Driving northeast from Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport along I-35E, you will soon enter the city of Sherman, a small community of about 38,000. It is at the crossroads of I-75 and I-82 in northeastern Texas. About 68 miles from the DFW Airport, it could take an hour to drive, but if you fly, you can be there in seven minutes.
Sherman is the county seat of Grayson, Texas. The act of the Texas legislature that created the Grayson County on 17 March 1846 also designated Sherman as its administrative center. It is named after Gen. Sidney Sherman, a non-Texan who volunteered to fight alongside Texans during their struggle against Mexico.
A year after its creation, a post office was in operation but in 1848, the entire city was moved three miles east along Post Oak Creek where it stands today. By 1852, there were 400 residents, and it was during this time that commerce and trade began to expand. The Overland Mail route made Sherman its first Texas waypoint in 1858, thus bringing in the Butterfield stagecoaches.
It wasn’t only the Butterfield mail coaches that passed Sherman. So did the notorious bushwhacker William Clarke Quantrill and his band of Missouri irregulars. The brothers Jesse and Frank James were also seen in Sherman. Indeed, Jesse spent his honeymoon in the city where a photo of him on a horseback was taken.
By the time the war ended, the population of Sherman ballooned to 6,000. Flour mills, a cracker factory, and a cottonseed oil mill were opened. In spite of Sherman’s initial opposition, the Missouri-Kansas-Texas railway arrived and further fuelled economic expansion.
The city, however, remained true to its original aims – a community focused on culture and education. In 1876, Austin College transferred from Huntsville to Sherman while in 1883, it established a public school system. By WW I, it prided itself with six colleges and private schools, six public elementary and two high schools.
