First Girl's Tomato Club in Texas

Each girl got one-tenth of an acre. She grew tomatoes, sold part of the crop and canned the rest, and the jars went on show. The first exhibit, held with the boys' corn clubs at Milano in August 1912, was the first public display of girls' farm products in Texas. The Handbook of Texas adds what the plaque only hints at: Edna Trigg urged members to start college funds and compete for scholarships. Lack of county money for her salary ended her work with young people in 1915.

What the plaque says

First Girl's Tomato Club in Texas The first Girl's Tomato Clubs in Texas were organized in 1912 in Milam County to acquaint young women in rural areas with tomato production and canning techniques. At the request of the United States Department of Agriculture, Mrs. Edna Westbrook Trigg, a local high school principal, agreed to undertake the project. She organized eleven clubs throughout the county, with members ranging in age from ten to eighteen. A similar program for boys, the Corn Clubs, had been instituted in Jack County four years earlier. Each member of the Girl's Tomato Clubs was to produce a tomato crop on one-tenth of an acre of land and then was taught proper canning procedures. The girls exhibited their products at Milano, Rockdale, the 1913 State Fair in Dallas, and the Waco Cotton Palace. So successful were these exhibits that several of the girls started college education funds with the money they raised selling their goods. As the state's first rural girl's organization of its kind, the Tomato Clubs were forerunners of later programs, including 4-H, that were initiated under the supervision of the Texas Agricultural Extension Service. Over time, 4-H has expanded its scope but has maintained the principle objectives of its predecessors. (1983)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Milam County Courthouse and Jail — steps away
  Cameron's 1892 Renaissance Revival courthouse and the 1895 St. Louis-built jail beside it, now the county museum, are listed together on the National Register.
• Calvert — 20 mi
  A railroad cotton town of 1868 on State Highway 6 that claimed the largest cotton gin in the world and elected Black men to county and state office during Reconstruction.
• Temple Railroad and Heritage Museum — 28 mi
  The Santa Fe depot of 1911 in a railroad town that began in 1880 as a construction camp, now a museum with locomotives and cars parked beside the active rail yard.

More markers nearby

• Ben Milam — steps away
• Mrs. Edna Westbrook Trigg — steps away
• Milam County — steps away
• First National Bank of Cameron — steps away