Fig Industry in Friendswood

Friendswood was established as a Quaker colony by Frank J. Brown and Thomas H. Lewis in 1895. Among the colony's early settlers was former Kansas farmer Nereus Stout. Stout became a highly acclaimed horticulturist and is believed to be the first farmer to grow figs commercially in Galveston County. J. C. Carpenter established Galveston County's first fig preserving plant in Friendswood about 1910. His main supplier was the Stout farm, but in time his inventory of fig suppliers expanded as figs became a popular and reliable cash crop. By the early 1920s Galveston County accounted for half of all the figs grown in a 7-county area along Texas' Gulf Coast.

In 1930 one-third of the county's leading figs producers were from Friendswood, a community of fewer than 300 residents. Friendswood's two fig preserving plants supported a network of nurserymen and orchardists, and provided employment for many of Friendswood's residents, including the years during the 1930s Great Depression.

Fig production along the Texas Gulf Coast declined after World War II; Friendswood's fig orchards began disappearing in the 1950s. A commercial fig preserving plant in Friendswood, the last of its kind still in operation on the Texas Gulf Coast, closed in 1968. Sesquicentennial of Texas Statehood 1845-1995