Stratford: County Records Moved at Midnight

Stratford is the seat of Sherman County in the far northern Texas Panhandle, named for Stratford, Virginia, the childhood home of Robert E. Lee. The original county seat was the town of Coldwater, but a faction of landowners and a railroad ally decided to move it to Stratford, a new townsite platted around nineteen hundred.

Their hopes were realized in a May nineteen oh one election, but opposition was fierce. To ensure the transfer was legally uncontestable, county officials moved the records in the middle of the night. Then, to officially hold court in Stratford, a judge convened a session in a tent just after midnight.

The bitterness between factions ran so hot that Governor Joseph Sayers ordered Texas Rangers to Stratford to keep the peace. By nineteen ten Stratford had three churches, two banks, a school, and roughly five hundred residents. The Panhandle and Santa Fe Railway arrived in nineteen twenty-eight.