Grayson County TXGenWeb

The Sherman Democrat
1939

Family From Michigan Founded Collinsville
Special to The Democrat

Collinsville - Shortly after the Civil War, the wave of covered wagons coming toward Texas included one occupied by Mrs. Lodoweska Baker Collins, widow of a Michigan missionary, and her 2 sons, Alphus R. and Charlie C. Collins, with their household belongings. They settled in the section later to become Collinsville, named for the Collins family. A.R. Collins drew off and gave to the community the town site and C.C. Collins was instrumental in locating the first post office. The town was east of its present site before the coming of the Texas and Pacific railroad, and was at first called Toadsuck.
Among the earlier business firms were those of Chapman and Bradley, a branch of a Sherman concern, J.H. Doyle, Pelphrey Brothers, W.E. Fisher, McGee and Russell, Noah J. Miller, P.P. Robertson and J.M. Swindle.
When the Texas and Pacific railroad was laid early in 1881, the road missed the newly built town of Collinsville by about three-quarters of a mile to the northwest. B.B. Durant was the first agent in charge of the new station.
The 67-acre farm of J.M. Doughty lay between the railroad and the town, and with a view to possible future development, H. Waldo, a early settler but now of Muskogee, Oklahoma, bought the farm and laid it off in town lots. He offered free lots on the public square to any business house that would move and the gradual migration began to the present site.
Collinsville now has a population of 700 or 800 and about 30 business houses.

Denison Herald
July 25, 1972

COLLINSVILLE FOUNDER
A.R. Collins, real estate dealer, was born at the Old Creek Agency, I.T., in 1848, and was educated at Ann Arbor, Michigan. He was for a time clerk in the Federal Army under Gen. L.E. Baker. He was a commercial traveler representing St. Louis and New York houses, then in the wholesale grocery business in Memphis. He came to Texas in 1872 and established the village of Collinsville in this county, after which time he was engaged in the land business either in Sherman or Denison.