Sue Sanders described 1890s Erath County sleeping-over etiquette:”When company stayed all night, it took some diplomacy to get all hands bedded down. But farm women had a lot of that; they needed it. Near bedtime the men would all walk out to take a last look at the stock. Then the women folks would take off their dresses and get into bed. Then the men came back. The man of the house carefully covered the fire with ashes so that there would still be coals the next morning. . . . Long before daylight, the men got up, dresses, and went out ‘to the crib,’ so the women could dress.”

Sue Sanders, Our Common Herd, New York: Garden City Publishing Co., 1939.

November 9, 1897 – the largest sweet potato in Stephenville’s history was displayed today by T.A. Price. It was 16 inches long and weighed 17 pounds. It was a wonder to all that saw it. Stephenville Empire

All species of oak trees along the Bosque River receive an environmental cue in the spring that coordinates their masting behavior. Have you noticed that oaks and pecans have heavy-bearing years and then several years in which they don’t produce at all. This is a trick they learned millions of years ago. If they produced a medium crop every year, the insect and animal predators would build their populations and wipe out each year’s crop. But if the tree do not bear a crop for several years, then those populations crash and are not present in large numbers when a heavy mast year arrives. Masting is the Old English term for forest foods, nuts and acorns that covered the forest floor in productive years. Acorn shells found in archeological sites along the Bosque show that Native Texans took advantage of mast years to process the acorns into flour to help them survive the winter. It’s thought that the far-ranging bands would gather in an oak grove during good years to meet and stir the gene pool, then share the work; collecting, shelling, crushing and then the acorn pulp had to be leached in water to remove the kidney-damaging tannins. After grinding on metates, the flour could be stored for winter soups, stews, and flatbread.

Dan Young, Unpublished manuscript, 2022.

Just before dark on November 12, 1905, Joe Gilbreath crept into Mrs. Wallace Gregory’s bedroom. In her statement she said, “The children was playing out in the pasture,” “I just sent the little girl Effie out with the baby and told her to stay until I called her.” Wallace Gregory was watching through a window as the couple embraced, it was then that she saw her husband at the window. Gregory rushed in and shot Gilbreath to death. Usually, the claim of adultery was the best guarantee a man could use before an all male jury, but twenty character witnesses showed up to describe Gilbreath as a “chaste and virtuous man.” So the January 12, 1906 verdict declared Gregory “guilty of murder in the first degree.” Gregory appealed and was given a three and a half year sentence.

James Pylant, Sins of the Pioneers: Crimes and Scandals in a Small Texas Town, Stephenville: Jacobus Books, 2009, 154-156.

John “Jack” Hollis lost his arms in a sorghum mill accident as a boy. In the 1870s he showed up in Stephenville and became a cowboy with violent tendencies. He used his stub arms to amaze people with his dexterity in eating, penmanship, and handling firearms. In 1877 or 1878, he traveled west to kill thirty-six buffalo, by tying a string to the trigger of his rifle and pulling it with his teeth. Jack learned to hold a six-shooter by placing it against his chest, held with his left stub, and cocking and firing it with his right stub. In 1880, when he was working as a cowboy near Duffau, Sheriff Slaughter arrested him for cattle theft. Hollis was able to escape, but was arrested again three years later. In December of 1886, he was involved in a brawl. During the fight he convinced a friend to tie a large rock in one sleeve of his coat. He returned to the fight and knocked out four men in ten minutes. Hollis later died of smallpox in El Paso.

James Pylant, Sins of the Pioneers: Crimes and Scandals in a Small Texas Town, Stephenville: Jacobus Books, 2009, 121-123.

On November 12, 1883, forty vigilantes, “who would not work if they had an opportunity,” descended upon thirty black wood-cutters, working six miles from DeLeon for the Houston & Texas Central Railroad. The mob harassed the railroad employees, poking them with gunbarrels and firing more than fifty shots in and around the camp. Fort Worth Daily Gazette