Judge C. C. Binkley

Christopher Columbus Binkley was a Tennessee farm boy who clerked for a dry goods merchant at twenty-one, read law with a cousin at Purdy and reached Grayson County in 1853, according to a student history on Clio. Governor Edmund J. Davis nominated him as district judge in 1870, and the Sherman Courier praised his impartiality. The history says he resigned the bench to run the Merchants and Planters Bank after the Panic of 1873, and credits him with urging the creation of Denison. It gives his birth as 1827, a year after the plaque.

What the plaque says

Judge C. C. Binkley (January 12, 1826 - March 15, 1886) Christopher Columbus Binkley came to Texas in 1852 and became a law partner of Sherman's first mayor. He served as district judge from 1870 to 1874 and Republican national committeeman for many years. As a founder and the first president of Merchants and Planters Bank, Judge Binkley was the financial leader of the county and was considered one of the most trusted and outstanding businessmen of his day. Upon his death, Judge Binkley was acknowledged as Sherman's leading citizen. (1997)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Eisenhower Birthplace State Historic Site — 9.5 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.
• Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge — 11 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 State Park — 12 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.
• Sam Rayburn House State Historic Site — 24 mi
  The two-story farmhouse west of Bonham that the longtime Speaker of the House built in 1916 and kept as his home, left as he lived in it and open as a museum since 1975.

More markers nearby

• The Rev. J.M. Binkley — steps away
• Lee Simmons — steps away
• Jesse P. Loving — steps away
• Aaron S. Mangum — steps away