In November of 1882, a swarm of locusts flew over Stephenville without stopping. It was supposed that they were trying to escape cold weather. Stephenville Empire

The agricultural Anadarko Indians had been forced from their ancestral home in Southeast Texas by land hungry Anglo immigrants, they tried to settle in a number of places but were forced to move each time before they could harvest a corn crop. They were in the Erath area before the Stephen immigrants arrived in 1854, and as skilled mounted fighters, kept the Comanches away from Stephenville in the first years after it was established. The friendship was ruptured, opening the way for Comanche raids after the Red Jack incident in November of 1857. The Anadarko were described as clean-living people who never touched alcohol, [and never lost a battle with the Anglos] but Red Jack, who might have been depressed about something, broke tradition when he visited Stephenville. He left his bow and musket at a tree near the present Tarleton dinning hall and rode to the square (Stephenville was mostly concentrated on the square then) and bought a bottle of whiskey. Red Jack became drunk and rowdy, so the constable was asked to force him to leave, but he was also drunk. Finally Red Jack headed back to where he left his equipment, along the way he passed near the McNeill cabin, (about where Vanderbilt crosses the railroad tracks) and decides to ride his horse into the log cabin. W.W. McNeill, later involved in the massacre of friendly Indians, was not home, but his wife was sick in bed and 16-year old Arch McNeill was terrified. He blocked Red Jack’s entrance to the cabin by holding a percussion revolver at him, but to little effect. So McNeill pulled the trigger on an empty cylinder, popping the cap, in an effort to turn Red Jack away. Red Jack became alarmed and pulled a knife. McNeill then shot him. Red Jack continued to ride toward the post oak where his gear was left, then fell from his horse and died. The residents of Stephenville didn’t know what to do, so they laid the body in state in a store on the square for a few days, before burying him about where Highway 377 crosses the Bosque River. [fifty years later boys dug up the grave and made a quirt handle of the thigh bone, but an old-timer made them put it back]. When the leader of Anadarko, Caddo, and other horticultural Indians, Jose Maria rode into town, looking for Red Jack, the residents gave him his horse and explained what happened. The outnumbered residents fed the warriors a meal {Erath’s Thanksgiving] while trying to mend relations. The Indians said they understood and left, ending their protection of Stephenville from the Comanches. It was two years before the musket and bow were discovered leaning on a post oak. Comanche raids were intense in the area until the early 1870s.

1894: In Dublin, highly unpopular officials -“a gang of toughs and embryo outlaws”- have gained control of city offices. “Law abiding citizens of this place are absolutely afraid to pass along the street after dark on account of this lawless gang who are allowed undisputed sway to act and do as they choose . . . “

Dublin Progress

In 1882, two men accused of stealing cotton, held in the Hazel Dell jail, (Comanche-Erath line) were taken out of their cell in November and hanged by vigilantes. Stephenville Empire

In November of 1908 a gang of young “hoodlums” broke up another performance at the Crow Opera House with “whistling, clapping of hands, talking, cat calls and shuffling of feet.” A stranger remarked: “I have always understood that Stephenville was a great educational center, but there seems to be a mistake. Stephenville Tribune

In 1903 a man stopped at the Chalk Mountain home of the the John Riley Brown family for supper. They talked all night and the the visitor was invited to join the family – and he never left – and is buried with them.

Heloise Brown Morton and Juanita Jackson, in Dan Young, A Calendar of Erath County History, 1983, Vanderbilt Street Press, Stephenville.

In November of 1897, “the most terrible boiler explosion that ever took place in this section occurred at Morgan Mill.” The cotton gin exploded, killing three people. Stephenville Empire

1890: The cotton critic, Edward Everett Davis, recalled: “My father brought me to Texas . . . We settled on the open frontier [just west of Erath County] where the population was sparse and conditions primitive. Our pioneer neighbors were honorable, fearless, and physically fit. But when the pasture lands gave way to the plow, and cotton moved in, the whole order changed . . . Legions of sorry humans followed in its wake. Bankers were constrained to lend with greater care, and credit merchants had to charge to a cash basis.” Edward Everett Davis, The White Scourge, San Antonio: Naylor, 1940.

Because of so many vigilante hangings in 1872, Stephenville was placed under martial law by state police. The authorities were able to hold the peace during an investigation and trial, but it was a waste of time. “. . . under the present reign of terror, no citizen, however much he may oppose this mob violence, will voluntarily come forward and give evidence against the mob, for fear it will be his time next (as they term it) to feed the wolves.” The feeding the wolves remark was a reference to victim’s graves being so shallow that wolves or wild dogs dug them up and scattered the bones.

Dan Young, A Calendar of Erath County History, Stephenville: Vanderbilt Street Press, 1987.

In 1860, a soldier stationed in Texas said: “within her limits are citizens from every state in the Union, as well as large numbers from foreign countries. They bring with them the habits and sentiments peculiar to their homes, and thus, unitedly form the basis of a hardy, vigorous, intelligent population.”

Llerena Friend, “The Texan of 1860.” Southwestern Historical Quarterly, 62 (July, 1958), 1-17.

In 1882 “Mr. J.W. Pittman’s family of five children picked over 1,600 pounds of cotton. Two of the boys , George and Jeff, picked 403 and 337 pounds respectively. A little 12-year old girl picked 218 pounds. This was a day’s work.” Stephenville Empire

In early November of 1891, at Woods Saloon in Dublin, Tom Woods got into a fight with a customer, Frank Craig, and knifed him to death. Stephenville Empire

E.E. Davis, a bitter critic of the socially and environmentally extractive cotton culture of West-Central Texas wrote that “. . . The pioneers had pioneer habits of thought. They and their forebears lived off the bounty of an untenanted frontier. It is just as natural for them to rob the soil as it was for their fathers to harvest wild chestnuts with no thought whatsoever of the next year’s crop. Fertilization, diversification, and crop rotation meant nothing to them. The calls of the new era reached them too late in life. They constitute a distinct type of our cotton patch poor, soon to pass on and leave the thin lands to less intelligent folk.” By 1910 Erath soil was so depleted by cotton and abusive grazing that half the population had moved away before 1940. This was the period when people with money bought up these small farms for as little as $5.00 an acre and consolidated them into the large ranches that characterize Erath County today.

Edward Everitt Davis, The White Scourge, San Antonio: Naylor, 1940; and Lena Lewis, Erath County: A Compilation, Stephenville, Texas, 1938.

1888:Judge T.L. Nugent, who began his legal/political career defending Erath vigilantes that had murdered several people in 1872, announced in November that “crime is up ten percent this year in Erath County . . . All suspected characters should be watched.” Stephenville Empire

1896: In eastern Erath County Ed Scales was shot in the leg as he dismounted his horse and was dragged several yards. The would-be assassin then fired four more shots at him and pulled him from the road, thinking he was dead. Stephenville Empire