Stilwell, Hart. 1902-

Hart Stilwell was born in 1902 in Yoakum, Texas. When he was two, his large family relocated to the Rio Grande Valley, an area they would roam throughout Stilwell’s childhood as his father sought undeveloped farmland and the freedom of the frontier. Stilwell’s upbringing was marked by psychological and physical conflict with his father, a former Texas Ranger prone to sudden mood-swings and threats of violence.

At the age of seventeen Stilwell entered The University of Texas at Austin, where he worked for The Daily Texan and graduated with a degree in journalism in 1924. One of his first jobs was as a reporter for The Brownsville Herald, a paper he also edited for two years. In the late 1920s Stilwell lost interest in working full-time and turned to free-lance writing, although for the rest of his life he regularly contributed articles to newspapers across Texas, including The San Antonio Light, The Houston Chronicle, and The Austin American-Statesman .

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