Favorite Books, Authors and Articles about Erath County People, Places and Events. Here's our list of books and articles about people and places in Stephenville, Thurber, Dublin, Alexander, Selden, Bluff Dale, Clairette, Morgan Mill, Johnsville, Lingleville and Chalk Mountain Texas.

From the jungles of Central America to the deserts of the southwest down the back roads from coast to coast, maverick archaeologist and adventurer David Hatcher Childress takes the reader deep into unknown America. "Similarly, they report that the Dallas Morning News on July 30, 1974, carried a story of the discovery of the skeleton of a seven-foot woman sealed in a cave at the crest of a high mesa near the hamlet of Chalk Mountain, Texas" . . . Read more Look inside

On July 4, 1855, on the fringe of the Texas Cross Timbers frontier, John M. Stephen and George B. Erath completed the survey of the Stephenville city square. Stephenville quickly became a prosperous settlement and a center for cattle raising, cotton production, and most recently dairy production. Styled today as . . .  Read more Look inside

Colonel Doyle R. Yardley died April 23, 1946, at his parent's home near Lingleville, Texas. He had just celebrated his 33rd birthday "Home Was Never Like This" was written by Colonel Doyle R. Yardley, commander of the 509 Parachute Infantry Battalion. Yardley was captured during the Invasion of Italy and spent 16 months as a prisoner of war in Oflag 64 in Szubin, Poland. Col. Yardley kept penciled entries of his experiences in England and as a POW . . .

. . . Read more Look Inside

"Grace Myrtle Oldham was born on April 5, 1886.  According to her stories she moved with her family to Alexander, Texas, Erath Co., before she was one year old. Later the family settled on a farm on Alarm Creek a few miles north of Alexander. Myrtle told many stories about Indians, and panthers, and rattlesnakes . . . " Read more Look inside

When the Civil War ended, many disenchanted Southerners poured into Central Texas, toting guns and grudges. Shots of whiskey loosened tempers and soon bullets were flying. Within a few years, the Lone Star State had become the nation’s murder capital. The small town of Stephenville, where 139 people were hauled to prison for crimes between 1864 to 1891, dealt with Comanche warriors, restless outlaws, crime rings, and the ruthless vigilante group known as The Mob . . . Read more

"In January 2008, several residents of Erath County in Texas saw a huge UFO in the skies above them. The object, estimated to be about half a mile long, was seen near the towns of Stephenville, Texas and Dublin, Texas. After this happened, some of the older residents remembered a UFO case that took place many years earlier, back in 1891. That was when a flying object exploded in the sky above a local cotton gin. The UFO sighting took place on Saturday, June 13, 1891, a quiet summer day, in the small town of Dublin, Texas..." Read more Look inside for more like this please see See also Mysterious Texas

Mary Joe Fitzgerald Clendenin grew up in rural Erath County, Texas, before electricity and indoor plumbing was available to country folk. My Corner of the Great Depression tells about life in rural Texas during the years from the fall of the stock market until the beginning of World War II. Country life in those times meant canning, hog-killing, milking the family cow, working in the field, saving pennies to go the movies, playing all the school games . . .Read more Look inside

"From reminiscences of old timers to the dusty pages of the court files of Erath County, Texas, the history of justice was recorded. Fed up with the inability of the court system to take care of..." Read more

by Robert K. DeArment

Think gunfighter, and Wyatt Earp or Billy the Kid may come to mind, but what of Jim Moon? Joel Fowler? Zack Light? A host of other figures helped forge the gunfighter persona, but their stories have been lost to time. "The first, Company A, with Captain John R. Waller commanding, began recruitment in May, One of the first to join Waller's company was John A. Watson, who on May 25, 1874 enlisted at Stephenville, Erath County . . . " Read more Look inside

The thirty-three Depression-era interviews presented here were culled from the WPA-Federal Writers' Project. They faithfully show how old-time Texas cowhands lived and how they felt about their glamour-less existence. "This time, though we went back to Erath County and got the rest of the family. I had three sisters, Lula, Bertie and Annie. They could all ride and rope, and Dad just brought them along. My mother died while we were in  " ... Read more Look inside  . . . for more like this please see Texas Cowboy History

Stephenville Yellow Jacket Football

In Texas, high school football is king. If pigskin passion is no less intense among college and professional fans, enthusiasm for the schoolboy sport is more democratically spread throughout towns and communities, small and large. Almost any young man can play if he's willing to pay the price, work hard, and bring a bit of local, regional, or statewide glory to his hometown. Stephenville High School is one among an elite group of Texas football schools that has achieved at the highest level. The traditional rivalry games against Dublin . . . Read more Look inside

The Road to Dr Pepper, Texas: The Story of Dublin Dr Pepper

The Road to Dr Pepper, Texas is the story of Dublin Dr Pepper Bottling Co., a David-Goliath case study of the world's first Dr Pepper bottling plant and the only one that has always used pure cane sugar in spite of compelling reasons to switch sweeteners. The book traces the story from the founder's birth through the contemporary struggles of a tiny independent, family-owned franchise against industry giants. Owners of the plant have been touched by every major social, economic, and political issue of the past 114 years, and many of those forces threatened the survival of the plant . . . Read more

"McDow's Hole is a deep hole in Green Creek in Erath County. The old watering hole first acquired its evil reputation in 1855, when a band of Texas Rangers who were pursuing a Comanche raiding party stopped at the watering hole to refresh themselves and their horses. While the horses were drinking, the Rangers noticed a plume of black smoke rising over a hill three hundred yard to the southeast. The men ran over the hill, where they encountered..." Read more Look inside

See also Mysterious Texas

Death List, Trail of Terror

Three desperate convicts under the cover of darkness slipped out of the confines of the Colorado State Penitentiary in Cañon City, Thursday night, August 22, 1974. Dalton Williams, Jerry Ben Ulmer, and Richard Mangum headed south, stealing and abandoning automobiles along the way. Two pretty petite social workers—Janice Lefever and Betty Jane Tucker— made a fateful stop along a New Mexico highway . . . Read more Look inside

by Sheryl Reed Rascher

Carved from central Comancheria, Erath (EE-rath) County was created by stock raisers and settlers with little to lose but hopes and dreams. Bisected by Grand Prairie and Western Cross Timbers, this is where East Texas ends and West Texas begins. The Bosque and Paluxy Rivers welcomed ranchers, farmers, millers, and ginners. Rustlers, deserters, train robbers, vigilantes, lawmen, and Texas Rangers soon followed. Faith, education, life, and death cultivated villages with churches, schools, stores, and cemeteries in walking distance. Bridges, roads, and railways meant the life or death of a township. This volume commemorates the people, places, and events of lost communities that made the "Cowboy Capital of the World" what it is today... Read more Look inside

Found inside: "One of the most remarkable escapes ever made from Indians was that of a young man by the name of Saunders, who settled in Erath county at an early day. As he was pretty well educated, and there were quite a number of families where he had taken up his abode, they built a school house and employed him to teach their children. Not long after his arrival  . . ." Read more Look inside

Author and adventurer David Hatcher Childress takes the reader on a fantastic journey across the Himalayas to Europe and North America in his quest for Yeti, Sasquatch and Hairy Giants.

Found Inside:

Chalk Mountain, Texas. Also in Texas, at the Paluxy River site, creationist researcher Dr. Clifford Burdick claims to have found evidence of dinosaurs and man walking together in the many fossilized footprints in the sandstone of the river . . .

In its heyday, Thurber was home to coal miners and brick plant workers from Italy, Poland, and as many as fourteen other European nations, not to mention the many Mexican immigrants who came to the area. In this, her master’s thesis, Mary Jane Gentry, who started the first grade in Thurber and graduated as valedictorian of its high school in 1930, records first-hand memories of the town’s vibrant charm. . . . Read more

History of Erath County:

A Pictorial, Limited Edition, Family History of the People or Erath County, Texas: 1878-1980

History of Erath County Texas 1878-1980, including genealogical information, photos, family surname history, settlers, pioneers, builders, trades, buildings, schools and churches of the era.

Images of Erath County: The Early Years

An incredible pictorial of the early history of Erath county Texas. This book covers the first half of the 1900s, from the turn of the century to around 1950.

A free verse description of life as it was in a farm family in Erath County, Texas, in the 1920s and 1930s, the way of life of devout Christians of the Church of Christ. . . . for more like this please see Texas Church History

This is not just a romance novel for women. During the story two families move from Erath County to Jones County, Texas in 1898 to expand one character's ranching operation. They cross the Clear Fork of the Brazos River at Lieb's Crossing near present day Lueders while the river was flooding. This novel is historical, beginning in 1897 and ending in 1910. It chronicles factual places and events . . . Read more Look inside

A twenty-first century reckoning with the legendary Texas Rangers that does justice to their heroic moments while also documenting atrocities, brutality, oppression, and corruption.

Found Inside: "Gillentine and his men returned to Erath County to sound the alarm over this sizable assembly of Indians. A state militia group was assembled, led by Captain Silas Totten, a former Confederate officer who had been wounded in the Civil War. As a ranger captain, Totten showed great enthusiasm for tracking down war deserters . . .  " Read more Look inside

In the winter of 1901, James W. Jarrott led a band of twenty-five homesteader families toward the Llano Estacado in far West Texas, newly opened for settlement by a populist Texas legislature.

Found Inside: " The allure that had attracted him to the Arizona adventure soon faded, and the Jarrots returned home to Texas in 1899, and settle in Stephenville, the county seat of Erath County ..." Read more Look inside

Found inside: "Though still primarily concerned with protecting the frontier from hostile Indians, ian an early example of the Rangers offering law enforcement assistance to local authorities, Rice and two other men escorted Erath County sheriff Fealdon H. Ross and a prisoner from Stephenville to district court in Jacksboro.  . . ." Read more Look inside

In 1925 Texans were stunned when a teenager's severed head was found in an abandoned farmhouse near the town of Stephenville. An investigation led to ex-convict F. M. Snow and the mysterious disappearances of his wife and mother-in-law. But this shocking, bloody saga began 50 years earlier . . . Read more Look inside

Texas UFO Tales: From Denison 1878 to Stephenville 2008

Since the late 1870's Texans have been reporting UFO sightings in the sky...and as recently as 2008, a wave of UFO reports around Stephenville stirred up international attention in the Lone Star State. In Texas UFO Tales, noted Texas writer-historian Mike Cox and journalist Renee Roderick have selected seventeen stories from among the many hundreds of reports. Ranging from the mysterious to the mirthful, they make these stories come alive . . . Read more

See also: Mysterious Texas

Found inside: "A lesser known sighting around President George W. Bush took place in Texas January 8, 2006. The people in Stephenville and Dublin Texas got a surprise appearance of a UFO in their area. Over a dozen people that included a pilot, county constable and many business owners state that they had seen a 300 meter long silent flying object ... " Read more Look inside

See also: Mysterious Texas

The Back Road to Thurber

In The Back Road To Thurber, Leo Bielinski looks through the eyes of ethnic immigrants to tell the story of life in a Texas coal mining town. The story is based in part on actual events, and those who know Thurber, Texas, will recognize it immediately as the setting. In Bielinski's novel, Thurber becomes the stage upon which Italian, Polish, and other immigrants come face to face with the realities of life in America. Through flashbacks, The Back Road To Thurber covers the period from the late 19th to late 20th century - a tumultuous era of boom and bust for many towns like Thurber . . . Read more Look inside

Oysters, Macaroni, and Beer: Thurber, Texas, and the Company Store

From 1894 to 1934, a span of forty years that saw its parent company go from coal mining to oil drilling, the Texas Pacific Mercantile and Manufacturing Company operated and managed the various commercial and service enterprises essential to the life and history of Thurber, Texas. Thurber was a company town, wholly owned by the Texas and Pacific Coal Company, and the inhabitants viewed the “company store” with suspicion before . . . Read more

A Way of Work and a Way of Life:

Coal Mining in Thurber, Texas, 1888-1926

The coal mine represented much more than a way of making a living to the miners of Thurber, Texas, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries--it represented a way of life. Coal mining dominated Thurber's work life, and miners dominated its social life. The large immigrant population that filled the mines in Thurber represented more than a dozen nations, which lent a certain uniqueness to this Texas town . . . Read more

Thurber Texas: The Life and Death of a Company Coal Town

The Thurber coal district sprang to life in the late 1880s in northern Erath County, Texas, some seventy miles west of Fort Worth. The mines were opened by the Texas & Pacific Coal Company to fuel the locomotives of its railway, whose tracks crossed the state from Marshall to El Paso. The company also built the town of Thurber to service the mines. It then imported workers from distant points, eventually including some twenty nationalities, whose old country ways contrasted sharply with . . . Read more

The only performer to earn 5 stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame--for film, recordings, TV, radio, and live performance--Gene Autry was the singing cowboy king of American entertainment.

" In addition to headlining 1940's Madison Square Garden and Boston Garden rodeos, both produced by Dublin, Texas-based Everett Colborn, Gene also had played sold-out shows at rodeos in Pittsburgh, Washington, DC, and other cities . . . " Read more Look inside

EARLY SCHOOLS OF DUBLIN, TEXAS

"Very soon in its life as a community the little settlement of "doubling" began to pay attention to educational matters. In 1859 the tiny collection of pioneers augmented by the removal from Cow creek of the families of Wm. (Big Bill) Keith, and G. W. O'Neal about twenty in number, had its very first school under the management of Mrs. Sarah Keith O'Neal" . . . Read more Look inside

The ghost of the McDow Hole

by Mary Joe Clendenin

Ashes Upon The Snow

Based on actual events, the discovery of a decapitated human head in an old storm cellar leads to the unimaginable in a rural Texas community in 1925. Teenagers, Elvis Rivers and Aaron Martin, plunge into a night of terror when Elvis’s trusty dog, Hootus, alerts on an old abandoned, partially caved-in cellar. Something is terribly wrong. After discovering and retrieving a bloody tow-sack from inside the cellar, Elvis quickly drops it when he sees inside – the decapitated head of a teenage boy . . . Read more Look inside

This is the best of the Society's papers over the past three years—from lynchings to el pato boat building; from sunbonnets to hammered dulcimers; from jokes about droughts and lawyers to tales of folk, gospel and blues music; from grave markers to bottle trees, and more.

"Opal Harris Pittman of Bluff Dale, Texas, remembers a funeral the Harris family with its five girls attended in the early part of this century: "Mama took every one of our bonnets, and washed and ironed them so we'd be dressed for the funeral . . . " Read more Look inside

 Centennial Clairette 1880-1980

The Ridge Report: A Journaled Year of My Life at the Star Mar Ranch, Morgan Mill, Texas

by Marla Bush

This sexy contemporary cowboy romance trilogy from bestselling author Carolyn Brown features the Honky Tonk beer joint and its succession of lovelorn owners.

FOUND INSIDE: "There really is a Morgan Mill, Texas, with a combination feed store, café, and gathering place for the locals to drink coffee. If you're ever in that area visit both of them. You'll find good food, smiles, and lots of friendly downhome folks. To every . . ." Read more Look inside

Found inside – Page 92

This is Mr. Max Gershon, from Johnsville, Texas.” “I'm pleased to meetcher, Mr. Gershon,” Alex replied. “Yes, Mawruss, Aaron says he sold the house already, and who d'ye think he sold it to?” Morris made an inarticulate noise which he  . . .

John A . Rampley from Johnsville , Texas , is as tough today as he was in 1943 when he enlisted to “ fight Japs . ” He was 18 years old and already had two brothers in the Navy . John made the mistake of listening to a local friend , Doug . . . "

On November 10, 1899 a crowd of 4,000 gathered in Stephenville, Texas for the last public execution in Erath County. What led to the hanging of Tom Wright who had been convicted of shooting and killing Constable John Adams in nearby Dublin and Wright's final testimony is included in this article.

West Texas Where the Heart Is

by Janelle Jackson Shirley reprinted with permission.

"Today was the day, the year 1922. All good-byes had been said and now it was time to walk out the door of their Erath County home for the last time. Ever since the decision was made to move to West Texas, Byrd had tried to reassure her children about leaving their childhood home for a new home in the west" . . . read more