Grayson County TXGenWeb

Denison, Texas

source: Denison, The Way It Was in 1873 by John H. Crawford

George Denison was born in Colrain, Massachusetts in 1822 and was 50 years old when the new town of Denison on the Red River in Texas was named after him. He gained prominence as President Lincoln's controller of the Bureau of Customs in New York. The appointment of Mr. Denison is clouded in suspicion; Mrs. Lincoln urged Mr. Denison's appointment to the much sought after position by more politically prominent men than Mr. Denison. President Lincoln appointed Mr. Denison to the position on July 26, 1861, against advice of prominent friends and politicians. James A. Briggs said Denison "only cares to make money. He knows nobody & nobody knows him His appointment was a party outrage." The appointment was made at the request of a Robert Irwin, Lincoln's long-time friend. Mr. Denison also offered Mrs. Lincoln the bribe of giving her a handsome carriage and establishing a $5000 line of credit in New York for her. (Source: Michael Burlingame. Abraham Lincoln: A Life, vol. 2, Chapter 25)

The consensus among Denison historians has long been that George Denison, the Katy vice-president for whom the town was named, never set foot there. Or at least there's no record of him doing so. The article below states that he returned from Texas on the previous day, October 18. That was 25 days after the date traditionally ascribed to the founding of Denison, September 23. His obituary from February 1876 states that he visited his namesake town only once and that was in October 1872, shortly after Denison's inception and about three and a half years before his death. He expressed pleasure with the location of the newly found town and its future business prospects.

The October 25, 1872, edition of The Galveston Daily News quotes from the Red River Journal (George A. Cutler's early newspaper) one week earlier. George Denison visited the town named after him in mid-October of 1872, approximately three weeks following its inception on September 23.

On July 2, 1873, the faculty of Kansas State College at Manhattan rode the train to Denison to spend the day touring the newly formed town. They were led by Rev. Joseph Denison, college president, who was making his only known visit to the namesake city of his younger brother. Five days earlier the college's board of regents had asked all ten members of the faculty to submit their resignations at the next board meeting. Faced with adversity, the teachers set an example to be followed by untold numbers of college students a century later.

George Denison died in 1876 at the age of 53 in Washington, D.C.