John Neely Bryan

John Neely Bryan (December 24, 1810 – September 8, 1877) was a Presbyterian farmer, lawyer, and tradesman in the United States and founder of the city of Dallas, Texas.

Bryan was born to James and Elizabeth (Neely) Bryan in Fayetteville, Tennessee. There, he attended the Fayetteville Military Academy and after studying law was admitted to the Tennessee Bar. Around the year 1833 he left Tennessee and moved to Arkansas, where he was an Indian trader. According to some sources, he and a business partner laid out Van Buren, Arkansas.

Bryan visited the Dallas area in 1839 looking for a place to create a trading post. After finding a good spot, he returned to Arkansas to settle affairs. In November 1841 he returned to Texas, where he learned that a treaty had forced half of his prospective customers, Native Americans, out of North Texas. Bryan decided that a trading post was no longer feasible, so instead he established a permanent settlement, which eventually became the burgeoning city of Dallas.

Bryan was very important to early Dallas — he served as the postmaster, a storeowner, a ferry operator (he operated a ferry where Commerce Street crosses the Trinity River today) and his home served as the courthouse. In 1844 he persuaded J. P. Dumas to survey and plot the site of Dallas and possibly helped him with the work. Bryan was instrumental in the organizing of Dallas County in 1846 and in the choosing of Dallas as its county seat in August 1850. When Dallas became the county seat, Bryan donated the land for the courthouse. In 1843 he married Margaret Beeman, a daughter of the Beeman family who settled in Dallas from Bird's Fort. The couple had five children. Another Beeman, John, arrived in Dallas in April 1842 and planted the first corn.

In 1849, Bryan went to California during the gold rush but returned within a year. In January 1853 he was a delegate to the Texas state Democratic convention. In 1855, Bryan shot a man who had insulted his wife and fled to the Creek Nation. The man he shot made a full recovery, and Bryan certainly would've been informed, but still Bryan did not return to Dallas for about six years. During that time he travelled to Colorado and California, probably looking for gold. He returned to Dallas in time to take part in a brief military expedition against the Comanche Indians in 1860.

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