Volunteers, cash donations and emergency supplies continued to pour into Sherman on May 22, 1896 a full week after a terrible twister destroyed much of the North Texas town and took dozens of lives.

Four years shy of the twentieth century, the community within spitting distance of the Red River was home to 7,500 people, a sixth of the present-day population. The seat of Grayson County was named for Sidney Sherman, a hero of the Texas Revolution, not the Union general who laid waste to Georgia.

The...