Renner, Dallas

[1] Although the main residential portion of Renner mostly comprised a small triangle between McCallum (Wells) Blvd and the St. Louis Southwestern Railway, the agricultural portions of Renner extended North to Plano and East to include the agricultural research station, which is now a campus of the University of Texas at Dallas.

The disparity between Collin County and Dallas County services was apparent as early as 1940 (DMN 04-14-1940)and annexation to Dallas was also considered at that time (DMN 09-03-1941), it was not until the 1970s where insufficient water infrastructure and budget shortages that required the laying off most of small police force became a serious issue for the Town of Renner.

[citation needed] By 1976 the Texas Department of Health declared Renner's municipal drinking water to be non-drinkable and the police force was eliminated due to budget cuts.

Jackson and J.B. Dickerson, patriarchs of prominent settler families who appear frequently in the society pages of the Dallas Morning News from the early 1900s.

Colorful mayor Ronald Newton Hartline (1937-1976), who was no-billed by Dallas County for official misconduct and theft by conversion (including borrowing a police CB radio to avoid speed traps) (DMN 03-23-1976), was killed in 1976 by a shotgun to the chest by Sam McDonald in Bonham, TX after a dispute over land on December 13, 1976 [1].

Settlement of the area began around a campsite on the Shawnee Trail near a small spring on Halls Branch, used in the 1850s and 1860s as a stopping point and watering hole for traildrivers and other travelers.

By 1890 the town had a population of eighty-three, a steam gristmill, a corn mill, a cotton gin, a blacksmith shop, two general stores, and three churches.

The St. Louis Southwestern Railway bypassed the town in the late 1880s, however, and many Frankford residents moved to Addison, Plano, and other nearby communities.

In 1904 the Frankford post office was closed, and in 1907 its lodge hall, which had served as a nondenominational church, was moved to Addison.

All that remained of the community in 1990 was the Frankford Church and Cemetery, adjoined by residences on three sides and by the Bent Tree Country Club to the south.