Wood County History
By LOU MALLORY - Chairperson, Wood County Historical Commission
(The historical information for this article came from a book on Winnsboro written by Will D. Suiter, a long-time resident of Winnsboro who practiced law there for many years. The book was published in 1952.)
About 1874, there was talk of planning a railroad from Jefferson to McKinney, which would extend through this region. A great rivalry developed between three villages: Winnsboro, Webster and Cornersville.
If the road came through Winnsboro and continued on in a westerly direction, it would have passed through Cornersville as well. The village of Webster was trying to have a road located a little differently so that it would pass through Webster, which was the largest of the three villages.
Webster had several businesses, including two wholesale houses run by two Jewish families, the Goldmans and the Fergusons. They hauled their goods from Jefferson by ox wagons and with mule teams and stored them in two large wooden buildings. The goods were later hauled to towns further west including Sulphur Springs, Greenville, and Dallas. It was said that Webster's population in 1856 was larger than Dallas at the time.
The railroad company, known as the East Line and Red River Railroad Company, was organized. In 1878, the surviving wife of J.A. Cook, Mrs Ophelia Cook, made a deal with the railroad company in which she conveyed to it one-half interest in the south 100 acres of her 200 acre tract and also conveyed a 200-foot right-of-way through her 100 acre tract. The railroad company was to have the 100 acres surveyed into lots, blocks, and streets, for the purpose of building the town of Winnsboro. The railroad company was also to build a depot, which it did, at the present location of the rail depot today.
The railroad company employed a man by the name of Haygood to survey and plat the 100 acres, showing the location of the depot as well as the location of streets, lots and blocks. The Haygood map is the earliest map of Winnsboro and is recorded in the deed records of Wood County.
Mrs. Cook's action won for Winnsboro the location of the rail depot and the people of Cornersville and Webster began to move into Winnsboro, and the town grew rapidly.
The Goldmans and the Fergusons moved to Winnsboro and conducted their business there for several years.
For quite as while after it became known that the railroad was coming through Winnsboro and the location of the depot, the people in the old town of Winnsboro, formerly Crossroads, did all they could to continue the town at the old location. But in 1878, after Mrs. Cook had made her deed to the railroad, and the rail company had a plat of the city made, people began to move their businesses near the railroad.
A man by the name of Berry put a brickyard south of the proposed new town of Winnsboro. Berry made the brick from which most of the early buildings in Winnsboro were constructed. The citizens who built these buildings had great incentive to buy the local bricks as they could be obtained at a cheap price.
Mr. Berry must have done very well when the railroad came to town.
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