First Girl's Tomato Club in Texas

Address County utm_east

Milam

693472

utm_zone utm_north

Cameron

14

3414584
Latitude Longitude
N 30.84946° W -96.97584°

Location Repair Condition

on museum lawn, NW corner of 201 E. Main and S. Fannin St. could use a cleaning

Marker Text

The first Girl's Tomato Clubs in Texas were organized in 1912 in Milam

County to acquaint young women in rural areas with tomato production and

canning techniques. At the request of the United States Department of

Agriculture, Mrs. Edna Westbrook Trigg, a local high school principal, agreed to

undertake the project. She organized eleven clubs throughout the county, with

members ranging in age from ten to eighteen. A similar program for boys, the

Corn Clubs, had been instituted in Jack County four years earlier. Each

member of the Girl's Tomato Clubs was to produce a tomato crop on one-tenth

of an acre of land and then was taught proper canning procedures. The girls

exhibited their products at Milano, Rockdale, the 1913 State Fair in Dallas, and

the Waco Cotton Palace. So successful were these exhibits that several of the

girls started college education funds with the money they raised selling their

goods. As the state's first rural girl's organization of its kind, the Tomato

Clubs were forerunners of later programs, including 4-H, that were initiated

under the supervision of the Texas Agricultural Extension Service. Over time,

4-H has expanded its scope but has maintained the principle objectives of its

predecessors.