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Forest History Collection
Established by the Forest History Foundation as an official North American Forest History Repository in 1959, the East Texas Research Center houses the business records of major East Texas lumber companies.
Also deposited here are the records of the Texas Society of American Foresters, the Texas Forestry Association and the papers of Texans prominent in the field of forestry. See our manuscript collection for listing.
We also have on deposit photographs supporting several of our collections
including
Sawdust Empire Photographs,
Southland Paper Mills Photographs,
and
Thompson Brothers Lumber Company.
ANGELINA COUNTY LUMBER COMPANY 1887-1966
Joseph H. Kurth, a native of Germany, came to Angelina County in 1887 where he purchased a small sawmill from Charles Keltys and J. A. Ewing. The next year he formed a partnership with Simon W. Henderson of Corrigan, Texas as the Henderson and Kurth Lumber Company. This, in turn, was incorporated as the Angelina County Lumber Company in 1890, with Kurth, Henderson, Sam Weiner of Shreveport and (somewhat later) Eli Wiener as the principal owners and officers. The company grew despite depressions, fires, and other misfortunes, until by 1912 it was a million dollar operation. From this point the company further expanded and diversified, acquiring related and subsidiary companies and the Angelina and Neches River Railroad. Kurth was an important state figure in Republican politics during the early twentieth century, and was the Republican candidate for Lieutenant Governor of Texas in 1924. The second generation of the families, Ernest L. Kurth, Joseph H. Kurth, Jr., and Simon W. Henderson, Jr., continued the development and expansion of the company into one of the largest and most successful lumber operations in the Southwest. Ernest Kurth took the lead in the organization of the Southland Paper Mills which pioneered in the production of newsprint from yellow pine fibers. The company and its extensive lands were sold to the Owens-Illinois Corporation in 1966. The papers of this major lumbering enterprise were deposited with the Forest History Archives of the Stephen F. Austin State University in two groups. The first papers prior to 1930 came in 1955, and the remainder at the time of the liquidation of the company in 1966 through the courtesy of Simon Henderson, Jr., and Ernest L. Kurth, Jr. It is one of the largest and most complete collections of company papers to be found in any depository, numbering more than 500,000 items.
W. T. CARTER LUMBER COMPANY
CHRONISTER LUMBER COMPANY 1898-1944
Collection consists of record books containing the company's charter, bylaws (1898) and director's and stockholder's meetings minutes, 1901-1944. Also included in the collection are agreements between the lumber company and family groups, plat maps, and a graph of monthly average sales prices for lumber and mill runs.
DANIEL LUMBER COMPANY 1876-1951
William Fleming Daniel (1861-1951) began lumbering operations in Nacogdoches
County around 1900 and continued operations throughout East Texas until
the early 1950s. With his son, Awtrey Fleming Daniel (1894-1955), and
other partners, Daniel operated sawmills in the Cushing and Caro areas,
as well as a planing mill, a lumberyard, and a hardware store.
The records in this collection include deeds, blueprints, insurance contracts,
liens, and other papers relating to the different mills operated by the
company.
EDWARDS BROTHERS LUMBER COMPANY
H. C. (Hugh Clete) and R. L. (Robert Lee) Edwards ran sawmills in Marion and Arcadia, Louisiana, before they moved to Bastrop, Texas in 1928. In July, 1936 they organized the Edwards Brothers Lumber Company, purchased the land of the defunct New Birmingham Development Company near Rusk, Texas, and moved their sawmill operations there, soon becoming Cherokee County's largest lumber manufacturing company. R. L.'s son, Billie (Robert Lavalle), and the bookkeeper, C. F. Mehner, were active in the company as were Ada Jane Pace (Mrs. R. L.) Edwards who ran the commissary, her assistants (first, Rosalie Byrum Kitchens; then Kitchen's sister, Eula May Byrum Daniels), and J. C. Banks (assistant bookkeeper).
FOSTER LUMBER COMPANY 1905-1957
The Foster Lumber Company, under founder John McCullough Foster, established its first retail lumberyard at Randolph, Kansas, in 1879. By 1894, the Foster Lumber Company had acquired land in Montgomery County, Texas, near the present day town of Fostoria, formerly known as Clinesburg. Most of the company's Texas business was concerned with timberlands and sawmill operations to support their retail yards.
In 1905, the company constructed a big saw mill at Fostoria and began operations there the next year. At the time of its construction the mill was said to be the fastest one in the South. The company town was cleaner and better equipped than the average mill town at that time. Continuing to add to its holdings of Texas timberland, the company eventually expanded to include land in Polk, Harris San Jacinto and adjoining counties in addition to its Montgomery County holdings.
FROST-JOHNSON LUMBER COMPANY 1902-1956
Enoch W. Frost began lumbering with a small portable sawmill as early as 1881 in the region around Texarkana. He expanded his operations and became associated with a group who formed the Frost-Trigg Lumber Company in 1897. In 1907 Edwin Ambrose Frost, son of Enoch, in conjunction with Clarence D. Johnson, organized the Frost-Johnson Lumber Company which merged with Frost-Trigg. The company was developed by E. A. into a complex lumber operation and was for a time the largest lumber manufacturer in Northeast Texas and Northwest Louisiana. Clarence D. Johnson, who was born in New York, came south and began his sawmill career working as a trimmer in the Louisiana mill in 1885. Johnson worked his way up through the mill and eventually became the first vice-president of the Frost-Johnson Lumber Company.
In 1910 Frost-Johnson further expanded with the purchase of the Hayward mill and more than 50,000 acres of pinelands in Nacogdoches and adjoining counties, together with the Nacogdoches and Southeastern Railroad. Frost-Johnson became Frost Lumber Industries in 1925 and three years later acquired another major Texas property with the purchase of the Waterman Lumber Company. With the death of E. A. Frost in 1950, the stockholders voted in 1952 to sell to Olin Industries who shortly there after sold to the International Paper Company.
HENDERSON AND KURTH
KIRBY LUMBER CORPORATION 1901-1985
The Kirby Lumber Corporation was organized in 1901. Its founder, John Henry Kirby, was already a well-known lumberman and timber buyer with large interests in South-East Texas and the growing city of Houston. At its peak, the Kirby Lumber Corporation operated some seventeen sawmills and a similar number of logging camps, cutting the timber from more than 900,000 acres of virgin pineland. The Kirby Company was easily the largest lumbering enterprise in Texas and claimed to be the largest in the entire South. With palatial headquarters in Houston, Kirby presided over a vast empire. He was an important political figure and held offices in both Texas and the federal governments. He was also a leader in organizing the Southern Pine Association and frequently spoke for the industry on national questions. During the Great Depression the company fell into financial difficulty and its control passed into the hands of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad Company which continues to own and operate it. John Henry Kirby continued as president of the enterprise until his death in 1940. The inactive papers of the Kirby Lumber Corporation were deposited in the Forest History Archives of the Stephen F. Austin State University Library in 1971 through the courtesy of Thomas Orth and J. B. Webster. It is a large, comprehensive collection dealing with all phases of the company's activities, numbering some 430 boxes and 179 ledgers.
LUTCHER-MOORE LUMBER COMPANY 1842-1969
Henry J. Lutcher and G. Bedell Moore came to Texas in 1877 and established what was probably the first large lumber operation in the state at Orange on the Sabine River. They were experienced lumbermen, having owned a sawmilling company in Williamsport, Pennsylvania before migrating South. The Lutcher and Moore Lumber Company developed into one of the largest lumber operations in the entire Gulf South and frequently reported the largest annual cut of any Texas enterprise at a single site. They owned large acreages of pinelands on both sides of the Sabine and expanded their activities to include a number of related companies. Henry Lutcher was a leader in promoting the development of a deep water port on the Sabine and the company exported Southern pine lumber to all parts of the world. L & M pioneered in the development of grade-marked lumber and was one of the first Texas companies to discontinue the use of merchandise checks for paying its employees. Three generations of Lutchers, Moores, Starks, and Browns (Henry J. Lutcher Stark) guided the destinies of this great company and its subsidiaries for more than ninety years. In 1970 the company, its assets and lands were sold to the Boise-Southern Company and Lutcher and Moore as an active producer of lumber passed out of existence. The papers of the company which are of historical interest have been deposited with the Forest History Archives of the Stephen F. Austin State University Library. They comprise a very large collection approximating some 44,122 items.
SAN AUGUSTINE COUNTY LUMBER COMPANY
The records in this collection cover a ten-year period from 1916 through 1926 but the bulk of the collection consist of business correspondence between 1922 and 1924. There were apparently a couple of lumber companies to call themselves the San Augustine County Lumber Company (according to W. T. Block in his book East Texas Mill Towns and Ghost Towns). These records represent Angelina County Lumber Company which was formerly San Augustine County Lumber Company. There are several items of correspondence which bear the Angelina County Lumber Company name.
Southland Paper Mills,Inc. was organized on June 13, 1938. Chief investor
and first president was Ernest L. Kurth. On May 27, 1939, the mill site
was dedicated to Charles H. Herty, the person who brought the project
about by insisting that the South could produce commercial newsprint.
On January 17, 1940, production of the first commercial newsprint made
of Southern pine was begun at the mill located near Lufkin because of
the wood, water, fuel, and transportation available there. Within the
first ten years of operation, a second newsprint machine was needed. In
1966, St. Regis Paper Company purchased the Southland stock that had been
owned by the Louis Calder Foundation and various Calder family members.
In the summer of 1977, St. Regis bought out the remaining shares of Southland.
Champion International Corporation bought St. Regis in September 1984,
making it the industry's largest manufacturer of "white paper"
and the second largest domestic producer of newsprint.
Southland's Lufkin mill pioneered the way to Southern paper production,
therefore, making it an important part of American history.
SOUTHERN PINE LUMBER COMPANY
TEMPLE INDUSTRIES 1908-1957
Thomas Lewis Latane Temple built his first sawmill at Diboll, Texas, in 1894. Temple, a native of Virginia, had previous experience in lumbering in Arkansas and Texarkana, and continued to maintain his interests in Northeast Texas throughout his life. The Southern Pine Lumber Company, as the Diboll venture was called, grew and expanded, adding additional mills, diversified wood-using plants, and increased acreage of virgin pine timber. To facilitate transportation, the company built and continues to operate the Texas, South-Eastern Railroad. The Temple families also were co-founders and pioneers in the development of the Southland Paper Mills which was the first manufacturer of newsprint from yellow pine fibers. Three generations of the Temple family, TLL Temple, Arthur Temple, Sr. and Arthur Temple, Jr., have provided strong leadership for the varied Temple Industries for more than three-quarters of a century. As of 1973 the Southern Pine Lumber Company is perhaps the oldest large lumber manufacturer still operating under the same family which founded it. The inactive papers of the Temple Industries have been deposited with the Forest History Archives of the Stephen F. Austin State University Library. It is a major collection containing approximately 70,000 items.
THOMPSON BROTHERS LUMBER COMPANY RECORDS
1847-1959
One of the earliest lumber manufacturers in Texas was the Thompson family. Beginning in 1852 Benjamin F. Thompson and his sons built a small sash sawmill in Northern Rusk County, which supplied local needs and also sold lumber as far west as Dallas and Ft. Worth. His son, John Martin Thompson, expanded and enlarged the mill buying new and improved machinery as it became available. In 1882 the family moved its operations to Trinity County where they built a large mill at Willard, on the Trinity and Sabine Railroad. In turn his sons developed several new mills and related companies, either in partnerships with members of the family or with other lumbermen. The Thompson family had mills at Willard, Douchette, Grayburg, New Willard, and Trinity, with headquarters at Houston. J. Lewis Thompson was a leading conservationist and an early supporter of the Texas Forestry Association and the Texas Forest Service. The widow of his brother, Mrs. Hoxie H. Thompson deposited some Thompson Papers, a history of the family lumbering business, and a great number of photographs with the Forest History Archives of the Stephen F. Austin State University Library. The pictures, especially, are most useful in recreating the history of the Texas lumber industry during the bonanza era.
TRINITY RIVER LUMBER COMPANY LEDGERS
1904-1949
The Trinity River Lumber Company was a wholesale house established by the Foster sons (Foster Lumber Company) in 1896 at Conroe, Texas. In 1897 the Trinity River Lumber Company, which supplied the Foster company's yards and wholesale business in Kansas City, was moved to Houston.
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