Wyatt-Hickie Ranch Complex

The Hickie Ranch complex was originally constructed in the early 1870s, modified in the 1930s and 1940s, and partially reconstructed in 1984-1985. It is comprised of a one-story, two-room, Cumberland-plan, rusticated stone house and four contributing outbuildings which are located to the north and south of the house: two stone barns, an early stone and brick dugout food/storm cellar, and a rock base for an elevated cistern. (A modern frame residence on the site is considered non-contributing.) A windshield survey of more than 50 percent of Erath County conducted in 1984 revealed that the main house may be the only stone, Comberland-plan, rural residence still standing in the county. Taken as a group, the ranchhouse, outbuildings, and associated features are an extraordinarily complete example of a nineteenth-century Erath County agricultural complex.

The Hickie Ranch complex, originally constructed in about 1871, is located in an unusually desirable situation. The elevation, ca. 1,250 feet above MSL, afforded exposure to cooling summer breezes and provided views to the Bosque River Valley to the west. Indian Creek entered the River a short distance to the south, creating a combination of pasture and land suitable for irrigation equal to any in southern Erath County.

An early school was located approximately 3,500 feet south of the complex, across the creek, and neighbors in the pioneer Alarm Creek Community were not far distant.

The 205-acre tract on which the Hickie Ranch complex was located was a portion of the James C. Corbin Survey, a twenty-five labor grant made to Corbin's heirs by the State of Texas and surveyed in September of 1846. Situated on the Bosque River in the Cross Timbers, the grant was south of present-day Stephenville and ran in a generally northwest-southeast direction on both sides of the river.

There is no evidence that either Corbin or his heirs ever saw the Erath County grant, and on December 4, 1869, his widow and her new husband--Bridget (Corbin) and Valentine Dalton of Galveston County--sold 1,580 acres of the grant to George W. Gentry for $1,000. The price of the land suggests that it was unimproved at the time of the sale, and Gentry, who was a native of Virginia, actually lived on Duffau's Creek to the southeast with his wife Caroline and daughter Anna Laurie, in 1870.

Gentry held the Bosque River land until August 29, 1872, when he sold 205 acres to James J. Wyatt for $307.50. The tract was described as lying along the river, south of a steam mill built by Durnett, and it included a small portion of Indian Creek north-northeast of its confluence with the Bosque. The land was ideally suited to farming and livestock raising, two occupations that Wyatt and later owners pursued throughout their tenures on the tract.

It is possible that Wyatt was responsible for the construction of the main house, the older of the two stone barns, and the stone and brick dugout, for all of the buildings exhibit similar stonework and a later owner recalled having seen the name "J.J. Wyatt" and the date "1871" inscribed on a rock in the north wall of the house. Tax assessments strongly suggest the presence of improvements on the tract by the mid-1870s, and deed records indicate that Wyatt and his wife occupied the property until August 1886, when they sold it to J.H. Boyd.

Born in Arkansas in about 1848, Boyd had migrated to Texas with his family in 1853 and settled near Weatherford. He had moved to Erath County by the early 1880s and married Rosa Keith of the Alarm Creek neighborhood. Between 1886 and 1894, the Boyds did not occupy the property which they had acquired from the Wyatts, apparently using the Bosque River farm instead for agricultural purposes only. However, after 1896, they moved to the tract and constructed a two-story, board-and-batten, central hall addition to the original stone residence to accommodate a family which eventually included five children.

Following J. H. Boyd's death on August 11, 1924, his 205-acre farm and several additional tracts were purchased from his other heirs by his son Harve K. Boyd, who held the property until December 10, 1937, when he sold it to L. A. Ogle. Ogle then sold the land to Naoma Frey (Hickie) on January 17, 1942, and she initiated various changes and stone additions that were made on the north side of the one-story stone structure. The most recent owner, Jane Hickie, has undertaken the reconstruction/ restoration of the stone house which was damaged by a fire in the early 1960s, as well as the construction of an adjacent frame residence which has incorporated portions of the ruined walls of the stone addition.

Today, the Hickie Ranch complex includes all of the elements of a nineteenth-century, Cross Timbers agricultural complex, a fact which sets it apart from most other farmsteads in Erath County. Beyond that fact, however, the complex is comprised of structures that are architecturally and culturally enigmatic. Nearby urban communities such as Stephenville, Dublin, and Hico contain a plethora of stone buildings. However, a reconnaissance of the eastern half of Erath County, together with interviews with a number of knowledgeable county residents, failed to locate any other nineteenth-century rural stone residence. Consequently, the house appears to be significant because (in its partially reconstructed form) it is an unusual example of a particular architectural style and method of construction, and because it is an integral element in a historic Cross Timbers farm complex.

Finally, the Hickie Ranch complex has the potential to generate important research questions and to become the focus for comparisons of the buildings on the site with other similar or dissimilar domestic structures present in counties ad- jacent to Erath. It may also provide explanations for the apparent uniqueness of the residence, and add to distributional data about the Cumberland house form in the Cross Timbers area.