PART H: THE THOMAS BANCROFT AND SONS MILLS ** raised in Bancroft, Louisiana, and never told the origin of its name, nor the history associated with it. My desire to know has led me places ( information) that has long been forgotten, and grateful of the historical write of W.T.Block ( Texas/Orange County/ Historian) Also is a map I found last night of the 3 locations of the mill, I only knew the second location, at my parents store. by W. T. Block A lumber journal of 1902 wrote that one of the earliest of the Orange County sawmills became a reality when:101 . . . Thomas Bancroft and Sons built a mill here (Orange) in 1877 and made lumber and shingles. The mill had a capacity of 50,000 feet of lumber and 90,000 shingles (daily). They were the first to introduce dry kilns to this place..... Fortunately, George Bancroft wrote a 21-page typescript about 1920, outlining his familys many activities while sawmilling at Orange, and his memoirs, along with the writers research, verify that while the Bancroft mills made both lumber and shingles during their first years at Orange, the company did not manufacture both lumber and shingles at the same time. Bancroft wrote that:102 . . . In 1873, my father and two brothers formed the partnership of T. Bancroft and Sons, and with their earnings, bought from a Mr. Woodell (sic: Burton and Woodill), a sawmill located on the Louisiana side of the Sabine River....and installed in this mill the first flooring and moulding machines brought to Orange..... . . . At that time the Sims Mill was operating on the Louisiana side of the river at the entrance to Phoenix Lake,103 and the Woods mill (Woods and Gilmer) was operating on Conways Bayou (south of Orange); and on the Texas side of the Sabine River, the (R. B.) Russell mill (was) at Orange, and the (W. B.) Black Mill (was) at the mouth of Adams Bayou. Transportation being entirely by water, boats would take cargoes from the mills on the Louisiana side....for delivery to ports on the Gulf Coast..... . . . Cypress was the only timber being worked in the mills, and this mill turned out cypress flooring, moulding.....at the rate of 15 or 20,000 feet per day....(On) Sunday, March 26, 1877, the sawmill of T. Bancroft and Sons was destroyed by fire..... George Bancroft added that since outlaws were hiding from officers in a nearby marsh, he believed the outlaws set fire to the mill to create a diversion. Obviously,the Bancrofts manufactured only lumber in their first mill that burned, and their second mill was only a shingle mill. Bancroft noted that Henry Thompson, a wealthy Orange merchant and wholesale shingle dealer, offered to loan the Bancrofts money to rebuild with; he would also furnish all cypress logs and buy the mills total output, provided the owners would build adjacent to the railroad on the Texas side of the river. Bancroft added as well that:104 . . . This shingle mill was built in 1877, and equipped with a circular saw rig to cant (saw) timber to size for shingle bolts....The bolts went up a belt elevator to the second floor....where the shingle machines were located. The shingles dropped from the machines onto sorting tables....and passed into bins to be packed into bunches (bundles).....This shingle mill had a capacity of 75,000 shingles per day..... On the initial runs of the new shingle mill, Bancroft and Sons were making between 35,000 and 40,000 shingles per day...105 Apparently, the earlier statement about the Bancroft dry kiln was correct as well. In March, 1879, another editor observed that:106 . . . Bancroft and Sons mill is getting under full headway. It turned out 76,000 shingles last Saturday....The steam dryer (kiln), which is capable of holding about 1,300,000 feet, is a new feature of that mill. The steam heat so far reaches about 150 degrees..... The 1880 Orange County Schedule IV census, Products of Industry, provided the following information about the Bancroft Shingle Mill:107 . . . Bancroft and Sons Shingle Mill, Orange, Texas. Capitalization: $15,000; employees: maximum, 35; average, 30 men; 3 boys under 16 (as shingle bundlers); work hours: 9 and a half winter; 10 and a half, summer; daily wages: skilled, $4.00; unskilled, $1.50; annual wages paid: $11,000; months in operation: 8, idle for 4; equipment: two 4-gang saws, 1 circular saw, 4 boilers, two 75-horsepower steam engines; raw materials and value: cypress logs worth $18,000; product: 14,000,000 shingles; product value: $35,000: origin of logs: Sabine River--mill did no logging. By the early and middle 1880s, cypress logs were often becoming scarce, and often the mill had to be shut down until a river freshet and overflow allowed logs to be floated out of the swamps. Fortunately about 1883, the Texas and New Orleans Railroad offered Bancroft a lucrative contract. The railroad would furnish the Bancroft mill with cypress logs from railroad-owned lands to be cut into crossties by the shingle mills circular saw; also they offered to pay the mill 20 cents for each solid heart crosstie the mill cut, and all the logs not containing wood of solid heart would be given to the mill to be cut into shingles. In 1885, T. Bancroft and Sons discerned that they would soon run out of cypress timber for shingles anyway, and the owners decided to build a new sawmill to cut pine lumber. With $30,000 in cash in the bank, the sawmiller bought a new double-circular mill from the Filer and Stowell Company of Milwaukee; also a steam log turner, a 40-foot log carriage, with steam shotgun feed; an automatic saw sharpener; timber sizer; edgers and cut-off saws; and a complete new planing mill, with moulders and matching machines and a resaw. By February, 1886, the new sawmill was in operation, but lacking a dry kiln at first, rough lumber was stacked on the yard to season.108 By March, 1889, the Bancroft shingle mill was cutting 75,000 shingles daily, whereas the new Bancroft sawmill was cutting 75,000 feet of pine lumber each day.109 At first, the Bancroft sawmill was logged by the Sabine Tram Company of Newton County, but eventually, E. W. Bancroft and L. T. Grubbs organized the Tram Arthur Logging Company, with intent to supply logs to the mill from the new Bancroft pine timberlands in Louisiana. On April 14, 1892, the stacked lumber on the yards of Bancrofts sawmill caught fire and burned for 48 hours, consuming 4,600,000 feet of lumber, worth $35,000, of which $17,000 was covered by insurance. The sawmill, planer, and 1,000,000 feet of lumber in dry sheds were saved. Two or three blocks of nearby dwellings also burned. The Bancroft blaze was one of Oranges most difficult fires ever to combat, and hundreds of volunteers, including a train load of men and equipment from Beaumont, fought the fire.110 In September, 1896, Thomas Bancroft died, and the Bancroft mills passed to his sons. In January, 1897, the Bancroft Lumber Company was incorporated, with a capital stock of $100,000, consisting of 1,000 shares with a par value of $100 each. Each brother was to receive 200 shares, and the new officers became A. J. Bancroft, president; E. W. Bancroft, vice president; and George Bancroft, secretary-treasurer. George Bancroft also acted as mill superintendent.111 In August, 1899, the brothers bought a 13,800-acre tract of prime long leaf pineries in north Calcasieu Parish, Louisiana, from Gay, Wasey and Company of Chicago for $12.50 an acre. The land contained an estimated 160,000,000 of mature (12 inch and larger) stumpage, sufficient to supply the mill for about ten years. The purchase also created an immediate need for rails and rolling stock. Bancroft contracted to buy a 28-ton locomotive, twenty logging cars, and six miles of steel rails from the J. I. Campbell Lumber Company, and agreed to pay for the purchases in dressed lumber shipped to Campbells many retail lumber outlets in central Texas. Hence, the Bancroft Lumber Company was soon staggering under a mountain of debt. The brothers borrowed $50,000 from a Beaumont bank. After paying a down payment of $43,612 to Gay, Wasey and Company, they also issued three annual notes for the same amount. Hence, they were soon committed to pay off $180,000 in notes in three years, as well as a percentage of their daily lumber cut to Campbell Lumber Company to pay for the rolling stock. To raise money to meet obligations, the brothers sold the 400 shares of uncommitted stock in Bancroft Lumber Company for $40,000 to George C. Vaughan Lumber Company of San Antonio. J. W. Link, an Orange attorney, negotiated the transaction with the Chicago firm.112 Link was soon to negotiate another transaction for the Bancroft firm. In the spring of 1901, the Kirby Lumber Corporation authorized Link to negotiate with Bancroft Lumber Company toward the purchase of all Bancroft company stock, real estate, and equipment. Both Bancroft and Vaughan Lumber Company agreed to accept $400 for each share of stock. Since Links fee of $10,000 for the transaction had to be paid out of the sale price, the old owners were paid a total of $410,000 for nearly all of the Bancroft assets, and as of September, 1901, Bancroft agreed to start sawing logs for Kirby, even though the company still owned much lumber on the yard that was committed to its former customers. A part of the agreement was that George Bancroft remain on his job as plant superintendent of Mill D at Orange (the new designation given to the old Bancroft mill in Kirbys alphabet soup nomenclature of its sawmills) at a salary of $250 a month.113
Posted on: Sat, 27 Dec 2014 19:02:28 +0000
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