PART K: THE MILLER-LINK LUMBER COMPANY
by W. T. Block
Under Leopold Miller and J. W. Link, who bought "Mill D' in July, 1905, the old Kirby mill seemed to blossom in a way that it never did while Kirby Lumber Corporation owned it. By 1905, J. W. Link became actively caught up in sawmilling, and he certainly guided the new company's financial progress, even if he lacked the mechanical skills of many sawmillers. Although two histories of Miller-Link Lumber Company survive from 1910 and 1916, little space in them is devoted to the mechanical improvements at the mill. In 1909, however, the mill underwent a complete rebuilding to increase its cutting capacity to 125,000 feet daily. Since Miller was one of the earliest band sawmillers at Orange, the writer believes that the owners replaced the double-circular rig with a single-cutting band saw and perhaps a 36-gang saw. The machinery replacements occurred in May, 1909, at the time that Miller-Link added a No. 77 American Woodworking matcher, a high speed machine for dressing flooring, beaded ceiling, centermatch, shiplap, and siding. The machine produced the company's "Faultless" brand of products as follows:126
. . . A specialty is made of "Faultless" flooring, (beaded) ceiling, siding, and finish. Since the adoption of this trademark as applied to the high class of material shipped under this name...."Faultless" is the product of a modern, high speed machine installed in this plant a little more than a year ago (1909).....
It became obvious that logging the Miller-Link sawmill was a trade-off with Kirby Lumber Company. Kirby logged its Call sawmill around 1906 from some of the L. Miller timberlands in Newton County, whereas Kirby provided the Miller-Link mill at Orange with logs skidded into the Sabine River at Whitman's Bluff.126 Beginning in 1905, the Miller-Link sawmill at Orange also received 24 car loads of logs daily from the C. E. Slade logging camp at Quigley, Jasper County, on the Orange and Northwestern Railroad.127 Miller-Link log trains on the Orange and Northwestern traveled at passenger train frequency and scheduling. Logging ended at Quigley in 1909, and it was soon transferred to Bunker Hill, Jasper County, also on the Orange and Northwestern, thirty miles north of Orange. At Bunker Hill, the Miller-Link loggers utilized both a steam log skidder and a steam log loader to facilitate the speed of handling, and their logging spurs crowfooted into the company's pineries on both sides of the railroad. At the height of logging activities at Quigley before 1909, loggers and their families numbered about 150 persons, and probably a like number lived at Bunker Hill.128
On September 1, 1908, Miller-Link tried to expand into Newton County, and the company bought the 50,000-foot Newton Sawmill Company plant at Newton, Texas. However, the year 1909 witnessed lumber overproduction and plummeting prices to the point that Miller had to close down the Newton plant in 1909 in order to keep the Orange plant open. A most grisly death at Newton in February, 1909, witnessed a young Orange man, Walter Bradford, being drawn into the sawmill machinery and was ground to bits; but since sawmill deaths occurred daily in that age, it probably had nothing to do with the mill closing. It is unclear to the writer exactly what happened to the Newton sawmill, but probably it was either sold or dismantled.129
Early in 1910, J. W. Link sold out his interests in the company to L. Miller, and Link moved his family to Houston. There was then considerable reorganization in the lumber company. Miller brought in Oscar S. Tam of Alabama as vice president and general manager over all mill operations. Two of Miller's sons were also active officers of Miller-Link Lumber Company. Joe Miller served as vice president and assistant general manager, and Maurice Miller was secretary- treasurer and purchasing agent for the company.130
Less is known about Miller-Link during the years after 1910, but it appeared the sawmill continued to prosper at least until the end of World War I. The Directory of American Sawmills recorded that in 1915, Miller-Link Lumber Company was still sawing 125,000 feet of yellow pine lumber daily. Some of its products were both for export and for railroad timbers. The company's sawmill and planer could saw and dress timbers up to 42 feet long, whereas the maximum length it could kiln-dry was thirty feet.131
Another history of the Miller-Link Lumber Company of 1916 indicated that nothing had changed drastically at the sawmill, which still was cutting 125,000 feet daily. Its logs were still coming from Jasper and Newton counties and from Calcasieu and Beauregard parishes in Louisiana. The Miller-Link mill owned seven miles of Sabine River frontage and river log booms, giving it ample space to store its logs, even to build up a surplus. Company officers had remained the same since 1910, and in 1916, Leopold Miller was still president of the Orange and Northwestern, the Orange Grocery Company, the Orange Light and Ice Company, and the Orange Rice Mill Company, and he was vice president of the First National Bank and the Yellow Pine Paper Mill Company.132
The advent of World War I was to add unprecedented demand for lumber in order to build wooden ships at the Orange shipyards. Some of the ships were as large as 318 feet long, weighed up to 4,800 tons, and consumed as much as 1.5 million feet of lumber. Once again, Miller-Link moved outside of Orange to purchase a sawmill and again disaster resulted. In 1917 the company bought the R. W. Weir Lumber Company sawmill at Texla, a 75,000-foot mill that employed 200 mill hands and loggers, and a few months later the mill burned in 1918. Although Miller-Link soon rebuilt it with another double-circular mill, the owners soon sold out to the Peavy-Moore Lumber Company of Deweyville.133
The history of Miller-Link Lumber Company after 1918 is even more unclear. Since the huge Orange Lumber Company sawmill at Orange also burned in 1918, Miller-Link Lumber Company sawmill was actually one of the last three or four great sawmills left in town. Although the years 1918 through 1928 were years of prosperty, George Bancroft noted that Miller-Link experienced financial reverses, year uncertain but probably about 1922, and went bankrupt. Bancroft added that around that date, a hurricane flattened the last remaining stand of Kirby Lumber Company timberland in Calcasieu Parish from which the Miller-Link sawmill was logged. The company was finally auctioned at a bankruptcy sale to Peavy-Moore Lumber Company, and the old Miller-Link sawmill was soon dismantled and moved.134
From W. T. Block, "East Texas Mill Towns and Ghost Towns, Vol I, pp. 245-297, ed 1994, Piney Woods Foundation, Lufkin, TX.
Used with permission.
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