The Blanton Grain Company
By Marion Blanton - Feb 9, 2009

Anthropologists claim that one of the earliest signs of civilization among human societies is the building of granaries. The creation of special buildings to store threshed grains for times of famine, cold or draught, to manufacture not only flour for human consumption but feed for domestic animals, and to preserve the seed of one harvest (especially the most bountiful or resistant harvests) for the planting of the next crop is a sign of human cooperation, community, and foresight that precedes and also predicts the flowering of a civilization. If that is the case, then the Old Downtown Square of Carrollton, Texas houses behind its east side an historic treasure of the Dallas-Fort Worth region of north Texas.  The two extant buildings of a large grain and feed operation sit snugly close to the railroad line a few yards from the old town square as a relic of the days when the towns around DFW formed a matrix of large and small family farms which fed into the great grain-growing plains of Middle America and thus into the heart of America itself. Such agricultural operations still exist in this country, but most are absorbed in the distant insides of large corporate farms, where their existence and and certainly their intimacy with local efforts and enterprise is largely invisible. The city of Carrollton is fortunate to have an intact and well-preserved example of a family agricultural operation from the last century, one which was integrated into the community by its presence near the center of town and by the family that lived in the town and helped to build both. This remarkable remnant of the past is the extant buildings (including a giant concrete storage tower) of the Blanton Grain Company.

Lester Franklin (L.F.) Blanton was born in Shawnee, Kansas, a small town on the outskirts of Kansas City on November 11, 1892. He was the second of six children of William Franklin Blanton and Mary Knauber Blanton. According to family stories, he acquired his legendary ambition, his restlessness for something better, and his stubborn pride in being his own boss, from the fact that his father's French Huguenots, had left their native land to avoid religious persecution, and his mother's German family had left their homeland because of a family member being conscripted into the Prussian army and forced to polish his superior officers' boots. (In humiliation and resentment he departed that post, or so the family stories told, and didn't stop running until he got to America.)  What ever the source of the Exodus, however, both families found themselves traveling up the Mississippi River and settling near Kansas City. The new location came with a case of bad timing, however, since they found themselves in the thick of the American Civil War. One of L. F. Blanton's uncles was shot dead on his front porch during a raid by the infamous southern-sympathizing rogue militia "Quantrill's Raiders."  In the same raid the family also lost a baby girl who died of exposure after being hidden in a shed with her mother over a long, cold Kansas night.  The family managed to save their money only by having time to throw it out the kitchen window and into the back garden at the first sight of the raiders. (By this time the Prussian army was probably not looking so bad.)

Lester Blanton met and married Lena Smith, also of Shawnee, Kansas, in 1914. Lena Smith was a member of a large family of Smiths who had helped to settle the Virginia mountains in the early years of this country.  One of her cousins was the bluegrass folk-singer, Hobart Smith, who once performed for Franklin Roosevelt at the White House (after they had added a special floor to accommodate his clog dancing).  Lena Smith's father, Andrew Milton Smith, was the only member of the very large family to leave the mountains. From a family that loved to sing and tell stories, the story of his leaving his mountain home has been recounted over and over in this way.  He was plowing a mountain field one day, laboring behind a mule, when he stopped to rest.  Leaning wearily against the plow, he looked around him at the wide expanse of land that flowed from his mountains in every direction, but especially westward, and contemplated his possibilities.  After a short reverie, he made a decision and simply walked away from his family, his plow, and his life. He ended up some time later in Kansas. (There is a postscript to this story. He actually ended up in Texas. he came to Carrollton with his daughter and her family in 1931. On the corner of Denton Drive and Trinity Mills Road at that time there was a large Mesquite-covered hill. Andrew Milton Smith was the first man to clear that hill, completing the task with a small hand axe, making way for some of the buildings on the Blanton farm.  In that regard he might be considered one of the pioneers of Carrollton and certainly a prototype of the restless and hard-driving American spirit.) Lester and Lena (Smith) Blanton had four children, all born in Kansas: Walter Howard, Betty Louise, Chester Franklin (Jack), and William Wallace (Bill).

As a young man, Blanton worked several jobs. For a time he studied law, but found the sheltered life of the study too confining for his activist spirit. He farmed and owned two small businesses, but these also soon became confining to him. As the Great Depression began to settle on the land, he did what many other men were doing. He packed up his family and looked for a place to start over. His family doctor had told him to find a warmer climate because of his daughter's severe sinus infections, so he brought his family south to Texas (still a rough frontier at that time, at least from the perspective of his Kansas City relatives who counseled him against going).  He settled first in the Rio Grande Valley.  Later he moved his family to Greenville.  While living in Greenville, he saw an advertisement in the local newspaper which offered the sale of a feed mill business in Carrollton.  He made a quick trip to Carrollton and fell in love with the place.  The small grain and feed business showed every sign of fulfilling his many interests along with his ambition to build and grow his business endeavors.  The location of Carrollton, so near Dallas (as his hometown had been near Kansas City), combined the excitement and opportunities of the big city with the small town life and direct interaction with customers that he loved.  The town's people were friendly, and the open space and good climate for growing were appealing.  He returned to Greenville and moved his family to Carrollton.  He never looked back.  He had found his place.

In 1931 he paid the owner of the Carrollton Feed Mill, a man named Omart, $250 (high financing during the Depression years) for a half interest in the business. The following year he paid another $250 and obtained the business in his own name.  The feed mill was a long, low building in which the components of feed, such as corn and various grains were stored, then mixed in measured proportions on a concrete floor with shovels and packed into bags of specialty feeds.  Blanton began immediately to make changes.  He installed a machine that allowed the mixing of blackstrap molasses into the feed. This made the feed easier to process and also more palatable to the livestock. He also added machinery to process ear corn. He bought the corn from area farmers, stored it in cribs and then either ground it for feed, or shelled ti to sell as grain.  He sold the shocks for fodder, and he left the cobs in piles for local people to use as firewood. (It was a common site to see wagons pulled up near the feed mill to allow people to collect the corn cob fuel.)  He also bought two company delivery trucks.  With the trucks in service, eh could sell, buy and deliver to feed stores all over the area rather than depending on the walk-in local business of individual farmers driving into town. The previous owner of the business had built a concrete foundation high off the ground across the street from the mill for a small office building. However, the company had fallen into considerable debt before he abandoned the plan and sold the whole operation.  Blanton, therefore, had inherited a troubled enterprise, and he struggled through several lean and difficult years during the mid-thirties and the end of the Depression trying to put the company on firm financial footing.

To the immediate west of the scale was a vacant lot where trucks could be loaded or lined up to await their turn to drive onto the scale.  The vacant lot backed up to Burnett Perry's grocery store which fronted the main Square.  The grain works were a block removed from the old downtown Square because of the necessity of being next to the railroad tracks.  The Cotton Belt and KATY railroad lines, which served Carrollton and the surrounding region, were extremely important to the operation of the grain business.  It was in these boxcars that the mill products were carried to market in timely fashion and without undue stress and manual labor.  The railroad line made mass production and transportation of produce possible, and all of the mill buildings were therefore as close to it as possible.  Today the old railroad line that serviced the Blanton Grain Company is being transformed into a branch of the DART light rail line, but the route of the old cargo-carrying railroad line is still the roadmap the builders follow.  The original Carrollton Feed Mill building in which the specialty feeds had been created, and the first small wooden storage towers built, and which had survived both a fire in the 1930's and a flood in the 1940's, was torn down in 1949 to make way for the new concrete elevator.  But the original office building still stands, looking almost the same as it did when it was first completed in 1939.  The lot on its western side is still vacant, and the outline of the giant scale it once housed is still visible.

The early 1940's brought World War II and its increased demands for production across the spectrum of American business. At this time Blanton decided that he was prosperous enough to add grain storage to his specialty feed business.  Across the KATY railroad line from the feed mill, he constructed the first real grain elevator. the new elevator was a steel clad building  with a tower in the center to hold the great grain bins and a drive-through in the base where trucks could enter, unload their grain, and exit.  On the south side of this building, Blanton built a large concrete tile feed mill.  The two operations of storage and milling were now separate, and by the end of the war, the name of the business had changed from Carrolton Feed mill to Blanton Grain Company.

The company continued to expand after the war.  Accommodating the postwar storage of grain for the Federal Loan program became a new impulse driving its growth.  In 1949 the original feed mill was torn down.  The new business, as well as the agricultural industry it served, had grown so large that Blanton contracted with a company from Kansas to build a modern 100 foot high concrete storage elevator across the railroad track from the earlier metal elevator.  The construction of the new elevator began in 1950.  The company, whose crews traveled across the country doing the highly specialized construction work involved in building concrete storage towers, was Johnson-Sampson Coast Company, which was located in Salina, Kansas.  The slip form process of construction was used, and in 17 days of continuous concrete pouring the entire building was erected.  The facility was ready for the wheat harvest of 1950.

The capacity of the new elevator was 210,000 bushels.  Like the old elevator, the new one had a drive-through for trucks on the bottom floor.  The drive-through was straight across the street from the scale.  The loaded trucks would drive up onto the scale to be measured.  The would be given a receipt for the weight of their truck in the office.  They would then cross the street and drive into the base of the elevator. On the floor of the drive-through was a life, which tilted the trucks up so that the truck bed could be emptied.  the grain drained from the trucks into a pit. From the pit it was moved by screw conveyor to an elevator.  The elevator lifted the grain to the top of the massive storage bins and dropped the load inside.  On the east side of the concrete bins was a chute (still visible) which descended from the storage area.  The trains would pull up under that chute and open the top of the boxcars to be filled with grain.  Most of the storage products from the Blanton Grain Company then went by KATY railway to Universal Mills in Fort Worth or to Morrison Mills in Denton to be milled into flour or other products.  The empty trucks would drive out the far side of the elevator drive through and cross back to be weighed again.  The difference in the weight with and without the load of grain determined how much the growers were paid.

When it was complete, the new concrete grain tower became a focal point of the town of Carrollton and a landmark of the area.  It was visible clearly from highway 35 E, and because Carrollton was located on a flat plain, it could be seen for miles in any direction.  During the Christmas season Blanton always put a simple blue cross in lights on the small building on top of the tower.  In the days before light pollution, the blue cross seemed to rise alone out of the black prairie and shine without support in the deep darkness of the Texas night sky.  It could be seen halfway to Dallas.

The Blanton Grain Company continued to sell and store oats, corn (which they shelled themselves with an automated mechanism) and maize.  The sold feed and seed to farmers in the area.  They created their own specialty feeds under the name "Blanco Feeds."  Their "Hen Scratch" was a customized mixture of wheat, milo (maize grains), and corn chops.  Their "Horse and Mule Feed" was a mixture of alfalfa, corn chops, and molasses.  The grain company soon became a one-stop shop for the farmers of the area, and Blanton products were shipped all over the state by rail line and truck.  The office in downtown Carrollton was frequented by names that are still familiar to this area: Trammell Crow, Margaret Doggett, Hooker Vandergriff with his son Tom, the future mayor of Arlington (Lena Blanton often took young Tommy along with her own children to attend Dallas baseball games), W. E. Schrieber (whose land supplied much of the space for highway 635 where it passes through Carrollton and Farmers Branch, and the Morgan and Furneaux families who owned much of the land between Carrollton and Lewisville.

At the height of grain harvest in early May, the Blanton  Grain Company would process about 100 trucks of grain a day. Before the grain storage boom of the mid-fifties was over, Blanton had added four more large metal towers and two long corrugated metal  buildings extending from the south side of the concrete tower to accommodate the bountiful harvests.  the Blanton Grain Company formed a campus of its own, a cluster of 9 buildings (most of them towers) that grew organically from the Carrollton City Square and helped to make the old downtown area one of the most unusual city centers of the whole region.  The Blanton Grain Company continued to expand and eventually operated storage and feed mills in seven towns and cities: Dallas, Carrollton, Austin, Lancaster, Justin, Irving, Harrold in Texas and Tipton in Oklahoma.  The Carrollton office was the hub, not just of business but of framers gathering to socialize, exchange information, plan, and even to vote (on agricultural issues).

L. F, Blanton was also a farmer and rancher himself.  The area he farmed was bound by Trinity Mills on the south, Denton Drive on the east, the Crumley farm (Where Creekview High School now stands) on the north, and the Trinity River on the west.  he grew wheat, oats, and maize on these abundant fields.  He raised livestock which eh pastured in the Trinity River Bottoms (in the area that is now Indian Creek Golf Course), selling his beef cattle (mostly Herefords and Angus breeds) at Fort Worth Stock yard, and he had also a large flock of turkeys. At the corner of Denton and Trinity Mills Roads where a large hill loomed (the hill was leveled to make way for the Furneaux Creek Shopping Center) a Blanton Dairy once stood, producing milk from approximately 100 head of Holstein and Jersey milk cows daily.

L. F. Blanton took an interest and active role in all the civic activities of the city of Carrollton. He was especially committed to the school system.  His love of learning, his memories of law school, and his deep love and feeling of responsibility for children caused him to dedicate a large part of his life in the growing Carrollton schools.  He oversaw the great expansion of city and school population in the 1950's and 60's and helped to build the first modern school building and school system in town.  For 26 years, he served on the school board and for 25 of those years he was President.  He found some of his greatest fulfillment in this work.

All of L. F. Blanton's sons and son-in-laws worked in various capacities and for various lengths of time at the Blanton Grain Company.  Various ones would work full time and at other times work only par, weekends or for temporary busy seasons.  At cattle round-up time and wheat harvest season, any9ne who could spare a moment put in an hour to two whenever possible. No matter where they spent most of their working days, however, non of them ever stopped working on and caring about the farm and ranch.  Farming and ranching were always the work of their hearts.

The children of L. F. Blanton followed in their father's footsteps.  Walter Blanton married Beryl Sumner who had moved from the tiny town of Rowlett to become one of  Carrollton's first telephone operators.  Walter served on the Carrollton City Council from 1944-1952 and was Mayor of Carrollton from 1952-58.  In the later capacity he helped to secure patronage of Inca Metal (a manufacturer of metal shelving and lawn furniture), the first actual industrial company to locate in Carrollton.  A handsome and charismatic man, he was elected in 1959 to serve as president of the Texas Grain and Feed Dealers Association, which he helped to expand into a three-state organization (including Oklahoma and New Mexico with Texas) to cooperate on regional agricultural issues.  He eventually became a member of the Board of Directors of the National Grain and Feed Dealers Association, bring national prominence to the Blanton name and business.

Betty Blanton married William M. Sumner, a brother of Beryl Sumner (a two-brother-and sister combination that was not uncommon in small towns in those days).  Betty received her Bachelor's Degree from SMU in 1939, a rare accomplishment for a small-town woman at that time.  She was active in book and study clubs, also in church and school work.  Like her father, she was honored with a Lifetime membership in the National Parent Teachers Association.  Bill Sumner, who lost an arm in World War II, became a specialist in prosthetics with the Veteran's Administration after the war.  He worked his way to Area Supervisor (one of our or five in the U.S.) before he retired. He spent several of his last years as Postmaster of the Carrollton Post Office.  He also owned and worked a farm be bought near Denton.

Jack Blanton married Marian Good.  Marian was a child of both the Jackson and the good families, which made her a descendant of two of the founding families of Carrollton.  The Jacksons had come to Carrollton with the "English colony," in the mid 19th century, and of of Marian's uncles, George Jackson, wrote a history of that time, Sixty Years in Texas.  Jack was active all his life in public affairs.  He was elected mayor of Carrollton in 1946, and at the age of 25 was the youngest city mayor in the area.  He served three terms in the Texas State Legislature, during which he held to bring the University of Texas at Dallas to this area, and did many years of work at a legislative liaison to the Texas Department of Health and Human Services.  he was also a member of the hospitality committe4e of Dallas Council on World Affairs, in which capacity he brought many foreign visitors to tour the Blanton Grain Company and Blanton Dairy.

Bill Blanton married Clovis Brake.  The Brake family had been in Carrollton since before the turn of the century.  They had a farm near the Trinity River and after a harrowing escape in a boat from the flood of 1908, the moved their home and farm to much higher ground.  On one of the highest points in Carrollton, the land where R. L. Turner High School now stands, they build a large two-story house.  They farmed much of the land that is enclosed by Crosby Road, Josey Lane, Valley View Lane and Denton Drive. Once in the 1950's the Carrollton High School Kids (including several Brake and Blanton grandchildren) needed a live pig for a greased pig contest they were planning as a school activity.  The 'pig committee' picked up a pig on the loan from the Brake family because they still had a working farm within walking distance of the Carrollton Square.  Bill Blanton was active in Lion's Club, Rotary Club and the Carrollton Chamber of Commerce, as well as his church.  Like his father, he was a member of the Carrollton school board, serving for ten years in that capacity.  He also was elected to five terms in the Texas legislature, serving for a decade and working on many of the issues of education and the arts that had concerned him in his local offices.  Many friends of his children will remember him forever as the voice of the Carrollton High School football games on the old high school football field next to the gymnasium (now DeWitt Perry Junior High School field and gymnasium) through the 1950's and 60's.

All of the Blantons put in a lifetime of effort for the town, and then the city, they loved. L. F. and his wife Lena are remembered with great fondness by several generations of children who grew up in Carrollton knowing them only as "Papa and Nanny Blanton."  Lester Franklin Blanton died at home after a long illness on April 22, 1971.  According to the local newspaper, he died in the evening as a school committee was meeting to plan a new elementary school to be named in his honor.  The Blanton Grain Company closed a few years later by the mutual consent of his surviving sons. Today the Blanton Grain Company office and the great concrete elevator stand largely intact (although without an identifying name or marker) as  kind of gateway to the old downtown Carrollton Squire and memento of what build the city.  The buildings will soon be in close proximity of a new DART light rail line station that is currently under constructions -two poles of a never-ending evolution.

The concrete elevator towers over the town Blanton loved like a watchman on guard, a symbol of the profound connection of all life to agriculture, and a monument to a world which through it has vanished from among us, has made us what we are.