First Site of City of Sherman

After the move, Sherman grew fast. The Handbook describes a town of about 400 in 1852: a row of clapboard buildings along the east side of the square, with two saloons, a district clerk's office, a doctor and a church. A post office had operated since 1847. By 1860 the county commissioners had set up an armed patrol to hunt for runaway enslaved people and for abolitionist threats. In 1862 the publisher of the anti-secessionist Sherman Patriot was murdered. By the end of the 1850s the town had incorporated and stood on the Butterfield Overland Mail route.

What the plaque says

First Site of City of Sherman When Grayson County was created on March 17, 1846, by the first Legislature of the State of Texas, the act named the county seat in honor of Sidney Sherman (1805-73), an heroic leader at the Battle of San Jacinto and in the affairs of the Republic of Texas. Commissioners to select possible courthouse sites within 3 miles of center of the county were Micajah Davis, George C. Dugan, Richard McIntire, James Shannon, and James G. Thompson. This site on the old Cherokee Trail and the road to important river crossing at Preston Bend won approval of the voters. Townsite lots were auctioned late in the year 1846. Chief Justice James G. Thompson supervised building of courthouse under a contract awarded in Jan. 1847 to M. L. Webster. Completion of the structure called for special celebration in a Fourth of July picnic with barbeque, a barrel of whiskey, music, and dancing. Water and wood for public use were scarce at this site, called "a bald prairie". State Representative James B. Shannon (one of the original county seat commissioners) secured new legislation; he and Samuel Blagg, his business partner, on Nov. 23, 1848, deeded from their holdings to the county commissioners an 80-acre Sherman townsite 5 miles to the east. Incise on back: Sponsored by the Grayson County Historical survey committee and erected by the Sherman city council as a memorial to the pioneers of this area

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge — 5.2 mi
  A 1946 refuge on the Big Mineral Arm of Lake Texoma, laid over land bought for Denison Dam and the site of the vanished railroad town of Hagerman, now a winter stop for geese.
• Eisenhower Birthplace State Historic Site — 11 mi
  The small frame house beside the Katy tracks in Denison where Dwight Eisenhower was born in 1890, bought by townspeople in 1946 and given to Texas in 1958.
• Eisenhower State Park — 11 mi
  A bluff-top park on Lake Texoma opened in 1958 on land leased from the Corps of Engineers, in the Red River country of Fort Johnson, Colbert's Ferry and the Butterfield stages.
• Choctaw Cultural Center — 25 mi
  The Choctaw Nation's history told from the Chahta side at Calera, with galleries from Nanih Waiya to the Trail of Tears and the reservation today, a living village and daily stickball.

More markers nearby

• Perrin Air Force Base — 3.0 mi
• Grayson County Poor Farm — 3.1 mi
• Travis Lodge No. 117, A. F. & A. M. — 4.8 mi
• Wilson N. Jones — 5.1 mi