Perhaps the oldest liveoak tree in Stephenville is located on Vine Street and is familiar to to those who walk the Bosque Trail. It’s one of those giant, stately trees that in other Texas towns are often the site of treaties or historically important gatherings. But, written accounts of early Stephenville being rare, this tree has no such recorded pedigree. Broken crockery around its base testify that this tree was a witness to historical activity between the Bosque and the square where the first log cabins were built. But the tree, estimated to be around 350 years old, may not last the year. The Stephenville City Council has decided to build itself an office building whose earthwork and parking area intrude dangerously close to the Senior Tree’s root system. Residents have asked the city to preserve the tree’s space without much response. Joe Carter, www.seniorstree.org 1 650 464 8432 will be hosting nightly discussions (5:30-6:30) each night leading up to the City Council meeting on September 6 at his home – 244 North Vine Street. We are hoping enough people show up at the City Council meeting to have an influence on the Council’s decision on the tree.

In late August of 1878, The sheriff of Comanche , with the help of state troops, arrived in Stephenville and “arrested a portion of our best citizens for reasons unknown to us. It is a matter of astonishment.” Waco Examiner

On August 27, 1883, residents of Stephenville reported sounds resembling cannon fire. The stage driver from Cisco said that people all over Eastland County were talking about how strange it was to hear thunder on a clear day. The noise was the Indonesian volcano Krakatoa exploding with the force of many hydrogen bombs. The violent eruption sent dust and gasses into the stratosphere where it circled the globe, cooling the earth that winter. In January of 1884, the Stephenville Empire reported that Erath creeks were frozen several inches and oats were killed in the field. As powerful as it was Krakatoa was ten times less than the history-changing Tambora eruption of 1815, known in the Northeastern states as “The Year without a Summer.”

Fort Worth Gazette; John T. Carr. Texas Droughts: Causes, Classifications and Prediction. No. 30. Austin: Texas Water Development Board, November, 1966; Nathalie Schaller, et. al. “Climate Effects of the 1883 Krakatoa Eruption: Historical and Present Perspectives, Vierteljahrsschrift der Naturforschenden Gesellschaft in Zurich (2009) 154(1/2): 31-40.

This week in 1891, B.H. Caraway, lost control of his herd of 1500 cattle near Sephenville during a thunderstorm and destroyed several barbed-wire fences – “but not a single head was lost.” Stephenville Empire

1883: around the 25th this month, Professor King, a Baptist preacher and schoolteacher at Carleton, was tied up while 98 of his sheep were clubbed to death. He was warned that this was cattle country. Stephenville Empire

During the week of August 20th, heavy rains washed the bones of a mastodon from the bank of a creek north of Stephenville. Some of the bones were brought to the office of the Stephenville Empire where someone identified them as Mammut americanum. The mastodon, a browser rather than a grazer like the more common mammoth, had been in the area for three million years, until the Pleistocene ended around 12,800 years ago. The mastodon’s head was carried horizontally to scoop up vegetation with the tusks. When both tusks are found one of them shows more wear showing that they were right or left tusked.

Bjorn Kurten and Elaine Anderson. Pleistocene Mammals of North America. New York: Columbia University Press, 1980

A man named Dalton lived along the Bosque River a few miles from Stephenville. Toward the end of the Civil War, a posse arrested Dalton for the murder of his wife. Arriving in town, the party found that citizens had gathered and were waiting. Without a judge or anything like an official court, the citizens were asked to consider the evidence, then a line was drawn in the Stephenville square, one side for guilty and the other for innocent. Most people stepped to the guilty side and Dalton was taken to the hanging tree close to the square.

Sherri Knight. Vigilantes to Verdicts: Stories from a District Court, Stephenville: Jacobus Books, 2009.

“G.W. White, who lived about a mile and a half north of Stephenville, last saw his cattle on January 29, 1883, when he turned them out to go to water. That morning he had seen Dawson Blankenship speaking with three other men along the road. Blankenship said one of the men, George Boucher, asked him if him if White wanted to sell his cattle. Blankenship told him that White was looking to buy, not sell, and he asked Boucher if he had any cattle to sell. Boucher replied that if he had some to sell, he would not be trying to buy. Blankenship recognized one of the men as Looney D. O’Neal; the third man, however, he could not identify. G.W. White, discovered his cattle missing the next morning and searched for them along the Bosque River” White finally found his stock twenty miles north in John Glenn’s pen. . . Wes Turnbow arrested John Glenn for cattle theft . . . a few days later Glenn jumped bail . . . a few days after that, Sheriff Gilbreath raided near Corinth and arrested Looney D. O’Neal and Mat Hughes, George Boucher escaped on foot. O’Neal and Boucher were eventually arrested and sent to the state penitentiary. In August, Boucher was wounded and his two companions killed as he escaped. Boucher was soon spotted in Erath County, but a posse never found him.

James Pylant. Sins of the Pioneers: Crimea and Scandals in a Small Texas Town. Stephenville: Jacobus Books, 2019.

“The north end of Erath County has secured more refugees from justice than any other portion of the county,” wrote the editor of the Stephenville Empire on October 3, 1885. Local historian, James Pylant, has pieced together the story of a crime syndicate based near what became Thurber, under the leadership of a tall, blue-eyed, blond-haired man in his early thirties named John Glenn and Bill Gilbreath. The syndicate reached Indian Territory, Williamson County, and Louisiana. ‘They would steal a horse, say in Louisiana, travel by night to Thurber, and then on to Indian Territory, and then to another station back in Louisiana,’ wrote Henry Gilbreath. John Gilbreath promised voters that if they would elect him as sheriff, he would break up the gang – and eventually he succeeded.” “Bill Gilbreath, overconfident in his cousin’s election, celebrated by gathering with friends and becoming intoxicated. ‘I came here to take in this town!’ Gilbreath proclaimed to the citizens of Stephenville. ‘Cousin John is sheriff, and I am going to take it in.’ The boozed Bill was sadly mistaken. It took Sheriff Gilbreath and several others to apprehend Stephenville’s self-appointed ruler. The arrest of Bill Gilbreath had a profound effect upon organized crime; it cracked the band’s powerful hold on Erath County. ‘That broke it up,’ recalled the sheriff’s son, Henry Gilbreath. The ring said, ‘Well, if he would jail his own cousin, guess he would jail us.'”

James Pylant. Sins of the Pioneers: Crimes and Scandals in a Small Texas Town, Stephenville: Jacobus Books, 2019.

On August 13, 1892, The Dublin Progress reported that in Charlie Day’s saloon A.E. Homuth shot and killed Levy Young who had been sharing Homuth’s house – among other things.

1891: Bear-baiting, offered by Jackson and Turner on the Stephenville square featured a chained bear versus a wolf drew huge crowds. In December the bear escaped and was shot as he opened a barrel of molasses in a local store. Stephenville Empire