DUANE
Duane's take
Here's my telling of what the official marker in Stephens County has to say — and friends, this one's worth your time. Pull over if you have to. Now, you hear the name Walter Prescott Webb tossed around in history circles, and people nod like they always knew him.
But there's a story behind the story, and it starts in Stephens County, Texas, with a four-year-old boy and a family that moved whenever the schoolwork took them somewhere new. Webb was born in 1888, and by the time he was four, his family had come to Stephens County. They'd stay, in one way or another, for the next seventeen years.
Seventeen years that would quietly, stubbornly, shape one of the most noted historians this country ever produced. His father, Casner, was a rural schoolteacher and a farmer. When a new teaching assignment came calling, the whole family packed up and followed.
And that, right there, is something worth sittin' with. Because every time Casner Webb moved to a new post somewhere in that county, young Walter got to see more of it — the hills, the flats, the stretches of land that shift and breathe in ways a boy doesn't forget. The physical geographical variety of Stephens County, as the marker puts it, was working on that boy's mind long before he had words for it.
His neighbors were doing their part too. These were frontier people, carrying frontier lore the way you carry a scar — naturally, without thinking much about it. Webb was listening.
Now, his public school experiences were infrequent. Let that sink in. The man who would one day develop grand theories on the role of the Great Plains in American history did not have the smoothest path through formal schooling.
But somewhere in those Stephens County years, he fell in love with books. And love of books will carry you a long way. Then came something that sounds almost too good for a tall tale, except the marker says it plain: a man named William Hinds, all the way from New York, contacted the young Webb.
Hinds became his benefactor — a source of encouragement at the exact moment a curious, book-hungry young man in rural Texas needed to hear that his ambitions weren't foolish. By 1906, Webb had earned his teaching certificate, and for the next three years he worked as a rural educator himself — walking a path his father had walked. Then in 1909, at the age of twenty-one, Walter Prescott Webb left Stephens County and headed to the University of Texas in Austin to pursue the college education he'd been dreamin' about since somewhere out there on those rolling, frontier-soaked acres.
He carried Stephens County with him. You can hear it in every page he ever wrote about the Great Plains. The county shaped the man, and the man shaped how we understand the American West.
Not bad for seventeen years in a place most people just drive through.
What the marker says
Noted historian Walter Prescott Webb (1888-1963) came with his family to Stephens County at the age of four. Over the next seventeen years, Webb received an education in frontier life that formed the basis of his intellectual development and his theories on the role of the Great Plains in American history. Webb's father, Casner, was a rural schoolteacher and farmer. As he moved to different teaching assignments, the family moved with him. W.P. Webb thus was exposed to the physical geographical variety within the county that was so important to his western thesis. His neighbors were prime sources of frontier lore. Although Webb's public school experiences were infrequent, it was during these formative years in Stephens County that he developed his love of books and his desire to attend college. Also during this time, Webb was contacted by William Hinds of New York, who was to become his benefactor and a great source of encouragement for the young scholar. In 1906 Walter P. Webb received his teaching certificate and spent the next three years as a rural educator. In 1909, at the age of 21, Webb left his home in Stephens County to pursue his college education at the University of Texas in Austin.