Grayson County TXGenWeb

Denison Canning Factory

With the active group of horticulturists in the Denison area looking for ways to increase their income, a group of local businessmen, led by T.V. Munson, created the Denison Canning Company, chartered in 1889.

The Denison Canning Factory was built in 1889, southwest of the Cotton Mill. The January 5th, 1890 issue of Denison's Sunday Gazetteer described the new canning factory with one word - "mammoth".
The factory consisted of:
West wing : 100' x 40', two story with floor surface of 8,000 square feet ~ The section was used for reception and preparation of produce to be canned
Center building: 40' x 50x, two story with large ventilating tower with floor surface of 4,000 square feet ~ The first floor was the processing room, complete with steaming retorts (pressure cookers) and cooking kettles.
East wing: 100' x 40', two story with floor surface of 8,000 square feet ~ Used as a store room
It was believed that the canning factory would be able to buy from the surrounding farmers all of the produce that they grew in the miles of soil perfectly suited to the growth of fruits and vegetables. The management of the business agreed to pay the following for vegetables not yet grown:
Tomatoes, delivered - 25c bushel
Sweet corn ~ $7.50 ton
Unshelled peas - 50c bushel
Wax beans - 1c pound
Other crops wanted were all kinds of berries and small fruits and especially peaches.

I suspect bad management as the reason the cannery failed, but they also got a bad break from the weather. The rains came late in the summer of 1890, with the result that they were able to produce only a few hundred cans of vegetables and fruits - far short of the boasted 25,000 cans per day. They might not have been able to recover from that disastrous first year even with better management.

In 1892 T.V. Munson was President; A.R. Collins, Vice-President; R.S. Legate, Secretary & Treasurer; Directors included E.H. Hanna, A.F. "Fox" Platter, W.C. Tignor, J.J. Fairbanks, D.J. Derby and F.R. Guiteau with James Nimon (1849-1905) as manager. Authorized capital was $100,000. By 1896, Nimon's position with the company was "horticulturist". (Hunt, Frontier Denison, Texas, edited by Mavis Ann Bryant, c2015)

The 1891 Denison's Birds-Eye Map shows the factory at the south end of Tone Avenue, where it crossed the Houston & Texas Central Railroad tracks near College Boulevard, Coffin Street, the Denison Cotton Mill, and the Exposition Building.

Map with suggested location, 2015

By the end of 1892 the building stood: like some banquet-hall, deserted." (The Sunday Gazetteer, Sunday, December 25, 1892, pg. 1 - quote from a poem by Thomas Moore) Mr. Hann of Jacksonville, Texas, purchased the cannery on August 13, 1893. By December of that year, the cannery had been sold again, like the cotton mill, at the courthouse steps in Sherman. The newspaper didn't say who bought it. It is unknown who owned it for the next six year, until Smith's group acquired it in 1899 for use for housing.

The canning factory, a twice-failed Denison business venture of the early 1890s, was given new life in late 1899, when it was converted to apartments for prospective employees of a planned second incarnation of the Cotton Mill. Less than six years after the defunct factory was converted to housing, and after the Cotton Mill had failed its investors' second attempt to make it a successful business, the old canning plant was characterized by Denison's city physician as "a very dirty and nauseating place," where tenants suffered from smallpox, diphtheria, and scarlet fever.

James Nimon died on December 1, 1905 in Denison when he was only 56 years old. City Directories suggest that Nellie lived on at 616 West Heron Street until her death in 1930. Both she and James are buried in Fairview Cemetery in Denison.

After a year, the canning factory was condemned publicly by Dr. Gibbs. The former canning factory was bought in 1906 by W.B. Munson, who dismantled it and recycled the lumber into 17 new houses for workers in the Cotton Mill, which he had recently purchased at auction and would soon start up again.