Grayson County
Sherman, Grayson County, Texas
Marker Inscription
In the mainstream of Texas history for more than a century, this area was, in 1837, the site of Colonel Holland Coffee's Trading Post, a landmark structure at the Preston Bend crossing of the Red River. It was a focal point, beginning in 1842, for settlers of the important Peters' colony. In 1846 the county was created from part of Fannin County by the 1st State Legislature. It was named for Peter W. Grayson, who immigrated to Texas in 1830, served in the Texas revolution, and was attorney general in the Republic. Also in 1846 the county was organized and Sherman was made county seat. The original townsite was 5-1/4 mi. W of here. It was moved to its present location, 1848. Honoree of the town name was Colonel Sidney Sherman, a hero of the Battle of San Jacinto. The place is distinguished for having had at least five courthouses and for its superior schools of the 19th century. It was once known as the "Athens of Texas." In 1858 the famous Butterfield Trail crossed the county and in the same period and later, a number of cattle trails and early railroads traversed the area. Today Lake Texoma, created 1939-1944, is a county approved tourist attraction. The Sherman-Denison region was named a Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area, 1967. Incise on back: Erected by Grayson County Historical Survey Committee.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Grayson County grew from Holland Coffee's 1837 trading post at the Red River's Preston Bend into a hub of the Peters' Colony and, in 1846, a county named for Republic of Texas attorney general Peter W. Grayson. Its seat, Sherman, moved to its present site in 1848 and earned fame for so many courthouses and fine 19th-century schools that it was called the "Athens of Texas." The Butterfield Trail, cattle drives, and early railroads all crossed the county, and Lake Texoma later made it a tourist draw.
Why it matters
The county's story compresses the whole arc of Texas settlement—trading posts, colonization, transportation networks, and civic ambition—into one North Texas landscape.
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Related people
- · Holland Coffee
- · Peter W. Grayson
- · Sidney Sherman
Related events
- · Peters' Colony
- · Butterfield Overland Mail
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
First Site of City of Sherman
Sherman, TX
When the Texas Legislature created Grayson County in 1846, it named the seat for Sidney Sherman, a hero of San Jacinto. Commissioners chose this spot on the old Cherokee Trail near an important crossing at Preston Bend, and the first courthouse was finished in 1847—celebrated with a Fourth of July barbecue, a barrel of whiskey, music, and dancing. But this "bald prairie" lacked water and wood, so in 1848 legislators arranged to move the townsite five miles east to its present location.
Sand Springs
Denison, TX
Sand Springs was a prized watering place where cold water boiled up at the foot of a rocky bluff, known to settlers by 1840 and carved with the names of passing travelers into an "inscription rock." Gold seekers bound for California camped here in 1849, Butterfield's Overland Mail coaches stopped by 1857, and postwar cattle drives watered their herds before the coming of the railroad to Denison in 1872 reshaped the land around it.
Waples Memorial United Methodist Church
Denison, TX
When the newly established railroad town of Denison counted forty Methodists in 1873, the North Texas conference sent the Rev. Alexander Jamison to organize them, and the little frame mission church was chartered in 1881. It took the name of E.B. Waples, a benefactor who cleared its debt for a single dollar and funded a larger building shortly before his death in 1898. Today it is remembered as the oldest continuing Methodist congregation in Denison.
Preston Road/Shawnee Trail
Pottsboro, TX
Laid out in 1840 by Colonel W. G. Cooke and the Texas First Infantry, this military road ran from Austin north to Holland Coffee's trading post on the Red River, becoming known as Preston Road. Immigrants poured south along it—roughly 1,000 wagons crossed the river in one six-week span in 1845—and by the mid-1850s it carried Texas's first great cattle drives. Renamed the Shawnee Trail for a nearby Native American settlement, it funneled herds across Rock Bluff Crossing until the Civil War, with the last large drives passing in 1871.