Before the advent of modern refrigeration, milk spoiled easily and could sicken those who drank it. The risk was especially great for children. To provide a safer, shelf-stable alternative, Gail Borden Jr. invented a process for condensing milk by removing much of its water and adding sugar. He launched his company, Eagle Brand, in the late 1850s, but sales were slow until the Civil War, when he inked a contract with the U.S. Army to provide his high-calorie, portable milk for soldiers’ field rations. After the war, veterans sought out condensed milk at their local grocery store, and the ingredient’s popularity grew among civilians.
But industrial food production wasn’t Borden’s first career. Born in Norwich, New York, he spent time in Indiana and Mississippi before arriving in Galveston in 1829, when he was in his late twenties. He became the surveyor for the colony Stephen F. Austin had established in what was then Mexico and launched the colony’s first newspaper. Borden continued publishing as Texas won independence from Mexico in 1836 and later served as the young republic’s first customs collector at the port of Galveston. He moved back to New York in the 1850s and later opened his condensed milk factories in the northeast. He ultimately returned to Texas and spent his last years in a hamlet roughly halfway between San Antonio and Houston that today bears his name.
Borden’s life story defies assignment to a single era of history, says Eric Lupfer, director of Humanities Texas, which produced a short radio biography of the inventor. Borden was active in the founding of Texas and surveyed the frontier, but he also was part of the early Industrial Revolution. By learning about his life story, Lupfer says, “you get a sense of just how rapidly, how dramatically, lives changed in the middle of the nineteenth century.”
Borden’s radio biography is one of 155 two-minute audio profiles of significant Texans produced by the state humanities council. The segments, called Texas Originals, air on 22 commercial and public radio stations across the state. The program features prominent figures such as Texas Revolution leaders Sam Houston and William Barret Travis as well as lesser-known residents who contributed to the state’s cultural, economic, and artistic development.
“We want to include familiar names as well as those who aren’t familiar, but whose lives illumine or provide insight into important aspects of Texas history,” Lupfer says.
Farm Security Administration photographer Russell Lee, circa 1942.
―Wikimedia
Their ranks include novelist and folklorist Dorothy Scarborough, who served as president of the fledgling Texas Folklore Society in 1914 and cataloged Texans’ stories as well as the traditional songs of communities in the Appalachian Mountains. Fellow folklorist Jovita González, the first Mexican American president of the society, interviewed residents of border counties about their cultural traditions (she knitted during the conversations, hoping it would help her subjects relax). Novelist Elmer Kelton also captured the stories of Texas in his more than 40 Westerns, most notably his 1973 work The Time It Never Rained, which depicted the devastating drought of the 1950s.
The only strict criterion for inclusion in the program, Lupfer says, is that the person is no longer living. Originals educates listeners about political and military leaders as well as civil rights activists, writers, and entrepreneurs. It also spotlights people from outside the state who had a significant connection to it, such as Borden and park designer Frederick Law Olmsted, who traveled with his brother through Texas in the 1850s, penning his observations for the New York Times.
“Outlaw Queen” Belle Starr (pictured here in 1886, three years before she was murdered at age 40) was known as a notorious criminal but later became a symbol of the romanticized American West.
―Ardmore Public Library
Humanities Texas started working on Originals in 2009, and episodes in the first season aired in 2012. Scholars review each script for accuracy and confirm that emphasis is placed on the appropriate aspects of the subject’s life. The humanities council has partnered with Houston Public Media and Austin PBS on production of the audio, which is distributed to radio stations at no charge and posted, along with a selected bibliography, on the council’s website.
After the initial episodes aired, Lupfer and his colleagues learned that teachers of seventh-grade Texas history were using Texas Originals to enliven their classes. “The biographic approach is really helpful for middle school students,” says Lupfer. “That ‘life story’ approach is very accessible.”
Capitalizing on this discovery, the council developed a curriculum, launched in August 2024, that aligns with state standards. Students choose Originals subjects to invite to a dinner party or write their own script for an Originals biography—experiencing firsthand the challenge of condensing the material into a two-minute script.
Shotgun, Third Ward #1, 1966, by John T. Biggers depicts a Houston neighborhood resilient to the racial violence of the 1960s, manifest in the burned church in the background.
―Smithsonian American Art Museum
Shotgun, Third Ward #1, 1966, by John T. Biggers depicts a Houston neighborhood resilient to the racial violence of the 1960s, manifest in the burned church in the background.
―Smithsonian American Art Museum
As the council lays the foundation for future seasons of Texas Originals, it has worked to translate all the existing scripts into Spanish. It will release the associated audio recordings, which may be played on Spanish-language radio, later this year, introducing another audience to the wide range of characters who shaped Texas history.
“We want the program, with all of the episodes stitched together, to tell the complete and full history of the state,” Lupfer says.
