Brooklyn-on-the-Bois-d'Arc

Before it was Forney, the village here was called Brooklyn, a settlement that grew up along an old Native American trace and the early Anglo wagon roads in the bois d'arc country east of Dallas. When the Texas & Pacific Railroad pushed its line through in 1873, the town reorganized around the tracks and took a new name, Forney, after a railroad official. The railroad made it a busy shipping town, and its old downtown and tree-shaded streets still hold the homes and lodges of that era. This tour follows two threads at once: the architecture of a turn-of-the-century railroad town, including grand Queen Anne and colonial-revival houses, and the remarkable life of William Madison 'Gooseneck Bill' McDonald, the son of formerly enslaved parents who rose to become a banker, fraternal leader, and one of the wealthiest Black men in early-1900s Texas. It's small-town history with a long reach.