Regarding Spencer Jack's dad's Dallas grave visit that post said....
Whilst Jason did his touring he text messaged a time or two to his Favorite Uncle D. That would be me. One of those messages said, in part....
Not only did I see Benjamin Franklin's grave today, I saw Dallas's grave. Are you aware of who the city of Dallas is named after?
Well, I guess I have always assumed Dallas was named after a guy whose last name was Dallas. But, I Googled "Dallas" to see if I could find who this Dallas person was. Soon I found myself reading the Wikipedia article about Dallas. The Wikipedia article made no mention of who or what Dallas is named after.
Well, Spencer Jack's dad must have read the above and then emailed me with....
FUD -- That big city in Texas, named Dallas, was named after George M. Dallas. Or so said my Philadelphia Big Bus tour guide, who majored in history in the early 1970s.
I had previously never heard of the man. Apparently he was our 11th vice-president.
--FNJ
So, I Googled George M. Dallas. Info from the Wikipedia article about Mr. Dallas is what Google adds to the search results for illustrative blurb purposes to the right of the search results, the screen cap of which you see above.
The first paragraph of the George M. Dallas article says "The City of Dallas, Texas, is named after him because Dallas created the first local trading post which was the first known settlement in what is today the Dallas, Texas."
During the course of the Wikipedia article, as the life of George Dallas is detailed from birth on, his education, what he did when Dallas got out of school, there is no mention made of how he came to be in Texas, or when this was, or how long Dallas was in Dallas.
The article details the political career of Dallas, going from being mayor of Philadelphia to a U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania to James Knox Polk's Vice-President.
But nothing about what Dallas did in Dallas, other than that one mention of creating that first local trading post. The article makes no mention of Dallas being any sort of merchant, let along a trading post opener founding the first known settlement at the location named after him.
I wonder if many Texans or Dallasites know why Dallas is named Dallas? I recollect being shocked, shocked I tell you, when the native born Texan known as Gar the Texan verbalized being surprised to learn Fort Worth had actually been a fort at one time. Gar the Texan learned this when reading the signage at one of Fort Worth's currently boarded up eyesores, Heritage Park, to which we had biked, back before that spot celebrating Fort Worth's heritage degraded into being a boarded up eyesore.
Leaving Fort Worth and going back to the founding of Dallas, the Wikipedia article about Dallas, the city, says...
John Neely Bryan established a permanent settlement near the Trinity River named Dallas in 1841.
What? 1841? That is four years before George Dallas became Vice-President, eight years after he ceased being a Senator. I think the John Neely Bryan log cabin is something I have seen in downtown Dallas, near the JFK memorial.
Why isn't Dallas named Bryan?
Anyway, I think both myself and Wikipedia are confused about Dallas....
