J.B. Henry "The Pea Man"

Clay Coppedge's Texas Co-op Power column gives the peas a later chapter. It dates Henry's first commercial growing to around 1909 and says he dried peas in an oven on East Tyler Street to beat the weevils, finding they shipped more easily. Athens was soon billed as the Black-Eyed Pea Capital of the World. Coppedge adds Elmore Tiger Torn, father of actor Rip Torn, who founded the International Black-Eyed Pea Appreciation Society after World War II; the column says Torn's association and the Athens Jamboree are gone, while the Arboretum's fall cook-off carries on.

What the plaque says

J.B. Henry "The Pea Man" Introduced in the United States in the early eighteenth century, black-eyed peas, also known as cowpeas, served primarily as animal feed on farms. The hardships of the Civil War, including the scarcity of food in the south, led to increased human consumption of black-eyed peas. John Benjamin Henry, Sr. capitalized on this phenomenon and pioneered a nationwide commercial market for the peas as a staple of southern cuisine. Born in 1866 in the Pine Grove community, southeast of Athens, J.B. Henry worked in a general merchandise store where he saw the economic opportunities in shipping dried black-eyed peas. Around 1900, he started receiving negative feedback from customers who complained of weevil damage to the peas. Through trial and error, he and his wife, Josephine, solved the problem by creating his first commercial dehydrating process in 1906. Henry dissolved his general merchandise partnership in 1910 to focus on his wholesale distribution of black-eyed peas. Shortly thereafter, he placed a large ad in the Athens Review proclaiming that he was "the pea man." In 1913, Henry leased land from the Cotton Belt Railroad for a new processing plant capable of handling and storing forty carloads of peas. By 1924, the Henry Pea Company handled several hundred cars annually. To highlight the growth of the business, he shipped a sack of peas via the barge Texas Steer from Trinidad, Texas, to the Gulf of Mexico, up the Mississippi River and on to Chicago, Illinois. He never retired but passed away in October 1940 from heart trouble and is buried in the Athens City Cemetery. J.B. Henry revolutionized the humble cowpea into a traditional southern staple. (2017)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Texas Freshwater Fisheries Center — 5.5 mi
  A Texas Parks and Wildlife hatchery and visitor center in Athens where visitors can borrow tackle and fish a stocked pond, watch native species in gallery tanks and ride a tram around the hatchery.
• Purtis Creek State Park — 14 mi
  A 1,582-acre park straddling the Henderson and Van Zandt county line, built around a 355-acre lake with no-wake fishing, borrowed tackle, a 4.1-mile hike-and-bike trail and a nature path.

More markers nearby

• Henderson County — steps away
• Henderson County Pottery Industry — steps away
• Athens — steps away
• Henderson County C. S. A. — 0.3 mi