He Chose Three Rivers

John Finkbeiner appears in the Three Rivers Glass record at two separated moments with a six-year gap between them: as the man Tips contracted in July 1921 to erect the factory — choosing Three Rivers over California alternatives — and as the plant manager who replaced H.S. Warrick when automation came online in 1925. What happened between those two appearances is not established in any held document. Tips’ own account of the founding does not mention him at all in the 1921 episode, crediting only the Ohio glass man (Warrick) with building the factory.

July 1921: The Contract in Clarksburg

The July 15, 1921 issue of the Texas Trade Review and Industrial Record, Volume 26, contains the earliest held account of Finkbeiner’s connection to Three Rivers:

Charles R. Tips returned yesterday from Clarksburg, W. Va., where he closed a contract with John Finkbeiner and some of his associates to erect a glass factory at Three Rivers to use the glass sand and the natural gas there in the manufacture of glass bottles. The decision of Mr. Finkbeiner to locate at Three Rivers was reached after making a very thorough investigation of San Diego and Los Angeles, Cal., both of which offered strong inducements to Mr. Finkbeiner to locate the factory there. Ten families of skilled laborers to act as the supervisory forces in the new plant will accompany Mr. Finkbeiner to Three Rivers all of them owning an interest in the new project. The factory will be known as the Three Rivers Glass Factory. [ev-0040]

This is a site-selection story: Three Rivers won a competitive evaluation against two California cities, and Finkbeiner was the decision-maker. The terms of the contract — what he was promised, what Tips committed — are not in any held document; only the fact of its closure is.

Mackey’s 2017 commentary on this record states: “It was John Finkbeiner who made the decision to build the plant in Three Rivers instead of Mr. Warrick” [ev-0040]. That reading conflates two episodes separated by seven months. The April 6, 1922 Manufacturers Record — also in Mackey’s collection — records the corporate structure at incorporation: “James Kepp, Prest., A.H. Morton, V.P., Chas. R. Tips Secy. and Treas., all of San Antonio, Tex.; H. S. Warrick Mgr., Three Rivers” [ev-0040]. Finkbeiner does not appear in the incorporation notice. Warrick built the factory; what ended Finkbeiner’s July 1921 arrangement is not in any held document.

The Gap: July 1921 to April 1922

Tips’ own account, written for the 1971 and 1973 marker preparations, does not mention Finkbeiner in the founding story at all [ev-0041]. Tips describes placing the advertisement, Warrick answering it, the $50,000 condition, and Warrick building the factory — with no reference to a prior contract in West Virginia. This is not necessarily a contradiction; Tips may have regarded the collapsed Clarksburg arrangement as a dead end not worth describing, or may not have remembered it five decades later. But the silence is notable: the July 1921 article treats Finkbeiner’s role as central, and Tips’ own retrospective omits it.

1925: Plant Manager

Three Rivers Glass increased its capital to $100,000 as machines came online in early 1925. At that point, per the Bottle Research Group’s 2019 account, “John Finkbiner had replaced Warrick as plant manager” [ev-0042]. Smith’s 1989 book independently records Finkbeiner as the manager who brought “25 years of glass production experience” to the role [ev-0039]. Both accounts draw on sources — Roller 1997, American Glass Review 1927, and Fort Worth Star-Telegram 1926 — not held in this expert. The “25 years” figure is not independently verifiable from held evidence, and BRG spells the name “Finkbiner,” which every contemporary source renders as “Finkbeiner.” [@ev-0042; @ev-0039]

How Finkbeiner returned to Three Rivers after his July 1921 departure — whether he was re-recruited by Tips, whether he had stayed in contact with the company, whether he had managed a glass factory in the intervening period — is not established in any held document.

What this expert does not hold about him

Finkbeiner’s background before the July 1921 contract — where he worked, how he knew glass manufacturing, what made him the person Tips traveled to West Virginia to recruit — is not in any held document. What ended the July 1921 arrangement is not stated anywhere in held evidence. Where he went between September 1921 and his 1925 arrival at Three Rivers, what he managed in the interim, and whether those ventures succeeded, are not established here. His tenure as plant manager after 1925 — what he oversaw, when it ended, what happened to him afterward — is absent from held sources. No held document corroborates or refutes the “25 years of glass production experience” Smith attributes to him [ev-0039], names his prior employers, or gives his birthplace, birth date, or death date.