July 20, 2024 - No one living in Shelby County, or anywhere else for that matter, can remember when King's Nursery wasn't in business in Tenaha. Established in 1915 by J.B. King Sr. as a strawberry farm, the plant nursery has been in continuous operation by the King family ever since. “Some people think all East Texas soil is red clay. West of here in Nacogdoches County certainly is and I have had an interesting experience working with red clay for the past year at the SFA Gardens and the SRC, but here in Shelby County we have sugar sand and that is perfect for growing strawberries. My great-grandfather J.B King Sr. started growing strawberries in Tenaha in 1915 and shipping them by train to Shreveport for sale. However, his success caused a number of other strawberry farms to spring up around Tenaha and his profits declined. He decided growing and selling fruit trees offered a better chance of success and that's what we have been doing ever since,” began Dr. Andrew King.
“People sometimes ask why we plant our trees in the ground instead of in pots. The answer is because that's the way my great-grandfather and my grandfather and my father did it, so that's the way we continue to do it,” King continued. Family tradition is obviously important to the Kings and as evidence, Andrew King brought his seven-year-old son Aubrey to the meeting and gave him a few minutes to speak about the importance of fertilization and insect control later in the program. “My great-grandfather realized that what he was really selling was a stick with hopes and dreams that it would become a beautiful tree. In order to help customers visualize what the stick would become, he had a picture book created with color illustrations of what the flower or fruit would look like when the tree reached maturity. My great-grandfather began selling ornamental plants after about ten years, with arbor vitae being very popular.” Clicking to an old black and white photo, King continued, “This is my great-grandfather, J. B. King Sr. I sort of romanticize what the business was like back in those days because you note that even though he worked outside with plants, he is wearing a tie. Super classy! It was he who coined the company motto, 'Where the name of the firm indicates the class of the stock.”
“This is my grandfather, J.B. King Jr.”, King continued. “Some of you might remember him. He went by 'J.B'. My great-grandfather was the trailblazer of the company but my grandfather was the pure horticulturalist. He loved working with plants and he would have been out there grafting trees whether you were going to buy his plants or not. He just enjoyed it. He was a sophomore at SFA when his father died and he had to drop out and come home to take care of the nursery. His son, Aubrey King, grew up on the place, just as I did, but he wanted nothing to do with the nursery business. To him it just represented hot, hard work, so he enrolled at SFA as a Political Science major. His goal was to become a lawyer. After graduation he took a job in a bank. Having worked at the bank for two years, my dad made the mistake of coming home for a weekend to help my grandfather with a landscaping project,” King revealed. “Monday morning he gave his two-week notice to the bank and came home to the nursery, where he worked for thirty-eight years. He was a great horticulturalist, but more than that, he was a great man who loved people. To him, plants were a way to connect with people. He thought he could root a Number 2 pencil. I once told my uncle that I thought Dad would have been a fine teacher, to which he replied 'Are you kidding? He WAS a teacher and this was his classroom!' “He died in 2012. His mother is still active in the family business, however. “She is the reason King's Nursery still exists.” King declared.
Like his father and grandfather, Andrew King attended SFA, graduating with a degree in Horticulture. “One day while sitting in one of Dr. Dave Creech's horticulture lectures in an air conditioned classroom and thinking about my parents working out in the hot sun at the nursery, it occurred to me that I could learn to do what Dr. Creech was doing. These plans changed with the death of my father in 2012. My wife and I moved back to Tenaha in 2013 and we ran the nursery until 2015 when I entered graduate school at Texas A&M,” King continued. He completed both his Masters and Ph.D degrees at A&M and joined the faculty. They returned to Tenaha about the time the Pandemic began and took over management of the nursery. Although King emphasized the importance of tradition at the nursery and the fact that their customers liked King's just the way it was, he knew that some changes were necessary. “People ask me what our business proposition is at King's and I say we don't really have one. We are trying to run a retail nursery where there are few customers. That is a difficult, at best. But two things I had learned were essential to the success of a retail nursery were parking and restrooms. We had never had either. The installation of these facilities necessitated the removal of a dilapidated arbor and some weedy rose bushes, but some long-time customers made it known that my father had put those in many years before and they did not appreciate their removal.” Dr. King was accompanied by his seven-year-old son Aubrey, who already takes a keen interest in horticulture and the nursery. Taking the floor for a few remarks, Aubrey emphasized the importance of soil fertilization, proper moisture, and insect prevention in horticulture, to the delight of the audience.
In addition to running the nursery, Dr. King has maintained his association with SFA. He has served as the Assistant Director of SFA Gardens as well as management of the Soil Research Center at SFA's Center for Applied Research and Rural Innovation. He soon will join the faculty at Texas A&M AgriLife Research and Extension Center at Overton, Texas. “I'm pleased to say that accepting the position in Overton will not necessitate our family leaving our home in Tenaha and I will still be involved with the nursery. Some changes are in the works but King's Nursery has been around for over 100 years and I expect it to be there for my son Aubrey in the future.”
The Timpson Area Genealogical Society meets at 2PM on the third Wednesday of each month in the meeting room of the Timpson Public Library on the corner of Austin and Bremond Streets in downtown Timpson. The TAGHS library is located within the Timpson Public Library and is open and staffed from 9AM until 5PM weekdays. Telephone 936-254-2966 and ask for the Genealogical Library.
