On April 22, 1922, the Stephenville City Council approved the removal of African-American bodies to a new cemetery to be called mount Olive. The Stephenville Tribune ran an article in May of 1922 entitled “Negro Burial Grounds” which spoke of beautification by black community leaders, but failed to mention that the removal was forced. Many of the earliest graves lost their wooden markers during the removal, among those was the first Stephenville family, an enslaved couple who names are lost, were sent a year ahead of the settlement of Stephenville, by John M. Stephen, to build a trading post and establish relations with the two Indigenous groups that frequented the area, the Anadarko and the Comanche. The Anglo-friendly Anadarko Natives and the Anglo-tolerant (at the time) Comanches, traded smoked buffalo hams, deer-skin bags of honey and other articles for hardware. A year later, in 1855, Stephen and George Erath, led thirty families up the Bosque River from Waco to build the village of Stephenville around the current square. The peace established by the black couple only lasted three years before Stephenville’s residents angered the Natives, causing years of Comanche raids.

“Segregated History Haunts Cemetery,” Texannews (February 26, 2013)