Thomas M. Stell

The fullest account found of Thomas Matthew Stell is a 1940 memoir by his sister Nan. He reached Indianola in 1858, was offered a professorship at Covey College and chose cattle instead, and worked four years on a Wyoming ranch before coming home in 1882. After 1892 he served as sheriff, then as tax collector and, from 1926 to 1939, county treasurer. The memoir never mentions John Wesley Hardin, who served a 25-year sentence from 1878 until his March 1894 pardon, so the plaque's claim of Hardin as his prisoner is unproven.

What the plaque says

Thomas M. Stell Born in Florida; came to Texas in childhood. A cowboy in youth -- drove cattle to Kansas, Wyoming. Attended Covey College, Concrete. Appointed sheriff of De Witt County, 1892; he served 15 years. Used persuasiveness and tact in handling duties. One of the prisoners he held was notorious gunman John Wesley Hardin. Married twice; father of five children. Member of Old Trail Drivers Association; president, Texas Sheriffs Association. Recorded - 1967

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Chisholm Trail Heritage Museum — 0.8 mi
  A cattle-country museum in Cuero's 1903 Knights of Pythias Hall, telling the Guadalupe Valley's 1866 drive north and the Sutton-Taylor feud that bloodied DeWitt County.
• Spoetzl Brewery — 24 mi
  The brewery a Czech and German railroad town started in a tin shed in 1909, run through Prohibition by a Bavarian who had brewed in Cairo, and then by his daughter.
• De León Plaza — 26 mi
  The central plaza of Guadalupe Victoria, the only predominantly Mexican colony in Texas, founded by Martín De León in 1824 and taken from his family after 1836.
• Museum of the Coastal Bend — 26 mi
  Victoria College's museum of thirteen thousand years on the middle Texas coast, from Clovis hunters and Karankawa potters to La Salle's lost Fort St. Louis and the first ranches.

More markers nearby

• Charles Goodwin Breeden — steps away
• Judge Henry Clay Pleasants — steps away
• Cuero — 0.4 mi
• De Witt County Monument — 0.5 mi