Sue Sanders described 1890s Erath County sleeping-over etiquette:”When company stayed all night, it took some diplomacy to get all hands bedded down. But farm women had a lot of that; they needed it. Near bedtime the men would all walk out to take a last look at the stock. Then the women folks would take off their dresses and get into bed. Then the men came back. The man of the house carefully covered the fire with ashes so that there would still be coals the next morning. . . . Long before daylight, the men got up, dresses, and went out ‘to the crib,’ so the women could dress.”

Sue Sanders, Our Common Herd, New York: Garden City Publishing Co., 1939.

November 9, 1897 – the largest sweet potato in Stephenville’s history was displayed today by T.A. Price. It was 16 inches long and weighed 17 pounds. It was a wonder to all that saw it. Stephenville Empire

All species of oak trees along the Bosque River receive an environmental cue in the spring that coordinates their masting behavior. Have you noticed that oaks and pecans have heavy-bearing years and then several years in which they don’t produce at all. This is a trick they learned millions of years ago. If they produced a medium crop every year, the insect and animal predators would build their populations and wipe out each year’s crop. But if the tree do not bear a crop for several years, then those populations crash and are not present in large numbers when a heavy mast year arrives. Masting is the Old English term for forest foods, nuts and acorns that covered the forest floor in productive years. Acorn shells found in archeological sites along the Bosque show that Native Texans took advantage of mast years to process the acorns into flour to help them survive the winter. It’s thought that the far-ranging bands would gather in an oak grove during good years to meet and stir the gene pool, then share the work; collecting, shelling, crushing and then the acorn pulp had to be leached in water to remove the kidney-damaging tannins. After grinding on metates, the flour could be stored for winter soups, stews, and flatbread.

Dan Young, Unpublished manuscript, 2022.

Just before dark on November 12, 1905, Joe Gilbreath crept into Mrs. Wallace Gregory’s bedroom. In her statement she said, “The children was playing out in the pasture,” “I just sent the little girl Effie out with the baby and told her to stay until I called her.” Wallace Gregory was watching through a window as the couple embraced, it was then that she saw her husband at the window. Gregory rushed in and shot Gilbreath to death. Usually, the claim of adultery was the best guarantee a man could use before an all male jury, but twenty character witnesses showed up to describe Gilbreath as a “chaste and virtuous man.” So the January 12, 1906 verdict declared Gregory “guilty of murder in the first degree.” Gregory appealed and was given a three and a half year sentence.

James Pylant, Sins of the Pioneers: Crimes and Scandals in a Small Texas Town, Stephenville: Jacobus Books, 2009, 154-156.

John “Jack” Hollis lost his arms in a sorghum mill accident as a boy. In the 1870s he showed up in Stephenville and became a cowboy with violent tendencies. He used his stub arms to amaze people with his dexterity in eating, penmanship, and handling firearms. In 1877 or 1878, he traveled west to kill thirty-six buffalo, by tying a string to the trigger of his rifle and pulling it with his teeth. Jack learned to hold a six-shooter by placing it against his chest, held with his left stub, and cocking and firing it with his right stub. In 1880, when he was working as a cowboy near Duffau, Sheriff Slaughter arrested him for cattle theft. Hollis was able to escape, but was arrested again three years later. In December of 1886, he was involved in a brawl. During the fight he convinced a friend to tie a large rock in one sleeve of his coat. He returned to the fight and knocked out four men in ten minutes. Hollis later died of smallpox in El Paso.

James Pylant, Sins of the Pioneers: Crimes and Scandals in a Small Texas Town, Stephenville: Jacobus Books, 2009, 121-123.

On November 12, 1883, forty vigilantes, “who would not work if they had an opportunity,” descended upon thirty black wood-cutters, working six miles from DeLeon for the Houston & Texas Central Railroad. The mob harassed the railroad employees, poking them with gunbarrels and firing more than fifty shots in and around the camp. Fort Worth Daily Gazette

There are Spanish reports of elk, thought to have been a subspecies of Merriam’s elk, in North Texas from the 1600s; loss of habitat and hunting shrunk their range to West Texas, where they became extinct by the late 1800s. (They have since been reintroduced). An early Erath County immigrant noted in an 1884 Stephenville Empire, that in the 1850s there were herds of 50 to 75 “red bucks,” thought to have been these elks.

The Bosque River begins near Huckabay and flows 110 miles into the Brazos at Waco (into a lake these days). The word bosque is Spanish for wooded because most of it is in the Western Cross Timbers, a finger of oaks that reaches into Oklahoma. The river may have been named for the Spaniard, Marquis de Aquayo in 1719, or for the illegal French arms trader, Juan Bosquet, who lived among the Tawakoni Indians along the river. There is an 1872 reference to the density of the post oaks recorded by Jim Peak and William Bower, who found themselves surrounded by Comanches 18 miles west of Stephenville. They escaped by riding into the timber. Handbook of Texas and Cleburne Chronicle

In the fall of 1858, 125 Anadarko, Caddo, and other Brazos reservation men guided a major campaign against the Comanches in Oklahoma. They were led by future Texas governor L.S. (Sul) Ross, and were known as Ross’s Indian Brigade, in support of Major Earl Van Dorn. The campaign was successful and Choctaw Tom, who had earlier been a scout for Sam Houston, was allowed to leave the reservation with his family to hunt bear with Anglo friends in the Palo Pinto area. Choctaw Tom’s family was well-known in the area because his wife often treated the sick among families that had settled near the reservation. Tom was away from camp, to buy an ox and cart when a group of Erath County men crept up to the tents and opened fire. Six Indians died in the gunfire, all of them in their beds except for one man that was at the tent’s opening. Tom’s nine year-old daughter woke to see a musket in her face and when she moved it, her thumb was shot off. The only casualty from Erath County was Samuel Stephen, the founder’s son, who became the first person buried in the Stephenville cemetery. W.W. McNeil, one of the organizers of the raid, returned to Stephenville and warned that an attack was expected. (the only motive that I can imagine was to stir up violence with the reservation Indians so the Anglos could claim the land – one year later the reservation closed and the last of the agricultural Texas Indians were marched to Oklahoma). But Jose Maria, the leader of the Anadarko/Caddo Indians refused to allow a vengeful response. Instead he wanted to wait to see what Captain Ross would do. (Ross was in Austin). The Indians wanted to take their case to court, but it was so close to the Civil War, that Ranger Captain Ford refused to make the arrests. Hateful writers spun bogus stories abut what happened: the worst was J. W. Wilbarger, who claimed that Choctaw Tom’s family was a Comanche camp, and that a trail was followed from recent Comanche atrocities. There followed a battle in which two women were accidentally killed, and the Anglos fought heroically.

Cecile Elkins Carter, Caddo Indians: Where We Come From, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1995; and J.W. Wilbarger, Indian Depredations in Texas: Reliable Accounts of Battles, Wars, Adventures, Forays, Murders, Massacres, Etc, Austin, Texas: Hutchings Printing House, 1889.

James M. McCarthy, Jr. and his wife Martha had a prosperous farm on Duffau Creek on the line between Erath and Bosque Counties. His family noticed that James, Jr. began acting strangely a couple of months before the incident. In September of 1869, James told his wife that he had to be baptized immediately by the Reverend Henry Hurley. He ignored the crops ready to harvest and walked five miles to his father’s house and told him to bring the Reverend. James, Sr. found Henry Hurley and brought him back to the house, but James, Jr. had returned to his cabin. The father and the reverend followed him to the son’s cabin and since it was late, decided to stay the night and perform the baptism to next day. During the night, James, Jr. terrified his wife by loading his shotgun and behaving strangely. Martha ran from the house to bring the neighbors. James, Jr. shot his father and the reverend, and told his son to lie down on the porch where the father smashed his head with a rock. McCarthy then grabbed his daughters, Susan and Ella, and brought them to his father’s house, where he then came to his senses. He was taken to Meridian where he was chained to a tree while while the doctor could be located to examine him. McCarthy explained that the spirits had commanded him to kill. Deemed not responsible for his actions, he was sent to the Lunatic Asylum near Austin, where he soon found a razor and cut his throat.

Sherri Knight, Vigilantes to Verdicts: Stories from a Texas District Court, Stephenville: Jacobus Books, 2009.