Dallas businessmen turned their attention to securing rail service and succeeded in attracting the Houston and Texas Central in 1872 and the Texas and Pacific in 1873, making Dallas one of the first rail crossroads in Texas. Early attempts to navigate the Trinity River had proved impractical. The key to economic expansion had always been better transportation in and out of the region. After the war, freed slaves flocked to Dallas in search of jobs and settled in freedmen's towns on the periphery of the city. Dallas was selected as one of eleven quartermaster and commissary posts in Texas for the Trans-Mississippi Army of the Confederacy. In 1861 Dallas voters voted 741 to 237 to secede from the Union. Suspicion fell on slaves and Northern abolitionists three slaves were hanged, and two Iowa preachers were whipped and run out of town. Peak Brothers Drugstore spread to the other buildings on the square and destroyed most of the businesses. On July 8, 1860, a fire originating in the W. By 1860 the population was 678, including ninety-seven enslaved African Americans as well as French, Belgians, Swiss, and Germans. With the breakup of the nearby La Réunion colony in the late 1850s, skilled European craftsmen and artists moved into Dallas, including brickmakers, cabinetmakers, tailors, milliners, brewers, and musicians. Alexander and Sarah Horton Cockrell, who purchased Bryan's remaining interest in the townsite for $7,000 in 1852, built a three-story brick hotel, a steam sawmill, and a flour mill. In 1852 French immigrant Maxime Guillot established the first factory, manufacturing carriages and wagons. By the 1850s it had dry-goods stores, groceries, a drugstore, an insurance agency, a boot and shoe shop, brickyards, and saddle shops, as well as a weekly newspaper, the Dallas Herald, founded in 1849. Samuel Pryor, elected the first mayor, headed a town government consisting of six aldermen, a treasurer-recorder, and a constable.ĭallas quickly became a service center for the rural area surrounding it. The Texas legislature granted Dallas a town charter on February 2, 1856. When Dallas County was formed in 1846, Dallas was designated as the temporary county seat in 1850 voters selected it as the permanent county seat over Hord's Ridge (Oak Cliff) and Cedar Springs, both of which eventually came within its corporate limits. Dallas, United States Navy and Joseph Dallas, who settled near the new town in 1843. Candidates include George Mifflin Dallas, vice president of the United States, 1845–49 his brother, Commodore Alexander J. The origin of the name Dallas is unknown. Dumas surveyed and laid out a townsite comprising a half mile square of blocks and streets. Bryan eventually legalized his claim, and the extensive promotional efforts of the Peters colony attracted settlers to the region. Unknown to Bryan, however, he had settled on land granted by the republic to the Texan Land and Emigration Company of St. Two highways proposed by the Republic of Texas soon converged nearby. The ford, at the intersection of two major Indian traces, provided the only good crossing point for miles. Bryan had picked the best spot for a trading post to serve the population migrating into the region. The city was founded by John Neely Bryan, who settled on the east bank of the Trinity near a natural ford in November 1841. It is crossed by Interstate highways 20, 30, 35, and 45. Dallas is on the Trinity River in the center of Dallas County in North Central Texas.
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