Wylie, Texas

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History of Wylie

The Candy Montgomery Case - Wylie, Texas, 1980 RoadyGoat

1980

In the small town of Wylie, Texas, on a Friday the thirteenth in June of nineteen eighty, one of the most unsettling murder cases in Texas history unfolded behind a closed door. Two women — Candy Montgomery and Betty Gore — were both churchgoing mothers and members of the First United Methodist Church of Lucas. Candy had been carrying on a months-long affair with Betty's husband, Allan Gore. When Betty confronted her, a struggle broke out over an ax. What started as a confrontation ended with forty-one blows. Betty Gore was dead. Candy Montgomery was arrested, tried, and — in one of the most stunning verdicts in Texas courtroom history — found not guilty. She pleaded self-defense. On October thirtieth, nineteen eighty, nine women and three men believed her. HBO's Love and Death, starring Elizabeth Olsen, brought the case back to national attention in twenty twenty-three. Candy Montgomery quietly moved away. Betty Gore's family has lived with it ever since.

The Muncey Massacre: Collin County's Last Fatal Raid RoadyGoat

1840

In the fall of 1844, Jeremiah Muncey and his family were killed in an Indian raid at their homestead on the south bank of Rowlett Creek in what is now north Plano, between present-day Plano Road and Jupiter Road. Muncey and his neighbor McBain Jameson had settled the area in the early 1840s. The raiders camped upstream the night before; as they moved down the creek they came upon two boys hunting, killing the Rice boy while the Searcy boy escaped. At the Muncey place they killed Jeremiah Muncey, his wife, a three-year-old child, and Jameson; two of the Muncey boys were carried off and never found, while another son survived only because he was away at the Throckmorton settlement. Neighbors Leonard Searcy and William Rice discovered the bodies and rushed to their own sons hunting nearby. The site and the victims' graves lie about a mile northwest of the 1976 Texas Historical Commission marker on Spring Creek Parkway. Though Indian raids continued across Texas into the late 1800s and were fought by the Texas Rangers, the Muncey Massacre is remembered as the last fatal Indian raid in Collin County.

9.2 mi away

The Summer One Sliver of Germanium Changed Everything RoadyGoat

1958

Right here in Dallas, on September 12, 1958, a brand-new Texas Instruments engineer named Jack Kilby switched on the first working integrated circuit. It was a tiny sliver of germanium, about the size of a fingernail, and it ran as an oscillator. That sounds small, but it cracked a problem engineers called the tyranny of numbers. Complex electronics meant soldering thousands of separate parts together by hand, and every new design only made the tangle worse. Kilby's leap was simple and a little crazy: make the components and the wiring out of one single block of semiconductor. Build the whole circuit as one piece. He was the first to make it work. Months later, in 1959, Robert Noyce at Fairchild independently built a silicon version, using a process the industry could actually scale up. When Kilby won the Nobel Prize in 2000, the citation carefully said it was for his part in the invention. First working chip here in germanium, Noyce's silicon the one that grew into everything.

13.7 mi away

City of Wylie

1850

Located in south central Collin County, Wylie and Nickelville began as settlements on the west side of the east fork of the Trinity River. Pioneers began arriving in the area in the early 1850s, attracted by the plentiful water supply from the river, the productive soil of the Blackland Prairie and the offer of land grants by the Peters Colony. By 1883, a post office named Nickelville opened next to a drug store and, by 1885, there were three churches, the post office, a hotel and the Nickelville school. The town moved to a new location in 1886 when the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe railroad company tracks were constructed just a half a mile north of Nickelville. That June, the name changed to Wylie in honor of colonel W.D. Wylie, the railroad right-of-way agent. The town quickly began to grow with new businesses and a steady flow of railroad employees. In 1887, the town incorporated and elected the first mayor, John Howard Picket from Nickelville. The next year, the St. Louis and southwestern railroad began construction in Wylie. Both railroads drastically changed the economy and landscape of the area, increasing agricultural production and spurring business growth. In the 1920s, onions became a staple crop in Wylie, eventually garnering the title, “Onion Capital of the United States.” Clothing manufacturing, the completion of Lake Lavon in the 1940s and the construction of a highway connecting Wylie to Dallas and Garland led to more growth in the area. In 1981, the TV series Dallas began filming in Wylie. The location of Wylie and its appealing resources have attracted residents since the mid-nineteenth century.

Stibbens, Charles C.

1836

(May 14, 1810-March 31, 1879) A native of Maryland, Charles C. Stibbens came to Texas about 1835. He served in the Army during the Texas Revolution, participating in the Battle of San Jacinto. He settled in Anderson county soon after the war and worked as a farmer and shoemaker. Following the death of his first wife, Julie Ann Frost Slaughter, he was married in 1849 to Elizabeth Creekman. They eventually were the parents of eleven children. Charles and Elizabeth Stibbens moved to Saint Paul in 1870. He is the only veteran of the Battle of San Jacinto known to be buried in Collin county. (1992) Incise on base: Brenda Burns Kellow and James C. Evans, Jr.

Sachse

1886

Prior to 1886, this area served as farm and ranch land for a handful of settlers. During that year, the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railroad indicated a desire to built tracks through the vicinity and William Sachse (1820-1899) donated land for this purpose. In return, the company agreed to lay out a townsite, construct a train station, and name the stop Sachse.
 By 1956 Sachse was no longer a tiny rural settlement. The community would soon reach a population of almost 400, but residential services were lacking. Dallas County's road and bridge department maintained the streets and the sheriff's office provided law enforcement. Residents and businesses used shallow wells for water access and individual septic systems for sewage disposal. Although Lake Lavon's construction in 1948 and the creation of the North Texas Municipal Water District in 1951 provided water for surrounding communities, Sachse was prohibited from receiving water from the district because it was not an incorporated town.
 Incorporation, the election of a mayor and city alderman, and the selling of bonds to pay for the water improvements were all necessary steps in getting the much needed water supply to the residents of Sachse. Residents voted to incorporate on April 14, 1956, and another election was soon held to approve the sale of $90,000 in bonds for the construction of a water supply system. The construction contract also provided for the erection of a small cinder block pump station at this site, which was used during the early years of the town's incorporation as the city hall. The building was the site of numerous meetings and countless decisions regarding the growth and development of Sachse until city offices were moved to another site in 1966. (2009)

Historical Marker → · 4.2 mi away

Wylie, TX (Collin County)

1870

Wylie is on State Highway 78 sixteen miles south of McKinney in south central Collin County. It was organized in the early 1870s and originally called Nickelville, reportedly after the name of the first store. In 1886 the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railway laid tracks a half mile north of the original townsite. Within a year the businesses of Nickelville had moved to take advantage of the railroad and had named their new location Wylie, in honor of W. D. Wylie, a right-of-way agent for the railroad. That same year Wylie received a post office branch and incorporated, choosing an alderman form of government. Two years later the St. Louis Southwestern Railway reached the town. The two railroads and the rich agricultural region of the Blackland Prairies contributed to the town's growth. Wylie had a population of 400 in 1890 and 773 in 1900. Before 1920 the community had over thirty-five businesses, including two banks, a school, and a weekly newspaper. Unlike many rural Texas communities, Wylie grew during the Great Depression years, reaching 914 residents by 1940. In part this was a result of increased dairy farming to meet the demands of nearby Dallas. Following World War II the population continued to increase. The construction of Lake Lavon five miles north of town and the selection of Wylie to house the offices of the North Texas Municipal Water District, designed to provide water for towns in four counties, pushed the population to 1,804 in 1960. In the next twenty years the population more than doubled as a result of the growth of the Dallas urban area. In 1980 there were 3,152 residents and ninety businesses in Wylie. In 1990 the population was 8,716, and Wylie had spread into Rockwall and Dallas counties. By 2000 the population reached 15,132.

Wylie, TX (Taylor County)

1902

Wylie is on State Highway 89, or Buffalo Gap Road, five miles southwest of Abilene in north central Taylor County. It bears the name of J. J. Wylie, a pioneer of the area who moved to Texas from Tishomingo, Mississippi, in the mid-nineteenth century and to Taylor County in 1880. Though early residents had farmed in the Wylie area from the time that patents were first issued in 1881, community development did not begin until 1902, when John H. Vance arrived from Austin, purchased land to the southwest of Abilene, and built the first general store, with a residence attached at the back for his family, on the southwest corner of what is now the intersection of Buffalo Gap Road and Antilley Road. The same year residents expressed a need for a school and a church, so Mary V. Wylie, widow of J. J. Wylie, donated land across the road to the north of the Vance store. While early records show that a Wylie school district was designated as early as 1888, none can be found to indicate that a school ever operated until 1902. Three prominent citizens contributed $120 apiece for the purchase of materials, and residents pooled their talents to erect a twenty-by-thirty-foot wooden building for use as both a school and a church. The community remained nameless until 1904, when John Vance installed a post office in his store and named it Sambo, for "Brother Sam," his good friend and neighbor Sam Little. The Sambo post office operated from December 1904 until February 1912, when Abilene began rural postal delivery. By 1915 the Sambo school was inadequate to house the increased student population. When Mrs. Wylie donated two acres across the road to the east she stipulated that the name of the school be changed to Wylie, in honor of her late husband. The land and the stipulation were accepted, and after citizens voted a $3,000 bond issue, a two-story plank building was constructed in 1916 and named Wylie. The Wylie community experienced tremendous growth while most rural communities declined. Between 1950 and 1986 its population more than tripled, and in the 1980s land development caused property valuations to increase more than tenfold. Wylie is a thriving suburb of Abilene.

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