FARMERS BRANCH BEGINNING
The Dallas Morning News - Friday, February 22, 1985
Author: A.C. Greene

The summer of 1842, Isaac B. Webb rode from

Missouri to explore Peters Colony lands of North Texas and camped on a creek called Mustang Branch alongside Thomas Keenan, a 35-year-old Peters Colonist from Indiana who was building a log cabin there.

Webb, enthusiastic over the Texas location, went back to Missouri and got his family, talking his in-law, William Cochran (husband of his wife's sister), and family into joining them. By 1843, a settlement had started named for Mustang Branch -- so called because of the mustang grapes growing along its banks -- not for mustang horses.

Cochran thought Mustang Branch failed to indicate the fertile soil conditions near there, not to mention the untamed associations of the word, so he changed the name of the settlement to Farmers Branch .

A tanyard was established on another creek in Farmers Branch , and leather was so in demand by the colonists the hides were taken up before they got throughly tanned, and the settlers jokingly called that creek "Rawhide.' The name remains today.

The Peters Colony had its first office at Farmers Branch , and through its advertising the name was, for a time, more famous than that of near-by Dallas. In fact, the section of present-day Dallas north of Northwest Highway and west of Preston Road was considered to be Farmers Branch well into the 20th century.

The first church, first school, first blacksmith shop, water mill and cotton gin in Dallas County were all in Farmers Branch . It was incorporated as a city Feb. 23, 1946.

A.C. Greene is a Dallas historian and writer.