May 19, 1836: Comanches raided Fort Parker (Limestone County) and carried off several children, including 9 year old Cynthia Ann Parker. She was given to a Penateka (Honey-Eaters) Comanche family. These Natives lived in the Cross-Timbers area and probably camped in present Erath County. She was raised as Naduah and later married Peta Nocona of the Panhandle-dwelling Naconis (Antelope-Eaters). Their son, Quanah Parker was the chief of one of the last Comanche bands to surrender.

James DeShields, Cynthia Ann Parker, San Antonio: Naylor Company, 1934; and Jack Jackson, Comanche Moon, San Francisco: Rip Off Press, 1979.

May of 1932 was a very wet month. Massive rainfall brought the Leon River out of its banks, “sending thousands of giant catfish into the eddying backwaters where thy are destroying crops. Citizens there are shooting and clubbing to death the voracious, hungry creatures. Several of the huge fish even entered flooded chicken houses and pulled chickens from their roosts.” Stephenville Tribune

1895: “Who would have thought of the Bosque being navigable, and of our people shipping vegetables and fruit right out of Stephenville by water?” Such a produce shipment left Stephenville this week bound for the mouth of the Brazos River. Stephenville Empire

“When people from Ireland began populating Texas, they arrived packing courage, toughness, and resilience as a result of previous persecutions and domination by England. The newcomers encountered similar difficulties under Spanish rule, yet they persevered and ultimately helped Texas win its independence. . . . Contrary to the hopes of the Mexican government, the Irish ultimately joined other settlers in Texas’ struggle for independence. Eleven Irishmen died defending the Alamo in 1836, and approximately a hundred fought at the Battle of San Jacinto . . . in the decades that followed, more Irish escaped to Texas to avoid economic woes and famine in their homeland. . . . The Central Texas community of Dublin, proclaimed by the state legislature in 2005 as the “Irish Capital of Texas,” stages a celebration the Saturday before Saint Patrick’s Day.”

Bob McCullough, “The Pluck of the Irish,” Authentic Texas: The Heritage Magazine of Texas, Volume 4, 2019, 60-61.

Cowboy Marsh Johnson described a night in a tent city saloon along the Chisolm Trail in 1868: The dance floor was crowded with women and girls with their partners of cowboys, halfbreeds, and toughs of every description – regular cutthroats. . . . Suddenly amid the hum of voices and laughter a shot rang out . . . the next few minutes were given to a bombardment of whiskey bottles, bullets, and rocks. Then as suddenly as it had started, the music began and . . . the proprietor yelled out, ‘on with the dance; there is only one man killed.'”

Marshall L. Johnson, Trail Blazing: A True Story of the Struggles with Hostile Indians on the Frontier of Texas, Dallas: Mathis Publishing Co., 1935.

Sue Sanders recalled that in the 1870s, ” Ma planted morning-glories and set out flags, [Iris] both the white and the purple kinds. She loved flowers a heap, and when the haws bloomed in the spring, [Cratagus variety now extinct in the area] she kept the house filled with their blossoms. At the windows she had sweet-potato vines growing in bottles, and they made as pretty a house plant as you could ask for.”