Bonham

Bonham, county seat and commercial center of Fannin County, is on U.S. Highway 82 and State highways 78 and 121 on the northern edge of the Blackland Prairie twelve miles south of the Red River. Settlement began with the arrival in 1836 of Bailey Inglish from Butler County, Kentucky. In 1837 he built Fort Inglish, a blockhouse and stockade, on 1,250 acres of land located on Bois d'Arc Creek near timber and water supplies. John P. Simpson came soon thereafter, and Inglish and Simpson donated the original townsite, known as Bois d'Arc, as an inducement to settlement. Inglish also secured the town's first post office, which served an area of several hundred miles, including what is now Collin and Grayson counties. When Bois d'Arc became the Fannin county seat on January 26, 1843, the county extended into the Panhandle and Greer County, Oklahoma Territory; the area later became twenty Texas counties. Bois d'Arc was renamed Bonham on February 26, 1844, in honor of James B. Bonham, who died at the Alamo. By the early 1840s, C. C. Alexander of Cumberland County, Kentucky, established a business house to supply Fort Worth and nearby forts, and Bonham became a resting and supply base for homeseekers in northeastern Texas.