In the 1860s Hazel Dell, on the Erath-Comanche line, “achieved prominence as the roughest, toughest town in Texas. There were several saloons operating there, and a man named lewis Ledbetter had the most popular saloon in Texas. It was known all over the state, and many tall tales have been told about the meanness, and the horrible crimes that were committed at this little place. It is said that the first ten citizens of the little village met violent deaths except for Choctaw Bill Robinson.” One story as to how the Hazell Dell cemetery began tells of a group of drunks in a saloon that decided to shoot a trapper camped near-by , since no one would miss him. His was the first burial at the cemetery. The most famous resident was Choctaw Bill Robinson, who came to Stephenville in 1856. “The tall, dark preacher arrived in Stephenville, and with several residents assembled in a log cabin on the north side of what is now the town square, delivered the county’s first sermon.”

Robinson-Bradley, Willo M. and Edith Lucile Robinson. Family Trails: Ancestral and Contemporary. Stephenville Printing Co., 1978.