Research: Tram & Railroad Database

Code: 273
Corporate Name: Freeman
Folk Name:
Incorporated:
Ownership: Freeman
Years of Operation: Unknown
Track Type:
Standard Gauge Wooden Rails
Track Length: Unknown
Locations Served: Leggett (Polk)
Counties of Operation: Polk
Line Connections: Houston East and West Texas at Leggett
Track Information:
Tram Road Logging / Industrial Common Carrier Logging Camp
Equipment: Keeling: one narrow gauge geared locomotive
History: Keeling lists the company with one narrow gauge geared locomotive operating on a wooden-railed tram road. James R. Freeman located a sawmill a mile down the road from his Freeman Lumber Company plant at Leggett in 1886. The following year he sold it to Jefferson Lumber Company. The latter firm operated the mill until 1889. Polk County Bill of Sale Record Vol A records that J. R. Freeman sold a steam sawmill to J. W. Temby of Harris County in 1887 for $10,000. The property included a fifty-horsepower steam engine, boiler, pumps, shafting, etc., a steam locomotive, all rails on the tramway, three tram cars, twelve yokes of oxen, four cart two dry kilns, all lumber at the mill, and all the remaining timber on the John Bland league west of King Creek in Polk County that had bought by Freeman of George W. Davis. When Thompson & Tucker moved from Willard to Freeman, the town was named New Willard.