Fink

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and here's how Duane tells it. A community grew up near Fort Johnson, out on the Texas Military Road, also known as the Shawnee Trail, back in the 1840s. Now, this little settlement didn't start with the name Fink.

No sir. It went by Georgetown first, then Reevesville, trying on names the way a man tries on hats at a general store. Neither one quite fit.

Then came 1897, and with it, a post office, five hundred feet north of where you're standing right now. That post office needed a name, and the name it got was Fink, after a German immigrant by the name of Fiedrick Finke, born in 1858, who had made his way to Grayson County back in 1884. Finke would live until 1920, long enough to know a Texas community bore something close to his name.

That post office ran its course and was discontinued in 1908. Eleven years of mail, names on envelopes, people connected to the wider world through that little window. The community itself never incorporated, never made itself official in that particular way, and eventually the boundaries of Pottsboro reached out and folded Fink right in.

But here's the thing about a place that refuses to disappear quietly. Come the 1960s, local residents started holding annual Fink celebrations. Georgetown didn't get a party.

Reevesville didn't get a party. Fink got the party. Some names, it turns out, are worth keeping.

What the marker says

A community grew up near Fort Johnson on the Texas Military Road (also known as the Shawnee Trail) in the 1840s. Earlier called Georgetown and Reevesville, the settlement became known as Fink when a post office (500 feet north) was established in 1897 and named for Fiedrick Finke (1858-1920), a German immigrant who had come to Grayson County in 1884. The post office was discontinued in 1908. Never incorporated, Fink was eventually included within the boundaries of Pottsboro. In the 1960s local residents began annual Fink celebrations.