Paris, the county seat of Lamar County, was founded by merchant George W. Wright, who donated fifty acres of land in February 1844. By the eve of the Civil War, when it had 700 residents, Paris had become a cattle and farming center. The Texas and Pacific reached town in 1876; the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe and the St. Louis and San Francisco in 1887; the Texas Midland (later Southern Pacific) in 1893; and the Paris and Mount Pleasant (Pa-Ma Line) in 1910. The city in the early 1990s was a regional medical center serving northeast Texas and southeast Oklahoma.

T. H. Freeze 1874-1875