History has it that about thirty settlers arrived in what would become Erath County in 1855, hoping to carve out new lives for themselves from this unsettled wilderness.
“Little was attempted besides cattle raising. They just brought their stock, turned them loose, and then went to hunting them. The settler’s first work was to provide a cow pen. The milk of his cows was a very necessary part of the sustenance of his family.
“He next busied himself in getting poles from the low trees of the country wherewith to build a home for his wife and children. Sometimes there would be a puncheon floor, but fully as often there was no floor but the bare earth.
“As soon as possible, ‘little patches’ would be enclosed wherein corn and garden stuff might be raised…Because oxen were less valued by the Indians [than horses] and therefore less liable to seizure by them, they were much used for draught animals.”
Mrs. S.C. Lattimore, Incidents in the History of Dublin, as quoted in The View From The Old Oak Tree, Fredda Davis Jones, p. 16.
I’ve said it before and I will say it again….it is a good thing the history of the area was not depending on me. As much as I love to study it, there is nothing about that life (and that of the poor women who had no choice but to follow the men) that sounds anything but hard to me!