In
the early 1800s, when East
Texas was settled by Southern families, they were greeted by vast
pine forests where massive trees towered over the land. It wasn’t
unusual to see pines as large as five feet in width. An early settler
wrote his family back in Alabama, “The forests are so thick with giant
trees that our wagons could not pass that way.”
But with the coming of the railroads, sawmills began to sprout up
throughout the forests. The giant pines came down and became lumber
that helped build cities like Houston,
Dallas, Beaumont
and Shreveport.
Today, only a handful of plots in East
Texas retain the appearance of the early forests.
But a new book published by Jane G. Baxter of Nashville, Tennessee,
and Dan T. Barnes of Trinity, Texas, has captured the appearance of
the old forests that existed in the early 1900s.
“Lone Star Pine” is actually a reprint of a copy of American Lumberman
magazine, which devoted its September 28, 1908, volume to the Thompson Lumber Company, the oldest lumber manufacturer in Texas.
Lucile Slocumb Thompson and John Gray Thompson, great-great-grandchildren
of John Martin Thompson, gave a copy of the 1908 volume. “The House
of Thompson,” to the Texas Forestry Mueum at Lufkin.
What makes “Lone Star Pine” so unusual are photos of forests that
will never be seen again, as well as scenes from sawmill towns that
vanished or have become shells of what they were in 1908.
John Martin Thompson is credited with founding the company. He was
born in Georgia, moved with his parents to Kilgore
in East Texas, was educated
in Kentucky, and took over his father’s sash sawmill and 10,000 acres
near Kilgore with
his brother, William Wirt Thompson.
They enlarged the mill and began buying additional lands and building
new sawmills and towns across East
Texas.
Thompson mills soon sprouted at Trinity in Trinity County, Willard
in Polk County, Doucette in Tyler County, and Grayburg in Jefferson
County.
The book contains more than ninety pages of rare photographs that
show the woods as they looked when the earliest settlers came.
One of East Texas’ most famous photos is a scene showing rotund Peter
Doucette, for whom the town was named, standing by a 56-inch upland
shortleaf yellow pine tree.
Other photos show the Thompson Brothers’ store at Kilgore,
early scenes of Kilgore,
and sawmill operations at Trinity, Willard, Doucette, and Grayburg.
“Lone Star Pine,” can be purchased from Jane Baxter, at 4641 Chalmers
Drive, Nashville, Tennessee, 37215. The cost is $30.00, plus $7.00
for shipping and handling. Checks should be made out to “House of
Thompson.” |
