Grayson
County Cities, Towns
& Communities
AMBROSE
was
named after Ambrose Bible. He came
from Tennessee in 1883. On January
10, 1902, land was surveyed, laid out, and mapped for Ambrose, and in September
a post office opened with James B. Moore as postmaster. On July 28, 1903, Bible
deeded the land for the right-of-way and the railroad station grounds to the
original railway company. He donated an entire block for the school, which was
built in 1907. The town had three churches—Methodist, Church of Christ, and
Baptist. Dr. Frank Miller was the first doctor. Oscar Sanford owned the hardware
store, C. D. Jordan the drugstore, and Calmy Brown the bank. The town had a
restaurant, a general store, and a blacksmith shop. The farmers shipped cotton,
watermelons, sand, and gravel. In 1917 a new school building was erected.
By 1919 the town reached its peak when the population was 60.
By 1927 the DB&NO railroad had failed. The post office was moved to
Bells in 1930 and served Ambrose on a rural route. In 1940 the school was
consolidated with that of Bells.
BELLS was
settled by Daniel Dugan in 1835. Community development, however, did not occur
until the early 1870s with the arrival of the Texas and Pacific and Missouri,
Kansas and Texas railways. The community was called Dugansville, for the local
pioneer family, from 1871 to 1878, and was renamed Bells (or Bell's), perhaps in
reference to the area churches, in 1879. In the 1870s the community had a post
office, nine stores, a mill, a cotton gin, and Corneilison School. The community
grew up south of the railroad, and incorporated in 1881. By 1900 the community
had 400 residents, twenty businesses, two schools, a number of churches, and a
weekly newspaper, the North Texas Courant. By the mid-1920s the number of
residents had grown to just over 600; businesses numbered thirty, including a
bank. The community supported a high school and a grade school. The depression
and World War II slowed the growth. Beginning in the 1950s, however, a steady
increase in population resumed.
CANNON
community
was born when Elijah Cannon, a native of Pickens County, South Carolina, built a
gristmill and gin. Construction of a school, a church, and several businesses
established the community as a center for area farmers in the 1870s. In 1876
John A. and Joseph L. Cobb founded the Centennial Institute, which burned in
1888. In 1877 a post office opened there. In
the 1880, the community had an estimated population of 400. That same decade,
however, saw the Houston and Texas Central Railway bypass Cannon. Over the next
fifteen years the community's businesses declined and its population decreased.
In 1907 the post office closed. Only thirty residents remained in Cannon by
1910.
CEDAR
MILLS was
settled beginning in the 1870s, when grist and saw mills were built in the cedar
groves on the Red River. Cedar Mills quickly established itself as a community
center for the mill operators and area farmers. Postal service began in 1872,
and by the mid-1870s the town had a church, a school, and a number of
businesses, including a hotel and racetrack. In 1884 the town had a population
of 500. Cedar Mills was bypassed by the railroads. In 1890 the population
dropped to eighty. Businesses left, and the post office closed in 1907. The
community had fifty residents through the 1930s. During the early 1940s,
however, the site was covered by Lake Texoma.
CHERRY
MOUND
began
in the mid-1850s, when the David Cherry family arrived and settled on a rise
that provided a view of the countryside. In the 1940s the community there had a
school, a church, two businesses, and a number of scattered dwellings. Cherry
Mound served area farmers and cattle ranchers as a school and church community.
COLLINSVILLE
is
a small community where the first Anglo-Americans to settled in the late 1850s.
Originally the community was called Springville, and land for the town donated
by Joshua Miller. A post office operated there in 1857-58. In the late 1860s
another town, Toadsuck, was established in the area. Following the Civil War L.
M. Collins and her two sons arrived from Ann Arbor, Michigan, and established
what many believe to be the first free school in the North Texas area. In 1872 a
post office opened. Nine years later the Texas and Pacific Railway arrived. The
railroad established the community as a shipping and retail point for area
farmers. Sometime early in the 1890s residents voted to incorporate and rename
their town in honor of Collins. By 1900 Collinsville had a population of over
600. That figure fluctuated little over the next five decades. The town had
Methodist, Baptist, Christian, and Cumberland Presbyterian churches and fifty
businesses.
DENISON
was
established in the 1870s when William Benjamin Munson, Sr., and R.
S. Stevens bought land in the area and prepared for the arrival of the Missouri,
Kansas and Texas Railroad (the Katy). The town was laid out in the summer of
1872 and named for the vice president of the Katy, George Denison. The first
train arrived on Christmas Eve. The town had over 3,000 residents by the summer
of 1873, when it incorporated. Although Main Street appeared to be an orderly
collection of businesses, the surrounding area consisted of a tent city,
inhabited by bars, gambling halls, and houses of prostitution.
On February 6, 1873, Denison established the first free
public school in Texas. The first Denison Independent Order of Odd Fellows was
organized on February 19, 1873. Denison had the first women's club in Texas; the
XXI club began in 1876. In 1886 a post office opened, and in 1889 the town had
5,000 residents. During the next ten years Denison established itself as a
retail and shipping point for North Texas. In addition to the tracks of the MKT,
the town also became a stop on the St. Louis, San Francisco and Texas and the
Kansas, Oklahoma and Gulf railroads. Five additional rail lines that connected
Denison with other communities in North Texas were chartered between the late
1870s and 1900, including the first interurban electric line between Denison and
Sherman in 1896. By the end of the 1870s local businesses included two cotton
compresses, a large flour mill, and a slaughterhouse capable of handling 700
cattle a day. In 1884 the town had an opera house that seated 1,200. In 1889 the
Denison Herald began publication. During the twentieth century industrial
and manufacturing plants provided a diversified economic base for the community.
Electronic parts, clothes, furniture, and a variety of plastic goods are among
the products manufactured in Denison.
In 1900 the population surpassed 10,000. By the mid-1920s
Denison had just over 17,000 residents and 400 businesses, including four banks.
It also had two high schools, nine grade schools, and numerous churches. In 1936
Denison had 13,850 residents and 460 businesses. By the end of World War II the
number of residents was almost 16,000. Denison was the birthplace of the
thirty-fourth president of the United States, Dwight David Eisenhower. The home
he was born in 1890 has been returned to its original appearance and sits in the
Eisenhower Birthplace State Historic Site, a three-acre area that includes a
museum.
DIXIE was
community developed shortly after the Civil War, when a group of Confederate
veterans settled at the site and called it Theodore. It soon became a community
center for area farmers. By 1886 the name had been changed to Dixie, and the
community opened a post office, which it retained until 1902. In 1908 the
settlement had three churches, a store, a gin, and a school. The school was
consolidated with the Whitesboro district in the 1940s. A blacksmith shop
continued in operation until about 1965.
DORCHESTER
was
established in the late 1800s and named for C. B. Dorchester, a Sherman banker.
The community was on the St. Louis, San Francisco and Texas Railway and quickly
became a retail and community center for area farmers. In 1896 it opened a post
office, and over the next four decades Dorchester prospered. By the mid-1930s it
had an estimated 400 residents and ten businesses.
DRIPPING
SPRINGS
emerged
as a community center before the Civil War. The first settler in the area is
thought to have been a man named Fawcett, who arrived about 1849. Other families
began farming the valleys of Little Barton and Onion creeks in the early 1850s,
and in 1857 Dripping Springs opened what became a permanent post office. By 1884
the town supported several businesses, including a steam gristmill and cotton
gin, and a population of 130. Education was provided by a public school and by
the Dripping Springs Academy, which opened in 1881. The settlement's location on
the Austin to Fredericksburg road made it a durable community center, and
despite a population decline during the Great Depression, Dripping Springs
developed into the principal town in northern Hays County during the twentieth
century. With only minor fluctuations, its population has grown slowly but
steadily since World War II.
ELMONT was
established when settlers arrived in the late 1840s and called the site Cross
Roads, since it was at the crossroads of north-south and east-west trade routes.
Harry Campbell of Elmont, New York, established a general merchandise store
there in 1845; this store was in continuous operation until its interior was
destroyed by fire in 1964. The first church, the Elmont Baptist Church, was
organized by Thomas B. McComb in 1869. More extensive community development did
not take place until the late 1870s or early 1880s. In 1884 a post office opened
in the community. By the mid-1890s Elmont had fifty residents, two general
stores, a church, a school, and a cotton gin. The first public library north of
Dallas was in Elmont, and at one time the Cross Roads Institute was considered
one of the best schools in Texas. The community's population stabilized at
between fifty and sixty residents, and in 1904 the local post office closed. By
World War II Elmont had only two businesses and a church that served an
estimated fifty residents.
ETHEL community
was developed in the late 1850s as ranchers and lumbermen migrated.
John Dishman constructed a gin, and a school was built on the ranch of S.
A. Schott. In 1885 a post office opened; W. H. Burgin, who owned the general
store and became the first postmaster, submitted the name Ethel. By 1900 the
number of residents had increased to eighty-one. The post office closed in 1902.
FARMINGTON
began
with the first settlers arrived in the area in the mid-1840s. Community
development occurred through the efforts of William W. Wheat, Henry Campbell,
and Samuel C. Watson. A post office opened in 1861. By the end of the Civil War
Farmington had established itself as a school and church community for area
farmers. By 1885 it had three churches, a school, a general store, a cotton gin,
and a gristmill. The population slowly increased over the next two decades, to
peak of 171 in 1904. That year postal service ended, and over the next few
decades the number of residents steadily declined. By the end of World War II
Farmington had fifty residents, a church, a school, and a general store.
FINK
is
a farming community that began to form in the late 1850s when farm families from
Mississippi settled in the area. The settlement was named for Fred Fink, a
member of this group. No established community center developed there until the
late 1860s or early 1870s, when W. J. Bilderback opened a general store. From
1897 to 1903 the settlement had postal service. The community's population has
never exceeded fifty; in 1936 it was estimated at fifteen. Fink's population was
estimated at twenty-five for most of the period from the mid-1940s to the
mid-1970s. The Sixty-sixth Texas
Legislature designated every fourth Friday in June as Fink Day in Texas, in
recognition of the "National Fink Week" celebration held by Finks,
during which the roads to Fink "are overflowing with Finks and Fink
well-wishers." The event has drawn national attention.
GEORGETOWN
community
was probably named for George Ivy, who owned the land where Fort Johnson was
located
in 1840. As other communities developed nearby and Fort Johnson was vacated, the
Georgetown residents
left,
and the community dissolved.
GORDONVILLE
was
a part of Holford's sheep ranch until 1872, when Mark Clayton selected it for
the site of his general store. William Clarke Quantrill and his guerrillas
camped in that secluded area on their frequent visits to Grayson County during
the Civil War. Quantrill's treasurer was Capt. Silas M. Gordon, after whom the
Gordonville post office was named. When Quantrill left Grayson County for good,
Gordon remained behind and operated a trading post in the new town. The
Gordonville post office is one of the oldest in the county. The town's
population reached its peak of 300 in 1925.
GUNTER
is
one of the later towns to be established in Grayson County; Gunter received a
post office in 1898 and was organized as a community in 1902 when the tracks of
the St. Louis, San Francisco and Texas Railway reached the area. The town's
namesake, John Gunter, a cattleman and surveyor, donated land for the town. The
arrival of the railroad established Gunter as a retail and community center for
area farmers. By 1914 the town reported a population of 800 and thirty-six
businesses. It also had Baptist, Methodist, and Church of Christ churches and a
weekly newspaper called the Grayson County Advocate. The community's
population surpassed 500 in 1924, the year Gunter incorporated. Its residents
were served by some fifty businesses, including two banks; it also had a school
and numerous churches. The Great Depression slowed Gunter's growth, and its
population declined to 475 by 1936.
HAGERMAN began
when the early 1870s settlers came to the community, which became a
center for area farmers. It was originally called Steedman, in honor of county
judge S. D. Steedman, and its post office, established in 1880, was called
Steedman until 1909. When the tracks of the Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railroad
reached the community in 1909, its name was changed to Hagerman, to honor
railroad attorney James Hagerman. The community post office closed sometime
after 1930. In the 1930s and 1940s Hagerman's population was reported as 150.
Though most of the town was submerged when Lake Texoma was built in 1944, a
church, and a cemetery mark Hagerman.
HOWE
community
is on the Southern Pacific line ten miles south of Sherman in southern
Grayson County. The first settlers in the area arrived around the time of the
Texas Revolution in 1836. In 1843, it is said, the last Indian battle in Grayson
County was fought in the area. The first settlers of Howe were Jabes and Harriet
Haning and Jabes's brother John. They received land through the Peters colony
after their arrival from Pennsylvania before 1850. The Houston and Texas Central
Railway built through the area in 1873, and a railroad switch was located in the
community. It was called Summit because at 810 feet above sea level it was
supposed to be the highest point between the Red River and the Gulf of Mexico.
In 1873, when Summit opened a post office, two businesses were located at the
switch: a general store and a saloon. Several houses were built to the east of
the switch. Jabes Haning persuaded the railroad to establish a depot on his land
by donating every second lot in his newly platted town to the railroad. The name
of the depot, the store, and the post office was changed in 1876 to Howe, after
F. M. Howe, who worked for the Houston and Texas Central. Howe had three saloons
until around 1900, when the town voted to go dry. Its first one-room school
building opened in 1877 and was replaced by a two-story building in 1884.
In 1884 Howe was incorporated, with George M. McCrary as
mayor. By the late 1880s the town had become a major grain-shipping center and
was the home of Red Rust-proof Oats. A number of seed companies had their
beginnings there in that decade. Howe became home to a Farmers' Alliance
Cooperative Association, which was absorbed by the Howe Grain and Mercantile
Company in 1894. In 1890 Howe had a population of 450, a steam gristmill, a
Farmers' Alliance Cooperative, and Baptist and Methodist churches, as well as a
number of hotels, doctors, druggists, and barbers. Several newspapers were
published in Howe, such as the Messenger and the Howe Herald in
the early years. During the 1930s the Howe Chronicle was published by
former Governor James E. Ferguson and his brother A. M. Ferguson. By 1914 the
Texas Traction Company, better known as the Interurban, was providing service to
Howe. This electric train ran between Denison and Dallas with a stop in Howe. By
1914 Howe also had the Farmers National Bank, the Howe Herald, three
grain elevators, and an ice plant. The community's population had grown to 521
in 1904.
IDA
community
began in the late 1870s, and in 1884 a post office opened. By 1890 Ida had fifty
residents, a general store, and a church. The community center also provided
area farmers with a gristmill and a gin. Ida remained a small church community
throughout the twentieth century. In 1903 its post office closed. By the
mid-1930s its population had decreased to twenty-five
KENTUCKY
TOWN was
born 1849, even though the area was sparsely settled as early as 1837.
The community was officially settler when the first substantial group of
settlers, traveling in a wagon train from Kentucky, arrived. Others soon
followed, and by the end of 1850 two stores and a mill, one of the first in
Grayson County, had been established. On January 8, 1852, Dr. Josiah L. Heiston
purchased land from Enoch Jones and laid out a town, which he called Ann Eliza
after his daughter. Because the town was populated primarily by settlers from
Kentucky, it was soon referred to by such names as the Kentuckians' Town. By
June 1854, when the first post office was established, the official designation
was Kentucky Town. The first postmaster, Jacob Alfred Drye, also owned one of
the first stores in Kentucky Town. The community, on stage and freight lines
from Shreveport and Jefferson westward, grew rapidly. Charles DeMorse, editor of
the Clarksville Standard, chronicled the speedy development of the town
in an 1855 news report. According to DeMorse, only two residences had been in
Kentucky Town when he had visited there three years earlier. In 1855, however,
the town had two schools, a church, a lodge, a lawyer, and three doctors, and he
credited the town with a precinct vote of 200. Kentucky Town continued to thrive
throughout the 1850s. At one time as many as twenty businesses, including three
saloons and two hotels, were located there. The Civil War years, however,
brought a different type of excitement: William Clarke Quantrill and his
guerillas frequented the area around Kentucky Town and wintered there at least
once. The population of Kentucky Town began a steady decline during the 1870s,
when the Texas and Pacific Railway passed to the north of the community, and the
Missouri, Kansas and Texas line brought the Whitewright community into existence
three miles to the east. By 1883 Jonathan Sewell's general store, which also
housed the post office, was the sole business left in Kentucky Town. In 1924 the
post office was discontinued and replaced by rural delivery from Whitewright.
LOCUST was
a farming community developed in the late 1880s, and in 1892 it received a post
office. By 1900 Locust had a general store, a gin, a church, and an estimated
thirty-five residents. In 1907 its post office closed. The population estimate
for Locust in the 1940s was thirty.
LUELLA
is
an incorporated farming community settled in 1888, when the tracks of the St.
Louis Southwestern Railway reached the area, and Luella was established as a
post office branch for the railroad's Lynn Station. In 1914 it had fifty people
and seven businesses. The community remained small, and it lost its post office
in 1924. For the next few decades it served as a community center for area
farmers.
OAK
GROVE
is
noted by the existence of an Oak Grove school by 1891 that suggests that
the settlement was established sometime during the late nineteenth century. The
only available statistics report a population of twenty-five in the mid-1930s
and sixty in the late 1940s, when Oak Grove maintained a school, a church, and
two rated businesses. The school became part of the Pottsboro school district in
1951, and Oak Grove ceased to exist as an organized community sometime
thereafter.
PILOT
GROVE
was settled about 1850 and was originally
called Lickskillet. It acquired its present name, derived
from the
nearby Pilot Grove Ranch of James P. Dumas, when the post office opened in 1850.
In addition to Dumas,
early settlers
included Buford Clement, Frank Stinnett, and Dr. William C. Holmes. The
community grew slowly through
the 1880s and had a
population of thirty, a school, a cotton gin, a general store, and three
churches by 1885. The
population reached
193 by 1904. The post office closed that year, but the population remained about
the same through
the mid-1930s, when
the town had three businesses. Pilot Grove declined to 125 persons, one
business, a school, and
three churches by
the late 1940s.
PRESTON
BEND
community was known as a ribald, boisterous, and profane frontier town and a
frequent destination of Indians seeking liquor. Coffee was murdered there on
October 1, 1846. Preston was an important river crossing from its founding until
about 1850; an estimated 1,000 wagons crossed there in a single year. Coffee,
George Butts, and Sloan Love operated ferries in the area. The settlement was
the terminus of the Indian Nation's Texas Road and the beginning of what became
the Preston Road. The Shawnee Trail crossed there. By 1851 a municipal
government had been established, and Tom Jackson was the first mayor. A Masonic
lodge was started in 1852, and a post office was granted in 1856. From 1851 to
1853 the United States Army operated a depot, established under the command of
Lt. Thomas C. English, to supply the Fifth Infantry. A Preston Supply Depot soon
came, under Bvt. Maj. W. F. Wood. In 1849 Randolph B. Marcy and Lt. Nathaniel
Michler passed through Preston. Marcy and John Pope came through in 1854, and
Albert Sidney Johnston marched the Second Cavalry by way of Preston in 1855.
As Sherman and McKinney began to develop east of the Preston Road, Colbert's
Ferry became the main crossing for
the area, and
Preston began to decline. The old town was largely abandoned by 1870, although a
new Preston
community
developed more centrally within the bend. Preston remained the center of a rural
community through the
late nineteenth and early twentieth century. It had general stores, a school
system, two churches, and a cotton gin.
A post office
operated from 1880 to 1914. In the late 1930s the United States Army Corps of
Engineers bought all the
land in the area,
and upon completion of the Texoma Dam a few miles downstream in 1944, the site
of Preston was
covered
by Lake Texoma.
SADLER is
on the tracks of the Missouri, Kansas and Texas line and the area was
settled in 1869 by A. J. Cross, who was soon joined by other such pioneers as
Zeke Hall and Jim Beach. The community proper developed around 1878, when John
Sadler, a local landowner for whom the town was named, donated land for a
right-of-way to entice officials of the Missouri, Kansas and Texas to extend the
railroad tracks to the settlement. A post office opened in 1892. From the
mid-1920s through the mid-1930s Sadler reported a population of 400; seven
businesses were there by 1936. In 1956 Sadler reported 185 residents and three
businesses.
SANDUSKY
was
settled about 1873, when John R. Davis established a general merchandise store
and George McCain began operation of a gristmill and sawmill. The settlement had
a post office by 1875. The community may have been named for Sandusky, Ohio
(reportedly the source of local cotton-ginning equipment), or for nearby
Sandusky Creek. By 1885 Sandusky had a population of 100, three churches,
several steam-powered mills, and a school. The population had declined to
sixty-two by 1900, and in 1902 the community post office closed. The population
was fifty in the mid-1940s.
SHERMAN
is
located the tracks of the Missouri, Kansas and Texas, Southern Pacific,
and Burlington Northern rail lines. The community, which is in the center of the
county, was designated as county seat by the act that established the county on
March 17, 1846. Thomas J. Shannon was one of the first settlers in the area. The
town was named for Gen. Sidney Sherman, a hero of the Texas Revolution and one
of the state's earliest railroad promoters. A log courthouse was among the first
buildings constructed in Sherman, and settlers soon began moving into the new
community, which grew rapidly as a merchandising center. A post office began
operating in 1847. The town originally was on a hill just west of its present
location. In 1848 Sherman was relocated to a site three miles east of the
original location. By 1852 400 people lived in Sherman, which "consisted of
a row of clapboard business buildings along the east side of the public
square," and, among other things, two saloons, a district clerk's office, a
doctor's office, and a church. By the end of the decade the town had
incorporated and was a stop on the Butterfield Overland Mail route through
Texas.
The community was not immune to the sectional passions that
flared during the 1850s, and by 1860 the county commissioners' court had
established an armed detachment of men to patrol the county in search of runaway
slaves and abolitionist threats to law and order. In 1862 the publisher of the
Sherman Patriot,qv an anti-secessionist Whig newspaper, was murdered. The
Civil Warqv
years witnessed William C. Young'sqv
organization of a force of 1,000 men from the Sherman area. This group became
the Eleventh Texas Cavalry of the Confederate Army. Despite hardships imposed by
wartime, Sherman continued to grow and develop during the early 1860s. In 1861
the community's first flour mill began production and became the foundation of
industrial development. Although outlaw bands led by Jesse James and William C.
Quantrill appeared in Sherman during and after the war, and a period of
lawlessness and depression accompanied Reconstruction, the town remained active
and relatively prosperous through the end of the decade. Dry goods stores,
warehouses, grocery stores, law offices, a newspaper, and two churches served
the community. The Sherman Male and Female High School, also known as the
Sherman Male and Female Institute, began accepting students in 1866, making it
one of three private schools registering students in Sherman.
Sherman experienced tremendous growth and development during
the 1870s. Its population reached 6,000, various new industries, including a
cottonseed oil mill and a steam-powered cracker factory, began operations in
1871. In 1873 the Sherman Male and Female High School became the North Texas
Female College and offered primary, preparatory, and college education. In 1876
Austin College, a male college, relocated to Sherman from Huntsville. Although
the Houston and Texas Central Railway extended its tracks to the community in
1872, thereby quickening the already rapid business and industrial expansion,
its residents failed to subscribe a large enough bonus to attract the Missouri,
Kansas and Texas line to build to Sherman. Such a connection would have linked
the city and the county to the profitable markets of the Northeast, as well as
to a national rail system. When officials of the Missouri, Kansas and Texas
chose to establish a terminal at the newly established town of Denison, a few
miles north of the county seat, "great civic jealousy" arose. Although
after 1880 the MK&T and other national rail systems would build to Sherman,
for the time being Denison became the county's rail and
marketing
town. Two fires in 1875 destroyed all of the buildings south of Sherman's city
square and all but two buildings east of the square. As a result a large part of
the city was rebuilt with better materials, giving Sherman a more attractive and
stable appearance. By the late 1870s Sherman was considered an important town
due to its commercial activity. It served as a produce market for farmers from
across the county and from areas west of the county. By the 1880s Sherman had
become "a thoroughly stable community and had pretty well lost all traces
of the rawness of the frontier." The local business community included five
flour mills, an iron works, and three newspapers. A public school system was
established in 1883, and, along with Austin College, the North Texas Female
College, and Mary Nash College, provided Sherman with a wealth of educational
institutions. The city suffered a devastating blow on May 15, 1896, when a
tornado cut through the west side of town, destroying some fifty homes and
killing between fifty and eighty people.
By the turn of the century Sherman's population reached
10,213. During the first two decades
of the twentieth century two more rail lines extended their tracks into the
community, which also boasted the state's first electric interurban railway,
linking it with Denison. The city's first hospital, St. Vincent's, opened its
doors in the early 1900s. Sherman's population increased from 12,412 by World
War I, to which the city contributed a field artillery battery, to 15,031 by the
mid-1920s. By the latter date Sherman's fifty-four industrial plants, producing
such goods as flour, cottonseed oil, and hardware, earned the city the nickname
"Fifth Industrial City of Texas," although it actually ranked sixth in
the state in value of annual production. Served by five railroads, the town held
an equal place with Denison as Grayson County's rail center. Sherman had
thirty-two wholesale establishments, 410 businesses, six private academies and
colleges, as well as six public elementary schools and two public high schools,
and the city was recognized as one of the state's leading educational and
industrial centers.
The Sherman riot of 1930 gained the town notoriety as the scene of one of the
South's major race riots. On May 3 of that year, George Hughes, a black farm
laborer, was accused of raping a white woman outside of Sherman. In addition, he
was accused of shooting
at two sheriff's deputies who attempted to capture him. Following his surrender,
the man was indicted by a grand jury in Sherman, and went on trial on May 9.
Despite warnings from the Texas Rangers that violence was likely should the
trial be held in Sherman, Hughes was tried in the Grayson County seat. A mob of
angry white people surrounded the courthouse and, after threatening violence,
set it on fire. While the structure burned, the accused rapist was trapped in
the courthouse's fireproof vault, the flames preventing his rescue. The mob then
burst through the concrete lining of the vault with dynamite. The body was taken by the mob and burned in
the center of Sherman's black district. A period of rioting and violence against
local blacks followed before order was restored.
Although its population growth slowed during the 1930s,
likely due to the Great Depression, 15,713 people lived in Sherman by the
mid-1930s, and some 410 businesses, including sixty-four industrial plants,
operated locally. While Kidd-Key College (formerly the North Texas Female
College) closed its doors in 1935, a number of private schools and colleges
remained open. By the late 1940s Sherman's population had risen to 17,156, and
408 businesses served the city. At least some of this growth was associated with
the county's acquisition of a site near Sherman for an airfield. This tract of
land was leased in 1941 to the federal
government, which constructed and operated Perrin Army Air Field there. During
the years of American involvement in World War II, some 2,500 potential pilots a
year received basic instruction at the base, which was deactivated in November
1946, reactivated in 1948 as Perrin Air Force Base and remained in service
through much of the succeeding three decades. Another wartime project, the
building of Denison Dam and the creation of Lake Texoma, also contributed to the
postwar growth of the Sherman-Denison area. Oil was discovered within the city
limits in the 1950s, which gave a further boost to the local economy.
SOUTHMAYD was
developed when the tracks of the Texas and Pacific Railway crossed land granted
to D. S. Southmayd, from whom the community derives its name. The presence of
the railroad attracted settlers, and by 1881 the settlement's first business, a
general merchandise store, was built, and a post office began operations. From
1904 to 1926 Southmayd had a population reported at 132, which increased to 250
by the mid-1930s. By 1936 it had nine businesses.
TIOGA
was
founded in 1881 when the Texas and Pacific Railway reached the site. The crew
used water from the local well and named the site Tioga, a New York Indian word
said to mean "swift current" or "fair and beautiful." When
mail service began in 1881, Dr. J. S. Nichols, a physician and druggist, became
the first postmaster. In 1884 the community had two churches, a school, a cotton
gin, a grocery, a general store, a pharmacist, a carpenter, a blacksmith, and a
population of sixty. By 1892 the town also supported a military academy, a gin
and gristmill, a physician, and a restaurant. The population was 600. The town
was incorporated in 1896.
In 1884 Matt Rains, a blacksmith, discovered medicinal
qualities in the local water; after he bathed a burned hand, the hand reportedly
healed quickly. As a result in the 1880s several companies-Tioga Mineral Wells
Company, Radium Mineral Water, Tioga Mineral Water Company, Atlas Water, and
Star Well-marketed the mineral water and attracted health seekers to Tioga. It
was said that ten trainloads of visitors came to Tioga each day. In 1925 the
population reached a peak of 777. In 1937 there was an unsuccessful effort to
change the name of the town to Autry Springs, after Gene Autry, who was born in
Tioga and graduated from Tioga High School in 1925.
The first local newspaper, the Tioga North Texan
(1895-98) was subsequently published as the Tioga Tribune (1899-1904) and
thereafter as the Tioga Herald. In 1955 it ceased publication. In 1940
Tioga had a population of 638, a post office, and sixteen businesses. In 1947
one of the bathhouses was destroyed by fire, and the wells were temporarily shut
down. However, a new proprietor built new bathhouses and continued to boost the
town as a health resort.
TOM
BEAN was
established in 1888 as a stop on the St. Louis Southwestern Railway, and that
year a post office opened there. The community was named for Tom Bean, a
surveyor from Bonham, who, in hopes of enticing the rail line to extend its
tracks across land that he owned in Grayson County, donated a fifty-acre tract
for a townsite and railroad right-of-way. The presence of the railroad drew
settlers and businesses from the nearby community of White Mound, and by the
early 1890s the incorporated town of Tom Bean had the post office and a school,
a general store, a blacksmith shop, a cotton gin, and a weekly newspaper. By
around 1900 its population stood at 299, and in the mid-1920s the town had a
population of 367, with twenty businesses.
TOADSUCK
was
originally called Toadsuck Saloon, later became part of Collinsville.
Settlers arrived in the area in the late 1850s, and in 1869 a town was surveyed
near Toadsuck Saloon, then located a half-mile southeast of what is now the site
of Collinsville. The town of Toadsuck took the name of the saloon. John Jones,
an early settler and mill owner, may have named it after the city of Toadsuck,
Arkansas. According to legend, the name was originally a reference to men
consuming liquor until they swelled up like toads. In 1869 William (Alfalfa
Bill) Henry David Murray, who later became a notable Oklahoma governor, was born
in Toadsuck. The Texas and Pacific line was built within three quarters of a
mile of Toadsuck in 1880, and by 1887 most of its businesses and residents had
moved to the tracks. The railroad town was named Collinsville when it was
incorporated in the 1890s.
VAN
ALSTYNE
established
the community of Mantua in the area during the 1850s. When the Houston and Texas
Central
Railway bypassed Mantua in 1872, many of that community's residents purchased
land from the railroad
company and
laid out a town. They named the new community after either William A. Van
Alstyne, a civil engineer
with the
railroad who surveyed the right-of-way and the town, or Mrs. Marie Van Alstyne,
a shareholder in the railroad
company. The
community opened a post office in 1873 and grew rapidly for the rest of the
century. Van Alstyne
incorporated
in 1890, when it had a population of 400, two gristmills, a flour mill, a
newspaper, and a college. Around
1900 the town had
1,940 residents and a number of businesses, including several banks, a grain
elevator, a roller mill, \
and a
chemical company. Though the population of Van Alstyne declined somewhat
during the early 1900s, it
remained an
active center for retail trade, banking, schools, and churches. Its population
was 1,453 in 1936, when
fifty-five
businesses, including two banks and various stores, served the community.
WHITE
MOUND
was
settled in 1849 by Henry Lackey and his family, who had moved from Missouri to
Texas, the settlement derived its name from the presence of two conical white
mounds, or hills, nearby. The small community soon included other settlers.
Prior to the Civil War the town had blacksmith shops, general merchandise
stores, drugstores, and saloons. Following the war a number of doctors, a
gristmill, a cotton gin, and Bosworth's Academy operated there. White Mound
received a post office in 1876. When the St. Louis Southwestern Railway's
right-of-way missed White Mound by three quarters of a mile in 1887, the
community declined. Tom Bean was built on the railroad and attracted 75 percent
of the population, many businesses, and all of the churches from White Mound.
White Mound quickly became a ghost town.
WHITESBORO community
is on the tracks of the Missouri, Kansas, and Texas and Texas and Pacific
railroads, fifteen miles west of Sherman. Although the first settler in the area
was Robert Diamond, the arrival of Ambrose B. White and his family in 1848
marked the beginning of the settlement. At this time the area was called
Wolfpath. The settlers who came after White chose to live very near one another.
The Butterfield Overland Mail route used White's Westview Inn as a stop on its
trail from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Coast from 1858 to 1861.
Fourteen families lived there by 1861. A post office, under the name
Whitesborough, began operations in 1860. After the Civil War residents were
attracted to Whitesborough in such numbers that it became a relatively
"wide-open" frontier town; female residents were prohibited from
leaving their homes on Saturday nights because shootings were so common.
Whitesborough was incorporated on June 2, 1873. At that time it had a population
of 500, saloons, several stores, and other businesses. By the end of the decade
the community had a bank, a newspaper, and train service from the Missouri,
Kansas and Texas Railroad, which had extended its tracks to Whitesborough from
Denison in 1879. In 1887 local officials reincorporated the town and received a
second charter, this time altering the spelling of its name to Whitesboro. By
1900 the population was 1,214, and by 1920 it had increased to 1,810. Surrounded
by farms producing cotton, corn, wheat, and oats, and served by two rail lines,
by the mid-1920s the town had become a commercial center. Some seventy-five
businesses, including three banks, operated in Whitesboro. In addition, the
community had a small number of manufacturers, producing such goods as
cottonseed oil and bedding. The population of Whitesboro declined slightly
during the 1930s and 1940s, no doubt affected by the Great Depression and World
War II.
WHITEWRIGHT
was
established in 1878, when New York investor William Whitewright, for whom the
community was named, purchased a tract of land in the path of the Missouri,
Kansas, and Texas Railroad, which was then extending its tracks across the
county. Whitewright had the land surveyed as a town and left two of his agents,
Jim Reeves and Jim Batsell, to sell lots in the new community. Likely due to the
combination of its rail connection and its location in the center of perhaps the
richest farmland in the county, Whitewright soon attracted settlers and
businesses. Within ten years of its founding the community had incorporated and
supported a private school, Grayson College, a public school, a newspaper, and
several businesses, including three hotels, two cotton gins, and two banks. In
addition, a post office began operations there in 1888. By 1900 the population
of Whitewright was 1,804. Although it declined slightly, to 1,563 in 1910 and
1,666 in 1920, the business community flourished. By the mid-1920s both the
Missouri, Kansas, and Texas and the Cotton Belt served the town, and sixty-eight
businesses, including two banks and manufacturers of cottonseed oil and flour,
operated locally. Whitewright served as a marketing, retail, and commercial
center for the farmers of the surrounding area who produced such crops as
cotton, wheat, and corn. The population rose from 1,480 in 1936 to 1,537 by the
late 1940s. The number of businesses, however, declined from sixty to forty-six.
-- Handbook of Texas