Purple martins, scissor-tailed flycatchers, orchard and Bullock’s orioles, and the black-chinned hummingbird all arrive in Erath County this month. Jack (Cactus Jack) Murray, Bird Field Notes, 1969 – 1979, Stphenville, Texas.

In early April of 1921 a tornado struck four miles east of Stephenville, the path was 100 yards wide and 400 yards long, destroying a windmill, tearing up trees, and pulling the feathers out of chickens. Stephenville Tribune

On April 7, 1848, James Stephen bought at public auction 4,409 acres for a total of $150. The land was originally given to the Blair family for their son’s death at the Alamo, but they refused to leave Tennessee to come to Texas. It would be another six years before the Stephen family would travel to the future site of Stephenville to see the land. In 1854, John M. Stephen moved an enslaved family to the post oak forest now the Stephenville square to open a trading post. Their mission was to establish good relations with the Anadarko and Comanche Indians. (good relations lasted less than four years) They traded for deerskin bags of honey and smoked buffalo hams. The following year thirty families moved up the Bosque River from Waco and established the town of Stephenville. The names of this first Black family are not recorded anywhere, but it is said that oral history still remembers their names.

The Stephenville Tribune, April 18, 1913; Homer Stephen, The Frontier Postmasters, Dublin: Dublin Progress, 1952; Dan Young, Unpublished notes, 2022.