Whitewright
Inscription
Early settlers in this part of Grayson County established communities at Orangeville (4 mi. E), Pilot Grove ( 4 mi. S), and Kentucky Town (3 mi. W). In 1878, after the Missouri, Kansas, and Texas (MKT) railroad built a line southeast from Denison to this site, a new town was created and named for William Whitewright (1825-1898), a railroad official and vice president of the Union Trust Company of New York, the railroad's financial backer.
Immediately upon the new town's founding, former citizens of Orangeville, Pilot Grove, and Kentucky Town moved to Whitewright. A post office was established in 1878, along with numerous homes and businesses. By 1894 the town boasted schools, churches, a newspaper, a college, and community organizations, as well as railroad depots, cotton gins, restaurants, drugstores, grocery stores, wagon yards and livery stables, lumberyards, hardware stores, blacksmith shops, and numerous other businesses.
Serious fires in 1904 and 1911 almost destroyed the central business district, but the citizens soon rebuilt. The city of Whitewright no longer has passenger rail service, but it continues its role as an important marketing center for this area of Grayson County.
Location
Sources
More markers in Grayson
Austin College
Sherman, TX
Oldest college in Texas operating under original charter.
Old Bass Home
Denison, TX
(Originally at 215 W. Houston, Sherman) Oldest extant house in city.
Captain N. A. Birge House
Sherman, TX
Connecticut native Noble Allan Birge (1832-1902) came to Texas prior to the Civil War.
Old Town of Cannon
Van Alstyne, TX
Founded 1852 by Elijah Cannon, who came from South Carolina with his children and slaves, to develop 700 acres of land.
Old Cedar Community
Sherman, TX
Settled in 1848 by Grayson County pioneers, who reclaimed land from wilderness, raiding Indians and hardships of frontier life soon...