knew that his men, besieged by Mexican forces under Martín Perfecto de Cos, could not hold out long without reinforcements.
Inspired by his letter, more troops did make their way to San Antonio, but too few and too late to avert disaster. Travis was among the first to die in the battle of the Alamo, on March 6.
The Southwest Texas Conference of the Methodist Church and the board of trustees of the University of San Antonio transferred the property of the University of San Antonio to the board of trustees of Trinity University. In 1952 Trinity moved to a new campus, designed by O'Neil Ford and Bartlett Cocke, on the north side of San Antonio.
Trinity served a full century as "the college of the Synod of Texas," first of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church and, after 1906, of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America.
One hundred years after its founding, in 1969, the university and the synod adopted a covenant that dissolved the legal ties between the two.
On Feb. 24, in 1836, William Barret Travis, commanding the Texans under attack in the Alamo, wrote his famous letter addressed "To the People of Texas and All Americans in the World." In the letter, he pledged that he would "never surrender or retreat" and swore "Victory or Death."
The predominant message, however, was an entreaty for help: "I call on you in the name of Liberty, of patriotism & everything dear to the American character, to come to our aid, with all dispatch."
Travis knew that his men, besieged by Mexican forces under Martín Perfecto de Cos, could not hold out long without reinforcements.
Inspired by his letter, more troops did make their way to San Antonio, but too few and too late to avert disaster. Travis was among the first to die in the battle of the Alamo, on March 6.