In 1865, a man named Dalton, who lived a little south of Stephenville on the Bosque River, was brought to town and charged with killing his wife. A large crowd gathered around the square. Since there was no judge, town officials drew a line in the ground on the square and after some discussion of the case, the people were asked to step to the guilty or the innocent side of the line. Most of the crowd stepped to the guilty side and Dalton was hanged from a post oak tree on the Stephenville Square.

M.L. Auten, A History of Erath County. Unpublished master’s thesis, Hardin-Simmons University, August, 1951, in Texas Tech Southwestern Collection.