Three Rivers Glass — Primary Source Timeline

This is a finding aid, not a narrative. Each entry names the source it comes from so a date can be traced back to the clipping, letter, or county record that carries it. Entries are grouped by period and given in the form the source gives them.

Two habits are worth keeping while reading it.

First, a date here is the date of the record, not always the date of the event. A wire brief reporting that the factory “resumed operations” was printed some days after it did. Where a source states an event date distinct from its own, both are given.

Second, the expert does not hold most of the papers named below. It holds four compilations that reprint them — Kevin Mackey’s 2017 article collection [ev-0040], Thelma Lindholm’s 1971–73 marker research [ev-0041], Michael David Smith’s 1989 book [@ev-0038; @ev-0039], and the Bottle Research Group’s 2019 encyclopedia chapter [ev-0042] — plus sixteen pages digitised by the Portal to Texas History and read directly: fifteen newspaper pages and one page of the 1933 Texas Almanac and State Industrial Guide [ev-0035]. An entry cited only to a compilation is a claim about what that compilation reprints. The distinction matters when two compilations disagree, which they do.

It also holds one thing that is not a compilation at all: the transcript of record in Hartford-Empire Co. v. United States, four of its fifty-eight parts, carrying dated correspondence and sworn testimony produced under subpoena [ev-0059]. It is the densest dated source in the holdings and the only one that is a court record rather than somebody’s reprint of a court record. Entries drawn from it are marked by part and folio and run from October 1928 to July 1938. Read them differently from the rest of this timeline. Every other entry here is a report of an event; these are the parties’ own letters and their answers under examination, printed years before any of the secondary accounts were written and produced by the men who wrote them. Where they contradict a compilation, the entry says so in place.

Two cautions attach to them and to nothing else here. The extract is OCR of scanned pages with no page images matched, so wording is provisional throughout — quotations are given as the extract carries them, obvious mis-scans and all. And the four parts are four of fifty-eight: an event’s absence from these entries is evidence about which parts were obtained, not about the year.

Six points where the sources conflict

These are marked again in place below. They are collected here because a reader consulting a single entry will not otherwise see that it is contested.

When the plant began making bottles by machine. A December 1922 newspaper item says a machine-made bottle existed that year; Tips’ own account and Smith’s book both say the first two years were entirely hand work.
When capacity doubled in 1925, and whether by enlarging one tank or adding a second.
The plant manager’s initials — H. L. Warrick or H. S. Warrick.
The first president’s surname — Kepp, Knapp, or Capp.
The machine builder’s name — Harold Trembly or Albert F. Tremblay.
When the factory was sold and when it closed — 1936 or 1937 for the sale, and 1938 or 1939 for the closing. On the closing the trial record now speaks: George A. Ball, writing in May 1938, says the plant “has not been operated since December,” which puts it in December 1937 [@ev-0059, part 16, fol. 60667]. See the entry at 1938-05-21.

1892–1921: Before the factory

1892-06-05 — Charles Rudolph Tips born at Seguin [@ev-0037, p. 3].
1912 — Tips graduates at nineteen and enters his father’s banking business, selling real estate and fire insurance alongside it [@ev-0037, p. 3]. A later profile records him as a University of Texas graduate and a student assistant in government [ev-0030].
1913 (spring) — Tips gathers investors, scouts sites along the new San Antonio–Uvalde–Gulf Railway, and settles on the ground near the meeting of the Frio, Nueces, and Atascosa rivers. He buys the Hamilton ranch from Annie Hamilton and her sons of Cuero, and hires crews at $6.30 an acre to clear streets. He was twenty [@ev-0037, p. 3]. Smith’s account puts the purchase at 200 acres including the planned depot site [ev-0038].
1913-06-05 — Tips’ twenty-first birthday [@ev-0037, p. 3].
1913-07-04 — Lots are sold at a barbecue and the town of Hamiltonburg is established [@ev-0037, p. 3].
1914-05 — The name is changed from Hamiltonburg to Three Rivers [@ev-0037, p. 3]. Disputed reason: the 2013 family account says it was to end confusion with the town of Hamilton [@ev-0037, p. 3]; the compiled wiki this article replaces attributed the change to a Post Office objection, and no held source states that.
1914-08-12 — The Live Oak County State Bank is established with Tips as its first president [@ev-0037, p. 3].
1917 — Tips volunteers for the Army when war with Germany is declared [@ev-0041, p. 16].
1919 — Tips helps organise the Dallas Joint Stock Land Bank, making farm and ranch loans across Texas from a San Antonio headquarters [@ev-0041, p. 16].
1921-07-15 — Texas Trade Review and Industrial Record, Vol. 26: the earliest printed record of the factory the expert holds. Tips has returned from Clarksburg, West Virginia, having closed a contract with John Finkbeiner and associates to erect a glass factory at Three Rivers using local glass sand and natural gas. Finkbeiner chose Three Rivers over San Diego and Los Angeles, both of which had offered inducements. Ten families of skilled workers, each holding an interest in the project, were to accompany him. The plant was to make soda water bottles [@ev-0040, pp. 4–5, 9].
1921 (late) — Tips places a trade-journal advertisement describing the town’s advantages, answered by Warrick of Ohio, whose own factory had burned [@ev-0041, pp. 16, 43]. Smith names the journal Glass Industry [@ev-0040, p. 4]. Mackey notes that the marker text and some accounts misdate the advertisement to 1922 [@ev-0040, p. 17], and that the July 1921 notice above shows the factory was already planned and named by mid-1921 [@ev-0040, p. 4].

1922–1929: Founding through peak growth

1922-03-16 — Crockery and Glass Journal, Vol. 94: the company “has just been formed with $50,000 capital.” The notice places the plant at San Antonio [@ev-0040, pp. 5, 9].
1922-03-22 — Chemical & Metallurgical Engineering: company recently organised; “H.L. Warrick is general manager” [@ev-0040, pp. 5, 10].
1922-04-06 — Manufacturers Record, Vol. 81: officers given as James Kepp president, A. H. Morton vice-president, Chas. R. Tips secretary and treasurer, all of San Antonio; “H. S. Warrick Mgr.” Plant to be 190 × 48 ft, daily capacity 100 to 300 gross of milk and soda bottles, with a complete automatic feeder and air compressor wanted [@ev-0040, p. 10]. Disputed: this notice gives the manager’s middle initial as S, the Chemical & Metallurgical notice two weeks earlier gives L [@ev-0040, p. 10], and the 2013 family account states it was H. S. Warrick, “not H.L.” [@ev-0037, p. 4]. BRG follows S [ev-0042]. The variance is in the 1922 record itself, not a later error.
1922-04-15 — American Gas Engineering Journal: a four-inch gas pipeline from the Reagan well four miles east of town, let by the Three Rivers Production Company to Elder Construction of San Antonio, to be completed by April 15 at ten cents per thousand feet. The glass company and two cotton gins were to be supplied [@ev-0040, pp. 5–6, 10].
1922-05 — Incorporated under Texas law with $50,000 capital; building begins the next month [ev-0042]. BRG notes Roller recorded the month as April while Toulouse and Smith say May [ev-0042].
1922-09 — Production begins [ev-0042].
1922-12-14 — San Patricio County News, reprinting the Live Oak County Leader: Prof. H. Coquat, superintendent of Sodville High School, secured “not only the first milk bottle turned out by the Three Rivers Glass Factory, but the first machine made bottle in Texas,” and meant to keep it as a souvenir [@ev-0040, p. 6]. Disputed. Mackey reads this as showing machinery was in use in the factory’s first year [@ev-0040, p. 6]. Against it: Tips’ own account says “All of the bottles produced and sold in the first couple of years were hand blown” [@ev-0041, p. 16; @ev-0040, p. 17], and BRG, following Smith, states the plant “made all of its glass by hand during the first two years” because of the Hartford-Empire patent position [ev-0042]. BRG adds that ware made prior to 1925 was unmarked and dates the marks from the adoption of machines in 1925 [ev-0042]. The weight of the held evidence is against the newspaper’s phrase.
1923 (mid) — Plant closes and stands idle about six months [ev-0042].
1924-01 — Reopens after the idle period [ev-0042].
1924-02-21 — Wheeler County Texan: “Three Rivers Glass factory, closed for past six months, reopened with full force of employes” — a one-line entry in a statewide column of industrial briefs [@ev-0022; @ev-0040, p. 6].
1924-03-20 — Wheeler County Texan: first carload of milk bottles ever manufactured in Texas shipped [@ev-0040, pp. 6–7].
1925 (early) — Capital increased to $100,000 as the machines go online; all products, including a newly added soda bottle line, made by machine at one continuous tank with six rings. D. J. Woodward becomes vice president and John Finkbeiner replaces Warrick as plant manager [ev-0042].
1925-05-06 — Yoakum Daily Herald: “Chas. R. Tips, Three Rivers” is listed to speak on “Glass Bottle Manufacturing in Texas” at the Texas Manufacturers’ Association annual meeting, banquet at Dallas May 25, alongside W. E. Justin of Nocona on shoe manufacturing and speakers on cotton oil, lumber, and gingham. The banquet menu was to be entirely Texas products [ev-0023].
1925-09-28 / 1925-10-01 — Ferguson Forum, dated Sept. 30: the work of enlarging the factory “to double its former capacity has been completed,” and the factory resumed operations Monday after several weeks shut down. The melting tank was enlarged to about 22 tons of finished bottles a day; an additional temperature oven and a 150-horsepower gas engine were installed and buildings enlarged. Fifty-five men on the payroll, three eight-hour shifts, with more automatic machinery on order. During the past year the factory had supplied “a large majority of all the milk bottles used in Texas” [ev-0024].
1925-12 — Disputed against the entry above. BRG, following Smith, places the doubling in December and describes it as the addition of a second 50-ton tank [ev-0042]. The Ferguson Forum reports the doubling complete three months earlier and describes it as an enlargement of the existing melting tank [ev-0024]. The period notice is the better record of what was done and when; the compiled figure of a second 50-ton tank is not corroborated by anything else held.
1926-07 — 35-ton furnace added, raising daily capacity to 60,000 milk bottles; capital increased to $150,000 the same month, BRG suggests to pay for it [ev-0042].
1926-09-02 — San Patricio County News: factory ready to resume after being closed for repairs a number of weeks; many new features added; 24-hour operation on three eight-hour shifts. A. F. Tremblay, Frank Schattel, and Bill Reese named as factory managers, to train local men and boys [@ev-0025; @ev-0040, p. 6].
1927 — American Glass Review Glass Factory Yearbook: “milk jars and soda water bottles,” by machine, one tank, six rings [ev-0042].
1927-11-03 / 1927-11-04 — Alto Herald and Mexia Weekly Herald carrying the same item: the company supplies more than half the beverage bottles and three-fourths of the milk bottles used in Texas, plus fig jars and other containers; more than 100,000 soda water bottles shipped to Porto Rico and Central American points [@ev-0040, pp. 6, 11].
1927-11-21 — Cuero Daily Record, datelined Nov. 19: chili powder bottles of 2 oz. and 6 oz. capacity for the Gebhardt Chili Powder Company of San Antonio, some 61,000 daily — enough to pack “seven tons of chili” in one day’s production [ev-0026].
1928 — Fruit jar production inaugurated, outside what Hartford-Empire had licensed the firm to make. The company was also known as a price cutter, refusing the prices set by Owens-Illinois, Thatcher, Hazel-Atlas, and Ball Brothers, and Ball repeatedly sent notices to drop jar production [ev-0042].
1928-03-15 — Bill of sale, Live Oak County: A. F. Tremblay sells the company “1 certain bottle blowing machine manufactured under and described in Patent No. 1648792” for $6,000. The machine was then at the Alamo Iron Works in Bexar County and was to be installed at Three Rivers “not later than April 1, 1928,” $1,000 on installation and the balance in six monthly instalments at 6 percent, title staying with Tremblay until paid. Tremblay warranted that it would run as efficiently as “the other bottle blowing machines which the said Three Rivers Glass Company now has in use at its plant.” Witnessed by R. A. Ellerman and M. E. Herring; accepted on the company’s behalf, and acknowledged as a chattel mortgage, by “Chas. R. Tips, Secretary, Treasurer and General Manager”; filed 29 June and recorded 30 June 1928 [@ev-0041, pp. 47–49]. The patent itself is held [ev-0051]. Two things follow: the plant already had bottle-blowing machines in March 1928, and Tips was not yet president.
1928-04-26 — Coleman Democrat Voice, “Let’s Have Some Catsup”: an argument for Texas-made catsup that pauses to name Three Rivers — “one of the busiest glass bottle factories you ever saw” — against the claim that Texas does not make its own bottles [@ev-0040, pp. 6–7, 11].
1928-10-22 / 1928-10-24 — H. C. Mandeville, chairman of the board and general counsel of the Thatcher Manufacturing Company of Elmira, New York, asks Hartford-Empire whether Three Rivers can be licensed for milk bottles or whether Thatcher may sublet its own milk rights. Hartford’s president F. Goodwin Smith answers that “Thatcher could not safely join Tips”: buying into “Tips’ concern just on the basis of an additional 30,000 gross of milks a year doesn’t look good to me.” He adds that “the original suggestion of Three Rivers purchasing Liberty seemed to me justified” — the Liberty Glass Company of Sapulpa, Oklahoma — and will not commit to granting Three Rivers a licence [@ev-0059, part 16, fol. 60710].
1928-10-30 — Mandeville to Tips, answering his letters of 22 and 26 October: Hartford says that licensing Three Rivers, or consenting to a sublet, “will get into trouble with other licensees,” that Berney-Bond should be consulted and Buck Glass explained to. Thatcher will not take an interest in Three Rivers alone — “the industry is in such a critical condition just now” — though the original plan of Three Rivers and Liberty going together, with Thatcher joining, “seems good to us” [@ev-0059, part 16, fol. 60711].
1928-11-26 — Mandeville to Tips, back from New York and a conversation with Goodwin Smith: Smith “agrees that it would be wise to combine your company with ours if it could be accomplished, but is not disposed to favor the putting in of a milk bottle unit by us at your plant until some general combination is accomplished” [@ev-0059, part 16, fol. 60712].
1928-12-02 / 1928-12-06 — Fort Worth Star-Telegram [ev-0042] and Cuero Daily Record, datelined Dec. 4 [ev-0027]: a new automatic machine is being installed that will raise capacity by a third to a maximum 135,000 bottles a day, on three shifts round the clock. The melting tank is held at 2,790–2,800 degrees. New zero-porosity tank blocks will cut shutdowns for block replacement from every six to eight months to once in two years, each shutdown costing thirty days. Gas comes from a well on land owned by the affiliated Three Rivers Company. Regular shipments now go to Mexico, Central America, and South America [ev-0027]. Two cautions. The Cuero item titles Tips manager, not president [ev-0027]. And Tips’ statement is that sales doubled in 1928, “the fifth consecutive year that a doubling of sales has taken place” [ev-0027]. BRG, reporting the Fort Worth Star-Telegram of December 2 on the same announcement, has Tips bragging that 1928 “was the fifth consecutive year that the plant had doubled its capacity” [ev-0042]. Two papers, one interview, two different words for what doubled. Nothing held resolves which Tips said.
1929 — Capital increased to $250,000 by August; by 1930 virtually all deliveries were by truck, which cut costs and let the firm undercut larger competitors [ev-0042]. A period promotional poster carried “What Texas Makes – Makes Texas; We are loyal to Texas” [ev-0042].
April 1929 — David J. Jones begins work at the factory as a mould maker, serving through September 1930 and returning for a second term from 1932 to 1934. For the marker research project, Jones later submits a signed information sheet naming the staff he recalled from his service years. His roster: general manager C.R. Tips; Tips’ secretary, (Emma Lee Bryant) Mrs. Dick Epperson; factory superintendent O.M. Wilson; chemist Steve Coleman; glass maker and furnace supervisor Albert Bowman; construction engineer and draftsman H.O. Knape; bookkeeper Eddie Tyre; paymaster C.S. Steadman; secretary and treasurer R.A. Ellerman; machine operators Jim Woodruff, Frank Schotell, Whity Knight, Victor Johns, Otto Schotell, Luke Wagner, and Harry Campbell; machine upkeep and designer C.B. Hoops; shift foremen A.N. Qualis, Sam Lungo, Joe Tetskus, and Chester Peters; mould makers Ross Ayers, Jones himself, R.A. LaPell, Theo. Williams, and Ballentine (the last three joining after operations were established); and truck drivers Guss Diez, “Fats” Hutchens, “Hook” Hutchens, Herbert Simmons, and Claude Casey [@ev-0041, pp. 53–54].
1929-05-27 — Tips writes to Thatcher on Three Rivers Glass Company letterhead — “Machine Made Bottles” — pressing for the decision that would let Thatcher tell Hartford a milk-bottle licence was acceptable. The same letter states the plant’s legal position in his own words: “the Hartford Empire [Company] notified us that the feeders we are now using infringe their patent rights. We have not contested this claim, but have agreed with them on a payment of release of damages” [@ev-0059, part 16, fol. 60713]. This is the earliest dated statement in the holdings of the infringement that shaped everything after it.
1929-06 — Three Rivers takes over the plant of the former Bastrop Glass Co. at Bastrop, Louisiana [ev-0042].
1929-07-24 — Mandeville to Tips: the merger accountants are still reducing the several companies’ figures “to a common denominator,” and on the licence, “there is such an overproduction of milk bottles that it is awfully hard to consent to any increased production” [@ev-0059, part 16, fol. 60715].
1929-08 — Hartford-Empire licenses Three Rivers to use three of its feeders, restricted to beverage bottles and packers’ and prescription ware [ev-0042].
1929-10-17 — Palacios Beacon: a general sales office opened at Dallas and district offices at Oklahoma City, Little Rock, New Orleans, and Houston. Sales given as $16,000 in 1922, half a million in 1928, three-quarters of a million indicated for 1929, and $1,000,000–$1,500,000 expected for 1930 [@ev-0028; @ev-0040, p. 11].
1929-10 — The Wall Street crash [@ev-0040, p. 7].
1929-11-11 — Mandeville, answering a Turner Glass Company sales report on “the activity of Three Rivers Glass Company,” writes the fullest outside account of the plant in the holdings. A Hartford man named Nagle had just come back from Three Rivers, where “he had been their installing the Hartford lehrs and feeders.” Goodwin Smith “gave them a Hartford feeder franchise for everything, and he wanted to give them a franchise on milk bottles. I heard about it in time to talk with him and it was not done.” Three Rivers’ activity was driving the Liberty Glass Company at Sapulpa toward opening a plant at St. Louis, which Mandeville telephoned Smith to stop. Tips “has bought an old plant at Bastrop, La. There is nothing much there,” is trying to assemble “a combination of glass manufacturers in the South,” claims a Dallas oil man will back him, and “got some money somewhere and paid up his back royalties to the Hartford-Empire.” Mandeville’s verdict: “He is a good salesman and a good promoter and probably will get capital somehow, but I do not know just how or where he can do it. He has no plants that entitle him to make any low prices” [@ev-0059, part 16, fols. 60716-60717].
1929-12 (late) — Goodwin Smith, replying to Mandeville’s letter of 20 December: “As far as we know, Three Rivers are operating their own home-made feeder on milks. They have been told in writing, and have agreed, that they must not change this feeder in any way, shape or manner, and we, of course, have refused to license them on this feeder, or to grant them a license for any Hartford equipment on milks. They are building up infringement damages, and if we win the decision in the Court of Appeals in St. Louis, we will be in a position to get an injunction” [@ev-0059, part 16, fol. 60719]. This is the Three Rivers feeder described by the company that held it an infringement.
1929-12-31 — An interoffice Hartford letter to Goodwin Smith complains that “immediately upon the enlargement of these licenses” the company finds itself “confronted… with actions of a most demoralizing character on the part of the licensee,” naming Three Rivers and Hemingray together [@ev-0059, part 16, fol. 59692].

1930–1935: Depression-era operation

1930 — Dallas City Directory lists Three Rivers Glass Co., “Manufacturers of Glass Bottles and Jars,” at 1511 Santa Fe Building (15th floor), telephone 2-6757, F. L. Glover general sales manager. Only two glass manufacturers were listed that year — the other Libbey-Owens [@ev-0040, p. 11].
1930-02-12 — San Patricio County News: a visiting church delegation is invited to tour the glass factory after lunch at the Tips home [@ev-0040, p. 11].
1930-05-06 — Tips to Mandeville, on the “Machine Made Bottles” letterhead: “I was mighty glad to have you tell me in Atlantic City that you thought it would be possible to work out an arrangement by which we could secure the license to use the Hartford Empire feeder on our milk machine unit,” with Mandeville and Hazleton to take it to Hartford within a week or two [@ev-0059, part 16, fol. 60139]. Two years after the first approach, the milk-bottle licence is still being sought and still not held.
1930-05-08 — San Patricio County News: the Orange Crush Bottling Company of Sinton receives a carload of Texas-made bottles from Three Rivers; since the factory was installed it no longer orders out of state [@ev-0040, pp. 7, 11].
1930-06-20 / 1930-07-03 — Big Lake Wildcat and Palacios Beacon carrying the same wire item: the company will increase production, “already at 50 million bottles a year,” and W. L. Moody III of Galveston has recently been elected to the board, bringing the company into close contact with the Moody-Seagraves gas interests [@ev-0029; @ev-0040, p. 12].
1930-10-09 — Tulia Herald: the factory has been closed several weeks for extensive improvements; new equipment added and the plant remodelled; three shifts on restart [@ev-0040, pp. 8, 12].
1930-10-23 — Rockdale Reporter and Messenger: a large shipment of beverage bottles sent by truck to a candy and bottling factory at Thatcher, Arizona, “a little more than 1,400 miles” [@ev-0040, pp. 7–8, 12].
1930-11-12 — Corpus Christi Times: capital stock increased to $600,000 to finance plant improvements, in what the paper called “the remarkable growth of this South Texas industry” [ev-0042].
1931-01-01 — Bastrop Advertiser: the factory “makes 30,000,000 bottles a year and expects to have to increase it’s plant to supply the demand” [@ev-0040, p. 12]. Unreconciled against the June 1930 figure of 50 million above. Mackey flags the two as apparently contradictory and does not resolve them [@ev-0040, p. 7]; neither does any other held source.
1931-01-29 — Fort Worth Star-Telegram: H. G. Goodwin, for the firm, reports “four automatic bottle and jar machines each of which is capable of turning out 18 to 22 bottles per minute,” and that even on three 24-hour shifts the firm could not keep up with orders [ev-0042].
1931-03-29 — Henderson Daily News: a profile of Tips as president of the Three Rivers Glass Company and general chairman of the campaign committee of Progressive Texans, Inc. He is also given as founder and first settler of Three Rivers, a helper in establishing the Federal Farm Loan System in Texas, vice president of the Dallas Joint Stock Land Bank, president of the Texas-Oklahoma Joint Land Bank, and developer of several thousand acres of South Texas land [ev-0030].
1931-05-22 — Cotulla Record: a first-person tour. “Mr. Wilson, the foreman” showed the visitor through; the plant “was installed at a cost of three quarters of a million dollars”; glass sand is hauled by truck forty miles and mixed with lime, broken glass, and other ingredients; “They manufacture bottles only” [ev-0031]. The last phrase sits against the 1926 notice that “all kinds of glass products will be manufactured at the plant” [ev-0025].
1931-06-01 — Hartford-Empire to Tips, setting out the bargain in terms the company would still be relying on ten years later. Hartford “hesitated for a considerable period of time before offering you a Hartford License, in view of the fact that you definitely stated you felt you must continue to operate one of your ‘Three Rivers Feeders’, in view of the fact that Hartford was unable to grant you Milk Bottle rights.” The licence was accepted “with the understanding that Hartford would, at some time dictated by its own judgment, bring suit against the Three Rivers Glass Company on this one unlicensed feeder.” The occasion of the letter is a complaint that a pressed packers’ tumbler of Three Rivers manufacture had appeared in the trade, outside the field of ware the licence allowed [@ev-0059, part 16, fols. 60862-60863].
1931-09-14 / 1931-09-15 — F. Goodwin Smith wires Tips about royalties in arrears [@ev-0059, part 09, fol. 10172]; the following day Main & Company delivers an audit report of the Three Rivers Glass Company, with balance sheets, addressed to Charles R. Tips [@ev-0059, part 09, fols. 10172-10175]. Both were admitted only to show Hartford-Empire’s state of mind. Royalties, Safford testified, “varied from time to time as to the length of time they were in arrears” [@ev-0059, part 09, before fol. 10172].
1931-11-04 / 1931-12-22 / 1932-04-04 / 1933-01-24 — Live Oak County lease records: Eugene Kaub, L. S. Casey and Sons, and C. Haak lease trucks and trailers to the factory, the Casey and Haak entries recorded at Book 44 p. 259 and Book 46 p. 607 [@ev-0041, p. 61].
1931-12-10 — San Patricio County News, reprinting the Three Rivers News: “the business depression is subsiding in this section” — the current was turned on Monday morning and the factory resumed full operation on three eight-hour shifts, with more and larger orders “than ever before in the history of the plant” [@ev-0040, p. 12].
1932-02-23 — F. Goodwin Smith wires Charles R. Tips [@ev-0059, part 09, fol. 10175]. The trouble over royalties, Safford testified, “continued through the winter and spring and early summer of 1932” [@ev-0059, part 09, fols. 10175-10176].
1932-03-15 — Lien Record Book 3 p. 3, Mechanics and Material Men’s, Live Oak County: the company is indebted to its employees “approximately $26,000.00 or more for salaries, wages, and pay checks for the past eight months, including August of 1931 up to date.” Tips assigns title in the cullet — the heap of broken glass — to a committee of S. A. Coleman, J. Woods, C. Peters, T. Gillmore, and J. E. Hemperly, void when the payroll is paid, and outright theirs to sell should the company cease operating. Signed by Charles R. Tips [@ev-0041, pp. 61–62].
1932-04-21 / 1932-04-28 — Electra Star and Llano News, both one-line industrial briefs: the factory resumed operations [@ev-0032; @ev-0040, p. 12].
1932-05-13 — A second wire from Goodwin Smith to Tips [@ev-0059, part 09, fol. 10175]. Before suit was filed, a 1934 Hartford memorandum records, Searcy had in 1932 advised Three Rivers “that they were refusing to pay an unpaid balance of $6,600.41 and asked for a satisfactory adjustment” [@ev-0059, part 09, fol. 10261].
1932-06-10 — San Antonio Register: the Hoffmann-Hayman Coffee company announces Crystalvac, a vacuum-packed glass container for its H and H brand. “The initial order of one-quarter million Crystalvac containers was awarded the Three Rivers Glass company, a Texas concern, and was one of the largest individual glass orders ever given Texas.” Twelve new staff were added to a force of fifty-six [@ev-0040, pp. 12–13].
1932-07-25 — Hartford-Empire gives the Three Rivers Glass Company notice of revocation of its licence [@ev-0059, part 09, fol. 10176]. Asked whether Hartford consulted any other licensee before sending the notice or before revoking, Safford answered “We did not” to both, and agreed that “the decision was entirely Hartford’s” [@ev-0059, part 09, fol. 10176].
1932-07-29 — Orange Grove Observer: “Colonel Chas. R. Tips, president of Three Rivers Glass Co. and founder of the town of Three Rivers” announces a celebration and old-fashioned barbecue to mark the paving of the last stretch of Highway 66 through Live Oak County, shortening the route from the Rio Grande Valley to San Antonio [ev-0033]. This is the earliest use of the title “Colonel” in the held sources.
1932 — A Frio flood threatens the factory; E. J. Stewart and other workers build a sandbag levee around the plant. Stewart is uncertain of his start date — “it must have been the summer of 1931” — having first weighed Dr Pepper bottles by hand scale on the line and later moved to unloading freight cars in the paper-carton department. He gives no month for the flood [@ev-0041, p. 52].
1932-10-07 — Claude News and Hondo Anvil Herald. The Claude News gives the founding rationale — silica sand between San Antonio and Three Rivers that had before 1922 been shipped to a glass factory in Monterrey, Mexico, combined with South Texas natural gas — and reports production above thirty million bottles a year, more than a quarter shipped east of the Mississippi, with over a hundred employed [@ev-0040, pp. 13–14]. The Hondo Anvil Herald reports the company opposing a freight-rate increase on carload bottles from Three Rivers to El Paso, 65¢ to 87¢ per 100 lbs, a case set before the Texas-Louisiana Traffic Bureau at Dallas, and carries Tips’ statement that the company “established the policy of selling at the same prices in the Southwest that apply in the Northeastern territory” [@ev-0034; @ev-0040, pp. 14–15].
1932-10 — Bankruptcy proceedings begin, opening a receivership during which the plant kept making soda bottles, milk bottles, packers’ ware, and fruit jars until 1936 [ev-0042].
1932-10-21 — Hartford-Empire files suit against the Three Rivers Glass Company in the United States District Court at Corpus Christi. Safford, asked to give the sequence in his own words: “In July, 1932, was the first time which we sent cancelation notice to the Three Rivers Glass Company. And then we filed suit against them on October 21, 1932, in the United States District Court at Corpus Christi” [@ev-0059, part 09, fol. 10221]. A letter from Searcy to Safford of the same date is in evidence [@ev-0059, part 09, fol. 10176].
1932-11-01 — Charles R. Tips signs a notice addressed to the Creditors of Three Rivers Glass Company [@ev-0059, part 09, fol. 10177].
1932 (late) — “Subsequent to our filing suit the first mortgage bondholders had a receiver appointed in the State court” [@ev-0059, part 09, fol. 10221]. This corrects the entry above. What BRG reports as “bankruptcy proceedings” was a state-court receivership at the instance of the bondholders, following a federal patent suit; the bankruptcy petitions came later, in 1934 and 1936. The receiver was Henderson Coquat, whom Safford identified as “mayor of the town of Three Rivers and manager of the local Gas Company.” Three Rivers had already answered Hartford’s suit, and Coquat became a party to it after his appointment [@ev-0059, part 09, fol. 10178].
1933 — American Glass Review lists the company with “R.A. Ellerman, agent for receiver.” The Bastrop plant, closed first, is listed for the last time this year [ev-0042].
1933 — Texas Almanac and State Industrial Guide, Live Oak County: Three Rivers, population 1,273, “is a trade center for a farming and oil producing territory and has a large glass manufacturing industry” [ev-0035].
1933-01-08 — A temporary agreement between Hartford-Empire and the receiver, referred to in later testimony as “the agreement of January 8, 1933” [@ev-0059, part 09, fol. 10269]. Safford confirmed that when Hartford gave the receiver his first licence it knew “he was going to run that feeder outside of the license,” and that Hartford regarded it as an infringing feeder [@ev-0059, part 09, fols. 10273-10274].
1933-03-14 — A Hartford-Empire interoffice letter from Dallas to Hazel-Atlas, subject “Three Rivers”: the receiver’s plant is “now offering a regular packers jars in Pint and Quart sizes either Round or Square equipped with two piece screw cap to jobbers in the Sherman district,” quarts at $6.35 and pints at $5.50 delivered. “If they do this generally in Texas it will certainly affect our fruit jar business this coming year” [@ev-0059, part 16, fol. 60283].
1933-04-14 — Searcy wires Hartford from San Antonio: “Coquat says he is willing to treat with you on milk feeder and will wire you for appointment at Hartford.” The same wire reports that Collins of Liberty Glass “is not in position to trade with Three Rivers as long as it is a going concern because [the] same bank at Tulsa [is] financing him and Three Rivers” [@ev-0059, part 16, photolithograph at side folio 59557]. The wire is reproduced as an image and the OCR of it is poor; the wording above is given as the extract carries it.
1933-04-29 — Henderson Coquat spends the entire day at Hartford. F. Goodwin Smith presents the company’s attitude in three numbered points: “1. We did not wish to license Three Rivers at all. 2. Even if we did, milks would have to be out. 3. If milks were out and we gave a license we would have to know thoroughly their financial set-up and plans for the future.” Coquat answers “that it would be impossible for them to run the plant without one feeder making milks. He believes that there is still a place for a Texas concern doing Texas business.” The memorandum records that he was restricting sales to Texas and part of Louisiana, had turned down a contract at Tips’ old figure, expected to be back in production by 15 July, and had about $9,000 either paid or set aside for tank repairs with Harbison-Walker, Corhart and Laclede-Christy furnishing the materials [@ev-0059, part 16, fol. 59558]. Hartford also advised Coquat to get in touch with Collins of Liberty Glass, “and that it was impossible for us to give him any license unless it was under some arrangement with Mr. Collins himself” [@ev-0059, part 09, fol. 10262].
1933-05-04 — A glass-machinery seller writes to Victor S. Rice at 105 West Adams Street, Chicago: “The Receiver for the Three Rivers Glass Company down in Texas was here today and verbally gave us an order for a #10. This will be sold on a conditional sales contract, $2000.00 down and the balance at the rate of $1000.00 per month.” An earlier version of this entry called the writer Hartford’s, which the letter itself refutes: it treats both Lynch and Hartford-Empire as outside firms — Lynch “has been a little more active at advancing prices,” and the writer has “heard on very good authority that the Hartford-Empire people has bought the Miller Machine Company, they made principly press and blow type of machines.” Neither the writer nor the “#10” is identified by anything held; the extract carries the exhibit without a signature [@ev-0059, part 16, fol. 60429].
1933-05-15 — A Hartford interoffice letter to president J. H. McNash, “Re: Three Rivers Glass Co.”: the plant is “very active in Texas, going to the wholesale grocery trade all over that State and selling plain pint and quart jars, without caps,” at prices that with a two-piece Bernardin or Crown cap still undercut the Ball list, “so much lower… as to make the situation almost impossible for the legitimate fruit jar manufacturer.” The conclusion: “the Three Rivers Company, being a Hartford licensee, should be prevented in some way from misusing their license in the way they are now doing” [@ev-0059, part 16, fol. 60285].
1933-06-21 — A supplementary agreement between Hartford-Empire and Coquat as receiver, and, the same day, the court’s order approving it and authorising the receiver to enter into the contract [@ev-0059, part 09, fols. 10181-10182].
1934 — American Glass Review: products made in flint and amber [ev-0042].
1934-01-02 — Safford writes Searcy that a debt of $6,915.20 owed Hartford from before the receivership “must be taken as a loss.” Asked whether any of it was ever collected, he answered: “We never collected it” [@ev-0059, part 09, fol. 10184]. A further letter of 17 January 1934 is in evidence [@ev-0059, part 09, fol. 10182].
1934-06-18 — A Three Rivers Glass truck wrecks at Lafayette, Louisiana [ev-0019].
1934-07-26 — Safford to Searcy. Asked whether he knew at that date “that Ball Brothers were interested in trying to buy the Three Rivers Glass Company plant,” he answered “Yes, I did” [@ev-0059, part 09, fol. 10266]. This is the earliest dated evidence in the holdings of Ball Brothers’ interest in the plant — two years and four months before the auction.
1934-08-04 / 1934-08-16 — A Hartford interoffice memorandum records that “Three Rivers manufactured Brilliantines on Single Feeder No. 295 for week ending August 4th and checked them as ‘Toilet Ware’. This is the proper classification for this item, but they have not the right in their Field of Permitted Ware to make ‘Toilets’.” The breach is passed over: “We are going to overlook this production for the time being inasmuch as this plant may be sold very shortly to another licensee. If it is not sold we expect to terminate their licenses completely” [@ev-0059, part 16, fols. 60789-60791]. The plant’s feeders were individually numbered by the licensor, and one of them was No. 295.
1934-08-06 / 1934-08-24 — A telegram from Safford to Coquat, and a letter from John R. Hobson to Searcy [@ev-0059, part 09, fol. 10184]. On the second, Safford testified: “we knew Coquat had been dealing with Ball Brothers, hoping that he could sell the plant to Ball Brothers,” and that Hartford “may have suggested Ball Brothers as a possible purchaser for that particular plant.” Ball was not the only name Hartford put forward — “I think we also suggested General Glass Company” — and Safford denied any part in fixing the price [@ev-0059, part 09, fols. 10184-10186].
1934-09-01 / 1934-09-05 — Searcy writes Hartford; Hartford replies that “generally speaking, we would prefer to have Three Rivers taken over by someone already in the business, and would prefer not, if possible, to have new people in the business.” Hartford had “talked with Mr. Ball today, and according to him, the present plan contemplates his seeing Mr. Coquat on Friday.” Hartford had drafted a notice of revocation to be served on Coquat effective in thirty days and held it back pending the Ball talks [@ev-0059, part 16, fol. 60654].
1934-10-08 / 1934-10-09 / 1934-10-13 / 1934-10-18 — A run of correspondence on Tips’ plan of reorganization: Tips to Goodwin Smith on the 8th, Safford to Coquat as receiver on the 9th, Hartford to Tips and Searcy to Safford on the 13th, and Searcy again on the 18th [@ev-0059, part 09, fols. 10194-10197]. Safford also testified that “on October 12th we had canceled those licenses, so that no new license had been issued,” while “the Receiver then operated the plant notwithstanding” [@ev-0059, part 09, fol. 10201].
1934-10 (October) — Three Rivers is put into the Bankruptcy Court in a proceeding under Section 77-B. Safford: Tips’ plan “was adopted to the extent that the petition under 77-B was filed with the Court, but subsequently, as I recollect, the petition was dismissed” [@ev-0059, part 09, fol. 10196]. Chamberlain became receiver under the orders of the Federal Court; Coquat did not return to office [@ev-0059, part 09, fol. 10200].
1934 (fall) — The Ball Brothers–Coquat negotiations stop. Safford attributed it to “a combination of the inability of Ball Brothers and Coquat to get together on the price, and also… Mr. Tips blocking the deal.” He testified that he had no knowledge of any further Ball negotiations until September 1936 [@ev-0059, part 09, fols. 10198, 10266].
1934-11-21 — El Paso Times: the Harry Mitchell Brewing Co. uses Three Rivers Glass beer bottles [ev-0019]. Mackey offers both items against the claim that the plant sat closed from 1933/34 to 1936 — a factory not running has nothing to haul and no bottles to supply — and adds that the federal government would not have sited a subsistence-housing project for glass workers at Three Rivers in 1934 had there been no workers [ev-0019].
1935-01-21 / 1935-01-23 — Frank C. Ball, president of Ball Brothers, writes Hartford that Mason fruit jars sold by the Griffin Grocery Company appear to be Three Rivers make. Hartford’s reply recounts that “when Mr. Henderson Coquat was acting as Receiver for the Three Rivers Glass Co., we persuaded him to come to Hartford for the main purpose of trying to discover whether he as Receiver… was violating his license and lease agreement with Hartford due to the fact that he was manufacturing a domestic fruit jar.” Coquat denied making domestic jars and showed letters declining such orders, but admitted supplying packers with “a straight line jar with a screw top thread” that a buyer could cap and resell. Hartford closes: “if the Court demands that we re-instate our license agreement with the re-organized company we will make every attempt to write into that license agreement… that they will not make jars with the Mason finish and seal” [@ev-0059, part 16, fols. 59030-59031].
1935-01-24 — San Patricio County News: the Three Rivers Gardens Subsistence Homesteads project is confirmed at 3 percent over thirty years, about $12.00 a month for a four-room house on better than two acres. Project Manager Charles R. Tips announces that roughly 40 of the 50 homesteads are allotted, mostly to workers in the glass factory and other local industries; applicants earning over $100.00 a month were turned down [@ev-0040, p. 15].
1935-03 / 1935-04 — The 77-B petition is dismissed. “Then another petition was filed in the State court for reorganization under the Texas State Statute that was comparable to what we know as 77-B of the Federal Statute, and Mr. Chamberlain became Receiver under the State court proceedings.” Coquat “did not go back in office as Receiver” [@ev-0059, part 09, fol. 10200].
1935-06-08 / 1935-06-14 — Two letters from Searcy to Safford [@ev-0059, part 09, fols. 10198-10200]. The first states that Chamberlain “had refused to qualify as Receiver”; he qualified after its date.
1935-07-19 / 1935-07-23 — Safford to Searcy and Searcy in reply [@ev-0059, part 09, fols. 10201-10202]. The plant was in operation that month under Chamberlain’s management. Asked directly whether Chamberlain was a federal or a state receiver at that point, Safford answered: “State court receiver” [@ev-0059, part 09, fol. 10202]. Hartford had by then given him permission to operate the equipment without a new licence, and had received no royalties [@ev-0059, part 09, fol. 10201].
1935-09-21 — A letter to Hartford-Empire from Robert A. Kelly, M. D., admitted over objection because, in counsel’s words, “it is a part of the picture of the whole story of Three Rivers Glass Company.” Safford did not know Kelly, forwarded the letter to Searcy, and never communicated with him [@ev-0059, part 09, fols. 10202-10204]. The subject of the letter is not stated in the extract.
1935 (fall) — Safford meets Chamberlain at St. Louis and offers a licence on a temporary basis. Chamberlain “did not accept at that particular time” and continued to operate [@ev-0059, part 09, fols. 10204-10205]. A further letter from Searcy of 4 October is in evidence [@ev-0059, part 09, fol. 10204]. In the same season “the Texas statute under which the proceedings had been filed in the State court was declared unconstitutional, so that that plan for reorganization failed” — putting the matter into the Federal Court for the third time [@ev-0059, part 09, fols. 10221-10224].
1935-12-14 — Chamberlain writes Safford [@ev-0059, part 09, fol. 10205]. Asked to identify a place named in these letters, Safford explained that “George West was the local county seat of the county in which Three Rivers is located” [@ev-0059, part 09, fol. 10205].

1936–1942: Foreclosure and closure

1936 — American Glass Review listing amended to “flint packers, fruit jars, beverage bottles, proprietary ware” [ev-0042].
1936 — Dallas City Directory now lists seven glass manufacturers with Dallas offices: Ball Brothers, Cambridge Glass, Dallas Cut Glass, Hazel-Atlas, Kerr Glass Mfg., Owens-Illinois, and Three Rivers — against two in 1930 [@ev-0040, p. 15].
1936-01-07 — Chamberlain, as receiver, writes Hartford-Empire from Hartford itself, asking that the hearing on Hartford’s motion for return of its equipment be postponed three months. Hartford agreed. Safford: “He came up and asked for the right to use equipment to see if they could get additional capital. They could not get additional capital” [@ev-0059, part 09, fols. 10205-10206]. A telegram of the same date went to Searcy [@ev-0059, part 09, fol. 10206]. The receiver operated throughout the extension.
1936-03-09 — Safford sends F. G. Smith his analysis of the plan of reorganization [@ev-0059, part 09, fol. 10206]. Two questions follow it: “Was this loan made?” — “No. It was not made.” And: “Did Hartford have anything to do or take any action which resulted in the refusal of the loan by the R. F. C.?” — “No” [@ev-0059, part 09, fols. 10206-10207]. This is the Reconstruction Finance Corporation loan that Tips’ own account says Ball Brothers killed by buying the first mortgage notes [@ev-0041, pp. 43–44]. The trial record establishes that the loan was refused and that Hartford denied under oath causing the refusal. It does not establish who did.
1936-04-22 — Safford to Searcy, recounting a conference with Tips at Hartford and stating of the Three Rivers bonds: “we haven’t the faintest idea who bought the bonds, so you can rest assured nothing is being done without your knowledge so far as we are concerned.” Asked whether that was true, he answered “That is correct” [@ev-0059, part 09, fols. 10207-10208].
1936-05-01 — Safford attends a hearing of the court at George West at which Searcy attempted to argue Hartford’s motion for return of its equipment. “The Court was informed that the state court no longer had jurisdiction because the assets of the debtor had been transferred to the Federal Court at Corpus Christi, because the second petition under 77-B had been filed.” No ruling was made on the motion [@ev-0059, part 09, fol. 10213]. A telegram from Searcy of 5 May, undated as to year in the original and identified as 1936 by counsel, reports the Southern District judge’s opinion [@ev-0059, part 09, fol. 10208].
1936-07-28 — Searcy writes Safford that the state court has entered an order in the Three Rivers receivership; the receivership had returned to state jurisdiction on the federal court’s dismissal of the second 77-B petition, with Chamberlain acting and Coquat “out completely by that time” [@ev-0059, part 09, fols. 10212-10213].
1936 (mid) — Tips, seeing that he would lose control of the factory, splits off the sales branch as Tips Glass Sales Corporation, so that he and his sales crew kept ownership of the contracts and the bargaining power that came with deciding where and by whom the glass was made [ev-0019].
1936-08 — John Matthijetz begins work at the factory, as a bottle packer and in carton assembly, staying through 1937 [@ev-0041, p. 57].
1936-09 — A feint is made toward a plant at Caney, Kansas [ev-0019].
1936-09-05 — Searcy writes Safford about Tips’ activities “in operating a glass plant at Caney, Kansas.” Tips had no Hartford licence for it, and Hartford took no action: “it is my recollection that the matter died a natural death, as Tips could not raise money enough to continue the operation of that plant” [@ev-0059, part 09, fol. 10215]. This corroborates the entry above from an independent lineage — Mackey reads the Caney move from Texas corporate records [ev-0019]; Safford testified to it under oath in a federal courtroom decades before Mackey wrote, from Hartford’s own file.
1936-09-12 — William C. Church circulates the creditors of the receiver on behalf of an undisclosed purchaser. The circular states that “the Receivership itself is now insolvent,” that the receiver’s books “do not truly reflect all of his liabilities and over-estimate his assets,” and — the sentence that most changes what the November sale is understood to have conveyed — that “one of the lehrs in the plant is owned outright by the Simplex Engineering Company and the other two lehrs and all of the feeders are owned outright by the Hartford Empire Company, and the Receiver has no interest therein.” The plant is about to begin rebuilding its tank with creditors’ money at an estimated $14,000, after which the receiver “will be without operating capital”; $8,984.91 of creditors’ money has already been spent and cannot be replaced. Claims were to be deposited with the trustee by 26 September 1936 against payment of 40 percent [@ev-0059, part 18, fol. 63510; part 18, line 66509].
1936-09-14 — Church writes Searcy privately, enclosing the circular: “While we do not want it generally known, and ask that you and your clients keep the information confidential, the prospective purchaser that we represent is Mr. George A. Ball of Muncie, Indiana. He has asked us to get you and the Hartford Empire Company to assist him in purchasing the Three Rivers plant.” The plan was “to take the plant over as soon as the new tank is constructed” [@ev-0059, part 16, fol. 60658]. Safford testified that this was his first knowledge that the Ball negotiations, broken off in the fall of 1934, had reopened [@ev-0059, part 09, fols. 10215-10216].
1936-09-15 / 1936-09-17 — Searcy forwards Church’s letter and the circular to Hartford; Safford replies authorising the assignment of Hartford’s claim, encloses an itemisation of $14,357.53 billed against the receivership, and adds a further instruction: “Mr. Smith suggests that in addition to the above you try to get the receiver to agree that the machinery is our property and should be returned to us” [@ev-0059, part 18, fols. 63508-63509; part 09, fols. 10215-10216].
1936-10 — Tips Glass Company is formed, with no plant of its own — Mackey reads the manoeuvres as leverage over the glass contracts and a possible way to re-employ the Three Rivers workforce [ev-0019].
1936-10-10 — Safford states Hartford’s claim against the receivership: $14,357.53 in royalties from Coquat’s operation and $17,532.72 from Chamberlain’s, $31,890.25 in all. The Coquat figure came from Hartford’s own books; the Chamberlain figure was the amount Chamberlain or his attorney gave Hartford, and Hartford accepted it. Hartford received 40 percent of the total and nothing more [@ev-0059, part 09, fols. 10217-10218].
1936-11-16 — Searcy writes Safford that the court has ordered notice given of the proposed sale, on 27 November 1936, of the Three Rivers Glass Company property to the Guardian Loan Company, Trustee, with a hearing on confirmation in the District Court at George West that day and all parties at interest called on to appear and register opposition [@ev-0059, part 09, fols. 10218-10219]. The sale was made to a trustee. Safford’s later testimony is that the plant “was finally purchased by a representative of George A. Ball and title put into the Ball Glass Corporation” [@ev-0059, part 09, fols. 10267-10268].
1936-11-27 — The Three Rivers property is auctioned. Ball Brothers Corp. bids highest at $80,000, taking the factory, the patents — possibly those connected with the Mexican machines — and all other property [ev-0042].
1936-11-27 (same day) — “At the same time this transfer was directed the District Court of the State of Texas directed that the machinery be turned back to Hartford-Empire Company” — and Hartford left it in place [@ev-0059, part 09, fol. 10268]. The order and the sale are the same day’s business.
1936-12-04 — Searcy sends Safford the court’s order entered after the hearing; a second letter of the same date comes from another correspondent [@ev-0059, part 09, fols. 10219-10220].
1936-12 (early) — Ball Brothers forecloses on the first mortgage notes through the Federal Court. Tips’ account: he had obtained Reconstruction Finance Corporation approval for a $100,000 loan conditioned on the first mortgage holders subordinating their claim, and “through a crooked attorney, Ball Brothers purchased these first mortgage notes and would not agree to the loan” [@ev-0041, pp. 43–44]. Mackey adds that Tips’ salesmen are said to have held a million dollars in contracts for 1937 delivery, which Ball could only realise by producing at Three Rivers and paying the salesmen [ev-0019].
1936-12-08 — Ball restarts production, per Dick Cole’s October 2000 presentation to the Midwest Antique Fruit Jar and Bottle Club, which Mackey reports as drawing on Ball’s own production records: “went into receivership in December, 1936. They were taken over by Ball Brothers Glass Manufacturing Company which restarted production December 8, 1936” [@ev-0040, p. 4].
1936-12-10 — Denison Press: the factory “has again resumed operations” after several weeks shut for repairs, a hundred men back at work on a 24-hour, seven-day schedule, with orders enough to hold it for months. Tips is titled president of Tips Glass Sales corporation, not of Three Rivers Glass [@ev-0040, p. 15].
1937 — Disputed. Smith’s book dates the closing of the Ball purchase to 1937, not December 1936 [@ev-0038; @ev-0039]. The TSHA Handbook of Texas carries the same 1937-sale, 1938-closure account [ev-0004], as does the state marker text itself — “Sold in 1937 to Ball Glass Company. It was closed in 1938” [@ev-0041, p. 23; @ev-0011] — and the 1971 Alice Echo-News feature [@ev-0041, p. 42] and the 1956–57 Texas Almanac, which has Tips serving as president “until 1937 when it was sold to out-of-state interests” [@ev-0040, p. 16]. Against them, Mackey holds the deal closed at the end of 1936 and notes that the Ball Brothers timelines all give 1936 [@ev-0040, p. 4], and BRG dates the auction to November 27, 1936 [ev-0042]. The 1936 date rests on the auction record and Ball’s own production records; the 1937 date is the one that entered the standard accounts and the marker.
1937 (through) — Ball operates the plant to fill contracts Tips had already secured, making soda bottles, prescription ware, vials, flasks, packers, preservers, and fruit jars [ev-0042]. Tips’ own account agrees: “Ball Brothers operated the factory for one year to fill these contracts and then closed the factory down. There only purpose in taking over the factory had been to eliminate the competition” [@ev-0041, p. 44].
1937-07-01 through 1937-08-31 — Four letters on Ball Glass Corporation and Ball Brothers letterhead fix the plant’s management by name. R. A. Ellerman, signing as Manager, Ball Glass Corporation, Three Rivers, Texas, writes Muncie on 1 July about Capstan and Hazel-Atlas quoting modernistic jars at the pantry-jar price of $4.92 per gross, and again on 15 July about an Owens-Illinois quotation to the Southern Coffee and Products Company of Oklahoma City; Ball Brothers replies on 21 July and, over F. J. Petty’s signature as assistant secretary, on 31 August about rail-and-barge freight differentials [@ev-0059, part 16, fols. 60669-60673]. The 1933 American Glass Review lists an “R.A. Ellerman, agent for receiver” at this plant [ev-0042]. Nothing held distinguishes the two men, and nothing held states that they are one.
1937-07-10 — “Three Rivers Glass Sales” of Three Rivers is renamed and relocated as “Texas Industrial Investment Company” of Houston under Texas charter [ev-0019].
1937-09-23 — Aspermont Star, a T.S.C.W. feature: “over 100,000 bottles are turned out a day” at Three Rivers — milk bottles, beverage bottles, food containers, medicine bottles. The same item ran in the Mineola Monitor that day and the Rusk Cherokee on October 1 [@ev-0040, p. 16]. The plant was under Ball ownership by this date.
1937-12 — The plant stops. The date is not given directly by any account written afterward; it is given in passing by its owner five months later, in a letter about something else. See 1938-05-21 below.
1938-02-05 — Live Oak County, Book 70 p. 313: Ball Glass Corporation deeds Live Oak County a strip averaging 21 feet for State Highway No. 202 [@ev-0041, p. 62].
1938-03-31 — Live Oak County, Book 71 p. 507, filed 1938-04-11: Charles R. Tips sells Three Rivers Glass Company, Inc., “and all track or parcel of land,” to Ball Glass Corporation [@ev-0041, p. 62].
1938-09-09 — Ball Glass Corporation, “Manufacturers of Glass Bottles and Jars, Three Rivers, Texas,” writes a letter of introduction for Lucas Diaz, “formerly employed by BALL GLASS CORP.,” who had been tank supervisor for three years. Signed by C. C. Cook, factory manager [@ev-0041, p. 64]. Ball still had a factory manager on the letterhead in September 1938.
1938-05-06 — F. Goodwin Smith writes George A. Ball, now vice-president of Ball Brothers, about “our equipment which the Ball Glass Corporation is now using at their Three Rivers plant.” The complaint is not financial but contractual: “it is hardly correct to have what was a temporary situation run along without a definite signed contract… we do definitely feel the time has come when licenses and leases must be signed” [@ev-0059, part 16, fols. 60665-60666]. Eighteen months after the court ordered the machinery returned, Hartford’s machinery was still in the building.
1938-05-21 — George A. Ball replies that Three Rivers is a subsidiary of Ball Brothers and its feeders are therefore already covered by Section 2, Article 3 of the general feeder licence, and adds, in a subordinate clause: “As you know, Three Rivers has not been operated since December” [@ev-0059, part 16, fol. 60667]. Written in May 1938, that dates the shutdown to December 1937 — one year and a few days after Ball restarted the plant on 8 December 1936. This is the only contemporaneous dated statement of the closing in the holdings, and it comes from the owner. It agrees with Tips’ recollection that “Ball Brothers operated the factory for one year to fill these contracts and then closed the factory down” [@ev-0041, p. 44], and against Brantley’s 1939 (below) and the marker’s 1938 [ev-0011].
1938-07-16 — George A. Ball declines a Three Rivers licence outright and gives the reason for the closing: “The Three Rivers plant and equipment was [bought] from the receiver. It was in due time closed down for repairs and at the time those repairs were completed there was not enough business in that section to make possible the operation of both Three Rivers and Wichita Falls.” Ball had displaced Owens machines at Wichita Falls with feeder machines whose royalty “amounts to a good deal more than the two or three feeders formerly operated at the Three Rivers plant” [@ev-0059, part 16, fol. 60668]. Formerly — and Hartford’s feeders were still there.
1938-07-28 — A Hartford internal memorandum on the state of the Ball negotiations, reporting a conversation at second hand: “Ball Bros. know they bought a pile of junk when they bought Three Rivers and at present never expect to open it up.” A Hartford letter about lehr licence fees at Three Rivers had just cost the company a trial installation of three Hartford feeders — “F. C. flew off the handle again and the Hartford Feeders were all off” — and the writer relays a request that Hartford “refrain from sending any more letters for just a little while” [@ev-0059, part 16, fol. 60688]. It is hearsay within a private memorandum and is offered here as that.
1939 — Brantley’s A Collector’s Guide to Ball Jars (1975) gives 1939 as the year Ball closed the factory, while retaining the property. BRG judges Brantley “most likely correct,” against Toulouse’s claim that production continued to 1947 [ev-0042]. Against both stands the owner’s own letter of 21 May 1938 above, which has the plant idle since December — and a Hartford memorandum of 28 July 1938 reporting that Ball “at present never expect to open it up” [@ev-0059, part 16, fols. 60667, 60688]. The count on the other side is not zero. The state marker [ev-0011], the TSHA Handbook of Texas [ev-0004], and both pages of the company’s present-day website [@ev-0001; @ev-0002] give 1938; Mackey quotes Dick Cole as “studying the production records from 1936 into 1938 when the plant was closed” [@ev-0040, p. 4]; and Toulouse, through BRG, carried production to 1947 [ev-0042]. None of them is contemporaneous. Ball’s letter is.
1942 — American Glass Review glass factory list places Three Rivers as “no report” [ev-0042].

1947–1960: The site afterward

1947 — The U.S. Supreme Court orders Ball Brothers to sell the Three Rivers holdings [ev-0042]. Tips separately recounts that an Assistant Attorney General told him evidence had been found to convict Owens-Illinois, Hartford-Empire, and Ball Brothers of antitrust violations; that they were tried at Toledo, found guilty, and lost on appeal to the Supreme Court [@ev-0041, p. 44]. Read Tips’ vocabulary with care. The proceeding this expert holds the record of is a suit in equity: the Government’s numbered Relief Requested asks for contract cancellations, injunctions, and an order directing Ball Brothers to divest the Three Rivers assets, and asks for no fine [@ev-0059, part 18, fols. 64374-64375]. No indictment and no criminal conviction appears anywhere in the four parts held. Whether a separate criminal case existed is not settled by anything here.
1954-09-21 — Live Oak County, Vol. 164 p. 285: Ball Glass Corporation sells all remaining Glass Company property to Bryan Boyd and Harry J. Schulz of Live Oak County [@ev-0041, p. 62]. BRG corroborates a sale in September 1954 “after some dispute” [ev-0042].
1954–1958 — The tank installed shortly before the Ball purchase, which Ball had remodelled, was still in working condition. Schulz records that he and Boyd approached several glass companies about operating the factory on a more conservative footing and were refused by each [@ev-0041, p. 65].
1958-06-11 through 1960-03-22 — Correspondence, partly in Spanish, with glass manufacturers at Monterrey and Mexico City. Vidriera “Nuevo León,” S.A., of Monterrey writes to “Sr. Harry J. Schultz, Attorney At Law, Three Rivers, Texas” that “what interests us are the refractory blocks”; twenty months later the same firm is still “battling to obtain the permit enabling us to bring the rock” [@ev-0041, pp. 67, 70]. The compiler’s caption states that the tank “was dismantled and sold to two Companies in Mexico” [@ev-0041, p. 65]; the letters filed beneath it record a negotiation and no completed sale, and the only support for the caption is a third firm’s understanding in March 1960 that shipments had been made [@ev-0041, p. 71]. See concepts/three-rivers-glass-factory-site-1938-1973.md. The letters were translated for the research file by Cindy Smith of George West [@ev-0041, p. 67].
1960-12-15 — Tips Glass Company, incorporated under the laws of Texas, issues a certificate for five shares of common stock to John Matthaeus [@ev-0041, p. 58]. The sales entity outlived the factory by more than two decades.

1971–2026: Documentation and commemoration

1971-08-01 — Alice Echo-News, “Three Rivers Had Early Glass Factory” by Faye Bartula: the factory “grossed more than $1 million a year”; the site is now a tin building used for grain storage, possibly built partly from the original lumber; a competing company bought the factory in 1937 and dismantled rather than remodelled it [@ev-0041, p. 42]. Lindholm’s marginal note corrects the article’s claim that it was “the first glass factory in the United States” to read “the first glass factory in Live Oak County” [@ev-0041, p. 42].
1971-10-11 — Tips’ letter to Thelma Pugh Lindholm on Golden Triangle Land Co. letterhead: the fullest first-person account held. It covers the advertisement and Warrick’s reply, the hand-operated plant, the Hartford-Empire refusal, the trip to Monterrey for Tremblay, the backing of Harry H. Rogers and W. L. Moody III — “who at that time owned United Gas Company and was supplying the gas we used” — Progressive Texans, Inc. and its slogan “What Texas Makes, Makes Texas,” the RFC loan and its defeat, and the antitrust conviction. Tips also names R. A. Ellerman, whom he brought from Ohio, as “one of my right hand men” [@ev-0041, pp. 43–44].
1971-10-21 — George West newspaper, Vol. 52 No. 43, Thursday, October 21, 1971: “Information Sought On Old Glass Factory” — Lindholm announces she is writing the factory’s history in order to get a marker; employee service records were collected through Stanley Stewart [@ev-0041, p. 50].
1971-11-16 — John Matthijetz’s letter: “I worked at the Three Rivers Glass Factory from August 1936 through 1937 both as a bottle packer and in the carton assembling department.” He describes picking up four bottles at a time in heavy gloves and examining them under a strong light for defects [@ev-0041, p. 57].
1972-03-30 — Beeville Bee-Picayune: at the Live Oak County Fair, Lee Troell exhibited a large collection of bottles, many from the former glass factory, and took the sixth place ribbon [ev-0036].
1973-03-08 — Three Rivers News: Mrs. William Hinnant announces to the Live Oak County Historical Survey Committee that an official marker “will be erected soon,” to stand alongside Farm Road 72 four blocks west of the traffic light in downtown Three Rivers [@ev-0041, p. 2].
1973-05-18 — Tips’ second letter to Lindholm, prepared for the dedication speech [@ev-0041, p. 16].
1973-05-26 — The marker is dedicated. Tips, the keynote speaker, is absent after a car wreck at Waco en route from Dallas with his wife Hazel; Viola Adlof read the speech he had prepared [@ev-0041, p. 15], and Mrs. William Hinnant chaired the program. The unveiling was performed by former workers — Lee Wiebush, engineer; David Jones, mold maker; Lucas Diaz Sr., furnace department; John Matthijetz, warehouseman; Wabon Stewart, bottle tester; Charles Herring, packer; W. A. Barrow, floor maintenance; C. E. Voges, shipping; Bryan Boyd, shipping clerk; Carl Steadman, bookkeeper; and others [@ev-0041, p. 23]. The marker is THC marker #5482, Atlas #5297005482, an 18″ × 28″ plate on FM 72 four blocks west of US 281, erected 1973 [ev-0011].
1989-09 — Michael David Smith’s Texas Glass: An Illustrated History of the Three Rivers Glass Company, 1922-1937 is published, Starsmith Publication, first printing, Atwood Printing, New Braunfels [@ev-0038; @ev-0042].
2013-07-04 — Refugio County Press, The Progress supplement: Jerry Retzloff’s centennial profile of the Tips family, seventh in a series for the town’s hundredth birthday, with information from GeeGee Thorn, Tips’ granddaughter [ev-0037].
2017-04-28/29 — The Three Rivers Glass Co. Glass and Bottle Show is held at the Gurwitz Community Center, hosted by the Grace Armantrout Museum with the City of Three Rivers and the Chamber of Commerce. Mackey compiled his article collection for it [@ev-0040, pp. 9, 16].
2024-10-05 — A re-typeset digital edition of Smith’s 1989 book is produced [ev-0039].
2026-07-13 — Kevin Mackey emails corrections and open questions about the factory’s history to the maintainer of this record [ev-0019].

What this timeline does not carry

Four classes of dated material named in the sources are not entered above, because the expert holds a reference to them rather than the record itself.

The period trade press — Glass Industry for May and September 1923, Manufacturer’s Record for July 1923, National Glass Budget for October 1919, and the American Glass Review Glass Factory Yearbooks for 1927 through 1942 — is known only through BRG’s citations to it [ev-0042]. Every yearbook entry above is a claim about what BRG reports the yearbook to say.

Roller 1997, Toulouse 1971, Brantley 1975, and Vatter 1955 are likewise reached only through BRG [ev-0042]; several of the dates above, including the Bastrop takeover and the 1947 divestiture, rest on BRG’s reading of Roller.

The Smith TIFF page scans behind one of the two Smith transcriptions are admitted by reference rather than held: the volume carrying them is not mounted, no custodian has confirmed a date, and no digest is recorded [ev-0055].

And the trial record is held as an extract of four of fifty-eight parts. The extract reproduces every passage in parts 4, 9, 16 and 18 that mentions “Three Rivers” or “Searcy”, with twenty-five lines of context on either side; the other fifty-four parts have not been searched at all. Two consequences bear on every entry above drawn from it. The parts held are the ones the prior research round named as carrying the receivership and sale testimony, the Government exhibits, and the Government’s charge — which means the correspondence in them is largely Hartford-Empire’s own file and Thatcher’s, and the dated entries are therefore dense where Hartford wrote a letter and thin where it did not. And a twenty-five-line window around a name is not a transcript: anything a witness said about this plant more than twenty-five lines from the words “Three Rivers” or “Searcy” is outside the extract. The only plant employee who speaks in the extract is Steve Coleman, its former chief chemist, and he is testifying about a different company [@ev-0059, part 04, fols. 3430-3452]. Neither Charles R. Tips nor Henderson Coquat appears as a witness anywhere in the extract — they are quoted only in other men’s letters and other men’s recollections.

That sentence read “in what is held” until 2026-08-28, and in that scope it was false. Two plant employees speak in this expert’s holdings, both in the marker research this timeline cites thirty-eight times. David J. Jones, a mould maker at the plant from April 1929 through September 1930 and again from 1932 to 1934, supplied and signed an information sheet naming the shift foremen, the mould makers and the truck drivers [@ev-0041, pp. 53-54]. E. J. Stewart, who weighed bottles on the Dr Pepper line and later worked the paper-carton department, wrote an account of the 1932 Frio flood and the sandbag levee round the factory [@ev-0041, p. 52]. Both pages are now cited above — Jones at April 1929, Stewart at 1932; the gap was open when the sentence was corrected on 2026-08-28 and is now closed. The scope word was the whole of the error, and it survived two prior audits of this article’s negatives.