There are Spanish reports of elk, thought to have been a subspecies of Merriam’s elk, in North Texas from the 1600s; loss of habitat and hunting shrunk their range to West Texas, where they became extinct by the late 1800s. (They have since been reintroduced). An early Erath County immigrant noted in an 1884 Stephenville Empire, that in the 1850s there were herds of 50 to 75 “red bucks,” thought to have been these elks.

The Bosque River begins near Huckabay and flows 110 miles into the Brazos at Waco (into a lake these days). The word bosque is Spanish for wooded because most of it is in the Western Cross Timbers, a finger of oaks that reaches into Oklahoma. The river may have been named for the Spaniard, Marquis de Aquayo in 1719, or for the illegal French arms trader, Juan Bosquet, who lived among the Tawakoni Indians along the river. There is an 1872 reference to the density of the post oaks recorded by Jim Peak and William Bower, who found themselves surrounded by Comanches 18 miles west of Stephenville. They escaped by riding into the timber. Handbook of Texas and Cleburne Chronicle

In the fall of 1858, 125 Anadarko, Caddo, and other Brazos reservation men guided a major campaign against the Comanches in Oklahoma. They were led by future Texas governor L.S. (Sul) Ross, and were known as Ross’s Indian Brigade, in support of Major Earl Van Dorn. The campaign was successful and Choctaw Tom, who had earlier been a scout for Sam Houston, was allowed to leave the reservation with his family to hunt bear with Anglo friends in the Palo Pinto area. Choctaw Tom’s family was well-known in the area because his wife often treated the sick among families that had settled near the reservation. Tom was away from camp, to buy an ox and cart when a group of Erath County men crept up to the tents and opened fire. Six Indians died in the gunfire, all of them in their beds except for one man that was at the tent’s opening. Tom’s nine year-old daughter woke to see a musket in her face and when she moved it, her thumb was shot off. The only casualty from Erath County was Samuel Stephen, the founder’s son, who became the first person buried in the Stephenville cemetery. W.W. McNeil, one of the organizers of the raid, returned to Stephenville and warned that an attack was expected. (the only motive that I can imagine was to stir up violence with the reservation Indians so the Anglos could claim the land – one year later the reservation closed and the last of the agricultural Texas Indians were marched to Oklahoma). But Jose Maria, the leader of the Anadarko/Caddo Indians refused to allow a vengeful response. Instead he wanted to wait to see what Captain Ross would do. (Ross was in Austin). The Indians wanted to take their case to court, but it was so close to the Civil War, that Ranger Captain Ford refused to make the arrests. Hateful writers spun bogus stories abut what happened: the worst was J. W. Wilbarger, who claimed that Choctaw Tom’s family was a Comanche camp, and that a trail was followed from recent Comanche atrocities. There followed a battle in which two women were accidentally killed, and the Anglos fought heroically.

Cecile Elkins Carter, Caddo Indians: Where We Come From, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1995; and J.W. Wilbarger, Indian Depredations in Texas: Reliable Accounts of Battles, Wars, Adventures, Forays, Murders, Massacres, Etc, Austin, Texas: Hutchings Printing House, 1889.

James M. McCarthy, Jr. and his wife Martha had a prosperous farm on Duffau Creek on the line between Erath and Bosque Counties. His family noticed that James, Jr. began acting strangely a couple of months before the incident. In September of 1869, James told his wife that he had to be baptized immediately by the Reverend Henry Hurley. He ignored the crops ready to harvest and walked five miles to his father’s house and told him to bring the Reverend. James, Sr. found Henry Hurley and brought him back to the house, but James, Jr. had returned to his cabin. The father and the reverend followed him to the son’s cabin and since it was late, decided to stay the night and perform the baptism to next day. During the night, James, Jr. terrified his wife by loading his shotgun and behaving strangely. Martha ran from the house to bring the neighbors. James, Jr. shot his father and the reverend, and told his son to lie down on the porch where the father smashed his head with a rock. McCarthy then grabbed his daughters, Susan and Ella, and brought them to his father’s house, where he then came to his senses. He was taken to Meridian where he was chained to a tree while while the doctor could be located to examine him. McCarthy explained that the spirits had commanded him to kill. Deemed not responsible for his actions, he was sent to the Lunatic Asylum near Austin, where he soon found a razor and cut his throat.

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

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