Founder of the cooperative wool marketing system in Texas and CEO of Charles Schreiner Bank for 70 years.
1870- 1970 | Artist: Othmar J. Hoffler (1893-1954)
Impact & Accomplishments
One of the nation’s largest sheep and goat raisers, Louis Albert Schreiner, is credited with establishing the cooperative wool marketing system in Texas.
His father, Charles Armand Schreiner, owned a bank, department store, and the Y. O. Ranch and founded the educational institution now named Schreiner University. Charles Schreiner was one of the first to value and market mohair in the U. S., making the town of Kerrville the “Mohair center of the world.”
Educated at Eastern Business College in Poughkeepsie, New York, son L. A. Schreiner took over Charles Schreiner Bank and was its chief executive for seven decades, helping farmers through droughts and the Great Depression. He was highly invested in the development of Kerrville, organizing a telephone company and donating land for an airport, agriculture building, and hospital.
Schreiner was an officer of the Texas Sheep and Goat Raisers Association and the National Wool Trade Association.
Did You Know?
Under Louis Schreiner’s leadership, the Chas. Schreiner Bank grew and prospered, even during the lean years of the Great Depression, when its policy of encouraging ranchers to diversify and add sheep and goat to their livestock herds helped save more than one family ranch.
The Charles Schreiner Bank, on the corner of Water and Earl Garrett Street in Kerrville, TX, 1928. Photo credit: "Looking Back" by Joe Herring, Jr.; photos from the Kerrville Daily Times