McKinney

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Now, some towns just sort of happen: a crossroads, a creek, a stubborn man who wouldn't move on. McKinney, up in Collin County, falls into that last category.

The year was 1845, and the man was Collin McKinney himself, a signer, mind you, of the Texas Declaration of Independence. That's not a small thing to have on your résumé. This was a man who'd already helped put Texas on the map, and then he went and put a town on it too.

But the story doesn't stop with a founding. Towns have a way of getting tested, and McKinney's test came with the Civil War. Now here's a name worth slowing down for: J.W.

Throckmorton. General J.W. Throckmorton, who would later become a governor of Texas.

Right there in McKinney, he organized Company K of the 6th Texas Cavalry. The marker calls it an outstanding Confederate fighting unit, and that word (outstanding) is doing some real weight-bearing work. Out of this town, out of this place, those men rode.

And through war and the years beyond it, McKinney kept building itself into something. A manufacturing center. A trade center.

A hospital center. Three things a community reaches for when it means to last. Founded by a man who signed a declaration, shaped by a general who became a governor, and still standing.

McKinney, Collin County; it earned its place on the map twice over.

What the marker says

Founded 1845 by Collin McKinney, a signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence. In Civil War, Gen. J.W. Throckmorton (later a governor of Texas) organized McKinney's Co.K, 6th Texas Cavalry, an outstanding confederate fighting unit. Manufacturing, trade and hospital center. 1963