DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Now, most folks passing through Friendswood today might not give a second thought to what's growing in the yard — but there was a time when this quiet little Galveston County community was sitting at the center of something sweeter than you might expect. Let me back up.
Friendswood was established as a Quaker colony by Frank J. Brown and Thomas H. Lewis in 1895.
Among the folks who put down roots there early on was a former Kansas farmer by the name of Nereus Stout. Now, Stout didn't stay a Kansas farmer for long. He became a highly acclaimed horticulturist, and he is believed to be the first farmer to grow figs commercially in all of Galveston County.
Let that sit a moment. One former Kansas farmer, one Quaker colony, and suddenly Galveston County has itself a fig industry. Then along comes J.
C. Carpenter, who established Galveston County's first fig preserving plant in Friendswood — about 1910. His main supplier?
The Stout farm. But word travels, and figs turned out to be a popular and reliable cash crop, so Carpenter's inventory of suppliers expanded as more growers got in on it. By the early 1920s, Galveston County was accounting for half of all the figs grown across a seven-county area along Texas' Gulf Coast.
Half. From a region anchored by a town of fewer than three hundred people. In fact, in 1930, one-third of the county's leading fig producers were from Friendswood itself.
Two fig preserving plants in that little community were supporting a whole network of nurserymen and orchardists, and providing employment for a good many of Friendswood's residents — right on through the lean and hungry years of the 1930s Great Depression. Now, here's where the story turns. Fig production along the Texas Gulf Coast declined after World War II.
The orchards around Friendswood began disappearing in the 1950s — quietly, the way things do when an era ends without making much noise about it. And then in 1968, the last commercial fig preserving plant still in operation on the entire Texas Gulf Coast closed its doors right there in Friendswood. The last one.
The whole Gulf Coast, and the final light went out in a town of under three hundred souls that had once grown half the figs in a seven-county stretch. From Nereus Stout's first commercial fig trees to that last closed door — that's the whole sweet, stubborn arc of it, right there in Friendswood.
What the marker says
Friendswood was established as a Quaker colony by Frank J. Brown and Thomas H. Lewis in 1895. Among the colony's early settlers was former Kansas farmer Nereus Stout. Stout became a highly acclaimed horticulturist and is believed to be the first farmer to grow figs commercially in Galveston County. J. C. Carpenter established Galveston County's first fig preserving plant in Friendswood about 1910. His main supplier was the Stout farm, but in time his inventory of fig suppliers expanded as figs became a popular and reliable cash crop. By the early 1920s Galveston County accounted for half of all the figs grown in a 7-county area along Texas' Gulf Coast. In 1930 one-third of the county's leading figs producers were from Friendswood, a community of fewer than 300 residents. Friendswood's two fig preserving plants supported a network of nurserymen and orchardists, and provided employment for many of Friendswood's residents, including the years during the 1930s Great Depression. Fig production along the Texas Gulf Coast declined after World War II; Friendswood's fig orchards began disappearing in the 1950s. A commercial fig preserving plant in Friendswood, the last of its kind still in operation on the Texas Gulf Coast, closed in 1968. Sesquicentennial of Texas Statehood 1845-1995