Grassdale, Gregg, Manor

Three names in fifteen years, and the people living on the ground chose none of them. A post office called Grassdale opened in 1859 with James B. Manor as its postmaster, and closed again the following year. A second office opened in 1871 under the name Gregg, and was renamed Manor in 1872. What settled the question was the railroad. Manor had reached Texas in 1832 and had surveys made in November 1838 on land between Wilbarger's and Gilleland's creeks, and on the thirtieth of November 1871 he deeded two hundred acres to the Houston and Texas Central. That put the depot on his property and his surname on every timetable between Austin and Hempstead. The village that had grown up around a store was laid off into lots where it already stood. Growth followed the rails. By the middle 1880s there were three churches, six general stores and about a hundred and twenty five residents. The count passed five hundred in 1892 and nine hundred by 1914, and the town finally incorporated in the early 1930s with six hundred and fifty four people in it. Then it stopped being a farm town altogether. Manor held about twelve hundred people in 2000, thirteen thousand six hundred in 2020, and something near twenty three thousand by 2025. It grew by 185 percent between 2014 and 2023, which made it one of the fastest growing cities in the United States for the decade, and Tesla's gigafactory is a few minutes down the road. The name is the part outsiders still get wrong. It is said MAY-ner, with the first syllable rhyming on may, not like the English word for a country house.