Theodore A. Babb, captured and raised by Comanches, was with an Indian who tried to trade for a piece of US. artillery . The officer refused refused: “If I trade a cannon to you, you will use it in killing my solders.” The Comanche indignantly responded that he wanted the cannon to shoot cowboys, he would kill the soldiers with clubs.

Theodore A. Babb, In the Bosom of the Comanches, Dallas: John F. Worley Printing Co., 1912

The first time Stephenville was raided by Comanches was during the winter of 1857. John M. Stephen had twelve horses in a fenced enclosure along present West Washington, across from TSU, The Indians burned the tall grass and the rail fence and drove the horses away.

M. L. Auten, A History of Erath County, Unpublished Master’s thesis, Hardin-Simmons University, August 1951, in Texas Tech Southwest Collection.

From the winter of 1830 trapping season, from the tributaries of the Brazos, fur dealers reported buying 40,000 deer skins, 1500 bear skins, and 1200 0tter and beaver hides.

John C. Ewers (ed) Jean Louis Berlandier: The Indians of Texas in 1830, Washington: Smithsonian Press, 1969.

1900: Mrs. John A. Frey’s [Frey Street was the border of their ranch] horse “took fright and ran away” on November 25, but she eventually calmed him before her buggy turned over. In the afternoon, Colbert Lancaster was killed in Stephenville, as his horse threw him into a barbed-wire fence. Erath Appeal

In 1883, when barbed-wire was very new in the area, large ranchers who had operated their cattle companies on the open range, became alarmed. They thought of the prairie like shrimpers think about the Gulf, it should be held in common. When water became scarce, some ranchers fenced in traditional waterholes, and some fenced off roads. The Wilson Ranch, near Hazel Dell began to build fences even though vigilantes threatened violence. After a mile of fence had been built, it was cut to pieces and every posts destroyed in one night.

Jewel Dukes Huddleston and Billy McCool, The Comanche County Sesquicentennial Committee: A Calendar of Comanche County History, 1986. Stephenville: Vanderbilt Street Press, 1985; and

Hyman Street is named for Joseph Henry Hyman, a Confederate officer who settled in Stephenville after the war. His daughter, Mary Hyman, wrote “The Judgement,” which horrified the good people of Stephenville and became the first book banned by the Stephenville Library. Another daughter, Susie Hyman, became the first post mistress. Years ago, I asked the Tarleton Library to see if they could locate a copy on Inter-Library loan. They found one someplace and I read it waiting for the great evil that would have caused so much trouble. And the morally unacceptable part of the book was that the abused woman divorced her husband and lived happily ever after – instead of going insane, suicide, or going to a nunnery. That ending was just too radical for the 1890s.

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

Hat $1.00-2.00 Gloves 10c – $1.00 Overalls 75c – $1.00 Shoes $1.00 – $3.00 Coal Oil 20c per gallon Lamp globe 10c Washboard 60c Tobacco 10c – 25c Snuff 5c – 25c Coffee 50c lb. Beans 10 lb. 50c Bacon 15c lb. Oatmeal 20c ib. Sugar 25 lb. for $1.85 Hay 50c per bale

Dan Young, Town and Country Bank Calendar of Erath County History, Vanderbilt Street Press, 1981.

According to a 1922 Stephenville Tribune, the first car seen in Erath County was a one-cylinder Oldsmobile introduced by the “Weiser boys” in 1902. It continued to run until the 1920’s.

The decade following the Civil War was marked by lawlessness in Erath County. Several factions of “Night Riders” took it upon themselves to clean up the county. Sometimes victims were tied up and lectured on morality and beaten. Sometimes worse. “It was a common sight in the morning to see two or three people hanging from trees.”

Lena Lewis, “Erath County: A Compilation,” Stephenville, Texas, [no date]. Unpublished manuscript in Tarleton library.

F.M. Snow had recently moved to Erath County from Palo Pinto County. Sometimes this month in 1925, he killed his wife, her son and mother. The bodies of the women were dismembered and partially burned in the fireplace. The 16-yer old boy’s head (some say all of their heads) was severed and hidden in a burlap bag in an abandoned cellar near Chalk Mountain. A hunter was drawn to the bag by his dog and the head(s) were taken to Stephenville, and displayed in a store window. Soon recognized, the authorities went to the Snow cabin (now on the Stephenville Museum grounds) and arrested Snow. He confessed to similar murders before moving to Stephenville. I was told by C. Richard King, that Snow agreed to confess if he was spared hanging. Since the electric chair had just become the mode of execution in Texas, the authorities agreed and he was the first person in Texas to be executed in the electric chair.

Boyce House, “The Head in the Burlap Bag,” Startling Detective Adventures, copy in the Tarleton University Library.

When R.D. Hunter took possession of Thurber in November of 1888, he found the miners on strike. He posted a notice offering the miners less pay if they would go back to work. The miners responded by moving off company property and starting a community called Striketown. Here Erath farmers were finally able to deliver fresh vegetables and meat to encourage the strikers. Hunter paid $10,000 to transport 172 miners from Indiana to replace the strikers. The miners described Hunter as a “feudalist of old who dreamed of a strickly monopolistic empire.” Hunter is best remembered for building a well-guarded fence around the entire town of Thurber to keep out Erath farmers and force the miners to buy at the company store. Striketown is now known as Mingus.

Willie M. Floyd, Thurber, Texas: An Abandoned Coal Field Town, Master’s Thesis, Southern Methodist University, June 1939; Mary Jane Gentry, Thurber: The Life and Death of a Texas Town, Master’s Thesis, University of Texas, August 1946; and Thurber Papers, Thurber Collection, Southwestern Collection, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, Texas.