The W.O. Rowden family moved from Gurley, Alabama, to Van Zandt County in 1895 and in 1898 moved to the H.H. Carmack place at the outer edge of Wills Point. After Carmack received a cotton boll from a friend in Florida and gave it to Rowden, Rowden planted nine seeds the following April and produced 25 pounds of seed cotton. In the spring of 1899, he planted one-half acre, gathered 1133 pounds of seed cotton, and added 300 pounds of another type of cotton to make a 549-pound bale that a buyer called one of the finest he had bought all season. Rowden Cotton was introduced in 1900. Rowden's brother, W.A. Rowden, came to Texas in 1902, and together they formed a successful partnership. Four years later, Rowden Cotton was brought to town to be weighed, and cotton picked from forty-four bolls weighed one pound, while other varieties took 52 to 56 bolls to weigh one pound. A firm in Stephenville wrote that the Rowden brothers had directly benefited Texas planters hundreds of thousands of dollars through their improved seeds. Seed dealers regularly sold out of Rowden cotton seed, which ranked second with the best varieties planted under the same conditions and sold on average for 4 to 5 cents more than other cotton. Although allotments that regulated how much cotton a farmer could plant led to the decline of the cotton industry in Van Zandt County, before that decline the Rowden brothers showed farmers how to improve cotton seed varieties and develop any type of cotton they wished, and the reputation of Rowden seed became well known across the South, especially in Texas.