The House of Thompson

The House of Thompson was originally printed in 1908 for The American Lumberman magazine. This historical document recounts the story of two brothers, John Martin Thompson and William Wirt Thompson, and the series of timber stands they purchased and sawmills they built in East Texas. Sawmills were located in such East Texas towns as New Willard, Old Willard, Doucette, Grayburg, and Trinity. The fine yellow pine lumber they produced was trademarked as Lone Star Pine. The American Lumberman sent a writer and a photographer to East Texas to gather material for the original publication. The text presents the full historical story of the Thompson family and their timber industry. The book contains over 90 pages with rare photos that show the forests of the region as many old-timers have described them, and similar to how they probably appeared when the first European explorers arrived in Texas. The development of modern photography at the beginning of the 1900s coincided with the availability of the still standing East Texas forest to present this unmatched glimpse into our past. The early Thompson family history begins with memories from John Martin Thompson of their father Benjamin F. Thompson; and the 10,000 acres he acquired near Kilgore, TX to develop cotton fields as he had in his native state of Georgia. The land contained a great amount of shortleaf yellow pine timber which became the first lumber operation of the Thompson family. The two brothers went to military school in Kentucky and then to fight in the Civil War. Upon returning to Texas, they moved to East Texas and started buying forest land and building sawmills at towns that grew up at the sawmill sites. Along with the existing forest environment, the reader is introduced to the woods crews that cut the huge timbers and skidded them to the rail line, the steel crews who laid the railroad into the forests, the loading crews who placed the logs on railroad cars to travel to the mill, and various sawmill operators who ran the machines to cut the logs and prepare them for market. Each of the Thompson sawmills is pictured inside and outside in great detail. The railroad became the major means of moving the heavy logs from the forest to the production plants, and ultimately out to markets in Texas and the nation. This reprint was made possible by a donation to the Texas Forestry Museum of an original copy of the 1908 volume The House of Thompson by Lucile Slocumb Thompson and John Gray Thompson, great great- grandchildren of John Martin Thompson. Stephen F. Austin State University and the East Texas Research Center lent assistance by scanning this document into a useable form. This reprint honors the families whose ancestors worked in the East Texas logging industry during the early 1900s, and who led the whole East Texas Landowners movement. They shared their love for the lands and forests of East Texas with their families and friends and opened the door to a life-long involvement in good forest management for the younger generations. This facsimile copy is sponsored by the Sam R. and Malcolm Monroe Barnes Foundation in an effort to document the story of living and logging in the East Texas forests of the past. The book preserves the heritage of East Texas forestry and the way the last great southern forest looked a century ago.