DUANE
Duane's take
The official marker tells it this way, and I'm just keepin' it honest for you. Now, before we get into the man himself, you need to understand what he was workin' with. Black-eyed peas — cowpeas, if you're bein' technical — arrived in the United States back in the early eighteenth century, and for a long, long time, folks mostly fed them to livestock.
That was the ceiling on the cowpea's ambition. Animal feed. Then the Civil War came, food got scarce across the south, and people started eating what they had.
And what they had, a lot of the time, was black-eyed peas. That shift changed everything — and one man in Henderson County saw exactly what it meant. John Benjamin Henry, Senior.
Born in 1866 in the Pine Grove community, southeast of Athens, Texas. He came up working in a general merchandise store, and somewhere behind that counter, stacking shelves or tallying accounts, he saw something other folks were looking right past: an economic opportunity hiding inside a dried little pea. Around 1900, though, the peas started talking back.
Customers were complaining — weevil damage, ruined shipments, spoiled product. Now, a lesser man might've quietly moved on to selling something else. Not J.B.
Henry. He and his wife Josephine went to work. Trial and error, trial and error — and in 1906, they cracked it.
Their first commercial dehydrating process. Problem solved, future secured. He dissolved his general merchandise partnership in 1910 to go all-in on wholesale black-eyed pea distribution.
And shortly after that, he placed a large ad in the Athens Review. No understatement, no false modesty. He told the whole town — and anyone reading — that he was the pea man.
Just like that. The pea man. By 1913, he was leasing land from the Cotton Belt Railroad for a new processing plant.
Not a little operation, mind you — a facility capable of handling and storing forty carloads of peas. And by 1924, the Henry Pea Company was moving several hundred cars annually. But here's the moment that tells you exactly who J.B.
Henry was. To show the world just how far his humble cowpea had traveled, he shipped a sack of peas via the barge Texas Steer — out of Trinidad, Texas, down to the Gulf of Mexico, up the Mississippi River, and all the way to Chicago, Illinois. That pea made a journey.
He made sure you knew it. He never retired. In October 1940, J.B.
Henry passed away from heart trouble. He's buried in the Athens City Cemetery. But what he left behind was something that had changed the American table — a man who took a pea that nobody thought much of, and turned it into a staple of southern cuisine sold nationwide.
The humble cowpea. Revolutionized. By one man from Pine Grove who simply refused to let it stay in the feed trough.
What the marker says
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)