COLLINSVILLE, TEXAS. Collinsville is on U.S. Highway 377 eighteen miles southwest of Sherman in southwestern Grayson County. The first Anglo-Americans to settle in the area arrived in the late 1850s. Originally the community was called Springville, and land for the townsite donated by Joshua Miller. A post office operated there in 1857-58. In the late 1860s another town, Toadsuck, was established in the area. Following the Civil Warqv L. M. Collins and her two sons arrived from Ann Arbor, Michigan, and established what many believe to be the first free school in the North Texas area. In 1872 a post office opened. Nine years later the Texas and Pacific Railway arrived. The railroad established the community as a shipping and retail point for area farmers. Sometime early in the 1890s residents voted to incorporate and rename their town in honor of Collins. By 1900 Collinsville had a population of over 600. That figure fluctuated little over the next five decades. The town had Methodist, Baptist, Christian, and Cumberland Presbyterian churches and fifty businesses. Beginning in the mid-1970s a ten-year growth in population occurred. In 1989 Collinsville had an estimated 911 residents and sixteen businesses. In 1990 the population was 1,033, and in 2000 it grew to 1,235.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Graham Landrum and Allen Smith, Grayson County (Fort Worth, 1960; 2d ed., Fort Worth: Historical Publishers, 1967).
David Minor
