Entrepreneur. He received recognition as a self-made American businessman who was the founder of the Borden Company, which was renamed Borden, Incorporated, in 1968. He created a process in 1853 to make sweetened condensed milk. Into the 21st century, his company is still known for the logo of Elsie the cow on the can of Eagle Brand Sweetened Condensed Milk. Born in New York, his family migrated west to Indiana by 1816, where he received little to none formal schooling. He was an intelligent young man who was basically self-taught. He learned to survey by aiding his father, who surveyed the city of Covington, Kentucky. As an American frontier pioneer, he is thought to have been captain of the local militia when barely twenty years old and active in law enforcement. By 1825 he had migrated south for milder winters, settling in Mississippi where he taught school as well as being the official surveyor for Amite County and the deputy federal surveyor. He relocated to Texas, arriving at Galveston Island on December 24, 1829, where he had a farm and raised cattle as well as surveying. He and his brother Thomas were the surveyors for Stephen F. Austin's colony. He had first met Austin in New Orleans in 1821. He became political becoming a representative at the Convention of 1833 and serving as secretary for Austin as Santa Anna came to power as president of Mexico on the dawn of the Mexican War. He helped write the first draft of the Republic of Texas Constitution. He, his brother Thomas, and another partner founded the newspaper, "The Telegram and Texas Register," with the first edition being printed on October 10, 1835. As one of Texas' first newspapers, it is credited as being the only one lasting through the Mexican War. On March 17, 1836, the newspaper's headline read a battle cry, "Remember the Alamo," after the fall of the Alamo 11 days earlier. After having his printing press destroyed by the Mexican army, he and his partners started again after the war in Houston, yet were penniless. By June of 1837, he and his brother Thomas sold their newspaper partnership. As a skilled surveyor, he helped pre-plot the city of Houston, Texas in 1836 and was given credit for doing the same for Galveston and for preparing the first topographical map of Texas. He sold over 2,500 plots of land in Galveston. He was appointed by President Sam Houston as the first Republic of Texas Collector of Customs of the Port of Galveston from June of 1837 to December of 1837 and from December of 1841 to April of 1843. He and his first wife Penelope Mercer, who he married in Mississippi in 1824, were active in the Baptist Church, allegedly being the first Anglos to be baptized by submersion west of the Mississippi River. He served by starting missions for the poor, head of the temperance league, serving as a deacon for 14 years, and being a trustee of the Texas Baptist Education Society, which founded Baylor University in 1845. As an inventor, he made the "Locomotive Bath House" for ladies wishing to bathe in the Gulf of Mexico. Later, he attempted to build a refrigeration system and in 1849 made nutritional meat biscuits from dehydrated meat and flour, which were not as successful as he had planned. He moved to New York City in 1851 to market his inventions. After abandoning the tasteless meat biscuits, he created a process in 1853 to make sweetened condensed milk. He opened three factories to produce his canned sweetened condensed milk, with the first two failing. Most people had their own cow and had no need for canned milk. The third, which opened in 1858 in Connecticut, flourished with the start of the American Civil War and the need to feed the military. He earned prosperous contracts with the Union Army. After inventing and patenting a process for condensing various fruit juices, beef extract, coco, tea, and coffee, he opened another Connecticut factory in addition to ones in New York, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and Maine. After the war, he returned to Texas as a respected and wealthy man and established a meat-packing plant in Borden and a sawmill and copperware factory in Bastrop. He spent winters in Texas. As a philanthropist, he built schools for white and Black children, at least five churches, and paid the salaries for much-needed teachers and ministers. He educated dairy farmers on sanitation of milk. After his first wife Penelope, with whom he had seven children, died of yellow fever in 1844, he married two more times: Augusta Stearns in 1845 and Emeline Eunice in 1860. He died in Borden, Texas but his remains were brought back to New York in a private railroad car for burial. Besides the town of Borden, which is located west of Houston, there is the town of Gail in Borden County located southeast of Lubbock. At the site of his Galveston home, a State of Texas historical marker was erected in 1936. The Gail Borden Public Library, which is located in Elgin, Illinois, was built to honor him by his stepsons. Starting annually in 1939, the Gail Borden Gold Medal with a $1,000 monetary award is given for "distinctive contributions to poultry science advancement" over the last seven years.