The Rev. J.M. Binkley

The Sherman Courier's 1917 anniversary number said Binkley did more than any other man to drive legal liquor sales out of Grayson County, and praised his logic and wit. In a 1910 interview it printed, he recalled arriving in Sherman in 1853 and attending the Rev. Barton W. Taylor's school, which had about a hundred students in 1854. He remembered a union church above the Masonic hall and said most preaching in the county until after the war was done in schoolhouses and under brush arbors.

What the plaque says

The Rev. J.M. Binkley (February 26, 1833 – January 13, 1916) Jacob Monroe Binkley came to Texas from Tennessee in 1852. Before being licensed to preach in 1855 he was an effective orator for the cause of temperance. In 1859 he organized and was first pastor of the church later known as First United Methodist Church of Sherman. From 1865 until is death, the Rev. Mr. Binkley was a Methodist Presiding Elder, retaining his Sherman residence. A strong supporter of education, he was Board Chairman at Southwestern University and Kidd – Key College. (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

• Judge C. C. Binkley — steps away
• Lee Simmons — steps away
• Jesse P. Loving — steps away
• Aaron S. Mangum — steps away