Dream Bigger
Finding history on a wall
While wandering around downtown I came upon this mural, which was painted on the rear wall of the Stephenville city hall.
Seeing the mural caused me to realize I’ve been here a week, yet still haven’t burrowed into the town’s early years. So I found the Stephenville library and asked for books on local history. The offerings were thin. Three books were handed to me: (1) “History of Erath County,” written decades ago by the great-nephew of John Stephen, the town’s founder. It’s only 48 pages long and organized in a stream-of-consciousness fashion; (2) “Images of Erath County,” essentially an album of old photos compiled by the local newspaper; and (3) another book called “History of Erath County,” this one put together by the local Historical Commission. It’s kept behind the library counter, because somebody scribbled notations in it quibbling with the book’s assertions. For instance, where one fellow from the past was described as having been “very active in all civic affairs …” somebody had jotted in the margin, “What a lie!”
I’d like to be able to say a reader could form a coherent picture of Stephenville history from browsing through these three, but I can’t. Still, I turned up some interesting nuggets. I learned that Stephen paid “fourteen and two-thirds cents per acre” for the land upon which the town was built. I also learned that in 1899, a fellow named Tom Wright was hanged in Stephenville for shooting a constable. The presiding judge in that case was William J. Oxford Sr. — in whose home I’m now sleeping.
I also came across this explanation of “the cause of the Caddo and Comanche Indians going on the war path” in Erath County:
About the year of 1859, when a couple of Indians rode up in front of the pioneer store and stopped their horses, a white citizen killed one of these. The Indian chief requested the white settlers to turn the killer over to them for Indian justice. This request was refused by the white settlers, and the Indians were so outraged they vowed that as long as the sun shone and water ran down hill, they would be at war with the paleface. They donned their war paint and many were killed on both sides before the Indians were driven from this country.
The best thing I learned, though, was from a bronze plaque attached to the wall next to the mural. It explained how a talking parrot set off a cattle stampede one day, almost destroying Stephenville. Read it for yourself. You can’t make up stuff this good.
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