Marshall McIlhaney was born in Loudon County, Virginia this month in 1837. His grandfather, a major in the Revolutionary War, made a fortune in stock-raising, making Marshall a wealthy man. After becoming a Methodist preacher, McIlhaney moved to Stephenville in 1883 and opened an elocution class. A little later he became the president of Stephenville College. In 1910, the son, Harry J. McIlhaney, began the respected, though short-lived, McIlhaney Academy, bounded by Clinton and Jones streets, facing Vanderbilt Street. McIlhaney Street is named for the family.

C. Richard King, Stephenville Streets. unpublished manuscript loaned by the author, 1986. Current whereabouts unknown.

After the Choctaw Tom massacre last month, the Anadarko and Caddo Indians tried to take the case to court. January 19, 1859, Judge Battle ordered Ranger Captain Rip Ford, for the second time, to arrest the 17 Erath County vigilantes. The Ranger Captain refused, fearful that state authority was too weak to support an arrest and trial. The names of the murderers continue to show up in Erath County history as honored members of the community, one of them, W.W. McNeil even has a street named after him.

Dan Young, The Erath History Calendars, 1979-1989.

In 1860 William Carpenter was overtaken north of Stephenville by Indians with drawn bows who demanded to know, “You good man?” He replied , “Me good Palo Pinto man – friend to Indian – I no like mean whiteman who live at Stephenville.” The Indians let him go. The reference to whether or not the man was from Stephenville must have been a reference to the 1859 Choctaw Tom massacre, an Anadarko family of scouts on leave that worked for the U.S. Army. The first burial in the Stephenville cemetery was the son of town founder, John M. Stephen, who had stood up as the vigilantes opened fire on the Indian’s tent, and was shot by his own people in doing so. The death of this 16-year-old boy was presented to the people of Stephenville as the result of deadly hand-to-hand combat.

From Dan Young’s Erath History calendars, 1979-1989.

Erath County was once described as being honeycombed with rock walls. It was in the 1920s and 1930s, when desperate times forced most people to sell their rock walls to be crushed into gravel to pave around the square and area roads. In 1920, a gravel road replaced the sandy lane from Bluff Dale to the Comanche line. Then after cars became common, this road was destroyed in only three years. By 1935 the road was paved from Stephenville to Bluff Dale, but the Great Depression slowed efforts to pave further until various WPA programs completed paving.

An article in the 1880 Comanche Chief says, “There is no danger in pruning a peach tree too much. The tree should be pruned so as to have the body short so they are not so easily affected by the strong winds which are a feature of this country.” Dick and Margie Korn, advise in Here’s How to Garden in the Dallas-Fort Worth Area, 1960, “Cabbage plants may be set out as early as January [it’s a gamble] but remember to water ahead of an expected freeze to stand very low temperatures.”

A settler arriving along Barton’s Creek in 1871 was “told it was useless to plant a garden, as nothing but seven top turnips would grow and they were only fit for greens . . . Almost everyone was interested in stock, and no one thought this was a farming country. Cattle were everywhere, and the man who tried to till the soil was censured for destroying the grass and laughed at for being a fool.”

Stephenville Empire, 1883

In August of 1883, the people of Stephenville reported sounds that resembled 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. What they heard was the Indonesian volcano, Krakatoa. The following three winters were described as colder than normal because of the volcanic dust in the upper atmosphere that reduced the sun’s intensity. During the winter of 1883-1884, the coldest in twenty years, the Bosque River stayed frozen through February. The winter of 1885 was more normal with only a few spells of 0 degree weather.

Stephenville Empire; Fort Worth Gazette; John T. Carr, Jr., Texas Droughts: Causes, Classification and Prediction, No. 30. Austin: Texas Water Department Board, November, 1966; and Krakatoa, Encyclopaedia Britannia.

J.M.R. Stephens described the area around Stephenville when he first came in 1856: “The country abounded in vast herds of deer and numerous flocks of turkeys, while the streams were full of fine fish, and I will say alligators, as we killed 19, measuring from three to twelve feet. The writer had the honor of killing the first wolf.” Strawn Enterprise

1899: “The Crow Opera House has served a good purpose these holidays. Monday night there was a masquerade ball, Tuesday night , the fireman’s ball, Wednesday night the young people occupied it with a party, and Thursday , Friday, and Saturday nights it will be occupied by the Jennie Holman troupe.”

Erath Appeal

1901: an eleven-year old boy gave this note to his teacher: “Please excuse James for not being thare yesterday. He played trooant, but you don’t need to lick him for it, as the boy he played trooant with and him fell out and the boy licked him, and a man they sassed caught and licked him, and the driver of a cart they hung onto licked him also. Then his Pa licked him, and I gave him another one for sassing me. So you need not lick him till next time.” Erath Appeal

John H. Boucher was born at his family ranch on the Bosque River, now Stephenville City Park, in 1861. In 1881, as Sheriff Bill Slaughter’s deputy, Boucher was sent to arrest Alf Gould, a cattle rustler based near Lampasas. The sheriff there was afraid to assist in the capture because of the Gould gang’s fierce reputation. Boucher was able to arrest Gould on his own in spite of the gang and Gould’s enraged wife. Mrs. Gould followed the deputy back to Stephenville, and after her husband was sent to prison, was so pitiful that Sheriff Slaughter hired her as the jail cook. Boucher was so nervous about eating her cooking that he quit. Empire-Tribune (1936)