Forney, that town in Kaufman County that seems more like a suburb of Dallas, has a most “back east” history, at least in nomenclature.
On July 6, 1872, the Dallas Weekly Herald reported, via the Fort Worth Democrat, that a Colonel Forney had been in Colonel Thomas Scott’s Texas & Pacific railroad party in Fort Worth. Scott et al. told Fort Worth residents that the railroad would reach Fort Worth within two years. Scott had been named president of the T&P earlier in 1872. Of course, T&P would not reach Fort Worth until July 19, 1876.
John Wien Forney, born in Pennsylvania in 1817, was a journalist, politician, and later a railroad promoter. (Photo from Wikipedia.)
By age twenty-five Forney owned the Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Intelligencer, as reported by the Sudbury, Pennsylvania, American on January 29, 1842.
By 1848 Forney was involved in the state Democratic Party in Pennsylvania. Clip is from the August 26, 1848, Clarksville Northern Standard.
By 1853 Forney had served as chief clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives, as reported by the Texas State Gazette on October 1, 1853. He would later be secretary of the U.S. Senate.
On August 5, 1870, the Galveston Tri-Weekly News reprinted a report in Pomeroy’s Democrat (New York) that tied Forney to John Wilkes Booth. The report alleged that Booth had killed President Lincoln five years earlier because Lincoln had reneged on a promise to Booth not to execute Booth’s friend John G. Beall. Forney allegedly had gone with Booth to ask Lincoln to intercede on behalf of Beall.
By 1872 Forney was affiliated with the Texas & Pacific railroad. On behalf of the railroad Forney undertook a tour of Texas and wrote his glowing “What I Saw in Texas” accounts, which newspapers printed. These accounts were designed to convince investors back east of the advantages of a southern transcontinental railroad route. This clip, containing Forney’s impression of Fort Worth, is from a longer article published August 3, 1872, in the Dallas Weekly Herald. Note that Forney erred in saying the Transcontinental and Southern Pacific railroads were operating in Fort Worth by 1872. He also claimed that General Worth established the Army’s Fort Worth.
Forney’s “What I Saw in Texas” tour resulted in a book of the same title.
As the T&P track was laid west toward Eagle Ford in Dallas County, on March 22, 1873, the Clarksville Northern Standard reported that the railroad would serve the Kaufman County town of Brooklyn. Residents of Brooklyn on December 29, 1873, renamed their community after Pennsylvanian John Wien Forney, who was by then a director of the T&P company. Colonel Forney died in 1881.
(East Texas really is “back east”: Sixty miles southeast of Brooklyn/Forney in Henderson County is the unincorporated town of . . . wait for it . . . New York.)