By 1900, however, the long leaf pine reserves of Orange County had been reduced to a half-billion feet.1 And elsewhere along the banks of the Sabine, three major tram roads, the Sabine Tram Company of Deweyville and Laurel, the Cow Creek Tram Company at Belgrade and Salem, and Lutcher and Moore's Gulf, Sabine and Red River Railroad in Calcasieu Parish, Louisiana, upped their delivery of logs in time to 100,000,000 feet of "stumpage (scale or log measure of uncut timber) annually to feed the ravenous appetites of Orange's "big log eaters."
Orange, Texas, like its counterpart of Beaumont in Jefferson County, was most fortunate in that it had water access to the Gulf of Mexico and did not have to depend entirely on rail transportation. The Texas and New Orleans Railroad arrived in Orange (that is, for the second time) on November 20, 1876.2 Bi-directional train service into Louisiana did not arrive until five years later, but that did not matter to the sawmillers because Orange's lumber markets during the 1870s-1880s were only at Texas points west of Orange, that is, in South, Central and West Texas.
Many of Orange's earliest lumber products were hand-hewn, but there was a water-powered sawmill built in the county in 1837. In 1891, Joseph Harmon, whose father, John Harmon, settled in Orange in 1830, reported that:3
. . . the first mill built in what is now Orange County was put up by Robert E. Booth in 1837, and was run by water, cutting 2,000 feet a day, a remarkably large cut for that day. After that. . .Robert Jackson erected a steam mill at the Narrows, eight miles above here on the Louisiana side. . . .
In a list of Republic of Texas postmasters published in October, 1840, R. E. Booth was named as being the postmaster at "Mount Holland," several miles northwest of Orange, which as of that year, was one of only two post offices located in present-day Orange County.4
Another article, entitled "The Mills of Orange," stated that Booth built his mill there in 1836, prior to his service in the Texas Army (of which the writer owns a copy of his military bounty certificate). It likewise states that Payne and Bendy built the first steam sash or upright sawmill at the Narrows of the Sabine River in 1841, using an engine and boilers from a sunken steamboat, which they sold to Robert Jackson in 1844, who soon tore it down and moved it to Orange. "It was the first mill to make sawdust in Orange," noted the same article, which the writer has serious doubts about since he has noted other errors in "The Mills of Orange."5 Jackson's mill was not listed at Orange when the the Schedule IV, Products of Industry, census was taken in 1850, and a Nacogdoches Chronicle article, written by a correspondent who visited in Orange in 1853, noted that: "...Captain Jackson has one (steam mill) now building (here)." Hence the writer believes that Robert Jackson's mill was moved to Orange in 1853, an opinion also voiced by an article in the New Orleans Democrat of 1889.6 The steamboat engine and boiler probably came from the steamboat Rufus Putnam, which sank at Eaves Plantation, south of Belgrade, on January 6, 1840. This was the only steamboat wreck on the lower Sabine River as of 1841, and its site was plainly marked on the Texas-U. S. Boundary Commission Map of 1840.7
There were a large number of cypress shingles being exported through Sabine Pass as early as 1839, and from all indications, all of them were being manufactured at hand-hewn shingle mills in Orange. In 1839 the schooners Santa Anna and Waterwitch carried loads of shingles from Orange to Galveston, and in 1842 the steamer Patrick Henry cleared Sabine Pass with a cargo of hand-sawn lumber.8
In 1850 the only lumber industry at Orange, recorded in the Products of Industry census of that year, was Marvin Delano's shingle mill. Delano processed 300 cypress logs, worth $300, by hand into 576,000 shingles, valued at $1,152. He employed three men, each paid $20 monthly, and one woman, paid $12.9 In 1850, the only steam lumber industry in Jefferson County (of which Orange County was then a part) was the Spartan Mill Company of Sabine Pass.
The first steam sawmill at Orange, erected in 1851, was built by two prominent local citizens, William Smith, who served terms in the state legislature, and John Merriman, who was Orange County's wealthiest resident in 1860, with assets totaling $60,000, including 49 slaves.10 In 1853, a visiting Nacogdoches newspaperman observed that:11 . . .Messrs. Smith and Merriman have a large steam mill in successful operation; it is a masterpiece of workmanship. Capt. Jackson has one now building.....Mr. Smith has one at the East Pass....Yet there is room for twenty more, and they will find ready sale for all the lumber they can make......
In 1855 Dr. William Hewson built the Empire Mills on the Sabine River, south of Orange, that reputedly cut 8,000 feet daily and worked ten men.12 The Empire Mills, said to have been "the best in the state," were deliberately set afire on May 31, 1856, by a Moderator posse of Orange's Vigilantes, who sought to flush out two murderers, Sam Ashworth and Jack Bunch, who were believed to be hiding in the sawmill, and who had just killed Deputy Sheriff Samuel Deputy on the Sabine River. The mill conflagration was a $15,000 loss, which included 100,000 feet of stacked lumber in which it was believed the murderers were hiding.13
Another source observed that W. C. Brazee and James Woods built a sawmill, consisting of one circular and one upright saw, at Orange in 1857.14 A Galveston editor of that year also confirmed that Brazee, Woods and Company was one of four steam sawmills located at or near Orange that had a daily output of lumber averaging from 3,000 to 4,000 feet daily. The other three lumber mills were John Merriman, Robert Jackson, and R. A. Neyland and Company's steam shingle mill.15
Between 1857 and 1859, Henry R. Green, a Galveston News correspondent, who was also a Beaumont school teacher, made three trips to Orange, and his accounts paint word pictures of matchless prose still unequalled in their descriptions of the sawdust city on the Sabine River. In 1857, while Orange still bore the name of Madison, he wrote that:16. . . Madison sits like a fairy upon a bewitching crescent formed by the Sabine, the houses neatly painted, stretching like the links of a chain clear around the bend of the river, so that standing at the uppermost part of the town, the eye is presented with a continuous line of fascinating cottages...."My God," I could but exclaim...."What a magnificent view! Just look at those pretty houses, so whitely-painted, ensconced like a duck in a nest of roses...."
Two years later, during his second visit to Orange in 1859, Green exclaimed upon visiting a local lumber mill that:17 . . . the spoke-shaving machine in (John) Merriman's Mills takes my beaver (hat) with the greatest facility and the least expense. Let lumber fall within its reach, and it comes out a wagon forthwith! Here is the greatest shingle and sawmill exporter in the state, constituting the chief pursuit of its inhabitants. The town is filling up with newcomers, which already reach to nearly one hundred and fifty families. . . .
The principal source of information for Orange's earliest lumber industries, not otherwise dependent on some one's memories, are the Schedules IV, Products of Industry, of the decennial censuses. Three Orange County firms were cutting timber with steam-driven equipment during the census year which ended on July 1, 1860, but strangely missing for the entire year was the sawmill of Brazee, Woods and Company, as follows:18
. . . John Merriman's Steam Sawmill, Orange, Texas. Capitalization: $23,000; raw materials and value: 10,000 saw logs, worth $10,000; employees: 8 men; wages paid for the year: $1,920; product and value: 1,104,000 feet of cypress and pine, worth $13,800.
. . . Robert Jackson's Steam Sawmill, Orange, Texas. Capitalization: $7,000; raw materials and value: 500 logs worth $1,500; employees: 4 men; wages paid: $100 per month; products and value: 300,000 feet of cypress and pine, worth $3,000.
. . . R. A. Neyland's Steam Shingle Mill, Orange, Texas. Capitalization: $4,000; raw materials and worth: 1,000 cypress logs worth $1,000; equipment: steam engine and shingle shaver; employees: 6 men; monthly wages: $180; product and value: 3,744,000 cypress shingles worth $11,252.
In 1857, there were 6,120,000 shingles exported at Sabine Pass, or about twice as many as were manufactured by Neyland's shingle mill in 1860. Since there is no indication that any shingles were being manufactured at Beaumont as of that year, the writer must assume that millions of shingles were still being manufactured by hand at Orange during 1859.19
Such was the city of Orange in 1861 when the great tragedy of the American Civil War made of Orange County an economic waste land, even though not a single shot was fired in anger there. Three Orange Confederate companies were quickly enrolled, who marched away to fight. A large number of them never returned, most falling victim to disease, although some of them were killed in battle. And as if the town and county had not suffered enough, Mother Nature added insult to injury on September 13, 1865, when a huge hurricane slammed ashore, killing and maiming several people at Orange and reducing the town to rubble and debris except for three or four residences.20 In the county's census enumeration for 1870, the population had dropped by several hundred, and it took Orange County an entire decade to recover from the devastation of the war and the winds.
In 1866 A. T. Chenault and John McGehee built a sawmill at Orange, but the latter soon sold out his interest to Chenault. The owner soon converted the business to a cypress shingle mill. One article noted that:21
. . . Charlie Chenault's....father was the first to introduce the manufacture of sawed shingles (at Orange). He started a Muzzy upright shingle machine near where the office of the Bancroft Lumber Company now stands in 1867 and averaged at first 10,000 shingles per day. The machine was eventually crowded up to a capacity of 15,000, and when the word went around town a year or more afterward that it had cut 20,000, it made a sensation.....The old Muzzy was afterward superceded by a rotary (machine) that soon wore out and was put in the scrap pile.
Used with permission.
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