| History: | Robertson-MacDonald Lumber Company, based in Houston, operated a sawmill at Devers in Liberty County during the 1920s and early 1930s. The original owners were C. J. Robertson and Roy McDonald. Robertson, however, had several business interests with his friend E. L. Kurth of Angelina County Lumber Company. The sawmill at Devers was let out to the Robertson-Kurth Lumber Company before 1934, which also operated another mill on the Trinity River near Liberty. The Liberty sawmill used water transportation for moving its timber and lumber.
The Southern Lumberman noted in 1928 that this mill had a logging tram. Keeling notesthat the Robertson-McDonald Lumber Company at Devers operated a tram raod. It may have been augmented by a purchase made by Robertson and Kurth from Sampson Machinery and Supply Company, of Houston, in October, 1928. Two months earlier, Sampson Machinery had bought all the moveable machinery of the Keystone Mills Company, located at Waukegan, in Montgomery County. Robertson and Kurth bought all the machinery, with the exception of most of the sawing equipment. Among their purchase included a blacksmith and machine shop, a 15-ton narrow gauge locomotive, a Baldwin 29-ton locomotive, a Porter 23-ton locomotive, 31 log cars, and 5,000 30'-long and 30# rails, either stacked or on the tram road. It is reasonable to assume that this equipment was used on the tram road of the Devers mill.
|