John Neely Bryan Cabin -- Dallas TX
N 32° 46.736 W 096° 48.406
14S E 705412 N 3628908
John Neely Bryan's Cabin, on permanent display in downtown Dallas for the last 80 years -- and most likely forevermore
Waymark Code: WMV213
Location: Texas, United States
Date Posted: 02/10/2017
Views: 14
The waymark coordinates are for the John Neely Bryan Cabin in downtown Dallas. John Neely Bryan is hailed as the "Father of Dallas," for building a trading post on the Trinity in 1841 and laying out a townsite on his Republic of Texas land grant that grew into the city of Dallas.
What nobody here talks about is that he was also an alcoholic prone to "fits" and violent outbursts, who died while he was an inmate of the Austin State Lunatic Asylum in 1877. John Neely Bryan's body was not claimed by his next of kin, so he was buried in an unmarked grave in the Austin State Hospital Cemetery.
In the 1930s his cabin was displayed on the lawn of the then-Dallas County Courthouse, known today as "Old Red". Old Red is no longer the seat of county government (in 2016 it is a local history museum and visitor center), but it still occupies a place of pride at the western edge of downtown Dallas on a bluff overlooking Dealey Plaza.
When the WPA writers came through Dallas in the 1930s, they visited and wrote about the John Neely Bryan cabin and the man who lived in it.
From Texas: A Guide to the Lone Star State:
[page 227] John Neely Bryan came to Texas from Van Buren, Arkansas, in 1840, intending to establish a trading post on the upper Trinity. Finding the Indians friendly, he built a hut on the river's east bank in 1841, becoming the first white settler of present-day Dallas. Bryan probably chose his site because the Republic of Texas had already provided for a military highway from Austin to the Red River to cross the Trinity River "at or near its three forks."
As this road, a survey of which was begun in September, 1840, came into use, Bryan abandoned his projected trading post and started a town on his 64O-acre headright tract.
Texas in the meantime had contracted (February 4, 1841), with William S. Peters and his associates of Louisville, Kentucky, for settlement of a land grant, covering approximately 16,000 square miles in the region of the upper Trinity. This grant became known as Peters Colony, although the name of the company formed to operate it was the Texan Emigration Land Company.
The first actual settlement of Dallas began in 1842, when Bryan persuaded three families to move to his site from Bird's Fort, a Ranger stockade to the northwest. Other settlers took up residence in the village, which was called Dallas as early as 1842. The origin of the town's name is uncertain, one group of historians believing it was named for George Mifflin Dallas, a Pennsylvanian who three years later became Vice President of the United States; another group that the name honored Commander Alexander James Dallas of the United States Navy, brother of George Mifflin Dallas; a third that the town was named for Joseph Dallas, a friend of John Neely Bryan, who came to the region from Washington County, Arkansas, in 1843, and settled at Cedar Springs, now within the Dallas city limits. There is no reasonable doubt, however, that the county of Dallas, which was organized [page 227] in 1846, was named by the Texas legislature in honor of George Mifflin Dallas, who had been elected Vice President partly on the issue of Texas annexation.
In 1846 the town site was surveyed and platted. Bryan had been appointed postmaster, and used his home both for a post office and store, carrying a stock of powder, lead, whisky, and tobacco.
Judge William Hord, in 1845, started a settlement on the west bank of the Trinity called Herd's Ridge (present Oak Cliff). His original cabin is at the entrance to Marsalis Park. Herd's Ridge was soon contesting with Dallas for the site of the new Dallas County seat, but was defeated at the polls in 1850. Dallas acquired a newspaper in 1849, the printing press and the town's first piano arriving simultaneously by oxcart. A school, a bowling alley, a wagon and buggy factory, and a tavern were established. Alexander Cockrell, a Kentuckian, engaged in the manufacture of bricks, branched into the lumber business and started a building campaign. He operated a ferry over the Trinity and later built a bridge across it.
Most of the settlers in Peters Colony, after they had filed colonist headrights with a special land commissioner, failed to have their lands surveyed. Consequently the Texan Emigration Land Company could not determine which were the alternate sections allowed them by the State in payment for colonizing the area. The company appealed to the legislature, which in 1852 passed an act compelling all settlers to have their holdings surveyed. Fearing that through this act they might lose their farms, Dallas County citizens, led by Captain John J. Good, marched on the land company's headquarters at Stewartville in Denton County and threatened to lynch the agent. After much agitation, the legislature reversed its stand and gave the settlers deeds to their homesteads.
John Neely Bryan sold his holdings in the town of Dallas in 1852 to Alexander Cockrell for $7,000.
. . .
[page 232] POINTS OF INTEREST
1. JOHN NEELY BRYAN CABIN (not open), courthouse lawn, Commerce and Houston Sts., is a reconstruction of the first log cabin built in Dallas. It stands on the site where the founder of the city built it for his bride in 1843. The cabin served as a Texas Republic post office, and from 1848 to 1850 as a temporary courthouse.
The one-room structure is about 16 feet square, built of 12-inch hewn cedar logs, chinked with clay. In the center of the front wall is the only door, made of heavy planks and operated by a latchstring. Built against the west wall is an outside chimney of limestone. There are two windows, both protected by heavy wooden shutters hung on hand-wrought hinges. The roof, the only part of the cabin not in the original building, is of hand-made shingles. The room has a puncheon floor cedar logs hewn flat and a limestone fireplace.
Book: Texas
Page Number(s) of Excerpt: 227; 232
Year Originally Published: 1940
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