Joe Fitzgerald founded the first nursery in Erath County in 1900. He is best remembered for developing the Early Wonder blackberry from local plants, and for the Eureka Persimmon. Fitzgerald said that February is the great tree planting month, “it is always better to cut them back about half or to 18 inches.” Fitzgerald’s first large order was for sycamore trees that lined Washington Street until most of them died out by the 1960s. Here and there in Stephenville one of these now very large trees survives. There is one that I can see from my window where Everitt and Vanderbilt meet.

Joe Fitzgerald, Family Papers, Stephenville, Texas