History of

  Grayson County 

Various Caddo groups, including the Kichai, Ionis, and Tonkawa Indians, were the earliest known inhabitants of the area that became Grayson County. These Indians, agriculturalists who found the soils of the area suitable to their way of life, traded and negotiated with the Spanish and French, who moved up the Red River during the eighteenth century to establish trading posts. French and Spanish expeditions resulted in the initial settlements established in 1836-37 at Preston Bend on the Red River, at Pilot Grove in the southeastern part of the county, and at Warren. After the establishment and surveying of the Peters colony in the early 1840s, settlement of the region progressed rapidly. On March 17, 1846, Grayson County, named for Peter W. Grayson, attorney general of the Republic of Texas, was marked off from Fannin County. The legislative action also specified that the county seat be called Sherman. The naming of the county seat in honor of Gen. Sidney Sherman was apparently an effort to effect a compromise between supporters of Sherman, an anti-Houston Whig, and Grayson, a pro-Houston Democrat. Sherman has the distinction of being one of the few towns in the Lone Star State named by an act of the legislature.

By 1850 Grayson County had a population of 2,008, most of whom had come from Southern states. The census enumerated 186 slaves, used mainly by farmers and stockmen along the Red River and its tributaries to raise grains and livestock, cotton being a minor crop in the area until much later. Throughout the 1850s Preston Bend grew in importance, and the character of the county as a trading and market center gradually emerged. Preston Bend, a landing for passengers and freight in a rapidly developing river trade, was also the northern end of the Preston Road, the state's oldest trail, which extended from the river to south of Austin. Further impetus to county growth occurred with the designation of Sherman as a station on the Butterfield Overland Mail route in 1858. By 1860 Grayson County's population had grown to 8,184, a significant part of the increase having occurred after 1858.

The attitude of the county in 1860-61 toward the issue of secession was not consistent countywide. Although the 1861 election resulted in a vote of 901 to 463 to remain in the Union, Whitesboro in western Grayson County was also the scene of one of the earliest secessionist rallies in Texas. Fear of alleged Union sympathizers in five north central counties, including Grayson, resulted in the deaths of forty men in the Great Hanging at Gainesville in 1862. During the Civil War Grayson County men served the Confederate cause in various parts of the South, but the Eleventh Texas Cavalry, composed of many area recruits, was commissioned to capture the federal forts in Indian Territory north of the Red River. No armed conflict was involved in these captures. The political instability and economic depression that characterized much of Texas in the Reconstruction era plagued Grayson County as well. The passing of cattle herds through the crossing at Preston Bend and a steadily developing river trade, however, provided much-needed income to the area.

From 1870 to 1880 settlement in North Texas flourished. The arrival of the Houston and Texas Central Railroad in Sherman and the Missouri, Kansas and Texas in Denison in late 1872 initiated a period of phenomenal growth and development for Grayson County. The population expanded from 14,387 in 1870 to 38,108 in 1880, an increase unparalleled in the entire history of the county. Numerous towns—including Denison, Van Alstyne, Howe, Whitewright, Pottsboro, and Tom Bean—sprang up as a result of the coming of the railroad to Grayson County. The number of farms increased 460 percent between 1870 and 1880, and since the railroads provided transport for produce, Grayson County soon became a milling and market center for surrounding areas. In 1876 Sherman had five flour mills and the largest grain elevator north of Dallas. By 1891 it had erected the largest cottonseed oil mill in the world at that time. Denison, founded by the railroad in 1872, also experienced significant expansion during this period; from 1890 to 1930 its population exceeded that of the county seat. Although manufacturing and milling interests steadily expanded, however, Grayson County remained predominantly agricultural. The number of farms in the county regularly increased, reaching a zenith of 5,762 in 1900. The same year marked the highest production of corn in the history of the county—3,681,640 bushels. Bumper crops of wheat and cotton were also noted, and commercial orchards flourished. Throughout the early years of the twentieth century Grayson County remained agricultural, its farms in 1910 comprising 553,527 of the county's 602,880 total acres.

The advent of the automobile effected significant changes in Grayson County. The first countywide road system, all gravel, was established in 1915, and by 1920 Grayson County had hard-surfaced roads. In 1926 county residents registered 12,314 automobiles, a number that increased to 14,501 in 1930.

The number of farms decreased from 5,169 in 1930 to 4,296 by 1940. The courthouse, destroyed by fire in the Sherman riot of 1930, was rebuilt in 1936 with Public Works Administration funds, and the Civilian Conservation Corps did extensive soil-conservation work throughout the area. In 1938 the Rural Electrification Administration brought electric power to rural Grayson County, and by 1944 the cooperative had 2,086 members. 

In 1938 Congress authorized the construction of a dam and reservoir north of Denison to control the flooding of the Red River, generate electrical power, and provide irrigation. Lake Texoma, the reservoir, with a shoreline of 1,250 miles, was developed by the Department of the Interior and the National Park Service and remains a major recreation area and tourist attraction. The dam project was an economic boom to the county, as was the construction of Perrin Air Force Base in 1941. - Handbook of Texas Online