| Historicial Development: | The A-Z Lumber Company (Charles W. Fitch and R. S. Noble) at Birdwell's Switch bankrupted in 1912. The trustee, Henry Arnold, sold the mill to R. S. and T. B. Noble for $7,021 in 1914. In 1915, E. D. Watson bought the mill. Watson partnered with John and J. B. Christensen, who had bought the other Noble & Noble mill southeast of Hemphill. Between May 11 and 16, 1916, J. B. Christensen bought out his brother and E. D. Watson.
Jesse Travis, a long-time resident of Sabine County, told Vernon L. Beasley that the Talltimber Lumber Company was a “big operation.” The company had a commissary and ran a train into Hemphill on Saturday for employees. The company was authorized to issue bonds by 1917. The lumber plant equipment included two boilers, one circular saw, a shotgun feed, live rollers, one edger, one trimmer, slab and dust conveyors; a planing mill with a boiler and steam engine, a Mississippi planer; five dry kilns; 1,800 feet of dollyways; fourteen tenant houses, sized 12-foot by 45-foot; one house 30-foot by 68-foot, which included the commissary and office; one warehouse; one boarding house, sized 30-foot by 72-foot; a blacksmith shop; and other goods, wares, merchandise, furniture and machinery; and 500,000 feet of lumber at the mill.
J. B. Christensen maintained the company name as Watson-Christensen as Sabine County Deed Records of 1917 show but would later change it. This researcher presumes that Talltimber Lumber Company was the name of the company that J. B. Christensen organized for stock issue in 1917, for that is when Talltimber Lumber starts appearing in the Sabine County official records Talltimber Lumber Company had succeeded to the properties of Watson-Christensen of Hemphill, with mills at Birdwell''s Switch, Brookeland, and the old Watson-Christensen mill on the Henry Nichols Survey, about four miles east and south of Hemphill. |