Dallas County
Dallas, Dallas County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Dallas County The unincorporated town of Dallas was designated as a post office by the Republic of Texas in 1843. The County of Dallas was created by the first Legislature of Texas on March 30, 1846 from portions of Robertson and Nacogdoches counties. Both city and county were named in honor of George Mifflin Dallas (1792 - 1864) Pennsylvania Democratic statesman who was elected the eleventh vice-president of the United States on a platform favoring Texas annexation. (West limits Dallas, US Hy 80, State Hy 18)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
The Republic of Texas designated a post office at the unincorporated town of Dallas in 1843, and three years later the first Texas Legislature created Dallas County from parts of Robertson and Nacogdoches counties. Both city and county honor George Mifflin Dallas, the Pennsylvania statesman elected eleventh vice president of the United States on a platform that favored annexing Texas. His name thus binds this North Texas crossroads directly to the national politics that brought Texas into the Union.
Why it matters
Naming a future metropolis for the vice president who championed annexation ties Dallas's origins to one of the defining expansionist debates of nineteenth-century America.
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Related people
- · George Mifflin Dallas
Related events
- · Annexation of Texas
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Log Cabin Pioneers of Dallas County
Dallas, TX
At the "Three Forks" of the Trinity River, colonists of the Peters Colony began arriving after 1841, drawn by land grants that required them to farm a few acres and raise "a good and comfortable cabin." The surrounding forests of oak, cedar, walnut, and bois d'arc supplied the timber, and John Neely Bryan's 1842 cabin marked the beginnings of Dallas. Within a decade milled lumber and brick were replacing logs, and an 1860 fire swept away most of the town's original cabins.
Old Red Courthouse
Dallas, TX
This site has anchored Dallas County government since the log courthouse that followed the county's creation in 1846, replaced over the decades by ever-grander structures as fire after fire took its predecessors. The fifth of them, completed in 1892, is the Romanesque Revival landmark still known as the Old Red Courthouse — a massive pile of blue granite and red sandstone bristling with turrets, once crowned by a clock tower and a heavy bell.
John Neely Bryan, 1810-1877 and Margaret Beeman Bryan, 1825-1919
Dallas, TX
In 1839 Tennessee lawyer John Neely Bryan chose this high bluff and shallow ford on the Trinity River for a trading post, and when he returned in 1841 he platted a town, installed a ferry, and named it Dallas. The Republic of Texas soon opened its Central National Road from here, drawing settlers with liberal land grants. Margaret Beeman, who married Bryan in 1843 and bore six children, and her Illinois-born family were staunch supporters of the man remembered as the "Father of Dallas"; she lived to age 94 and saw the city grow past 150,000.
Alexander Cockrell_Sarah Horton Cockrell
Dallas, TX
Alexander Cockrell arrived in the Dallas area in 1845, fought in the war with Mexico, and by 1852 had bought the remainder of the townsite from Dallas's founder, John Neely Bryan, building brickyards, a sawmill, and a Trinity River bridge. When he was killed over a debt in 1858, his wife Sarah Horton Cockrell took the reins, finishing the St. Nicholas Hotel, running the ferry, and adding a flour mill — becoming the first woman in Dallas to wield real economic power.