Steve & Polly Stephenson

Steve and Polly Stephenson had immigrated to the Kentucky Town area in the 1850s.  It became common knowledge that Steve had spent some time in the gold fields of California immediately after the 1849 Gold Rush.  On January 1, 1859 he had paid about $1,000 in gold for 181 acres of land lying along the boundary of the Collin McKinney and J.H. Jackson surveys.  About 4-1/2 years later on October 25, 1862, they paid $1,300 gold for an additional 115 acres in the adjoining Caleb Holloway Survey.  On this latest purchase, they built their two-story home of finished lumber hauled from Jefferson, Texas.  It was common knowledge in the area that Steve was still looking to purchase more acreage and was willing to pay cash for it; people had good reason to believe that Steve had more money in the form of gold.  Since there were no banks in the area in the 1860s, it was believe that Steve had his gold hidden on his property.

On the dark, moonless night of March 31st, 1864, seven men with blackened faces entered the woods by horseback at the side of a lonely road that ran along the west side of the farm home belonging to Steve and Polly Stephenson, located about six miles southwest of Kentucky Town.  The closest farm near the Stephenson home was that of the Dumases, about 2 miles distant.  However, danger was present as a unit of the "home guard" was known to be camped near the grist mill operated by R.B. "Bob" George, located about two miles to the southwest.  The seven men could take no chances of attracting the attention of these soldiers who might be riding through the area looking for suspicious actions of horse or man.
The horses were left in the care of the youngest member of the seven, a 17-year-old boy, while the others made their way quietly along the winding, narrow lane to the front yard of the Stephenson home.
Steve, 42 years old, and his wife, Polly, 35 years old, were going about their evening routine of getting their five children to bed - three girls and two small boys.  The oldest of the Stephenson children, Texana, had died a few months before of small-pox contracted from a nieghboring family she was giving aid to before it was known they had the dreaded disease.  Expecting no visitors, nevertheless they were not alarmed when they heard the familiar greeting from outside the house, "Hello, Steve."  Unsuspecting and unprepared, Steve opened his front door and stepped out only to fine the six men with blackened faces and holding six guns at him.  Their demand - his gold.
There was no way that Steve could convince this group of men that he did not have any gold buried on his place; hence, they decided to search the place.  Steve was forced into his home and while two of the men stood guard over him and the children, the other four forced Polly to accompany them to the smokehouse and to stand in the center of the smokehouse and hold a lantern for them while they dug along all four sides of the dirt floor; the robbers had actually dug all around the gold which was buried under the center of the smokehouse where Polly was standing. Finding no gold in the smokehouse, the four men returned to the family home with Polly.  Their intention was to use means to force Steve to tell them where the gold was.
Polly and the children were held under guard inside the house while Steve was forced outside and to an elm tree in the back yard.  The robbers tied one end of a rope around his neck and flung the other end over a tree limb, pulling him upward to a strangling position.  But before he lost consciousness, they lowered him to the ground.  Since he still refused to reveal his hiding place, they hoisted him up again until his feet were in the air.  As Steve gasped for breath, one of his tormenters grasped him around the hips and lifted him up so he could get a few breaths.  They thought their torture had worked because Steve began to talk, "You can hang me till Hell freezes over, but I won't tell you!"
While hanging and in the agonies of death, the villanous robbers proposed to the wife, as the price for her husband's life, her prostitution to each of them; they then treated her in a most shameful manner.
The man supporting him let go of him and for the third time he was hanging from a rope over the tree limb, gasping for breath.  Although the noose became tighter and tighter about his neck, it was not his time to die.  Instead a great meteor flashed across the darkened sky, lighting up the heavens and the earth for a fleeting moment; this was too much for the hangmen to whom it seemed an omen of displeasure and interference from above.  Too frightened to give Steve any further thought, they yelled at the guards inside the house and all sprinted for their horses in the woods and the cover of darkness.
Polly and the children ran to the tree where Steve was still dangling and cut the hoose loose with a butcher knife.  They shook him and dashed waters over his face and head.  Soon he was able to catch his breath.
Several days later, four strangers stopped at the home of a widowed woman about noon, whose home was less than two miles northwest of Cannon.  Although it was past meal time, the men asked in stern tones if she would serve them dinner.  In those day it was not uncommon for mounted strangers to arrive at a farm home and ask to be fed.  The lady was fearful thinking these could be the same men that had attempted to rob Steve and Polly Stephenson.  Consequently she told the strangers as they dismounted that she would have to send her black servant boy to fetch a bucket of fresh water from the spring.  But when she and the boy were out of their hearing at the back kitchen door, she whispered to the boy to get the bucket of water and run to George's mill to notify Captain Boren of  the home guard to hurriedly come to the house.
She continued with the preparation of a meal for her uninvited guests.  While they were finishing their meal, the house was suddenly surrounded with members of the home guard who captured the men and took them to their campsite for questioning.  The men denies any knowledge of the attempted robbery even after the Stephenson family members arrived at the camp and identified the men as members of the seven robbers.  The men continued to deny any knowledge or participation in the robbery at the Stephenson house.  Finally Mrs. Stephenson pointed a finger at one of the men, suggesting that their heads and ears be inspected for tell--tale signs of blackening.  This was done and a black streak was found on one of the men, behind his ear.  Investigation of their saddle bags turned up a box of black substance along with some axle grease.  The men started confessing and implicated three residents living no more than six miles from the Stephensons.  One of these residents was himself a member of the home guard, after having served in the Confederate military and being released.  The other two residents were father and his 17-year-old son.
Capt. Boren held a hearing at the camp; a lawyer supposedly from McKinney rode into the camp and asked to represent the accused men.  Those involved even considered the settling of the matter by taking the men across the Red River into Indian Territory and turn them loose with the understanding that they would never again set foot in Texas.  But since the area was under military law which was administered by Gen. McCulloch in Bonham, Capt. Boren chose three men from his unit to tie the prisoners together in a wagon and proceed to take them to Bonham.  The teamster and owner of the wagon was 18-year-old, Bill Penn.  Two guards,19-year-old J.W. Pennell and 22-year-old William H. Baxter, rode their mounts behind the wagon on its trip to Bonham.  (William H. Baxter would later become a Texas Ranger.)
After the wagon with its prisoners left the home guard camp, rumors spread that the robbers were being taken to the Red River crossing at Bonham to be released into Indian Territory as well as concern that future robbers occurring throughout the area would continue.
A posse was formed with the intention of administering their own justice; the robbers' victim, Steve Stephenson, was ordered to accompany the posse.
Around dusk the wagon with its prisoners passed Jacob and Joseph Weber's grist mill, less than a mile southwest of Kentucky Town.  Shortly thereafter their attention was attracted to 150 well armed men riding northward in the same direction as the wagon, alerting the brothers that "something was up".  As darkness fell, Joseph Weber decided to ride northward through the fields to Tom Dean's house to advise him of the presence of the unknown horsemen.  Tom Dean was inside his house, cleaning up and eating his supper after his day's work and had observed nothing unusual.  His reaction to the news brought by Joseph was to gather up a quilt and his guns to spend the night in his barn as a precaution against theft of his livestock.
Meanwhile, the posse had overtaken the wagon loaded with the prisoners at the foot of the hill just below Dean's barn and just before the wagon was about to make the right-turn to the east toward Kentucky Town.  The men in the posse ordered the young guards to move aside and demanded the prisoners be turned over to them in the name of the citizens of Grayson and Collin counties.  The heavily armed men steered the wagon to the left instead and down the sloping ground to a neighboring grove where stood a large boi d'arc tree, located on the Sewell farm in 1865.  The two long, cotton tether ropes were taken from Bill Penn, driver of the wagon, The men then proceeded to cinch the ropes across limbs of the tree with a noose formed at each end of the two ropes.  Realizing the intention of the posse, the guards resisted the hanging of the 17-year-old boy, pointing out that he had not been aware of the six men's intention to rob Mr. Stephenson.  When asked if they had any final statements to make, only one of the young, single men made a confession beneath the hanging tree as he took a worn New Testament from his vest pocket, which his mother had given it to him when he entered the Confederate army but that he had fallen in with bad company - the reason for his being in the situation he was that day.  
The nooses were tied around four of the men's necks while they were in the wagon; the team was driven forward, leaving the men dangling until life passed from them.  When their bodies were lowered to the ground, the same procedure was followed the other three prisoners - with the exception that their bodies were left hanging from the tree as the self-made posse rode away in the darkness of the night.  
The next morning Tom Dean returned to his house for breakfast with his livestock safe; his 14-year-old son, Thomas J. Dean, took a basket of corn down the hill to give their hogs their daily feeding.  Young Tom was so frightened by the sight he saw when he reached the branch and bois d'arc tree that he rushed back to the house.  With great difficulty, young Tom finally regained his voice to explain to his parents what he had seen.  Word of the horrible scene at the bois d'arc tree spread quickly.  That afternoon men gathered at Kentucky Town to plan for the burial of the bodies.  Families came for the bodies of one man and the father and his 17-year-old son, who were buried at Heiston Spring on the old dirt road between Kentucky Town and Sherman.  At the burial of the other four men, Thomas Dean was the only white man present while the other white men sent their Negroes to do the job.  Dean supervisied the digging of a grave large enough to hold the wagon beneath the bois d'arc tree; the wagon bed was lowered into the grave and the four bodies placed in the wagon.  To protect the faces from the falling dirt, Dean placed a hat over each,  Soon the four lay in their common grave, marked for deceased by the large chunks of white rocks and the roots of the bois d'arc tree.
All of the men had come to Texas from southwestern Missouri about 15 months prior to the robbery; their names were J.T. Sherrill, N.C. Vivion, Wm. Hester, Dr. John W. Walker and his three sons, Francis, Thomas and Jacob.

AUSTIN STATE GAZETTE
April 20, 1864
p. 2, c. 1
The Telegraph's special correspondent, writing from Bonham, gives the particulars of the hanging of seven robbers in the neighborhood of Kentucky town, Grayson county, after the perpetration of a horrible outrage on the night of the 31st of March, in which three of them were engaged.  It appears that three men, disguised, entered the house of Mr. Stephenson, near Kentucky town, and after stealing a large amount of money, hung Mr. S., in the presence of the family, and left him for dead.  While hanging, and in the agonies of death, the villains proposed to his wife, as the price of his life, her prostitution to each of them, and treated her in a most shameful manner.  Next day two of them were arrested, and through their confessions, five others, all of whom were committed by the Justice to take their trial at the District Court, and were sent in charge of the Sheriff to Bonham.  On the way there, they were met by 150 well armed men, who demanded the prisoners in the name of the citizens of Collin and Grayson counties, and took them to a neighboring grove and hung the whole of them.  Additional confessions were made by several of the guilty men beneath the gallows, and two of them had been identified by Stephenson and his wife previously on their trial.  Their names were J. T. Sherrill, N. C. Vivion, Wm. Hester, Dr. Jno. W. Walker and his three sons, Francis, Thos. and Jacob Walker.  All of them had come from Southwestern Missouri, about 14 or 15 months ago, and were a band of horse thieves and robbers.

Steve became blind.  He died in 1908.

Sources:
Chumbley, Joe W.  Kentucky Town and Its Baptist Church.  Houston, Texas: D. Armstrong Co., Inc., c1975, pg. 112-117.
The Weekly State Gazette (Austin, Texas), Wednesday, April 20 1864, pg. 2
History of the Dean and Pistole families, viewed October 5, 2017

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