Stephen F. Austin State University

The family of James Herbert “Jimmy” Hinds recently donated 2.34 acres of land on East Austin Street to Stephen F. Austin State University’s Tucker Woods Trail. This parcel of land, known as Jimmy Hinds Park, had been at the north end of the LaNana Creek Trail since the city of Nacogdoches was granted an easement in July 1991, according to Dr. David Creech, regents professor of agriculture. “Jimmy Hinds Park now gives hikers access to the Tucker Woods Trail from East Austin Street,” Creech said. “Plans for an accessible parking lot are under consideration.”

Jimmy Hinds Park was part of the home site of its namesake, who was among the original faculty at the opening of Stephen F. Austin State Teachers College in 1923, Creech said. SFA President A.W. Birdwell chose Hinds to establish an agriculture department at SFA as a service to East Texas farmers, as well as training for future farmers. “Jimmy Hinds was a hands-on Ag teacher, and some of his earliest practical teaching began in the land around and below his home, which is still situated at present-day 3028 Raguet Street,” Creech said. “Mr. Hinds planted vegetable and flower gardens and an orchard in his backyard, and he experimented with various pasture grasses in the creek bottom. He raised chickens, hogs, cattle and horses. The Jimmy Hinds acreage, down the park and LaNana Creek, became an experimental farm to aid in his own research projects and a place to give his students practical training in gardening, growing, grafting and animal husbandry.”

Because of Hinds’ considerable work in promoting and teaching the care and breeding of poultry in this area, he is considered the Father of the East Texas Poultry Industry, Creech said. Hinds bred and distributed at his own cost advanced breeds of chickens to farmers throughout the Pineywoods to improve their meat and egg production. Hinds assisted the Nacogdoches County agent in teaching dairy and poultry farm improvement and created SFA extension courses in agriculture to serve the East Texas rural population. SFA’s Department of Agriculture expanded quickly, and in 1924 Hinds hired Dr. Dan Giles, a local veterinarian, to teach animal husbandry.

“Giles and Hinds soon began to look for ways to develop the agriculture department, and in 1930 convinced the legislature to allocate $25,000 to the department to purchase 163 acres for an experimental farm east of the campus to build a house, two barns and three poultry houses,” Creech said. “This was the ‘College Farm’ for many years.” From SFA’s beginning to World War II, Hinds was an integral part of the campus and its early growth, Creech said. “His widespread reputation and his contributions in agricultural research and education brought credit and reputation to this young East Texas college,” Creech said. “Hinds was an outdoorsman and an athlete, and he helped coach track and baseball during the early years of the college.”

Hinds had joined the U.S. Army in World War I, but he had an appendicitis attack and was operated on, stretched out on a train-station table on the way to being shipped overseas, Creech said.

“He regretted not going overseas in WWI and lived with that regret until he joined the army again in World War II,” Creech said. “Ironically, the primitive WWI appendectomy came back to haunt him, and he died of resulting complications in England two days before D-Day. Captain James Herbert Hinds was buried in the Cambridge American Cemetery in Cambridge, England.”

Creech said he and Dr. James Kroll, co-directors of SFA’s Pineywoods Native Plant Center and Dr. F.E. Abernethy of the Tucker Woods Trail, wish to thank the Jimmy Hinds family for its generosity. The family includes daughter Barbara Hinds Finney of Houston, daughter Patricia Hinds Spearman of Raleigh, N.C., and grandchildren Susan Hinds Knox of Austin and Dan Hinds Jr. of Houston.

“Jimmy Hinds Park at the north end of the LaNana Creek Trail and the Tucker Woods Trail will be a fitting memorial to this pioneer in the field of science and education in East Texas agriculture,” Creech said.