At its October 5, 1929 meeting the Bonham City Council entered into a formal agreement which allowed Texas & Pacific Railroad to raise the dam wall of the city lake by five feet, and allowed it to begin using water from the lake and its standpipe reservoir for its railyard operations. In return, T & P agreed to build a 300,000 gallon water tower on the lot behind city hall (now behind Legend Bank). (photo by Mike Weber)

The old city lake, created in 1893, with the city that it once served in the background. photo by Tim Davis

Neilson Rogers practiced law in Sherman for almost 60 years, from 1938 until 2002, except for the five years he was in the U.S. Army during World War II. In 2007 he was recognized by the Grayson County Bar Assn. for seven decades of service to the legal and judicial communities. In retirement he wrote this memoir, which will be serialized in the North Texas e-News. Before his death, Mr. Rogers asked Dr. Jerry Lincecum to edit the memoir and gave him literary power of attorney to make decisions about publishing his writings.

In 1935 there was misery a-plenty to go around. The Great Depression was in high gear, and blue-collar working folks and small farmers were hit the hardest. Small towns like Dodd City were not insulated from the pain. Folks came up with various ways to cope with the blues - church socials, family gatherings, sharing resources such as food from the garden, eating homemade ice cream on a front porch on a lazy afternoon, etc. However, one method of coping, the opening of a dance hall, rubbed most Dodd City citizens the wrong way.

Neilson Rogers practiced law in Sherman for almost 60 years, from 1938 until 2002, except for the five years he was in the U.S. Army during World War II. In 2007 he was recognized by the Grayson County Bar Assn. for seven decades of service to the legal and judicial communities. In retirement he wrote this memoir, which will be serialized in the North Texas e-News. Before his death, Mr. Rogers asked Dr. Jerry Lincecum to edit the memoir and gave him literary power of attorney to make decisions about publishing his writings.

A Fort Worth Gazette clipping noted that once in Bonham, Jay Gould and his retinue, which reportedly included George (son) and his wife, Howard (son), Dr. John P. Munn and others, "were met at the depot by a delegation of prominent citizens." The Gould party was then "escorted by Capt. S. B. Allen, ex-president of the Fannin county bank and other prominent citizens . . . through the principal streets of the city." It further noted that Gould said that "we had a fine town and the finest courthouse in the state, and that we only needed a few more public buildings of the same kind."

Neilson Rogers practiced law in Sherman for almost 60 years, from 1938 until 2002, except for the five years he was in the U.S. Army during World War II. In 2007 he was recognized by the Grayson County Bar Assn. for seven decades of service to the legal and judicial communities. In retirement he wrote this memoir, which will be serialized in the North Texas e-News. Before his death, Mr. Rogers asked Dr. Jerry Lincecum to edit the memoir and gave him literary power of attorney to make decisions about publishing his writings.

Neilson Rogers practiced law in Sherman for almost 60 years, from 1938 until 2002, except for the five years he was in the U.S. Army during World War II. In 2007 he was recognized by the Grayson County Bar Assn. for seven decades of service to the legal and judicial communities. In retirement he wrote this memoir, which will be serialized in the North Texas e-News. Before his death, Mr. Rogers asked Dr. Jerry Lincecum to edit the memoir and gave him literary power of attorney to make decisions about publishing his writings.

Old cemeteries are time travel, glimpses into the symbols, sayings, and culture of previous generations. As cremation becomes more commonplace, those things will disappear as well.

After a year-long intermission, Jarrott Productions returns with an audio theatre performance of Austin playwright Clay Nichols' "The Speaker Speaks," a one-man show about U.S. House Speaker Sam Rayburn of Texas.

Neilson Rogers practiced law in Sherman for almost 60 years, from 1938 until 2002, except for the five years he was in the U.S. Army during World War II.

Denver, Colorado resident Michael Ome Untiedt likes to say that every painting he does has a story behind it. That certainly is true of Mr. Untiedt's The Last Ride of James Butler Bonham.

Neilson Rogers practiced law in Sherman for almost 60 years, from 1938 until 2002, except for the five years he was in the U.S. Army during World War II. In 2007 he was recognized by the Grayson County Bar Assn. for seven decades of service to the legal and judicial communities. In retirement he wrote this memoir, which will be serialized in the North Texas e-News. Before his death, Mr. Rogers asked Dr. Jerry Lincecum to edit the memoir and gave him literary power of attorney to make decisions about publishing his writings.

"He was just a local fellow who took pictures. He never really amounted to much." If you asked the old men who gathered on the bench on the south side of the courthouse in Bonham in the 1950s to chew tobacco, whittle and tell the stories old men tell, that would have been their general recollection of Erwin Evans Smith. But there was more of course. (On Saturday, March 13 from 10:00 a.m. until 4:00 p.m., The Sherman Museum will present an exhibit honoring the legacy of the American cowboy, with frontier-related material and featuring the art of famed cowboy photographer Erwin E. Smith. This feature article was written by the inimitable Edward Southerland.)

The Deep Freeze came to Texas the week of February 14. It was a hard time in Honey Grove, where the power was shut off for 2½ days.

If you think no people on earth could treasure the sacrifice made at the Alamo more than today's Texans, you've never been to Saluda County, South Carolina.

Neilson Rogers practiced law in Sherman for almost 60 years, from 1938 until 2002, except for the five years he was in the U.S. Army during World War II.

Remember the Alamo? Remember the larger-than-life heroes of that historic and pivotal battle of the Texas Revolution? Names such as David Crockett, William Barret Travis, Jim Bowie and James Butler Bonham come to mind. Did you know that, out of all those valiant men who decided to make their final stand at the Alamo, the birthplace of only one has been preserved? The home of James Butler Bonham stands today in Saluda, South Carolina, thanks to the efforts of the Saluda County Historical Society.

Neilson Rogers practiced law in Sherman for almost 60 years, from 1938 until 2002, except for the five years he was in the U.S. Army during World War II.

Trial lawyers know that jury selection is an art, and today in publicized or important trials, highly trained consultants in jury selection are hired by opposing counsels. These modern day specialists are trained in social psychology, and they make a careful study of every person on the list of potential jurors. The purpose is to ascertain, as far as possible, how the lives of a potential juror might influence that person’s decision in a given case. Even lawyers in Grayson County sometimes hire jury consultants to research internet social media postings by potential jurors to help the attorneys make informed decisions about which ones to avoid and which ones to favor.

Ruby Nell Allmond was born in 1923 on a farm in southeast Fannin County, near the Bailey community. Ruby was born into a musical family, with members who played the fiddle, guitar, banjo, and mandolin.

In 1837, when Daniel Rowlett petitioned the Texas Congress to divide Red River County west of the Bois d'Arc, he suggested the name Independence.

Lake Fannin Saved is a book in 150 pages compiled by Gregory Hall now available from Amazon in "full color" for $29. A "black & white" version is available for $8.

For most of the country, the Civil War ended with the surrender of Confederate forces across the South in the spring of 1865, but in Northeast Texas, these events only presaged the beginning of an informal struggle between rival factions that paid out in blood and death for another half dozen years. Starting today, the Red River Scrapbook takes two-part look at the infamous Lee-Peacock Feud. photo by David Womack

The wounding of Bob Lee and the assassination of Dr. W.H. Pierce in late winter of 1867 ending nothing as Lee and Lewis Peacock and their supporters played revenge for revenge and the Lee-Peacock Feud continued. photo by David Womack

The long and often bitter debate that charged the atmosphere in the Pennsylvania State House in Philadelphia in the early summer of 1776 as the members of the Continental Congress thrashed out the question of independency from Great Britain, was matched outside the hall, as the vote grew near, by nature's display of crashing lightning and rolling thunder that served to reinforce the import of the moment.

We invite you to join North Texas e-News in a new project - a scrapbook of the Red River Valley and of the people, places, and events that have made a mark on this part of Texas and Oklahoma for two hundred years and more. At e-News we often have thought that an import function of a small town newspaper is to act as a repository of the everyday things that tie one day to the next, one year to the next, one generation to those who have come before and will come after.

It was one thing for the Congress to declare independence from Great Britain; it was another thing to achieve it. As the word of the decisions reached in Philadelphia spread throughout the colonies, those in favor of the move, if they were not under the baleful eye of King George's soldiers, generally celebrated with gusto, but it would take six years of war and before the idea became a reality for many.

In times past, no American politician worth his salt would let Independence Day past with out rising to extol the virtues of the founding fathers, the grand old flags, and the sacrifice of the men and women who made the American Dream an American Reality for millions. These days, the speeches are more likely to be bitter, angry, and mean spirited, so here are some words from earlier times when pride and love of country were not such a negative things as it sometimes is now.

During the war for independence, the new American government and the armed forces of the army and navy utilized numerous flags of different designs. Although several of these flags incorporated designs of stripes and stars, none put all the elements together in the form we recognize today, until the Continental Congress passed the first laws concerning the national banner on June 14, 1777.