In January of 1887, Rev. John Brown, having finished an investigation into the great drought of NW Texas, told fifty members of the Texas Legislature: “People are leaving that section of the state by the hundreds, doing Texas incalculable injury in advertising it as a state unwilling to provide for it’s own people in distress. Dallas Morning News

In February of 1887 “Word reached Texas that President Grover Cleveland vetoed the drouth bill appropriating $10,000 in seed for the suffering Central Texas area.” Typical; of the Gilded Age Social Darwinist thinking of the time, Cleveland explained that the drouth was a local problem. King, 1965

1886: Drought stricken Central Texas made the Dallas Morning News in September: “The very air is now quivering and throbbing with the cries of the poor and needy for bread to eat and food to sustain life. Those who are able are leaving their homes in search of employment in more favored localities , while those who remain, to continue the battle, are driven to the wall.” C.D. Williams of Desdemona, wrote to The Dallas Morning News: “There has been considerable grub sent here by the good people of the East, and I will say that parties that it are mostly those that don’t deserve any help, for I know that they lay around town a week waiting for the rations to be issued, when right here in sight of town they cn get plenty of cotton to pick at 50 cents per hundred.” King, 1965

1886: For hundreds of miles there is no green grass and very little dry, and often no water. The people are moving their cattle before they all die.” C. Richard King. Wagons East: The Great Drouth of 1886. Austin: The University of Texas , 1965.

Immigrants into Texas had been led to believe by land speculators that Texas was a subtropical paradise. Rain was plentiful in the spring of 1885, but by January of 1886 all surface water was gone: “Long strings of wagons are daily seen coming east.” The drought had begun. King, 1965

In 1874 Captain J.K. Blunt moved his family from Erath County to Beasley Crossing in McCulloch County. While chopping wood Blunt was attacked by unidentified Natives among whom was a white man with a large mustache and a broad brimmed white hat. Two of the Indians were killed and the others were driven away. J.M. Franks. Seventy Years in Texas: Memories of the Pioneer Days. Gatesville, Texas, 1924.

In 1867 a band of Comanches led by a man with long red hair killed Ann Whitney, a Hamilton schoolteacher, and kidnapped one of her students, John Kuykendall, whom they later sold for four gallons of whiskey. Homer Stephen. The Frontier Postmasters. Dublin: Dublin Progress, 1952.

During the second of a drought, in 1886, Stephenville residents rejoiced to see a huge black cloud approaching out of the west. Someone yelled, “Didn’t I tell you it was going to rain?” But it was only another sandstorm. Stephenville Empire

An 1893 Stephenville ordinance declared: “Any person who shall bathe, wash, or swim in that part of the Bosque River within the corporate limits of the city of Stephenville, between the hours sunrise and sunset, shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor and/or upon conviction thereof shall be fined any sum not exceeding ten dollars.”

J.W. Jarrott. Revised Ordinances and Rules of Order of the City of Stephenville, Texas. Printed and published by authority of the City Council of Stephenville, Texas. Revision of 1893.

In July of 1898, Mrs. N.W. McCorkle of Thurber, with three of her children, were thrown into a barbed-wire fence when their horse ran away and turned over the buggy. Erath Appeal

In 1877 Erath County was described by the Fort Worth Democrat: “It is mostly uncultivated; the farms are few and far between. We did see a very extensive orchard. Stephenville is a very promising town with an inhabitance of about 2000 . . . .The United Friends of Temperance is an organization of note: with a membership of about 200, much good work has been done, and more bad whiskey put down by its members than all the churches in town.” [of course this was before Thurber].