1904 Train Depot - Kingsville Texas

The following story is an excerpt from the book Come Aboard by local author and historian, Kathryn Evans.  This book is not available on Amazon.com or any other major book seller.  It is only available in Kingsville at the 1904 Kingsville Train Depot Museum and a couple local venues.  If you want a copy of this very interesting publication of local stories and history, call the KCVB to order a copy at 800-333-5032.  Books are $15.00(soft cover) or $25.00(hard cover) plus shipping costs.  Enjoy this chapter on us.

Molasses and Mops Manufactured in Kingsville

             The word “factory” brings to mind a place in a big city where lots of people make lots of products.  In Kingsville in 1914 the Ondrejs, moved from Shiner, Texas, to an eighty acre farm two miles south of town.  They found a press for making molasses on the property.  This was the beginning of a molasses factory where Sunday afternoon drivers stopped to see the process.  It was the only such mechanism in this area, and other farmers brought their sugar cane here for processing.

            A metal vat twelve feet long, four feet wide, and ten inches deep rested in the brushy field.  When a relative who was a bricklayer came to visit, the Ondrejs had him build a brick stove under the vat to put it in use.  Naturally, making molasses started with growing sugar cane.  When it was ready for harvest, the stalks were stripped and the canes cut.  The heads were saved for next year’s crop.

            The cane was piled into a wagon and hauled to the press which extracted the juice.  Two horses harnessed to the press walked in a circle crushing the juice from the cane into barrels.  From the barrels it was carried by buckets to the vat.  Coals made from wood heated and cooked the juice into molasses.  If the fire was a good steady one, it took only a few hours to make.  If the fire burned too hot, some coals were scooped out to adjust the heat.  The molasses maker stirred and skimmed the syrup with a paddle made of metal, shaped like a spoon with a broom stick for a handle.  At one end of the vat was an opening with a wooden plug from which the finished molasses drained into wash tubs.  The processor poured the glistening mixture into barrels after it cooled.  When people came to buy it, they brought their own containers.  Customers use it for a sugar substitute or made cookies, taffy, or gingerbread to satisfy the sweet tooth.  Children often helped with taffy pulling, usually ending up in a sticky, smeary mess from head to toe.  Children were dosed with molasses and sulphur as a spring tonic.  The mixture was also taken for colds.

            A special treat was homemade bread cut into cubes, doused with bacon grease, and smothered with the thick, dark molasses in a big bowl.  Then each family member armed with a fork dug into the communal concoction!  Molasses is not readily found on the grocery store shelf, and a molasses factory no longer exists in Kingsville.

            A dozen years later another kind of factory was emerging in a family garage.  In April 1926, David Huske Jones Sr., Superintendent of the Kingsville Cotton Mill, in answer to his wife’s plea for a good mop with a head that will stay on a stick, made his first mop.  His ingenious mind and skilful hands fashioned a product that started a new factory in town. 

            After designing the mop, he developed machinery to speed up the winding and binding process.  He continued to make the mops in his garage after realizing he had a winner.  His neighbor Tom Brookshire sold the first batch immediately in his grocery store.  The demand was so great that he added more work space to his garage twice.  By 1929 and 1930 he hired college boys to scout the surrounding territory for customers.  They sold the mops for $1.25 and kept fifty cents for their return, a good deal in those days when twenty-five cents an hour was the going wage.  Jesus Alvarado became his manager as Mr. Jones was still employed at the Cotton Mill.  Later, Lupe Deanda assumed managerial duty.

            In 1934 he expanded by relocating in a larger building with a railroad siding on Santa Gertrudis and Sixth Street.  Fine quality mops and brooms were his main products.  Later he added production of cotton picking sacks.  The Chapman Ranch’s first order was for 3,000 sacks.  The factory buzzed night and day.  He also supplied cutting twine for Robstown farmers to tie radishes, green onions, and spinach in bundles for shipping vegetables all over the country by Missouri-Pacific Railroad.

            Mr. Jones put out quality products under the name of Capital Manufacturing Company.  Scotch tape replaced twine as a fastening object.  Cotton sacks were no longer needed when machines took over cotton picking.  This inventive man possibly produced over a million mops and a half million brooms before the business closed in 1963.

            Material compiled from Kleberg County Texas history book.

© Kathryn Evans, published 2004 by the Kleberg County Historical Commission