The Forney Messenger

The paper's founding date is disputed. The plaque, and a 2013 Texas House resolution honoring its publishers, say M. J. Cox founded the Forney Messenger in 1896. The Handbook of Texas says it was first published in 1881 and calls it the community's weekly. The House resolution records a later chapter: Cary and Judy Griffin bought the paper's publication rights and mailing list from Dallas East Publishing Company on October 15, 1972, and reported never missing an issue in their first forty years, a first issue of six pages at ten cents.

What the plaque says

The Forney Messenger The Forney Messenger is the oldest newspaper in continuous operation in Forney. Founded in 1896 by M. J. Cox, the first issue was printed on April 16 and contained a personal column, school news, a local church directory, and news from surrounding communities. In 1919 the Messenger was merged with the Forney News and was known as the Forney News and Messenger until 1921, when it again became the Forney Messenger. For many years the Messenger has provided residents of Forney and the surrounding area with news of local interest. Texas Sesquicentennial, 1836 - 1986

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• No. 1 British Flying Training School Museum — 12 mi
  A free museum at Terrell's airport where about 2,200 RAF cadets learned to fly between 1941 and 1945, with logbooks, uniforms, letters and original training aircraft.
• Rockwall County Historical Foundation & Museum — 12 mi
  A small museum in Harry Myers Park that keeps the evidence on Rockwall's rock wall, sandstone dikes that geologists call natural and folk tales call built.
• Fair Park — 17 mi
  The State Fair of Texas grounds since 1886, where the 1936 Texas Centennial Exposition left one of the country's greatest concentrations of Art Deco exposition buildings.
• African American Museum, Dallas — 17 mi
  Founded in 1974 at Bishop College, a free Fair Park museum holding the Sepia photograph archive, African art and A. Maceo Smith's papers, and the story of the Hall of Negro Life.

More markers nearby

• Forney — steps away
• Dixie Overland Highway (U. S. Highway 80) — steps away
• 1899 Automobile Trip — steps away
• William Madison McDonald — 0.2 mi