Colleyville was named for the general practitioner Dr. Lilburn Howard Colley. Colleyville was formed in 1956 after several small parent communities banded together - the communities of Spring Garden, Pleasant Run, Pleasant Glade, Bransford, Red Rock, and Glen Hope.  They decided on the name of Colleyville to call the incorporated town, and the area had been referred to as Colleyville as early as 1914.

Dr. Colley was born in 1843 in Colley Hollow in Missouri. He served in the Union Army during and after the Civil War before earning his medical degree in Iowa in 1873. He and his wife moved to Bransford Texas where they were active in the community until her death in 1914 and his death in 1924.

Bransford was situated on a line of the St. Louis, Arkansas and Texas Railway (today known as the Cotton Belt Rail Line) in Northeast Tarrant County.  In addition to the rail line, it had a post office, two blacksmith shops, a livery stable, four general stores, and a large hall shared by the Masons, Odd Fellows, and Woodsmen of the World. He was one of four doctors who resided in the area.