Thomas Jefferson Shannon

Thomas Shannon's Texas career was tangled. The Handbook says Missouri's governor charged him with fraud over a land deal involving William Becknell, and in 1850 the Texas Supreme Court ruled against him. It also says he served in the Missouri militia and helped remove the Cherokees from that state. In Texas he and his brother bought and divided a large survey, and he won a legislative seat on a promise to move the county seat. Queen Victoria, he claimed, gave him three Durham cattle after he wrote her; he paid the freight. He developed Sherman's first addition.

What the plaque says

Thomas Jefferson Shannon (1808-1864) Thomas J. Shannon came to Texas in 1839 and settled in what became Grayson County in 1845. Elected first Grayson County representative to the Texas Legislature, he worked for relocation of the county seat to the present site of Sherman. Shannon earned the name "Father of Sherman" after donating land for the townsite. His daughter Julia named the first streets. A pioneer stockman, Shannon imported Durham cattle, a gift from Queen Victoria, in 1848. Recorded - 1983

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

• Olive Ann Oatman Fairchild — steps away
• Aaron S. Mangum — steps away
• The Rev. John Silliman Moore — steps away
• Tom Randolph — steps away