I'm leaning toward the view that the "Shawnee Trail," like other frontier trails, was an intricate trail system with multiple paths, and that the Military Road/Preston Road was one of those paths but not the only one and maybe not the favored one for settlers coming down from Missouri. There were multiple early (1840s) settlements on the line between Dallas and the present-day Sherman and Bonham areas, and one early settler (Benjamin Prigmore) describe his family's route from Missouri to Texas in 1843 or 1844 as crossing the East Fork of the Trinity, which would place his route closer to McKinnney and not on the Military Road. I know of no settlements along the Military Road/Preston Road from Dallas to Fort Johnson with the exception of Lebanon, founded in the 1850s. There seem to have been multiple fords of the Red River. My surmise would be that guides would lead settlers (and cattlemen) via different routes depending on the season, recent weather, etc.
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