J.B. Henry "The Pea Man"
Athens, Henderson County, Texas
Marker Inscription
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)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Black-eyed peas came to America in the 1700s mostly as livestock feed, until Civil War scarcity pushed them onto Southern tables. Born near Athens in 1866, John Benjamin Henry saw a business in the humble cowpea, and after weevils spoiled his shipments he and his wife Josephine perfected a commercial dehydrating process in 1906. Branding himself "the pea man" in a bold newspaper ad, Henry built a wholesale empire that by the 1920s shipped hundreds of railcars a year, even sending a symbolic sack by barge all the way to Chicago.
Why it matters
Henry turned a regional folk food into a nationally marketed Southern staple, a small-town example of the food-processing innovation that reshaped American agriculture and cuisine.
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Related people
- · John Benjamin Henry
- · Josephine Henry
Themes & tags
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