City of Sherman

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Sherman, Texas. A town with a name it had to earn, and a story that starts the way so many good Texas stories do, with people putting down roots where there weren't any.

The year was 1846, and settlers arrived and claimed this stretch of Grayson County as home. That's the foundation. But the name, now the name is where things get interesting.

This city carries the honor of General Sidney Sherman, 1805 to 1873, and if you know your Texas history, that name should ring like a bell across an open field. General Sherman commanded the left wing of the Texas Army at the Battle of San Jacinto. The left wing.

Not the center, not the rear, the left wing, the edge of the blade, and he held it. After the smoke cleared and Texas stood as its own republic, Sherman didn't hang up his ambitions. He went to the Congress of the Republic of Texas, serving from 1842 to 1843.

A man of the battlefield and the chamber both. So when the settlers of this Grayson County town needed a name, they reached for one that meant something. And the town itself seemed to respond in kind.

Incorporation came on May 12, 1873, and what followed wasn't a slow crawl. The marker says it plain: rapid growth and prosperity followed. Not gradual, not modest.

Rapid. A name with that kind of weight behind it, maybe the town felt it had something to live up to.

What the marker says

Settled in 1846. Named in honor of General Sidney Sherman 1805-1873. Commander of the left wing of the Texas Army at the Battle of San Jacinto. Member of Congress of the Republic of Texas 1842-1843. Rapid growth and prosperity followed its incorporation May 12, 1873.