J. C. Neeley

J. C. Neeley was the fourth member of the first-year Board of Directors of the Hoffmann-Hayman Coffee Company at its 5 February 1912 Texas charter. He is not one of the three incorporators (W. E. Hayman, Mrs. William R. Hoffmann (Minnie), and Gus P. Menger) but is named alongside them as the +1 on the first-year board, bringing the directorate to four.

The single attestation

Only one primary source on this site names Neeley — the 5 February 1912 Express Austin Bureau wire item, reprinted in the 6 February 1912 San Antonio Express-News:

AUSTIN, Tex., Feb. 5. — The Hoffmann-Hayman Coffee Company of San Antonio. Capital stock $20,000, of which three-fourths has been paid in. Purpose: general merchandising. Incorporators: W. E. Hayman, Mrs. William R. Hoffmann, and Gustave Menger, San Antonians. First year’s directorate: the three incorporators and J. C. Neeley. Term: fifty years.

The companion San Antonio Light 6 February charter notice — 1912-02-06-san-antonio-light-san-antonio-firm-chartered — covers the same filing but omits Neeley, naming only the three San Antonio incorporators. The Express-News longer treatment is the only on-site source that records him.

Spelling discrepancy. The TX SOS certified copy of the charter itself — 1912-02-05-tx-sos-certified-charter-hoffmann-hayman-coffee-co — transcribes the name as “J. C. Neely” (no second “e”) in both the stock-subscriber table and the directors clause, against the Express-News wire item’s “Neeley.” The charter is the primary legal document and arguably the more authoritative spelling, but since the wire item is what this page was originally built around, “Neeley” is retained as the page title pending a tie-breaking source (e.g. his own signature, which does not appear on the charter — only Hayman, Mrs. Hoffmann, and Menger signed).

What we don’t know

• Full given names. The wire item uses initials only — “J. C.” — and no later source on this site identifies him.
• Profession and relationship to H&H. Whether Neeley was a San Antonio businessman, a Hayman associate, an investor, a banker representing the capital stock contributors, or a friend-of-the-incorporators slot is undocumented. Texas corporate filings of this era often required at least one outside director for the first-year board; Neeley may have been filling that conventional role.
• Tenure on the board. The charter language locks him in for the first year only (“first year’s directorate”). The next on-site attestation of H&H’s officer roster is the August 1921 San Antonio Light board listing, which names R. W. Menger, L. B. Menger, G. P. Menger, and Mrs. William J. Schlosser — Neeley is gone by then, and there’s no documentation of when he rolled off.
• Local civic profile. No San Antonio newspaper, city directory, or trade-press reference on this site mentions a “J. C. Neeley” outside the 1912 charter notice.

Open questions

• Who was J. C. Neeley? A USPTO TESS / trademark search would not surface a personal name; the more productive sources are: 1912 San Antonio city directories (Polk’s / Appler’s), 1910 / 1920 federal census records for Bexar County, and Texas Secretary of State filings naming him as an incorporator or officer of other companies during the 1910s.
• Why was he on the H&H board? A coincidence of address with one of the incorporators (e.g. shared business at a nearby downtown street), a family connection (the Hoffmann or Menger families had relatives with the surname Neeley in San Antonio in the 1910s — worth checking), or a banking/legal relationship are all plausible.
• When did he leave the board? A 1913 or 1914 H&H board listing (if one exists in Tea and Coffee Trade Journal or local trade press) could narrow the exit window.

Research attempted (2026-07-17)

An open-web sweep (~20 queries across both name spellings, plus name-variant tries — John C., James C., Joseph C., Jesse C., Julius C. Neely/Neeley) found no conclusive identification. Ruled out:

• Direct name search, both spellings: only modern-day namesakes surfaced (a contemporary San Antonio neurosurgeon, a modern realtor, a modern law firm) — none predate 1970.
• 1912/1913 San Antonio city directory (Jules A. Appler’s General Directory and Bluebook of Greater San Antonio — held at UTSA Special Collections, San Antonio Public Library, and Ancestry Library Edition): identified as the right source, but paywalled/offsite and not browsable via open search. No entry confirmed either way.
• 1910/1920 federal census, Bexar County: no indexed household surfaced via open search (FamilySearch, USGenWeb, Linkpendium finding aids only — no direct record access).
• Other TX SOS filings, same-day Feb 5 1912 Austin charter batch (Peoples Oil and Gas, Price & Fields, Jefferson Wholesale Grocer, Bellah & Sons, Home Furniture, Home Hardware, Litchfield Land, Houston Taxicab, Thorndale Oil Mill, Gulf Coast Brick and Tile, Times Publishing): Neely/Neeley does not appear as a director on any of these, so no support (from that one batch) for a “serial qualifying-share director” pattern.
• Findagrave / genealogy sites: no San Antonio-era (1900s–1920s) Neely/Neeley memorial matching the profile.
• Portal to Texas History (via Google-indexed snippets, since direct fetch is bot-gated): surfaced an unrelated, socially prominent Neely family in 1912 San Antonio society pages (a “Mrs. Mary Neely” and “Misses Mintle and Ewing Neely,” Aug/Apr 1912 Express) — no business or coffee-company tie found; likely a different family entirely.
• Connection to Hertzberg & Barrett: tested the hypothesis that Neely/Neeley was a clerk or associate of the drafting law firm (whose letterhead is on the charter filing jacket and whose partner Harry Hertzberg notarized the incorporation) — no source connects a Neely/Neeley to that firm’s staff.

Working hypothesis (unproven): given the single $100 qualifying share, the first-year-only directorship, and total absence from later H&H records, Neely/Neeley was plausibly a professional “accommodation director” — supplied by the drafting attorneys or otherwise unconnected to Hayman/Hoffmann/Menger — rather than a business partner, to satisfy Texas’s four-director minimum. This is inference from the shape of existing data, not a new source, and should not be treated as established.

Next steps requiring paid/offsite access (beyond open WebSearch/WebFetch): a paywalled Ancestry.com or Newspapers.com account to search the 1910/1920 census and period San Antonio papers directly, or direct outreach to UTSA Special Collections or the San Antonio Genealogical and Historical Society (txsaghs.org) to check the 1912/1913 Appler directory and any Hertzberg & Barrett staff records. See TODO-73.

See also

• Hoffmann-Hayman Coffee Company — founders list
• Hoffmann–Hayman Coffee Company chartered (1912) — the event page
• W. E. Hayman, Wilhelmina Menger Schlosser, Gustav P. Menger — the three incorporators