| Historicial Development: | William H. Allen mortgaged to J. F. Kelly for his sawmill in Walker County in 1879. County chattel mortgages registered in the county records reveal that the steam-powered sawmill was located on Pine Creek, about ten miles northwest of Huntsville This sawmill was listed in Subdivision 2 for Walker County in the 1880 Census. The Census recorded the d capital value of the facility at $2,000. Allen employed fifteen men. They were paid $.75 to $2.00 daily for eight-hour shifts. Allen paid out a total of $1,600 in wages for twelve half-time months of operations. From $4,400 worth of sawlogs and supplies, the facility manufactured 800,000 feet of lumber for a value of $7,000. The woods crews did their logging along the Trinity River. Allen was enumerated at Precinct 2, residence 68, in Walker County, as a sawmiller. This is probably the sawmill that John Felix, Kelly, Sr., that a Walker County deed record referred to when Kelly transferred more than 800 acres to Benton Randolph, acting as Trustee for Byrd Eastham, in January, 1878, to satisfy a debt to Eastham in the sum of $4,268 that Kelly had used to purchase machinery, provide for his family, and run his mill.
George Meggs Cecil purchased the sawmill about 1892, according to Walker County Chattel Mortgage Register entries. George Meggs Cecil, according to W. T. Block, “was a well-known, pioneer lumberman from about 1890 until 1910.” The sawmill was mentioned in the LCA editions of 1905 and 1907. In 1907, Cecil mortgaged the sawmill and planer, a portable boiler and engine, and all his lumber to the Huntsville State Bank.Sion was located several miles northwest of Huntsville, near the county line and between the forks of Bedias and South Bedias creeks. Webb's Handbook of Texas describes the community as “a sawmill site with a general store, daily mail delivery, and a population of 150 by 1896. . . . it was not listed in census reports after 1914.”
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