Mrs. Edna Westbrook Trigg

The Denton years are the part of Edna Trigg's career the plaque compresses. The Handbook of Texas says she arrived in 1916 as a stranger and a 'government woman', travelled the county by horse and buggy and stayed overnight with farm families. She borrowed $350 for steam canners, placed them in twenty communities and sold them to residents after demonstrations. In the First World War she led a drive to make Denton County self-sufficient in food, urging families to plant less cotton, and she introduced a diet card meant to guard against pellagra and rickets.

What the plaque says

Mrs. Edna Westbrook Trigg (December 30, 1868 - November 15, 1946) Pioneer leader of Texas women in rural club work. While serving as principal of a school near Milano, Mrs. Trigg was asked by the United States Department of Agriculture in 1911 to supervise Texas' first Girls' Tomato Club. Her role included organization, teaching, and experimentation. In Aug. 1912, her clubs showed canned products at Milano Fair-- the state's first exhibit of this kind, and a great success. In 1913-14, she worked in Childress and Milam counties, holding canning schools financed by local groups and the U. S. Department of Agriculture. After enactment of national and state legislation (1914-1915) established the Agricultural Extension Service at land grant colleges, Mrs. Trigg became (in 1916) the first county home demonstration agent in Texas. Stationed in Denton, she also served on staff of the College of Industrial Arts (now Texas Woman's University), overseeing courses in methods for home demonstration work, assuring its professionalism. Edna Trigg was a native of Milam County, daughter of Ervin and Rachel Walker Westbrook. She married (in 1892) Charles Letman Trigg, and was mother of Charles Westbrook Trigg and Eloise Trigg (later Mrs. Johnson). Mrs. Trigg is buried in I. O. O. F. Cemetery, Denton. (1970)

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

• Milam County — steps away
• Ben Milam — steps away
• First National Bank of Cameron — steps away
• First Girl's Tomato Club in Texas — steps away