6,000 years ago Texas was nearing the end of a 1000 year mega-drought. About that time the earth experienced a two hundred year period of diminished solar activity that brought cooler temperatures to Texas. One of the remaining herds of the larger, nearly extinct Bison occidentalis, that required cool temperatures had been hanging on in the prairies west of the Ozark Mountains. When Texas became an inviting habitat these bison began to migrate into Texas and with them came the Calf Creek culture that had specialized in hunting these large animals for centuries. They brought with them a more advanced lithic technology than was common along the Bosque River: The Calf Creek people used one of two dart point types, the Bell ( illustrated; more common in the Erath area) and the even more astonishing Andice; heat-treated to enable the finest craftsmanship, the points were skillfully knapped into large, thin, and deeply basally-notched projectile points that fitted onto a five-foot dart launched from a spear-thrower known as a atlatl. (this was thousands of years before the bow). These hunters had a strong preference for their own flint collected Northwest of Texas, and rather than use the local chert varieties, they re-worked their broken points down to a nub barely recognizable as the Bell. (one clue is the unusually long base) There are clues that each band favored a specific color of flint, a concept still being considered by Texas archeologists. One reason these dart points are considered rare is that the cool spell was brief, only two hundred years, after which the larger-than-present bison type no longer frequented Central Texas and were soon extinct, replaced by the more heat tolerant modern buffalo.

1880 was a dry year in Erath County and the McDow Hole, one of the few sources of water at the bend of Green Creek, collected unfenced cattle from miles around every evening. So the area around the Papworth cabin was well known to teenagers sent to drive the cattle home. Charlie Atchison was a cabinet and coffin-maker from Pennsylvania, who moved into the abandoned Papworth cabin. Charlie played his violin every evening and the young men often stayed around to listen, which meant that the boys were late getting home, imagining that Jenny Papworth’s ghost was about to appear from behind every tree. When asked about the ghost, Charlie answered that she had not visited him yet and that he was not much concerned. Charlie did mention that the sound of the Death Watch beetle was a little creepy at night. [the deathwatch beetle, (Xesobium rufovillosum) made a ticking sound as it infested logs in early cabins was so named because in the quiet during the vigil kept beside the bed of the dying or dead], was also thought to foretell an impending death. A few weeks after that remark, cattlemen were unable to rouse Charlie from the latched cabin. On forcing the door open they were shocked to find Charlie dead, with no wounds, but with a horrible expression on his face. Erath County was now firmly imprinted with fear of Jenny Papworth.

Mary Joe Clendenin. The Ghost of the McDow Hole: Based on Stories told by Joe Fitzgerald. New York: Carlton Press, 1979.

Photo: The man on the left is John Gilbreath, the ex-vigilante who became sheriff when Sheriff William Slaughter was assassinated in the Stephenville square. Gilbreath is credited for putting an end to vigilante activity in the early 1880s. Next to him is the Deputy, John Caudle, and the jailer, W.H. Chaney. A Stephenville Historical House Museum photo.

An article in the 1877 Fort Worth Democrat advised: “March is unreliable and treacherous. It first leads you to believe that winter is gone northward, and toys with the buds, tender buds and small blossoms; it then dashes out, as if a lion, from its ambuscade and nips the whole young growth before strength warrants protection.”