The backstory on the new Frost Bank in Kerrville

Memorial Funeral Home, 200 block of Clay Street.
Originally built as the home of Charles and Magdalena's eldest daughter, Caroline.
From the collection of Jeannie Berger.
Click on any image to enlarge.

On most workday mornings, I walk along Clay Street from Water to Jefferson streets. I’ve been serving as an unofficial ‘sidewalk superintendent’ over most of the construction projects along that two-block section, from the renovation of the A. C. & Myrta Schreiner House (for our community’s museum), to the transformation of the bank building now housing Texas Regional Bank.

That bank building was originally built for a Kerrville bank: the Charles Schreiner Bank. It was a built as a new drive-through bank for them, and it served several other banks, as well: NCNB Texas, NationsBank and, later, Bank of America.

Now, Frost Bank is building a branch across Clay Street from the Texas Regional Bank (and diagonally from Sunflower Bank). More than one person has remarked how nice it is to see the Butt-Holdsworth Memorial Library from Main Street, though that view will likely not last very long as additional buildings appear on that block.

Lena Schreiner (seated), and daughters
Frances, Caroline, and Emilee

Frost Bank will be built on lots that once held the home of Hiram and Caroline Partee. Caroline was the second eldest daughter of Charles and Magdalena Schreiner. They built the home in 1902. Later, after the Partees moved to San Antonio, another Schreiner daughter, the youngest, Frances Hellen, lived in that same house with her new husband, Solomon Leroy Jeffers; they lived there from about 1905 to 1907. 

The home later went through several owners, including the Masons, Brooks, and Wolfmuellers – and in August, 1945, the home was converted into the Memorial Funeral Home. 

Gene Stover was the owner-operator of the funeral home (though not owner of the house), and his daughter, Jeannie, provided the research about this property. I always enjoy hearing from her.

Another friend, Gene Hutzler, bought the funeral home around 1957, and owned it until about 1963. (He later founded Kerrville Funeral Home.)

The old house was torn down in 1972, by the Plummer family, which owned the funeral home that is now owned by the Grimes family.

One of the things that interests me about the current construction is the long history of business dealings between the Schreiner family and the family of Thomas Claiborne Frost.

Thomas Claiborne Frost

Charles Schreiner and T. C. Frost had many things in common. Both were born in the 1830s. Both served as Texas Rangers. Both operated mercantile businesses which later branched into banking. Both operated wool commission businesses. Both the Schreiner Bank and the Frost Bank survived depressions and recessions when other banks failed.

And both supported the extension of the San Antonio and Aransas Pass Railroad from San Antonio to Kerrville, and both (likely) for the same reason: the transportation of wool and mohair.

For a long time, I thought Charles Schreiner's wealth came mainly from his Kerrville store and bank. Later, I added his real estate investments, not just in towns like Kerrville and neighboring communities, but also the numerous ranches he owned. By 1900 he owned around 600,000 acres stretching from Kerrville to Menard. Schreiner also financed and organized great cattle drives north to the markets in Kansas and elsewhere which were often quite profitable. Add to these the corporate boards on which he served, mostly for companies in which he'd made an investment, including the San Antonio and Aransas Pass Railroad, and the original National Bank of Commerce.

Any one of these would have made Charles Schreiner a comparatively wealthy man, and would have made him very similar to other Texas businessmen of that era. It seems most Texas towns had a primary mover -- the one person who owned the bank, the water system, the electric system, the telephone system in their little town.

Lately, though, I've thought the true source of his wealth was something else, something I would have never guessed, and that source differentiates Schreiner from the other Texas successes. 

Charles Armand Schreiner

Schreiner created at least two local commodities markets which served international buyers: a market for wool, and, to a lesser extent, a market for mohair.

Sheep and goats, in those days, were an anathema to most cattle ranchers, but Schreiner championed these livestock in several important ways.

First, through his bank, he influenced ranchers to diversify into sheep and goats. Basically, many of the loans to ranchers for livestock stipulated that some of the capital was to be spent on sheep and goats. I’m sure this was not always well received, but there was cleverness in Schreiner’s policy. Sheep provided an opportunity for profit at least twice a year, when the wool was clipped, plus the additional opportunity for sale as meat; goats offered similar advantages to cattle.

These fiber products also helped Schreiner build a market for what was possibly his most clever enterprise: wool and mohair warehousing. He ran a huge wool and mohair commission business. While he cannot be credited with creating this concept, one could certainly argue he perfected it locally. In fact, there was a time when Kerrville – little Kerrville, on the edge of the Chihuahuan Desert, far from any large cities – was credited with more mohair commission sales than any other market in the world. Schreiner had, in other words, not only created a market for these fibers, but had cornered that market.

There was another Texan who was operating an important wool and mohair commission business at the time: T. C. Frost.

Frost, who operated out of San Antonio, had an advantage over Schreiner: access to railroad transportation, and, likely, better capitalization of his business.

Schreiner, however, had an advantage over Frost: closer proximity to wool and mohair producers, and long business dealings with the ranchers of the region. By the time the railroad arrived in Kerrville in 1887, Schreiner capitalized on his advantages in the wool and mohair business, which prospered.

By 1896, T. C. Frost ended his wool commission business altogether, and focused on banking. In 1899, he applied for a national bank charter, and his bank became the Frost National Bank of San Antonio, with resources of $1.3 million.

Charles Schreiner’s bank remained unincorporated, and operated on the personal financial responsibility of Charles Schreiner, which was likely in excess of $1.3 million.

Frost died of a stroke in 1903, and his family continued and enlarged the banking operations. Charles Schreiner died much later, in 1927, and for many years his family continued his banking business. However, the bank which carried his name for over 120 years failed in April, 1990.

Meanwhile, I’ll keep an eye on the construction of the new bank – as I walk by most mornings.

Until next week, all the best.

Joe Herring Jr. is a Kerrville native who wonders if one more bank can be squeezed onto remaining corner of the intersection of Main and Clay streets in downtown Kerrville. This column originally appeared in the Kerr County Lead July 3, 2025

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