 MANTUA ... where it started. Collin McKinney was born on April 17, 1766, in New Jersey, later lived in Virginia, and grew up in Kentucky, then a nearly wilderness state. He married Miss Annie Moore in 1792. She died in 1804 and a year later, Mr. McKinney married Miss Betsey Coleman. In 1824, McKinney moved from Kentucky to some wilderness land near present day Texarkana. In 1831, they moved again, into that is now Bowie County, and in 1836, the family moved to a site near the present Grayson-Collin county line. There were other settlers living in the area and on Sundays some of them would get together for church, usually meeting in a home and usually it was the home of Collin McKinney's brother, Uncle Carroll McKinney. Dr. Asbury Cartwright moved into the area in 1847 and along with another settler, J. B. Wilmeth, provided the preaching at these Sunday gatherings. As more settlers moved into the area, attendance at the Sunday services increased. In 1850, the settlers joined together and built themselves a church home. It was named Liberty Church. Research done by Dr. Lloyd Mottley, a former pastor in Van Alstyne, showed the church membership numbered 69. William C. McKinney, Dr. Cartwright, and G. W. Vernon were elders in that early church and Collin McKinney and Solomon DeSpain were deacons. Within four years, the congregation had grown too numerous for the small Liberty Church and so another church was built, in the newly organized town named Mantua. It was named the Mantua Christian Church. It was the first Christian church in Texas. Collin McKinney died on September 8, 1861, at the age of 95. And the War Between the States was taking the men of communities all over the South, and the community of Mantua sent her share. The Mantua soldiers were called Capt. Thomas Brown's Mounted Volunteers. There were 63 privates and 12 officers. They organized on June 8, 1861, and before leaving for the War, they trained on the town square of Manuta. Little boys stood in the summer heat on the corner and watched the men work with their horses around the square throughout the day. The soldiers rode away, leaving a few men and the women to keep the town running until after the war. About the time Mantua was getting organized, a group of Houston citizens went to work building a railroad. They named it the Houston and Texas Central. The railroad would connect Houston with North Texas. Track had been laid nearly to Bryan when the Civil War stopped work. Following the war, track was laid rapidly, to Hearne in 1868, to Corsicana in 1871, and into Dallas in 1872. Already work crews were north of Dallas securing land
right-of-way. The railroad was being
built partly with donations from cities the railroad would serve. The railroad bidders arrived in Mantua and
asked the citizens for money but the citizens figured that if the railroad was
going from Dallas to Denison, it had to come through Manuta, whether the town
The railroad reached Denison all right, in 1873, but it did
not pass through Manuta. The tracks were
laid a few miles east In those days, people and businesses wanted to be near the
railroad. Slowly, they started moving to
Mantua to carve out And today , it only a memory. MUSTER
ROLL OF CAPT. THOMAS H. BOWEN'S Thomas
H. Bowen, Capt.
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