More Stephenville Newspapers Available at Portal to Texas History

On July 18, Dr. Ana Krahmer, Director of the Digital Newspaper Program at the University of North Texas Libraries, spoke at the Dick Smith Library on the Texas Digital Newspaper Program, the largest statewide open digital newspaper access and preservation repository in the United States. It includes over 7 million newspaper pages, spanning west to east, from El Paso to Newton, and north to south, from Higgins to Brownsville, starting in 1813 and moving up to the present day.

Dr. Krahmer was here because of the recent addition of more issues of Stephenville newspapers to the Portal to Texas History, thanks to a cooperative effort by the Tarleton Libraries and the Dublin Public Library.  The latter applied for a Tocker Foundation grant to digitize the newspaper issues from 1923 through 1965.


Earlier Stephenville newspapers, from 1882 through 1922, were digitized thanks to a Ladd & Katherine Hancher Library Foundation grant obtained by the Stephenville Public Library, again in cooperation with Tarleton Libraries.

So if your research requires old (or current) Stephenville newspapers, here's a current description of what to find where:

Stephenville Newspaper Availability (Empire, Tribune, and Empire-Tribune)

Everything through 1965 is available online for free at the Portal to Texas History:  https://texashistory.unt.edu/search/?sort=date_a&fq=untl_collection%3ASTET. 
Note however that there are a number of gaps, because original newspapers (that were microfilmed and then later digitized) were lost or destroyed before microfilming.

Currently all of our microfilm for issues from 1966 through 1980 is at UNT (the University of North Texas) for digitization and addition to the Portal.  We do not have backup copies of these reels.  Please contact our Periodicals department at 254-968-9867 or periodicals@tarleton.edu if you need a reel from this date range so we can coordinate retrieval from UNT.  Note that it may take some time to retrieve the reel(s).


The microfilm for 1981 through 2017 is available in the Periodicals department, on the main floor of the library.  We will be sending reels from 1981 through 1999 to UNT periodically for digitization, and the previous paragraph will apply, but earlier reels will be returned as they are digitized.


We have bound volumes of issues for 1993 through 2011 at our offsite location. These would need to be requested in advance from the Periodicals department to allow time for retrieval.

Full text of selected (not all) issues from 1930-1978 is available via open access through Newspaper Archive:   https://newspaperarchive.com/us/texas/stephenville/stephenville-empire-tribune/. Use the "Browse by Date" to choose from digitized issues. 

Full text for 2000 - present is available through Access World News, a subscription database. If you are a Tarleton student, faculty member, or staff member, you can access it with your NTNET user name and password at any time.  If you are not affiliated with Tarleton, you would have to come in after 3 p.m. on weekdays or any time on weekends and request a guest pass to use this database in the library.  It is also possible a library near you has this database, but you'd need to check with them to see if they have access to this newspaper.  Simply having a subscription to this database does not mean they have the same newspapers we do.

Selected articles are also available from the Stephenville Empire-Tribune website:  http://www.yourstephenvilletx.com/.

Issues from the current year and previous year are available in print, and are stored in-house in the Periodicals department until they have been microfilmed. 

You might also want to check the Tarleton student newspaper, the J-TAC, which began in 1919.  In earlier years it covered a lot of local news.  It is available on the Portal to Texas History: https://texashistory.unt.edu/explore/collections/JTAC/browse/?sort=date_a

The nearby town of Dublin has newspapers from 1882 through 2014 (but with some gaps) available on the Portal: https://texashistory.unt.edu/search/?sort=date_a&explore=true&fq=str_location_county%3AErath+County%2C+TX&fq=untl_institution%3ADUBPU

Finally, here is a link to all Erath County newspapers available on the Portal:  https://texashistory.unt.edu/search/?fq=dc_type%3Atext_newspaper&explore=true&fq=str_location_county%3AErath+County%2C+TX&sort=date_a

The Living New Deal

The Living New Deal is a non-profit organization that exists to document all of the public works that were created by various New Deal programs from 1933-43. Several professors at the University of California-Berkeley began this project in 2005 by gathering information on New Deal public works projects in California. In 2010, they expanded and began documenting projects nationally. The New Deal refers to a wide range of economic programs that President Franklin Roosevelt's administration enacted in response to the Great Depression. 

The Living New Deal's website contains a wealth of information and resources. My favorite tool is the map. You can use navigation tools in the map to either zoom in or search for a specific location in the United States and see New Deal public works projects in the area. 

Map from the Living New Deal website.
Each red dot represents a public works project built by a New Deal program between 1933-43. 

Close up view of Stephenville and surrounding towns reveals several New Deal projects in the area.  

This map reveals that there are two buildings in Stephenville that were built by New Deal programs. One is the current Public Library and former post office building located at 174 N. Columbia Street. It was funded by the US Treasury Department and completed in 1935.

Current Stephenville Public Library and former post office.
The building was a New Deal public works project completed in 1935.
Michael Barera [CC BY-SA 4.0  (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0), from Wikimedia Commons.

The other is the Recreation Hall located at 378 W. Long Street. It was built the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and completed in 1938. Today it houses the offices of the Stephenville's Parks and Recreation Department.

Recreation Hall in Stephenville. Built by the WPA in 1938.
Joshua Wallace - Photographer & Copyright Holder, 2018. 

If you want to learn more about the New Deal, the Dick Smith library has a large collection of items on the subject. Such as these titles:

Digital Film:
A Chaos of Experimentation

Books & eBooks:
A Concise History of the New Deal by Jason Scott Smith
The Crash of '29 and the New Deal by Bruce Glassman
Designing a New America: The Origins of New Deal Planning, 1890-1943 by Patrick D. Reagan

The Great Depression & the New Deal: A Very Short Introduction by Eric Rauchway

Nature's New Deal: The Civilian Conservation Corps and the Roots of the American Environmental Movement by Neil M. Maher 

The New Deal by David E. Hamilton
The New Deal: America's Response to the Great Depression by Ronald Edsforth
The New Deal Art Projects: An Anthology of Memoirs by Francis V. O'Connor
The New Deal: The Depression Years, 1933-40 by Anthony J. Badger

Contact us at 254-968-9249 or reference@tarleton.edu if you have any questions about library resources on the New Deal or any other topic.

Need a ride? Call CARR

Do you live in the Stephenville area and need a ride around town or to nearby towns such as Granbury or Weatherford? Then what you need is CARR. City and Rural Rides (CARR) is a rural public transit operation that serves 11 counties including Erath.

CARR operates Monday to Friday from 7:30AM to 5:30PM and is closed on the following holidays: New Year’s Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Eve, and Christmas Day.

To request a ride call 1-800-710-2277. You can schedule a ride up to 60 days in advance. They recommend to call at least 2 business days ahead of your planned trip to ensure that they can accommodate you. They will take same-day requests until 3:30PM, but will only give you a ride if they can fit you in that day's schedule. When you call they will ask for the following information:

1. Passenger Name
2. Date of Birth
3. Address
4. Phone Number
5. Assistance Needs 
6. Emergency Contacts 
7. Destination Name 
8. Destination Address 
9. Request time

The amount you pay depends on distance traveled. These are the current rates:

• 1-5 miles................$1.00 
• 6-10 miles..............$2.00 
• 11-15 miles.............$3.00 
• 16-20 miles.............$4.00 
• 21-25 miles.............$5.00 
• 26-30 miles.............$6.00 
• 31-35 miles.............$7.00 
• 36-40 miles.............$8.00 
• 41-45 miles.............$9.00 
• 46-50 miles.............$10.00 
• 51-55 miles.............$11.00 
• 56-60 miles.............$12.00

You must pay the driver with cash or check (credit cards are currently not accepted). Drivers are not able to make change. Another option is to purchase a prepaid fare pass, if you buy a $20 prepaid pass, then you will receive $4 worth of free rides.

If you have any questions about CARR you can contact them here: http://www.cityandruralrides.com/ContactUs.htm. I can tell you from personal experience that they respond to questions very quickly.

This online handbook provides detailed information about the services CARR provides.

Tarleton Thursdays - Stephenville Historic Resources Survey

In the spring semester of 2015, Dr. T. Lindsay Baker, W.K. Gordon endowed chair in history, and his students in HIST 5309 (Historic Preservation) and HIST 4350 (Special Topics) partnered with the City of Stephenville to identify and document historic, mostly commercial structures within a 25 block area surrounding the Erath County Courthouse and the square, as well as additional sites outside of this area selected by the city.  The students used recording forms approved by the Texas Historical Commission, adding photographs and other research documents.

The result was called the Stephenville Historic Resources Survey.  Dr. Baker recently donated a copy of this survey, as well as the accompanying research files for the 147 sites and other supporting material, to the Dick Smith Library, along with digital copies of the photographs from the project.

A nearly-21-block area downtown was initially identified, with over half of the buildings surveyed in it considered to be contributing to a historic district designation on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP).  Further work by the expert consultant hired by the city, Mary Saltarelli, has expanded the district to include a total of 120 buildings, with 77 of those (63%) contributing.  The minimum requirement is 51 percent to be considered for placement on the registry.  Being listed on the registry can bring tax incentives and other benefits to the downtown area and property owners.

While the original research files will be preserved, the library hopes to make copies of the files available in the Local History Room in the Special Collections Suite on the lower level of the Dick Smith Library, where users can access them to learn the history of their homes or buildings.

Here are just a few examples of buildings that are part of the proposed district.  The first building pictured, the First National Bank building on the square, built in 1889, has been a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark since 1994.  On July 21, 2015, it was added to the NRHP as an individual building, and in February 2017, it received a Preservation Texas Honor Award for its restoration and rehabilitation.

Above:  198 S Belknap Ave., First National Bank Building.  Photo by T. Lindsay Baker, 4 May 2015.

Below:  160 E Washington St., W.W. Rutherford Building.   Photo by T. Lindsay Baker, 3 May 2015.

Below:  154 E Washington St., Tatum and Sons Building.  Photo by T. Lindsay Baker, 3 May 2015.

Research by the library's Special Services and Archives staff using old Sanborn insurance maps shows that the first floor of the Tatum building was actually constructed between September 1902 and November 1907, which corresponds with a large increase in the property's value in 1905, the estimated construction year for the first floor (a grocery warehouse on that 1907 Sanborn map).  
The second floor was added in 1920.

On this building, the first floor is made of stone while the second floor is made of brick.  The cast iron columns by the entry were furnished by Fort Worth Iron Works, and were added before 1920.  

Digital Public Library of America

We told you a couple of months ago that the Tarleton Grassburrs are now online, through the Portal to Texas History. Did you know, though, that because they are in the Portal to Texas History, they are also included in the Digital Public Library of America? You can find them in the DPLA using this search link.*

Screenshot of DPLA Homepage 4/17/2014

The DPLA is a nationwide digital library that partners with regional digital libraries, such as the Portal to Texas History, and institutions like the New York Public Library and the Smithsonian to bring you content from all over the country in one place. You can search by date, keyword or by place. As you can see below, there are many items from the Stephenville area in the DPLA!

So, get out there and explore the DPLA!  You might find the perfect picture, newspaper article, book or other primary source for your research, or discover something completely new about your home town.

*Updated 4/18/2014 to add direct link to Grassburrs.