During the Civil War on the Texas frontier, some families, few in number and with little military protection, refused to abandon their country and gathered in hastily constructed stockades to withstand threats from hostile Indians and renegade whites. Known as “forting up,” this plan was encouraged by the military in this part of the state. Most men from eighteen to forty-five were away in Confederate service, and those seventeen and over forty-five were subject to periodic militia duty for frontier protection. These family forts helped settlers protect their livestock and farms and provided some schooling for their children. The best-known family fort in this sector was Fort Davis, eight miles east on the Clear Fork of the Brazos in Stephens County, where about one hundred twenty people lived during the last year of the Civil War. Named for Confederate President Jefferson Davis, it was laid out in lots, and its log houses, with dirt roofs, mud-filled cracks, and dirt floors, were connected by pickets driven into the ground. A blockhouse sheltered women and children during raids. There were no luxuries and little food; clothing, soap, soda, and candles were all made there. The nearest supplies were one hundred miles away and the nearest doctor sixty-five miles away. Yet there were dances, candy pulls, weddings, feasts, Sunday school, occasional sermons, and blue-backed spellers. Other nearby family forts included Lynch and Green ranches in Shackelford County, Blair’s Fort and Allen’s Ranch in Eastland County, Buffalo Springs in Clay County, and Picketville, Mugginsville, and Owl’s Head in Stephens County.