A Toast to Our Past: Williamson Co. and the Wild, Wild West

7 p.m. January 25 at Williamson Co. Courthouse District Court Room, 710 S. Main, Georgetown

The Williamson County Historical Commission Cemetery Volunteers presents “A Toast to Our Past: Williamson County and the Wild, Wild West” featuring speakers Stephen Benold, MD, Judge Billy Ray Stubblefield, and Jim Garry. Drinks and snacks provided. Tickets ($10) are available for purchase at the Williamson Museum or Commissioner Joe Plunket at [email protected]. Tickets must be purchased by January 21.

Speakers

Dr. Stephen Benold was elected to the Georgetown ISD Board of Trustees in May of 2021 and currently serves as School Trustee Place 7. As a graduate of Rice University, Stephen earned a bachelor of arts degree with a double major in biology and economics. He then attended Southwestern Medical School in Dallas and received his MD degree. He was the first medical director of the Williamson County EMS, and served in that capacity for 32 years. After doing a family medical practice for 27 years, Dr. Benold received further postgraduate training and became a board-certified financial planner, which is now his profession.

Stephen has lived in Georgetown all of his life, except for time away at schooling. He is married to Nancy Benold, a former GISD school board member. He and Nancy have two grown children. His daughter Amy is an assistant principal in Atlanta, Georgia and his son Jordan works with Stephen in Benold Financial Planning. Stephen is currently on the boards of The Caring Place, The Chisholm Trail Community Foundation, The Georgetown Neurosciences Foundation, and First United Methodist Church. He enjoys teaching, gardening, working at his ranch, and traveling. 

Billy Ray Stubblefield, former Presiding Judge of the Third Administrative Judicial Region, is the product of four pioneer Williamson County families. He is a proud sixth-generation Texan.  His maternal ancestors include three grandfathers who arrived on the Mayflower and founded the Massachusetts colony at Plymouth.  Their descendants settled in Vermont and migrated to Troy, Missouri. They then came to Texas with the Austin Colony in the 1820s and fought in the War for Independence from Mexico and the Civil War.   His paternal forebears arrived in Virginia in the mid-seventeenth century and went on to fight in the French and Indian War, the American Revolutionary War.  His great, great, great, great grandfather was with General Washington at Yorktown in 1781.  Other lineal ancestors fought in the Mexican War of 1846-48 and arrived in Williamson County, Texas, in late 1869 or 1870.  His father, born in 1899,  joined the Navy in World War I.

As District Judge, he heard civil cases without limit to the amount of dispute, felony adult cases, and heard family law matters and juvenile cases of all classes.  In 2000, Judge Stubblefield was elected by his colleagues to serve as Local Administrative Judge and resigned from that position in February 2010 so that he could assume the duties of Presiding Judge of the Third Administrative Judicial Region, a position to which he was appointed by then-Governor Rick Perry.  He was re-appointed by Governor Perry in 2014.  Subsequently, he was appointed to a third term by Governor Greg Abbott.  He is the Presiding Judge of the Third Region, which covers 27 counties with an area the size of West Virginia containing approximately 3.5 million residents.  It covers all of Central Texas.

Jim Garry: In the tradition of Mark Twain, J. Frank Dobie, and Will Rogers, master storyteller Jim Garry shares with us his special stories about western life and the land that defines it—, stories he’s acquired through more than two decades of haunting ranches, crossroad diners, hunting camps, and retirement homes in search of people with a story to tell. Cowboy, horse wrangler, wilderness guide, camp cook, river runner, lumberjack,  Mule packer, author & poet, Jim was raised in Taylor, TX. He now lives all over the west but his home base is Sheridan, WY.  

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Source: City of Round Rock