The founder of Benham & Company, Thomas Winterroud Benham, was born on April 17th, 1896 in Indianapolis, Indiana. He graduated from high school in Indianapolis and then attended Wabash College in Crawfordsville, Indiana. He was an outstanding student and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, a fraternity that honors scholastic excellence.
After graduation from Wabash, Mr. Benham entered the armed services and was assigned to a cavalry division in the U.S. Army. He and his classmates trained on horseback despite the fact that horses were no longer being used in combat. He became an excellent horseman, however, and continued to enjoy riding for many years.
When his unit was sent to France the day before the armistice was declared, he was given a choice between serving additional duty in Paris where the Army offered to send him to the Sorbonne, or to return to the United States. He opted to come home.
After leaving military service, Mr. Benham went to New York City where he found a position in the import-export business with J. Aron and Company. He stayed three years and then moved to New Orleans and continued in the trading business there. While in New Orleans, he acquired a small warehouse in Mineola, Texas, where he bought blackeyed peas from local Texas farmers.
The warehouse operated only in the summer with the help of Benham's son and nephew and some Mineola workers. When the Depression put an end to the trading business in New Orleans, Benham decided to move to Mineola with his new wife, Comfort, to manage the small warehouse on a full time basis.
On September 1st, 1939, Benham and Company was established as a Texas corporation. At that time, the company had two employees and the first annual payroll was $7,500. The first-year volume of business in sales of re-cleaned and bulk-packaged dried peas and beans was $100,000. The plant, warehouse and office space occupied 6,000 square feet of space.
Mineola was a good location for such a business because it was on the mainline of the T&P Railroad and at the intersection of two U.S. highways.
Mr. and Mrs. Benham started out with a small office in the Beckham Hotel. Gradually they began bringing in other varieties of beans and peas as the blackeye crop diminished in the East Texas area. They soon saw that they were going to need more space and were able to purchase a building near the present plant site on Freeman Street. It had been owned by a concern that used it for storing cotton - the Cotton Compress property.
On September 17th, 1945, a fire broke out in this building that the Benham firm had just remodeled into a large warehouse for grain and feed storage. The building was completely destroyed but the original Benham warehouse was not damaged. The losses totaled $10,000 - a considerable sum for the company at that time.
Before long, however, the firm was able to add another warehouse and Mr. and Mrs. Benham began to investigate the possibility of packaging beans and peas for consumers in small one pound and two pound packages. The firm installed its first packaging machines in the late 1940s.
From there, the company began to grow rapidly to the point where their beans, rice, peas and popcorn were being bought, packaged and sold in all parts of the United States.
Benham and Company started a similar operation in Memphis, Tennessee in the late 1950s. This planted was then moved to Murfreesboro, Tennessee where the packaging of beans and peas took place as well as the packaging of household aluminum foil.
From its beginnings in a one-room office, Benham and Company grew to over 100,000 square feet of plant and office space in Mineola. The plant employed 125 people in Mineola and an equal number at the Tennessee plant.
On May 31st, 1978, Benham and Company, Inc., merged with the Trinidad bean and Elevator Company of Denver, Colorado and formed a holding company called Trinidad/Benham Corporation. After this merger, the new corporation purchased the assets of the Westlam Company of California.
Trinidad Benham presently has packaging plants in the following areas: Mineola, Texas; Murfreesboro, Tennessee; Westley, California; Kansas City, Missouri; Sterling, Colorado; Shino, California and Sutter, California.
In addition, the company's plant elevators are located in prime bean growing areas throughout the country. These include Washington state for green split peas and lentils; California for blackeyed peas, baby lima beans, large limas and red kidney beans; Colorado for pinto beans and Nebraska for pintos and Great Northern beans. These locations provide the geographic flexibility to economically service most areas in the United States with dried packaged beans, rice and popcorm.
Benham and Company also owns its own trucking operation and, in 1983, it began poly film printing, making it possible to color print its own polyethylene bags and to print to order for all customers.
In 1967, Carl Hartman joined Benham and Company and became president in 1978. Mr. Benham became chairman of the board of the Trinidad Benham Corporation.
From modest beginnings, a very successful and productive company has emerged which has benefited the community of Mineola. It is grateful for the support of the community and its residents. It has been a good partnership.
(Editor's Note: This article is date December 26, 1983, author unknown. However, Benham and Company, Inc. continues to this day in Mineola. We will endeavor to fill in the subsequent history of this firm, from 1983 onward, at a future date.)
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