Kingsville Garden Club
5 linear feet
https://archives.tamuk.edu/results/1/?collection_name=Kingsville+Garden+Club+Records
1890-1945 (unknown)
The Kingsville Garden Club was organized on March 9th, 1948. The organizing committee was Mrs. Charles H. Flato III, Mrs. Joe Keepers Jr, and Mrs. Edward N. Jones. From the beginning, they were concerned with serving the area by creating junior garden clubs for the children, garden therapy seminars, community flower shows, plant exchanges and numerous roadside beautification projects. Garden Clubs during the 1940’s were all over Texas and highly active. Towns like Bishop and Robstown each had their own garden clubs. Kleberg County had at least two known garden clubs, The Kingsville Garden Club and the Cenizo Garden Club. Flower arranging competitions were very popular in Garden clubs during the 1940’s and 1950’s. This collection has newspaper clippings stating that 500 to 600 people would show up to these events. The Kingsville Garden had a Christmas Show, with a flower arranging competition, at the King Ranch in 1952. Almost 8,000 people showed up, charging $1 for admission and with inflation that comes to approximately $10 a person in 2018. Garden clubs from all over South Texas showed up to compete at this event. The money raised would be put back into the community with scholarships and the Roadside Beautification Program that had six phases: Clean-up Programs, Wild Flowers, Highway Markers, Advertising Signs, and Control of Dumping and Unsightly Wrecking Yards. Garden clubs were so popular the Kingsville Record had two columns (The Garden Corner and Garden Gossip) entirely devoted to garden club news. The Kingsville Garden Club is still going strong today celebrating their 70th anniversary. They have 34 active members, monthly meetings and programs, and have standing committees consisting of Civic, Conservation, Courtesy, Finance, History, Horticulture and Yard of the Month, Library, Membership, Programs, Publicity, Scholarship, Telephone, and Yearbook.
The Kingsville Garden Club Records contain scrapbooks from 1949-1950, 1953-1954, 1978-1984, 1987-1988, 1992-2002 and 2014-2015. The scrapbooks are compiled by Garden Club members that consists of event and member pictures, newspapers clippings of the Garden Club events and reports done by the members about organizational business. The collection also consists of a scrapbook on the Christmas Festival Benefit at the King Ranch in 1952. There are Kingsville Garden Club yearbooks from 1948-1955 and 1968-1984. The yearbooks has membership listings, mission statements, and lists of organizational events. This collection also has the business meetings of the club from 1966-1981. There is also a photo album of the Kingsville Garden Club’s participation in the 1998 Parade of Lights in Kingsville, Texas.
Currently the collection is arranged in three series but due to popular demand, the collection is being reprocessed. Right now, one record has been made for each scrapbook but we are making individual records for each picture within the scrapbook. The Kingsville Garden Club are volunterring their time to identify each member in the photos along with historical information. If you have any questions about this collection, feel free to contact us at the South Texas Archives. Series I: Scrapbooks Series II: Yearbooks Series III: Minutes
South Texas Archives, James C. Jernigan Library, Texas A&M University-Kingsville
Open for Research
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Kingsville Garden Club Records, A1984-012.XXXX, A1987-016.XXXX, A1993-015.XXXX, A2007-022.XXXX, A2017-065.XXXX - South Texas Archives, James C. Jernigan Library, Texas A&M University-Kingsville
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A1984-012 – Gift Fay K. Robbins and Jewel Griffith Rees A1987-016 – Gift JoRene Newton A1993-015 – Gift Joan Nuesch A2007-022 – Gift unknown A2017-065 – Linda Jean Hamilton
A1984-012 was received by Patricia F. Scott and originally processed by unknown. Daniel Thacker reprocessed it in 2017. A1987-016 and A1993-015 was processed by Cecelia Hunter. A2007-022 and A2017- 065 was processed by Prasanth Devarapalli. EAD, finding aid and uploading of records by Daniel Thacker in 2018. Linda Jean Hamilton, Mary Cusack, Ellen Risken, and Debby Womack of the Kingsville Garden Club have been helping with the reprocessing of the entire collection.