DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Way up in Grayson County, there's a place called Old Town of Cannon — and that name right there ought to give you a clue that what once stood here didn't exactly stick around. The story starts in 1852, when a man named Elijah Cannon came up from South Carolina, bringing his children and his slaves and a vision for what this stretch of Texas land could become.
Seven hundred acres. That was what he had to work with, and if you think a man who names a town after himself wasn't aiming to make something of it, well — you'd be wrong. The Cannon family didn't waste any time.
They put up a church, got a cotton gin running, raised a grist mill, and built a wagon factory. Think about that combination for a moment. You could tend your soul, process your cotton, grind your grain, and roll out of town in a brand new wagon — all without leaving Cannon territory.
By 1885, the place had grown into a proper little community, an academy standing proud and four hundred people calling it home. Four hundred souls building a life out here on the Texas prairie. That is no small thing.
But here's where the story takes its turn, and if you've been on enough Texas back roads, you already feel it coming. The Houston and Texas Central Railroad came through the region — and it did not come through Cannon. It bypassed them.
And in the 1890s, that town of four hundred, that church and gin and mill and factory, began to decline. Rapidly. The railroad didn't have to fire a single shot.
It just went somewhere else. And Old Town of Cannon — founded 1852, thriving by 1885 — quietly faded into the Grayson County soil. The marker's still there, though.
Elijah Cannon made sure his name at least would last.
What the marker says
Founded 1852 by Elijah Cannon, who came from South Carolina with his children and slaves, to develop 700 acres of land. Family established a church, cotton gin, grist mill, wagon factory. By 1885 town had an academy and 400 people. Bypassed by Houston & Texas Central Railroad, it declined rapidly in the 1890s.