The Franco-Texienne Bill, favored by Sam Houston in the 1840s, would have allowed French colonists to build a fort at the site of later Stephenville – giving the settlers three million acres in the area. Later, a 60,000 acre tract known as the Kimball’s Block was almost sold to a group of New England farmers who would have arrived as a group to Erath County – which would have imprinted the area with quite a different character. In 1853, Because he was killed in the Alamo, the heirs of John Blair were given 17 labors of land. Thomas Blair, with the power of attorney for the family, sold the land because nobody in the family would move to Texas from Missouri. John M. Stephen bought some of the land, now in Erath County, 1, 920 acres for $500. The following year he followed the Bosque up from Waco to see the land.

Dan Young, History Calendar, 1986