NEW HISTORIC WALK DEVELOPED

10/1/20074:50:02 PM Link 0 comments | Add comment

IN OUR MIDST...

It is amazing how we come and go and are not always aware of our surroundings. I have recently discovered something and in researching, have found there are a lot of people in this area who did not have a clue either.

A very famous Texan lived around here and not many put the two together. Most are familiar with Borden community but most are not aware that this was "THE BORDEN". Most of us grew up with this man's milk , but didn't know he lived down the road east of Weimar.

Gail Borden, Jr. (1801 - 1874) was a 19th century inventor, surveyor, publisher and was the U.S. inventor of condensed milk in 1856 and the founder of the Borden Company. Yes, that Borden!

Even though he was born in New York he moved south in search of a milder climate to cure a persistent cough. It was in Mississippi that we became a surveyor and taught school.

He arrived at Galveston Island in 1829 and farmed and raised stock in upper Fort Bend county and managed to spend time surveying. He eventually became a surveyor for Stephen F. Austin's colony. During this time he and his brother and another gentlemen launched the Telegraph and Texas Register, a newspaper that would serve as the voice of the government of the Republic of Texas after the revolution. In the meantime he had prepared the first topographical map of Texas. In October and November 1836 he helped lay out the site of Houston.

In the middle 1840s be began inventing. He is supposed to have experimented with large-scale refrigeration as a means of preventing yellow fever and with a terraqueous machine, a sort of prairie schooner that would go on land or water. In 1849 he perfected a meal biscuit, made of dehydrated meat compounded with flour. Although this project left him deeply in debt, for seven years Borden struggled to sell meat biscuits. For this reason, he moved to New York in 1851 to be closer to the trade centers ands to promote the product.

After we received a patent on a process for condensing milk in vacuum, he dropped the meat biscuit to devote himself to condensing milk. When the Civil War brought intensified demand for condensed milk, sales grew. He also invented processes for condensing various fruit juices, for extract of beef, and for coffee. After the Civil War he established a meat-packing plant at Borden, Texas and a sawmill and copperware factory at Bastrop.

After 1871 he spent his winters in Texas because of the milder climate. In 1873 he built a freedmen's school and a white children's school, organized a day school and a Sunday school for black children, sided in constructing five churches, maintained two missionaries, and partially supported numerous poorly paid teacher, minister, and students.

He married three times and had seven children. He died in Borden on January 11, 1874; his body was shipped by private car to New York to be buried in Woodlawn Cemetery.

A historic country-walking trail has been developed to show some of the more interesting aspects of his life when he lived and worked in this area. Maps may be obtained at The Borden Country Store at 2284 E. Hwy.90, 5 miles east of Weimar or at the Weimar Area Chamber of Commerce Office at 109 E. Main.