Describing Resley’s Creek in 1913, Sarah Catherine Lattimore, early Dublin historian, noted that “one passes the spot where R.C. Oldham was baptized, and looks in vain for a suggestion of the deep water that was there then. Farther stands the big live oaks beneath whose spreading branches stretched above was built a grocery, the scene of many a carouse, but afterwords became the happy home of newly weds. Nearby is another majestic oak in whose shade was the log cabin, accommodating a school on week days, the hogs at night, but swept and garnished by the good women for Sunday preaching.”

Sarah Cathrine Lattimore, Incidents in the History of Dublin, 1913 (Copied for the Dublin Public Library by Mollie Louise Grisham, 1967).

Early in the morning of October 10, 1901, on Long Street, in the home of Judge Lee Young, an aunt, sleeping in Alden Young’s room, woke to see a man carrying the five-year-old boy out the door wrapped in a blanket. She following screaming, overtaking him at the gate. “Her cries aroused others and the man finally let go of his burden and ran to his buggy.” Erath Appeal

The October, 1872 hanging referred to in the last post happened on the night of the 25th. As the captured men were being taken to the hanging tree ( I think this was at McDow Hole) James M. Latham tried to escape and was shot to death. James Coats escaped, with his hands tied, by jumping from his horse and running off in the night. The others were “hung to the limb of a tree.” Fayette Latham was lowered twice and allowed to recover his breath, taunted and questioned, before being drawn up for the last time. In the darkness, no one saw that he caught the rope in his teeth, “thus preventing strangulation until the mob left. He then took out his knife and cut himself down,” [other accounts said it was his son, who had been hiding nearby that cut him down] when his brother-in-law, McDow, was cut down, he was found to have a broken neck, but with a strong pulse. He died because nobody knew what do to with him.

This account was in my Town & Country 1987 Calendar of Erath County History, documented as “Britton,” but the complete reference was left out of the bibliography, and I have lost the book title.

In 1872, in Comanche T.D. Reynolds and two others, Mason and Roberts, were taken by vigilantes. The explanation to the locals was they were transporting them to the Erath County jail. The vigilantes headed toward Stephenville about midnight on October 20th. One of their number, Dr. T.D. Windham of Brown County, bought 36 feet of rope on the way out of town. The next morning the three prisoners were found hanged. A hasty inquest fond that the “prisoners came to their death at the hand of parties unknown.” The bodies were so poorly buried “that wolves dug them up and fed on them.”

Stephenville was once the center of several nationally-known nurseries. V.O. porter, “the horticulturalist-sage of West Texas,” began his seed business in a room of his Carleton home in 1912. “I had $236 cash and nothing else but a large and growing family. I lost $236 the first year, broke exactly even the second year, and made $200 the third year. Then three drouth years and a hailstorm broke me completely in 1918.” The Porter seed business , however, continued to grow.

“Portrait of a Seedsman-Sage.” Southern Seedsman, February, 1945.

James House Cage was born on October 19, 1845. The family moved to Stephenville in 1859 after the father died en route to the California gold fields. The mother, Martha Cage, operated a hotel on Graham Street. Jim Cage went to Arizona with John Baylor’s Confederate regiment [Baylor offered to kill Apaches with poison flour and then shoot those who came to bury them – the Confederate high command refused his offer] Cage returned after the Civil War and became a successful cattleman. He established a general store in 1872 and a bank in 1900. Cage Street is named for him.

C. Richard King, Stephenville Streets, Unpublished manuscript loaned by author in 1986.

1911: “While the Campbell Brothers Circus was unloading their animals, an elephant stabbed a camel and killed him instantly. It is not known exactly what caused the elephant to commit the deed, but it’s presumed that he was tired and ill from several days journey.” Stephenville Empire

In 1879 it was predicted that Stephenville would grow to have a population of 10,000 in the sweet by and by.” Fort Worth Democrat

For years the Erath prohibitionists had been unable to vote the county dry because of the large Thurber vote. The October, 1903 issue of the United Mine Worker’s Journal revealed that for some reason, W.K. Gordon, “The King of Thurber,” arranged with Erath County commissioners to exempt the Thurber vote.

Weldon B. Hardman, Fire in the Hole, Gordon, Texas: Thurber Historical Association, 1975.

Kight Street was named for Henry Lee Kight who came to Texas in 1876. He built cotton gins in Stephenville, Bluff Dale, Tolar, Alexander, Dublin, Clairette, Comanche, and Proctor.

C. Richard King, Stephenville Streets, Unpublished manuscript loaned by author, 1986.

In October of 1913. thousands of unidentified hawks flew over Stephenville heading south. They roosted for the night along Green Creek where alarmed farmers killed over 300. Stephenville Empire

Squirrels, once abundant in Stephenville were hunted out before 1900. In October of 1921 a rare squirrel was seen in the city limits which was soon shot and eaten. Later it turned out that it was the pet of a local physician. Stephenville Tribune

in 1897 Josie Caldwell (12), “small for her age,” and her sister Carrie (9), “have made a record that those much older might be proud of,” each picked 200 pounds of cotton, four times their own weight. Stephenville Empire Cotton ruined the soil and as a farming strategy, it was hard on people. Between 1910 and 1940, after Erath County soil was depleted by cotton and abusive grazing, half of the Erath population migrated out of the area. During this time land sold for $5 to $15 dollars an acre, this period was the end of small farmers, who were replaced by large ranches. Old-timers that I interviewed from before this time said that a farmer could stand on his porch and see ten other farmhouses.

Lena Lewis, Erath County: A Compilation, Stephenville, Texas, 1938; and Temple Nolan Saester-Hicks, Interview, Stephenville, Texas, May 19, 1981.

Erath County was mostly settled by the descendants of the Scots-Irish who came over in the 1700s from the British Borderlands (bringing Border Collies) and after a few generations in the Upper South moved go Texas. In the old country they were not allowed to cut oak trees, so when they reached Erath County, they cut down post oak trees for rail fences and cabins with reckless abandon. Pecan trees were cut down to make collecting the nuts easier. Post oak trees were once so thick that a squirrel could climb into a tree on the square and not come down until Dublin. Last month a dozen surviving post oaks were bulldozed on Washington street almost without comment. The incredible fertility of early Erath County unfortunately encouraged a philosophy of abundance which led to the destruction of not just timber; abusive grazing removed the grass root mat that had trapped spring rains which had trickled into clear-running streams during the summer. Just a few years after barbed-wire fences were introduced in the early 1880s prairies chickens became extinct for lack of water and cover. Thoughtless agriculture methods resulted in the loss of 75% of the topsoil by the 1930s.

Some of this is from the Stephenville Empire-Tribune; Henry Fooshe, Historical Articles Appearing in the Stephenville Empire in the 1880s; and my own remarks.