Dream Bigger
Room with a tale
It’s a fine thing when your lodging comes with a story. I spent a half-hour this morning with Stephenville lawyer William Hall Oxford, who explained the provenance of the Oxford House — where I’ll be bunking for the next month and where my sponsors have established their temporary headquarters. Here’s a look at the place.
Oxford is the third generation of his family to have practiced law in Stephenville. The home above was built in 1898 by his grandfather, William J. Oxford Sr., whose family had emigrated to Texas in the 1860s from Arkansas. The country around Stephenville was dangerous in those days. There were, shall we say, certain ethnic tensions between settlers like the Oxfords and the Comanches who were native to the area. Oxford’s great-uncle died after being shot in the stomach with an arrow after attempting to retrieve some horses stolen by the Comanches. Needless to say, this is a cause of death you don’t often see in modern obituaries.
“They had some scuffles in those days with the Indians,” Oxford says. (Note to aspiring writers: This is a good example of dry understatement.)
The construction of Oxford House was funded with a $3,000 fee collected by Oxford Sr. after he won a lawsuit in a nearby town. The payment was made in silver coins, which were transported back to Stephenville in a buckboard wagon. It was the grandest house in town, and when Oxford Sr. — known to the family even today as Poppa Judge, for his four terms on the district court bench in Erath County — temporarily moved away for a few years in the early 1900s, the home served as a boarding house and a bank. When he returned in 1921, he found the bank’s vaults had damaged the hardwood floors, so a new floor was installed over the existing hardwood. That double layer of hardwood can still be seen.
The elder Oxford’s son, William J. Oxford Jr., likewise became a lawyer and district judge in Stephenville, but it was William Hall Oxford who took custody of the home after his grandmother died. The youngest Oxford promised her not to let the home fall into ruin, so he extensively remodeled it and operated it as a bed and breakfast for more than a decade. It’s now a historical landmark, with a state plaque out front to prove it.
“The dream was to keep my promise to my grandmother to keep up that property,” Oxford says. “I believe I accomplished that dream the day I got it restored and preserved as a landmark.”
I’m now sleeping in the old gal’s bedroom. By the way, I couldn’t find anyone who could recall the last arrow fatality around here.
Related Posts
No related posts.
