My father's birthday was yesterday...and

 

☞The photograph depicts the bearded & bespectacled visage of Gail Borden Jr. in an undated engraving.

On November 9, 1801, famous American inventor, publisher, surveyor, & founder of the Borden Company, Gail Borden Jr, (1801-1874), was born at the town of Norwich in Chenango County, New York.

☞Borden came to Texas in 1829 & became a surveyor for Austin’s Colony in 1830. From 1835 to 1837 the ubiquitous Borden published the second permanent newspaper in Texas, the “Telegraph & Texas Register,” prepared the first topographical map of Texas, & helped to lay out the site of town of Houston.

☞In the mid-1840s, Borden began inventing. He experimented with large-scale refrigeration as a means of preventing yellow fever. He also experimented with what he called a “terraqueous machine” -- a sort of prairie schooner that would go on land or water.

☞In 1849, he perfected a meat biscuit that was made of dehydrated meat compounded with wheat flour.

☞In 1853, he sought a patent for his most famous invention, a process for condensing milk in vacuum. After several unsuccessful attempts, he opened a condensed milk factory in Connecticut in 1858. When the War Between the States brought intensified demand for condensed milk, sales grew to the point that Borden’s success was assured. Along with Underwood’s Deviled Ham & Van Camp’s Pork & Beans, Borden’s Eagle Brand Sweetened Condensed Milk is one of the very few well-known canned food products of the 19th Century that have remained in continuous production to this very day.

☞After the War, Borden returned to Texas & founded the town of Borden in Colorado County, where he established a meat-packing plant. He died at the age of 72 in the town of Borden on January 11, 1874.

George Rogers was my father, born in 1914 in Galveston Texas. I've blogged about him before, but I do want to honor this man who was such a gentleman, and a flirt, and a respected member of the community.

My father in the rear, his father on left, George Sr., me as a 3 year old, and Dad's mother on right. No date. The senior Rogers lived in San Antonio and drove all the way to Dallas TX where we lived. Wearing summer garb, perhaps my birthday in August 1945.