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references · updated 2026-07-26

Three Rivers Glass Factory — Primary Source Timeline

confidence: high volatility: cold verified: 2026-07-26fresh

A chronological index of dated events, newspaper clippings, and legal/property records for the Three Rivers Glass Company, drawn from period trade press, Charles R. Tips' letters, and Live Oak County deed records. Companion to the narrative articles; use this to locate the primary source behind a specific date.

A chronological finding aid for dated claims across the compiled Three Rivers Glass Company articles. Each entry names its primary source so a specific date can be traced back to the clipping, letter, or deed record it comes from. This is a curated index, not a full transcription — see the linked raw sources for full text.

1892–1921: Before the Factory

  • 1892-06-05 — Charles Rudolph Tips born.
  • 1912 — Tips graduates from the University of Texas.
  • 1913-03 — Tips and investors purchase 200 acres from Annie Hamilton of Cuero, including the planned San Antonio, Uvalde and Gulf Railroad depot site; a land company is organized to develop the town.
  • 1913-06-05 — First train reaches Hamiltonburg — Tips’ 21st birthday.
  • 1913-07-04 — Hamiltonburg’s grand opening celebration.
  • 1914-05-01 — Town renamed Three Rivers (from Hamiltonburg), at Tips’ suggestion, after the U.S. Post Office objected to the name.
  • 1917 — Tips volunteers for U.S. Army service (WWI).
  • 1919 — Tips helps organize the Dallas Joint Stock Land Bank.
  • 1921-07-15 — Earliest known printed record of the factory: Texas Trade Review and Industrial Record, Vol. 26, reports Tips closing a contract with John Finkbeiner “to erect a glass factory at Three Rivers,” crediting Finkbeiner’s site survey (over San Diego and Los Angeles alternatives) for the Three Rivers decision.
  • 1921 (late) — Tips places his glass-industry trade-magazine advertisement (per Michael David Smith’s 1989 book and Kevin Mackey’s research; some accounts, including the Texas Historical Marker text itself, misdate this to 1922).

1922–1929: Founding Through Peak Growth

  • 1922-03-16 — Crockery and Glass Journal: Three Rivers Glass Co. “just been formed with $50,000 capital.”
  • 1922-03-22 — Chemical & Metallurgical Engineering: company organized; H. L. Warrick named general manager.
  • 1922-04-06 — Manufacturers Record: officers listed as James Kepp (president), A. H. Morton (VP), Chas. R. Tips (secretary/treasurer), H. Warrick (manager) — matching Smith’s book, which names Kapp/Kepp as the company’s first president and Tips as secretary/treasurer.
  • 1922-04-15 — American Gas Engineering Journal: gas pipeline contract to supply the factory and the town.
  • 1922-05 — Three Rivers Glass Company formally incorporated with $50,000 capital; construction begins near the railroad tracks, between the tracks and the Frio River.
  • 1922-12-14 — San Patricio County News (via Live Oak County Leader): first milk bottle and first machine-made bottle in Texas produced at the factory (Prof. H. Coquat account).
  • 1923 (mid) — Plant closes and sits idle for approximately six months, per the Bottle Research Group’s 2019 encyclopedia chapter (hereafter “BRG 2019,” citing Roller 1997 and Smith 1989) — the shutdown behind the February 1924 reopening report below.
  • 1924-01 — Factory reopens after the six-month idle period (BRG 2019) — corroborating the Wheeler County Texan report below.
  • 1924-02-21 — Wheeler County Texan: factory reopens after approximately six months closed (likely mechanization-related).
  • 1924-03-20 — Wheeler County Texan: first carload of Texas-made milk bottles shipped.
  • 1925 (early) — Automated equipment online; Warrick relieved of duty and John Finkbeiner replaces him as factory manager; D. J. Woodward becomes the company’s first vice president. BRG 2019 corroborates and adds that capital was increased to $100,000 as the machines went online, with all products — including the newly added soda bottle line — made by machine at one continuous tank with six rings.
  • 1925-12 — Capacity doubled by the addition of a second 50-ton tank (BRG 2019, citing Smith).
  • 1926-07 — 35-ton furnace added, raising daily capacity to 60,000 milk bottles; capital increased to $150,000 the same month, probably to pay for the new furnace (BRG 2019, citing Fort Worth Star-Telegram, 1926-07-20).
  • 1926-09-02 — San Patricio County News: factory reopens after weeks closed for repairs; three-shift, 24-hour operation resumes under managers A. F. Tremblay, Frank Schattel, and Bill Reese.
  • 1927 — American Glass Review Glass Factory Yearbook lists Three Rivers making “milk jars and soda water bottles” by machine at one tank with six rings (BRG 2019).
  • 1927-11-03 / 1927-11-04 — Alto Herald / Mexia Weekly Herald: company supplies more than half of Texas beverage bottles and three-fourths of Texas milk bottles; over 100,000 soda bottles shipped to Puerto Rico and Central America.
  • 1928-03-15 — Bill of sale: A. F. Tremblay sells the company a patented bottle-blowing machine (U.S. Patent No. 1,648,792) for $6,000, to be installed at the plant by April 1, 1928; recorded June 29–30, 1928.
  • 1928 — 125-ton furnace added (45 tons molten glass/day at peak), per Smith’s book, matching the “furnace capacity is 125 tons” figure in a separate period factory-tour feature.
  • 1928 — Fruit-jar production inaugurated — ware outside what Hartford-Empire would later license the firm to make, and a move that drew repeated notices from Ball Brothers to drop jar production (BRG 2019, citing American Glass Review 1928, Roller 1997, and Vatter 1955).
  • 1928-12-02 — Fort Worth Star-Telegram: new automatic machine installed, increasing plant capacity by a third to 135,000 bottles per day on three shifts running 24 hours; Tips notes 1928 is the fifth consecutive year the plant has doubled its capacity; “regular shipments of bottles” now going to Mexico and South America (BRG 2019).
  • 1929 — Per Ellis A. Davis and Edwin H. Grobe’s Encyclopedia of Texas (Texas Development Bureau, 1929), the company supplies more than 75% of Texas milk/beverage/food-container bottles. Tips persuades Houston financier W. L. Moody III to buy $100,000 of company stock; Tips becomes company president as part of this transaction, sharing controlling interest with Moody.
  • 1929-06 — Three Rivers takes over the plant of the former Bastrop Glass Co. at Bastrop, Louisiana, running it as a second factory through 1933 (BRG 2019, citing Roller 1997) — see Bastrop, Louisiana Plant.
  • 1929-08 — Hartford-Empire licenses Three Rivers to use three of its feeders, restricted to beverage bottles and packers’ and prescription ware (BRG 2019, citing Vatter 1955); capital has reached $250,000 by this month (BRG 2019, citing Smith).
  • 1929-10-17 — Palacios Beacon: Dallas general sales office and district offices (Oklahoma City, Little Rock, New Orleans, Houston) established; sales history given as $16,000 (1922) → $500,000 (1928) → ~$750,000 (1929, indicated) → $1,000,000–$1,500,000 (1930, projected).
  • 1929-10 — Wall Street crash; the Depression begins.
  • 1930 (late) — Over 150 employees on payroll, including six full-time bottle designers — among them sculptor Gutzon Borglum (later of Mount Rushmore), then living in Beeville, Texas (per Smith’s book).

1930–1935: Depression-Era Operation

  • 1930-05-08 — San Patricio County News: Orange Crush Bottling Co. (Sinton) receives a carload of Three Rivers-made bottles.
  • 1930-06-20 / 1930-07-03 — Big Lake Wildcat / Palacios Beacon: production at 50 million bottles/year; W. L. Moody III of Galveston joins the board.
  • 1930-10-09 — Tulia Herald: factory closed several weeks for “extensive improvements,” new equipment added.
  • 1930-10-23 — Rockdale Reporter and Messenger: trucked shipments now reaching as far as Thatcher, Arizona (~1,400 miles).
  • 1930-11-12 — Corpus Christi Times: capital stock increased to $600,000 to finance plant improvements — “the remarkable growth of this South Texas industry” (BRG 2019).
  • 1931-01-01 — Bastrop Advertiser: production cited at 30,000,000 bottles/year.
  • 1931-01-29 — Fort Worth Star-Telegram: H. G. Goodwin, speaking for the firm, reports “four automatic bottle and jar machines each of which is capable of turning out 18 to 22 bottles per minute” — with three 24-hour shifts still unable to keep up with orders (BRG 2019).
  • 1931-12-10 — San Patricio County News (via Three Rivers News): “business depression is subsiding” — factory resumes full three-shift operation.
  • 1932 (spring) — Frio River flood threatens the factory; workers sandbag a levee.
  • 1932-03-15 — Live Oak County record: Tips pledges company cullet (broken glass) to an employee committee against ~$26,000 in wages unpaid over the prior eight months.
  • 1932-04-28 — Llano News: factory resumes operations.
  • 1932-06-10 — San Antonio Register: H&H Coffee (Hoffmann-Hayman) orders a quarter-million “Crystalvac” jars — one of the largest single glass orders in Texas at the time.
  • 1932-10-07 — Claude News / Hondo Anvil: production at 30 million bottles/year, 100+ employees; company opposes a proposed freight-rate increase (Three Rivers–El Paso, 65¢ → 87¢ per 100 lbs).
  • 1932-10 — Bankruptcy proceedings begin — the start of a long receivership during which the plant continues producing soda bottles, milk bottles, packers’ ware, and fruit jars until 1936 (BRG 2019).
  • 1933 — American Glass Review lists the company with “R.A. Ellerman, agent for receiver”; the Bastrop, Louisiana plant — closed first — is listed for the last time this year (BRG 2019).
  • 1934 — American Glass Review: products made in flint and amber (BRG 2019).
  • 1935-01-24 — San Patricio County News: Three Rivers Gardens Subsistence Homesteads federal housing project confirmed, Charles Tips as Project Manager; ~40 of 50 homesteads allotted, mostly to glass factory and other local-industry workers.

1936–1942: Foreclosure and Closure

  • 1936 — American Glass Review listing amended to “flint packers, fruit jars, beverage bottles, proprietary ware” (BRG 2019).
  • 1936-08-07 — “The Light” (newspaper): names Tips Glass Sales Corporation as the entity selling all Three Rivers Glass factory output, with Tips as president.
  • 1936-08 — John Matthijetz begins work at the factory (through 1937, per his 1971 letter).
  • 1936-10 — Tips Glass Company formed, with no plant of its own (per Kevin Mackey’s research, which also records a September 1936 feint toward a Caney, Kansas plant).
  • 1936-11-27 — The Three Rivers property is auctioned; Ball Brothers Corp. makes the highest bid at $80,000, acquiring the factory, patents (possibly those on the Mexican-built machines), and all other property (BRG 2019, citing Roller 1997) — BRG’s bankruptcy-auction account of the ownership transfer the entries below describe as a mortgage foreclosure.
  • 1936-12 (early) — Ball Brothers Glass Company forecloses on Three Rivers Glass’s first mortgage notes via Federal Court, per Charles Tips’ account of a betrayed Reconstruction Finance Corporation loan negotiation.
  • 1936-12-08 — Ball Brothers restarts production at the plant, per a 2000 presentation (Dick Cole, Midwest Antique Fruit Jar and Bottle Club) citing Ball’s own production records.
  • 1936-12-10 — Denison Press: plant “reopens” under new ownership; Tips now titled “president of Tips Glass Sales corporation.”
  • 1937 — Per Michael David Smith’s 1989 book, this — not December 1936 — is when “the Ball Brothers closed the transaction on the purchase of the Three Rivers Glass Company.” This directly conflicts with the December 1936 date given above; see Three Rivers Glass Closure Timeline Dispute. The 1937-sale/1938-closure account also remains the standard modern encyclopedia version — carried by the TSHA Handbook of Texas entry for Three Rivers (V. Sue Nance, revised 2025-11-18).
  • 1937 (through) — Ball Brothers operates the plant to fill contracts Tips had already secured (per Tips, Mackey, and Smith alike; BRG 2019, citing Roller 1997, concurs and adds the product list: soda bottles, prescription ware, vials, flasks, packers, preservers, and fruit jars).
  • 1937-07-10 — “Three Rivers Glass Sales” (Three Rivers) renamed and relocated as “Texas Industrial Investment Company” (Houston), under Texas state charter.
  • 1937 (last days) — Per Smith’s book, Ball completes the last contractual obligations and quietly begins dismantling the plant.
  • 1938-02-05 — Live Oak County deed (Book 70, p. 313): Ball Glass Corporation conveys a highway-strip easement to the county.
  • 1938-03-31 — Live Oak County deed (Book 71, p. 507), filed 1938-04-11: Charles R. Tips formally sells Three Rivers Glass Company, Inc., “and all track or parcel of land,” to Ball Glass Corporation.
  • 1938 (through) — Plant dismantling continues; Ball keeps a night watchman at the site for several years afterward (per Smith’s book).
  • 1938-09-09 — Ball Glass Corporation reference letter for former employee Lucas Diaz confirms Ball’s continued administrative presence in Three Rivers.
  • 1939 — Per Brantley’s A Collector’s Guide to Ball Jars (1975), this — not the standard 1938 — is when Ball Brothers closed the factory (while retaining the property); BRG 2019 judges Brantley “most likely correct,” against Toulouse’s claim of production continuing until 1947.
  • 1942 — American Glass Review glass factory list places Three Rivers as “no report” (BRG 2019).

1947–1960: The Site Afterward

  • 1947 — U.S. Supreme Court orders Ball Brothers to sell the Three Rivers holdings (BRG 2019, citing Roller 1997) — the outcome of the federal antitrust case Tips recounts in his 1971 letter below.
  • 1954-09-21 — Live Oak County deed (Vol. 164, p. 285): Ball Glass Corporation sells all remaining Glass Company property to Bryan Boyd and Harry J. Schulz of Live Oak County. BRG 2019 (citing Roller 1997) corroborates: “after some dispute,” Ball sold the factory in September 1954.
  • 1958–1960 — Correspondence (June 1958 through March 1960, partly in Spanish, with glass manufacturers in Monterrey and Mexico City) documents Boyd and Schulz selling the dismantled furnace’s refractory materials to Mexican glass companies, after being unable to interest other companies in reopening the plant.

1971–2024: Documentation and Commemoration

  • 1971-08-01 — Alice Echo-News: feature “Three Rivers Had Early Glass Factory” (Faye Bartula) — the factory “grossed more than $1 million a year”; site by then occupied by a grain-storage building. A marginal note by Thelma Lindholm corrects the article’s “first glass factory in the United States” claim to first in Live Oak County.
  • 1971-10-11 — Charles R. Tips’ letter to Thelma Pugh Lindholm: the fullest first-person account of the founding, mechanization, RFC loan betrayal, and the later federal antitrust conviction of Owens-Illinois, Hartford Empire, and Ball Brothers.
  • 1971-10-21 — George West newspaper (Vol. 52, No. 43): “Information Sought On Old Glass Factory” — Lindholm announces she is writing the factory’s history “in order to get a marker”; employee service records collected via Stanley Stewart include shipping-department service dates running through 1938 and 1939.
  • 1973-03-08 — Three Rivers News: historical marker for the factory site announced.
  • 1973-05-18 — Tips’ second letter to Lindholm, prepared for the marker dedication speech.
  • 1973-05-26 — Texas Historical Marker dedicated at the former factory site; Tips, the intended keynote speaker, is absent due to a car accident en route from Dallas — his speech is read by Viola Adlof. The marker is THC marker #5482 (Atlas #5297005482), an 18” × 28” plate on FM 72 four blocks west of US 281, erected 1973, per the official Texas Historic Sites Atlas record — the authoritative state citation for this and the marker-announcement entry above.
  • 1989-09 — Michael David Smith’s Texas Glass: An Illustrated History of The Three Rivers Glass Company, 1922-1937 published (Starsmith Publication, 1st printing, Atwood Printing, New Braunfels, TX) — the dedicated published history of the company, and the “Michael David Smith’s book” Kevin Mackey cites repeatedly.
  • 2017 — Kevin L. Mackey (President, Grace Armantrout Museum) compiles his article collection for the 2017 Three Rivers Glass Company Glass and Bottle Show (April 28–29, Gurwitz Community Center).
  • 2024-10-05 — A re-typeset digital edition of Smith’s 1989 book is produced (pandoc/LaTeX/tex4ht).
  • 2026-07-13 — Kevin Mackey emails corrections and open questions about the factory’s history to the maintainer of this wiki.

See Also

Sources