Name: Van Alstyne, Texas
Address: Van Alstyne, TX

The Black Clay That Cracks the Ground Open RoadyGoat

1873

The dark, sticky ground under Van Alstyne is one of the most famous soils on Earth. This is the Texas Blackland Prairie, and its signature dirt, called Houston Black, is studied worldwide as a classic Vertisol and is the official Texas state soil. What makes it special is a swelling clay called smectite. When the clay soaks up water it expands; when it dries it shrinks and pulls apart, opening cracks several inches wide and up to six feet deep. That same shrink-swell power heaves house foundations and buckles roads across North Texas. Houston Black covers roughly 1.5 million acres, part of a prairie belt running from the Red River south toward San Antonio, and it is prized farmland. The cotton, corn, and grain that built Van Alstyne after 1873 grew in this clay. The ground that feeds the town is also the ground that quietly tears at its buildings.

The Town the Railroad Made, and a Name Nobody Pinned Down RoadyGoat

1854

About three miles southwest of here sat Mantua, a seminary town founded in 1854. In 1872 the Houston and Texas Central Railway laid its tracks two miles east, and Mantua's fate was sealed. Rather than fight the bypass, its citizens bought land beside the new line and platted a fresh townsite. In 1873 a depot rose and a post office opened. By mid-1873 Mantua stood nearly deserted, and churches, businesses, and families followed the rails in. The new town took its name from the railroad, though which Van Alstyne is still unsettled: the Handbook of Texas allows either William A. Van Alstyne, a civil engineer with the line, or Mrs. Marie Van Alstyne, a shareholder in the railroad company. By 1900 Van Alstyne had grown to nearly 1,940 people, with banks, schools, hotels, a literary club, electric service, and one of the early opera houses in North Texas. Cotton and other farm production ruled the local economy.

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The Vanished College of Van Alstyne RoadyGoat

1889

In 1889 an association of merchants and landowners around Van Alstyne pooled their money to build Columbia College here on a four-acre fenced lot. It was ambitious for a farm town barely fifteen years old: a three-story frame building that taught every grade from primary school up through college level, blending vocational training with the arts and sciences. It opened with about 40 students. Within five years enrollment had reached 578 by the 1893-1894 school year, drawing families from across North Texas. Then, in the late 1890s, a fire and failed efforts to refinance ended the college, which had operated for just under a decade and never reopened as a college. The site later served the public schools. Today only a Texas historical marker on South College Avenue records that Van Alstyne once had a college of its own.

Fifty Feet North to Grave of Collin McKinney

1836

(April 17, 1766 - September 8, 1861) 
 A pioneer leader of north Texas and signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence, Collin McKinney was born in New Jersey, a son of Scottish immigrant parents. In 1780 the family moved to Kentucky and in 1824 McKinney migrated across the Red River and settled near present Texarkana. 
 In January, 1836, he was elected a delegate to the General Convention at Washington-on-the-Brazos and there served on a committee of five that drafted Texas' Declaration of Independence from Mexico. On March 2, he signed the document. He also served on the committee which prepared the Constitution for the Republic of Texas. Later he served in the 1st, 2nd and 4th Congresses of the Republic. In private life, McKinney was a leader in establishing the first Disciples of Christ Church in Texas. 
 In 1846 he settled near the Grayson-Collin county line; this became his permanent residence. In 1792 he married Amy Moore; they had four children. He and his second wife, Betsy Leake (Coleman), by whom he had six children, are both buried in this cemetery. 
 Collin County and its seat, McKinney, were named in his honor. In 1936 the Texas Centennial Commission had his house moved to Finch Park in McKinney. (1968)

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Arnspiger, Herman

1929

Herman Arnspiger, guitarist, was born in Van Alstyne, Texas, on November 13, 1904. He is best remembered as one of the first musicians to play alongside Bob Wills in the early days of western swing. Arnspiger and Wills met in Fort Worth in 1929 while Wills was fiddling and performing in blackface with a traveling medicine show . Arnspiger invited Wills back to his rented room where they played for hours. Wills asked Arnspiger to join him, and the two performed together in the medicine show. They also made their first recordings in November 1929 in Dallas for the Brunswick Record Corporation. After the medicine show closed in December 1929, Arnspiger played a radio show on KTAT, Fort Worth. He soon rejoined Wills in 1930 following a chance encounter. In the summer of 1930 Wills and Arnspiger were playing a house dance in Fort Worth as the Wills Fiddle Band when they heard another singer, Milton Brown . Wills invited Brown and his guitar-playing brother, Derwood, to join the band. They soon found work playing at the Eagles Fraternal Hall in Fort Worth and at other venues in the area. The group also landed a spot on KFJZ radio before going on to play on WBAP radio for a time under the name Aladdin Laddies. Through their radio appearances, they attracted the attention of W. Lee "Pappy" O'Daniel , manager of Burrus Mills, who gave them a regular radio program on which they appeared as the Light Crust Doughboys . The group became so popular that when station managers removed the Doughboys from the air, angry listeners flooded the station with letters and phone calls, pressuring the management to rehire the band. Despite their success, the musicians quickly became frustrated with O'Daniel's overbearing management style. Arnspiger was among the earliest to leave the group but was later rehired at the insistence of Wills. Milton Brown left the group in September 1932 to form his own band, The Musical Brownies . Bob Wills, himself, departed in 1933 and formed The Texas Playboys. In 1934 Arnspiger had a disagreement with O'Daniel and left to join Wills in Tulsa, Oklahoma, as one of the Playboys. Arnspiger continued performing with Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys until 1940 whereupon he became a pilot and instructor for Spartan School of Aeronautics. He also later worked for Douglas Aircraft as a test pilot. In 1945 Arnspiger set up the Aviation Department at the Sunray Oil Company, from which he retired in 1964. He lived the remainder of his life in Tulsa with his wife, Rowena Arnspiger, and daughter, Glenda Goodwin. Arnspiger died in a Tulsa nursing home on February 21, 1984, at the age of seventy-nine.

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Boy Scout Troop 1 (Troop 44)

1913

Boy Scout Troop 1 (Troop 44) The U.S. Congress chartered the Boy Scouts of America organization in 1910. Just two years later, three Van Alstyne boys, Rowland Barnett, Otis White and Rae Nunnallee, received a Boy Scout storybook. Barnett made a Christmas wish and, in March 1913, the Van Alstyne troop received its charter--one of the first in the state. W.F. Barnett, Rowland's father and Van Alstyne school superintendent, became the troop's first scoutmaster. Within a few years, Troop 1, as it was known then, helped establish other boy scout troops in the area, beginning with the communities of Anna and Elmont. The Van Alstyne troop worked from its founding date to serve its community. Through the 1920s, the troop helped in a citywide cleanup to control disease and insect population. In the 1940s, the troop's number changed to 44, and in 1948, the city donated land for a scout hut, which has since been used for meetings. In 1959, the troop took part in the relay of the Pan American Games torch as it traveled from Mexico City to Chicago. The Van Alstyne troop also became the first integrated troop in the Texoma Valley Council. Beginning in 1917, Van Alstyne's First United Methodist Church became an official sponsor of the troop, which has since been sponsored by other local organizations and churches, as well as being continuously supported by the Methodist church. Scout leaders have included many men and women from the community, including one whose interest was piqued in 1912 by the storybook. Rae Nunnallee was an active troop member for 70 years, joining as a boy and later serving in a number of key roles, both locally and nationally. For his dedication and service, the chapel at nearby Camp Grayson was named in his honor. Setting an example others in the community have followed, Nunnallee generously gave his time, labor and care for the boy scouts in Van Alstyne. 										(2003)

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Van Alstyne

1854

The town of Mantua was established about 3 miles southwest of here in 1854. Mantua prospered but was unexpectedly bypassed in 1873 when the Houston and Texas Central Railway (H&TC) extended its track through this area instead. That year a depot was built and a post office established in the new town named for Maria Van Alstyne, the widow of W. A. Van Alstyne who had been a principal stockholder of the H&TC. Churches, businesses, and people of Mantua and other area towns moved here to be near the railroad. Van Alstyne was incorporated and a newspaper established in 1883. Columbia College was founded in 1889. Van Alstyne contained banks, schools, hotels, an opera house, a literary club, and electric service by 1900, when cotton and other farm production dominated the local economy. Interurban transportation began in 1908. The local "Grays" semi-pro baseball team, established about 1902, played for many decades and produced a number of major league players. Many local businesses, churches, and social organizations trace their origins to Mantua and 19th century Van Alstyne. The historic downtown area, the former site of popular Saturday night social activities, continues as a business and social center.

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Mantua Seminary

1854

Mantua Seminary, a coeducational institution sponsored by the Mantua Masonic Lodge, was located in Mantua, sixteen miles north of McKinney in Collin County. Both the school and the town were projects conceived by William C. McKinney, James W. Throckmorton , and Joseph Wilcox. In 1854 the three McKinney residents purchased 200 acres of land from Younger Scott McKinney, son of Collin McKinney . The land was divided into town lots and sold, and part of the profit was set aside to finance the school. Although chartered on September 1, 1856, the seminary did not offer classes until 1859. Because of the failure to collect enough money to construct a school building and the outbreak of the Civil War , classes originally were held on the first floor of the Mantua Masonic Lodge building. In 1865 a two-story, sixteen-room building was constructed. The seminary operated successfully for the first decade following the war. Classes were generally of high-school level and were taught by a faculty that at one time numbered eight. In 1868 eighty students enrolled in the school, paying tuition that ranged from ten to twenty dollars. Four years later, however, most of the residents and businesses of Mantua moved to the new town of Van Alstyne, built on the Houston and Texas Central Railway line in southern Grayson County. The seminary continued to offer classes in the nearly deserted Mantua until the early 1880s, when it ceased operation.

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Van Alstyne, TX

1850

Van Alstyne is on State Highway 5, U.S. Highway 75, Farm Road 121, and the Southern Pacific line, twelve miles south of Sherman in extreme south central Grayson County. Settlers established the community of Mantua in the area during the 1850s. When the Houston and Texas Central Railway bypassed Mantua in 1872, many of that community's residents purchased land from the railroad company and laid out a townsite. They named the new community after either William A. Van Alstyne, a civil engineer with the railroad who surveyed the right-of-way and the townsite, or Mrs. Marie Van Alstyne, a shareholder in the railroad company. The community opened a post office in 1873 and grew rapidly for the rest of the century. Van Alstyne incorporated in 1890, when it had a population of 400, two gristmills, a flour mill, a newspaper, and a college. Around 1900 the town had 1,940 residents and a number of businesses, including several banks, a grain elevator, a roller mill, and a chemical company. Though the population of Van Alstyne declined somewhat during the early 1900s, it remained an active center for retail trade, banking, schools, and churches. Its population was 1,453 in 1936, when fifty-five businesses, including two banks and various stores, served the community. The town's population fell from 1,650 around 1948 to 1,608 by 1967; during this same period the number of rated businesses in the community increased from forty-two to forty-five. By the mid-1970s the town had 2,230 residents and some forty businesses, among them seven manufacturers, including producers of clothing, motor homes, and mattresses. By the late 1980s the population of Van Alstyne stood at 1,990, and it had some thirty-five businesses, including factories of plastics and aluminum products. In 1990 the population of the community was reported as 2,090. The population reached 2,502 in 2000.

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Van Alstyne, Texas

Music in Van Alstyne

Songs About Van Alstyne

Artists From Van Alstyne

Rivers & Roads in Song near Van Alstyne

History of Van Alstyne

The Black Clay That Cracks the Ground Open RoadyGoat

The Town the Railroad Made, and a Name Nobody Pinned Down RoadyGoat

The Vanished College of Van Alstyne RoadyGoat

Fifty Feet North to Grave of Collin McKinney

Arnspiger, Herman

Boy Scout Troop 1 (Troop 44)

Van Alstyne

Mantua Seminary

Van Alstyne, TX

Everything Near Van Alstyne