White Mound

White Mound (Whitemound) is a rural community in southeastern Grayson County eight miles southeast of Sherman on Farm Road 902. Settled in 1849 by Henry Lackey and his family, who had moved from Missouri to Texas, the settlement derived its name from the presence of two conical white mounds, or hills, nearby. The small community soon included other settlers. Prior to the Civil War the town had blacksmith shops, general merchandise stores, drugstores, and saloons. Following the war a number of doctors, a gristmill, a cotton gin, and Bosworth's Academy operated there. White Mound received a post office in 1876. When the St. Louis Southwestern Railway's right-of-way missed White Mound by three quarters of a mile in 1887, the community declined. Tom Bean was built on the railroad and attracted 75 percent of the population, many businesses, and all of the churches from White Mound. White Mound quickly became a ghost town. Little information concerning the community during the twentieth century was available. It reported a population of eighty-nine in 1900, and the post office closed in 1904. By 1960 the town had ten houses and a population of twenty-seven. In 1989 the community had only widely scattered houses.