This portion of our Sanders family History section is devoted to Sanders - Saunders and descendants who became notable in business and industry.
This site is sponsored by the Sanders Family Association, a national, non-profit family club devoted to gathering and preserving family history of all Sanders-Saunders families.
If you have information and records on any Sanders relative who has been elected to any public office or served in government in any capacity, please send us this info to preserve in the Sanders Family National Library.
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John C. Saunders became a pharmacist but achieved success as manager of the Bonham Cotton Mill. The mill was organized on 12 May 1900, by nine Bonham directors acting for 192 local stockholders. By 1950, Bonham had become the largest light sheeting mill west of the Mississippi River, with 17,200 spindles and 426 looms and capital stock valued at $600,000. It had an annual payroll of $780,000 for 380 employees. It was the major employer in Bonham for several decades. Its textile operations started in 1900 with 5,000 spindles and 150 looms. Capital stock was valued at $150,000; by 1906 the value of stock had risen to $200,000. By 1910 the company employed 196 workers. Consolidated Textile Corporation, an eastern company, bought the mill and forty-six tenant houses for $575,000 in 1920. The onset of the Great Depression sent Consolidated into bankruptcy and all its plants closed early in 1930. Bonham businessmen raised $100,000 purchase price to return ownership to Texas in January 1931 but Dallas investors had assumed control by 1933. Employment stabilized at about 190 and production was geared to light sheeting for tomato frames. During World War II orders for drill, a heavy fabric, dramatically expanded production and required 24-hour operation.
John C. Saunders, a pharmacist, was the first director and managed the mill until his death in 1934. Because so many women worked at the plant, the mill operated a free kindergarten for fifty years. The kindergarten began in 1907 by members of the First Methodist Church and was held in a private home. Mill manager Saunders was credited with getting a permanent building constructed and for assuming mill responsibility for the kindergarten. Although the first free kindergarten in Texas had been established in Galveston fifteen years earlier, the cotton mill's school was unusual for a town the size of Bonham. The kindergarten was controlled and operated by women. Children from throughout the town were accepted, and tuition was charged those who could afford it. J. C. helped organize the Texas State Manufacturers Association as a board of trade on 22 Dec 1922. He became its first president in 1923 and the headquarters was set up in San Antonio. It is now called Texas Association of Business. It works with the National Association of Manufacturers and the National Industrial Council. Membership is now mainly Texas industrialists and oil producers.
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