Mysteries of the city name of "Dallas" (TX)
Barry A. Popik
Bapopik at AOL.COM
Tue Aug 21 06:00:36 UTC 2007
This 1876 article seems not to be recorded anywhere on the web. Maybe the
city and county of "Dallas" were both named after George M. Dallas after all?
...
Some cites are provided, but any additional historical cites will be
appreciated.
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28 July 1876, Galveston (TX) Daily News, pg. 3, col. 4:
The _Commercial_ reels after the following legend of the city of Dallas,
which it obtains from Uncle Ben Christian, now of Whitesboro, Grayson County: In
December, 1837, Wilson Gilbert, who had commanded of English's Fort, now
Bonham, was sent for to take command of Bird's Fort, on the Trinity River, near
where Fort Worth now stands. While en route the party camped one evening a few
miles from the river. The next morning John Neely Bryan made his way
through the thick heavy underbrush to the bank of the river, saw that the banks
were suitable, and selected his place. He went back to the party, and they cut a
roadway for the ox-teams, and drove down to the river. Bryan stuck his
hatchet in a tree, and announced his purpose of laying out a town. Turning to Mrs.
Gilbert, he told her he would give her a corner lot on the "square" if she
would name the town. Mrs. Gilbert was from Pennsylvania, and an ardent admirer
of the then prominent statesman, George M. Dallas, and suggested the name of
Dallas. The name was adopted, and the record shows that the lot was duly
deeded. Bryan and John Beeman stopped here, Beeman making a farm near by.
Gilbert and Tom Cozzens made a farm on the other side of the river, about two miles
distant, but the heavy rain of the next year washed off Gilbert's pumpkin
patch, and he deserted the place, going back to Tennessee.
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28 July 1926, Galveston (TX) Daily News, pg. 4, col. 4:
Dallas--Uncle Ben Christian, now of Whitesboro, Grayson County, furnishes an
interesting legend of the founding of Dallas. The story is that John Neely
Bryan, who was one of a party with Wilson Gilbert, transferred from command
of English's fort, now Bonham, to Bird's fort, near the present site of Fort
Worth, came in December, 1837, to the place where Dallas is now located, when
Bryan stuck a hatchet in a tree and declared his intention of locating there.
Bryan asks Mrs. Gilbert to name the town he proposed founding and she, being
a Pennsylvanian, suggested that it be named Dallas, after the then prominent
statesman, George M. Dallas.
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_http://freepages.history.rootsweb.com/~jwheat/adair_columns/adair19apr1925.ht
ml_
(http://freepages.history.rootsweb.com/~jwheat/adair_columns/adair19apr1925.html)
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_http://www.ci.dallas.tx.us/cso/archives/Origin_of_Dallas.htm_
(http://www.ci.dallas.tx.us/cso/archives/Origin_of_Dallas.htm)
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_http://www.dallashistory.org/cgi-bin/webbbs_config.pl?noframes;read=30980_
(http://www.dallashistory.org/cgi-bin/webbbs_config.pl?noframes;read=30980)
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_http://freepages.history.rootsweb.com/~jwheat/adair_columns/adair19apr1925.ht
ml_
(http://freepages.history.rootsweb.com/~jwheat/adair_columns/adair19apr1925.html)
WOMAN CHOSE NAME
OF CITY OF DALLAS
________
STARTED WHEN JOHN NEELY
BRYAN BUILT CABIN ON
BANK OF RIVER.
_______
WAS FIRST EXPLORER
________
Mrs. Martha Gilbert, Wife of Pio-
neer, Won Prize for Picking
Name for Town.
BY W. S. ADAIR
(...)
April 19, 1925, The Dallas Morning News,
Sec. IX, p. 2, col. 1-8.
[Also Feb. 15, 1925, The Dallas Morning News, part three, page nine -- B.P.]
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_http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dallas%2C_Texas_
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dallas,_Texas)
...
Before Texas was claimed in the 1500s as a part of the _Viceroyalty of New
Spain_ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viceroyalty_of_New_Spain) by the _Spanish
Empire_ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Empire) , the Dallas area was
inhabited by the _Caddo_ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caddo) _Native
Americans_ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_Americans_of_the_United_States) .
Later, France also _claimed the area_
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_colonial_empires) , but in 1819 the _Adams-Onís Treaty_
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adams-Onís_Treaty) made the _Red River_
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_River_(Mississippi_watershed)) the northern boundary of New Spain,
officially placing Dallas well within Spanish territory._[9]_
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dallas,_Texas#_note-bolton) The area remained under Spanish rule
until 1821, when _Mexico_ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexico) declared
independence from Spain and the area became part of the Mexican state of _Coahuila y
Tejas_ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coahuila_y_Tejas) . In 1836, the
_Republic of Texas_ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_Texas) broke off
from Mexico to become an independent nation._[10]_
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dallas,_Texas#_note-handbook_republic_of_texas) In 1839, four years into the
Republic's existence, _John Neely Bryan_
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Neely_Bryan) surveyed the area around present-day Dallas. He then left for
Arkansas, but returned in 1841 and founded the city of Dallas. In 1846 the
Republic of Texas was annexed by the United States and _Dallas County_
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dallas_County,_Texas) was established.
...
According to the City of Dallas, the origin of the name “Dallas” is a
mystery, despite claims to the contrary. Bryan stated only that it was named “
after my friend Dallas.” It has often been claimed that both the county and the
city were named after _George Mifflin Dallas_
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_M._Dallas) , the eleventh _Vice President of the United States_
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vice_President_of_the_United_States) . However, there is
no evidence that Bryan ever met George Mifflin Dallas, and the area was
called Dallas several years before the latter was elected. Another idea, was that
the name was influenced from a small town in Pennsylvania, named "Dallas"
...
Other leading candidates for Dallas's _eponym_
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eponym) are:
...
1. Commodore _Alexander James Dallas_
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_J._Dallas_(U.S._Navy_officer)) , brother of George Mifflin Dallas, stationed
in the Gulf of Mexico;
2. Walter R. Dallas, who fought at San Jacinto;
3. James L. Dallas, Walter's brother and a Texas Ranger;
4. Joseph Dallas of Arkansas, who lived in the Cedar Springs area in 1843,
and moved from Washington County (near Bryan's land holdings in Crawford
County) to the Dallas area a few years after Bryan's arrival. This possibility has
much support, in that founder John Neely Bryan stated that he had named the
town after "his friend," and he was indeed friends with Joseph Dallas at the
time.
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A notable fact is that, while the namesake of the city of Dallas is not known
for certain, the namesake of the county of Dallas is clear, as noted in the
transcripts of the Texas legislature. Dallas County was named after
Vice-President _George Mifflin Dallas_
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Mifflin_Dallas) , leading to the intriguing possibility that the county seat was named
for a different person than the county of the same name.
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_http://gilglover.com/Dview2a.htm_ (http://gilglover.com/Dview2a.htm)
The Mystery of the Naming of Dallas
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THE CITY OF DALLAS AND DALLAS COUNTY WERE NAMED AT DIFFERENT TIMES - NEARLY
FOUR YEARS APART - AND WERE ALMOST CERTAINLY NAMED IN HONOR OF TWO DIFFERENT
PEOPLE. This curiousity lacks any real consequence, but has been a topic of
discussion among historians for many decades. Historians don't get out a lot.
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_http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/GG/fgi11.html_
(http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/GG/fgi11.html)
GILBERT, MABEL (1797-1870). Mabel Gilbert, pioneer North Texas settler,
farmer, and businessman, was born on March 4, 1797, to William and Nicy Gilbert
in Dickson County, Tennessee. He was known as Captain Gilbert from his years
as a Mississippi River steamboat captain. In the spring of 1837 he gave up a
comfortable life in Tennessee with land and slaves inherited from his parents
and moved with his wife, Charity (Morris), and their seven children to Fannin
County, Texas. Gilbert's first home in Texas was located three miles south of
the site of present-day Bonham.
He met with immediate success in Texas. By 1839 he had participated in
successful expeditions that recovered stolen stock and property from Indians,
served as a justice of the peace and member of the first Fannin County
Commissioners Court, and helped draw up plans for the county's first courthouse. He
also farmed 1,280 acres and established the first horse-powered gristmill in the
area. By 1840 he had constructed and made operational an incline-wheel,
ox-powered mill.
Events in 1840 persuaded Gilbert to move his family to a remote and unsettled
portion of Texas. Late that year he and about forty other men accompanied
Gen. Jonathan Birdqv on an expedition to construct a fort and settlement on
the West Fork of the Trinity River, in what is now Tarrant County. The
expedition, harassed by Indians, managed to raise a log stockade, a blockhouse fort
(Bird's Fort), and a few houses, collectively known as Birdville. Gilbert
retained his property in Fannin County during the fall of 1841. He and his family
remained in Birdville for six months before a legal dispute arose over the
right of the community to exist on land granted to the Peters colony. During
the spring of 1842 Gilbert took his family by boat down the Trinity River to
John Neely Bryan's newly established settlement. The Gilbert family became one
of the earliest to settle the community that was to become Dallas, and Mrs.
Gilbert was the first Anglo-American woman to live there. Bryan constructed a
log cabin for them at a site that became the foot of Main Street in Dallas,
where they lived until 1844.
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