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Three
miles north of Kountze,
in Hardin County, Texas,
where once the burly and towering pine trees shaded the forest floors
beneath them, the town of Olive thrived between 1881 and 1912. It
took its name from Sidney C. Olive of Waco,
who was one-half of the partnership of Olive, Sternenberg and Company,
the owners of the large Sunset Sawmill, which spawned the community.
And everywhere in town could be heard the shrill blasts of the steam
whistles, the whir and shotgun exhaust of the steam-driven log carriage,
the whine of the circular and gang saws, and the screech of the big
band saw, sure indications that mechanization and industry had finally
reached "the land of the pineys."
In 1876, while Beaumont
was celebrating the hundredth anniversary of the United States, the
same owners built the Centennial Sawmill on Brake's Bayou, Beaumont's
first large lumber mill, and operated it until 1883.
By 1915, the town of Olive, where once some 1,200 people lived and
prospered, had disappeared, having shared the same fate as a hundred
other early East Texas
sawmill towns, all of which died when the timber was cut out and the
mill and housing were moved away. Soon, only "cutover" stump lands
scarred the areas surrounding it, and today, its site having returned
to forest, only the abandoned and thicket-covered Olive Cemetery
remains to bear mute testimony to the town's erstwhile existence.
Likewise, all knowledge of the town of Olive has disappeared, except
among a few people of very advanced years who may have been born there. |
 |
In
1875, John A. Sternenberg of Houston
teamed up with Sid Olive of Waco to found the lumber firm, which was
capitalized at $56,000. And although both men would maintain at various
times residences at either Beaumont
or Olive, they continued to own their permanent abodes elsewhere,
Olive at Waco,
where his retail lumber business was concentrated, and Sternenberg
at Houston, where his other
business interests were located.
In 1876, Olive, who was born in Tennessee in 1833, moved his wife
Amerika and two children to Beaumont.
Sternenberg, however, boarded at Beaumont's old Telegraph Hotel, but
visited his wife and four children in Houston
whenever possible. J. A. Sternenberg, who was born in the German principality
of Westphalia in 1837, immigrated to Texas in 1849, where he settled
with his parents at New
Ulm, Austin County,
Texas.
Following his and his six brothers' service in the Confederate Army,
Sternenberg moved to Harris
County, where he built a steam sawmill on Green's Bayou in 1868.
In 1882, after their Centennial Sawmill in Beaumont
had been dismantled, Olive moved back to Waco
permanently and expanded the Central Texas retail lumber outlets of
the Waco Lumber Company, owned jointly by himself and A. J. Caruthers,
to about thirty-five. Thereafter, operation of the sawmill at Olive,
including all machinery and logging operations, became entirely the
domain of J. A. Sternenberg, as outlined in the partnership indenture
recorded in 1885.
Van A. Petty, who began as company bookkeeper in 1881, soon became
secretary-treasurer of the firm, and was charged with control of finances
as well as the company store and saloon. Petty, who was born at Bastrop,
Texas, in 1860, was Olive's nephew and the son of a Confederate captain,
killed at the Battle of Pleasant Hill, Louisiana. Later, one partner's
oldest son, G. Adolph Sternenberg, became the active manager of mill
activities, and both he and Petty acquired a quarter interest in the
business. Around 1900 and after, two other sons of J. A. Sternenberg
and four of his nephews became associated with the mill, by which
time Petty and G. A. Sternenberg owned the firm outright.1
On October 10, 1876, Gilbert Stephenson, as executor of the Nancy
Tevis Hutchinson estate, transferred the Beaumont townsite's "steam
mill square," located where Brake's Bayou intersects the Neches River,
and bounded as well by Mulberry and Cypress Streets, to Olive and
Sternenberg for $450.2 |
Early
in 1876, while visiting the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia,
Olive "purchased the prize engine of E. P. Allison and Co. [sawmill
manufacturers of Milwaukee], shipped to Beaumont,
[where] it was the first [sawmill] engine south of the Mason-Dixon
line that had a capacity of 50,000 feet a day."
Immediately, the proprietors began building the Centennial Sawmill
into the largest lumber manufactory then in Beaumont.
Unlike Long and Company, whose product was limited solely to cypress
shingles, the Centennial Mill installed one steam-driven shingle machine
and three lumber saws, and it took its name from the centennial anniversary
of American independence, which at that moment was still being celebrated
in Beaumont. Sadly, however, the Allison sawmill depended on an out-of-date,
friction-feed log carriage, and it was 1882 before another Beaumonter,
Mark Wiess, invented the steam-driven, "shotgun-exhaust" log carriage
that revolutionized Southern sawmilling. By December, 1877, one newspaper
noted that "the Centennial mill of Messrs. Olive and Sternenberg cut
805,000 feet of lumber last month in 26 days."3
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A month later,
the same newspaper recorded that "the Centennial mill of Olive and
Sternenberg 'chaws' up logs at the rate of 40,000 feet a day and employs
20 hands."4 For the year ending in August, 1878, the six Beaumont
sawmills shipped a total of 21.1 million feet of lumber, of which
more than two-fifths (8.85 million) was shipped by the Centennial
mill.5
In September, 1878, the Galveston Daily News observed:
Another firm, Olive and Sternenberg of the Centennial mills, are among
the prominent and reliable lumber manufacturers of Beaumont.
They turn out nearly 10 million feet annually. Their planing mills
are located in Houston, and the dealings of this firm are always prompt.
Their mills in Beaumont turn out 34,000 feet a day at present.6
The 1880 Products of Industry census schedule added a great deal of
information about Beaumont's
principal lumber facility of 1879, as follows:
Olive and Sternenberg's Centennial Sawmill, Beaumont,
Texas. Capitalization, $56,000. Employees, maximum, 160; average,
60 men and 6 boys as shingle bundlers. Work hours, daily, 11 winter
and summer. Daily wages, skilled, $3.00 daily; unskilled, $1.50. Annual
wages paid, $22,000. Months mill in operation, 10; shut down for logging,
2. Equipment: one 5-gang saw, 2 circular saws, two 75-horsepower steam
engine, 3 boilers. Raw materials: saw logs worth $50,000; mill supplies
worth $3,400. Products: lumber, 9,000,000 feet; shingles, 4,000,000.
Value of products, $88,000. Origin of logs: Neches River and its tributaries
- mill did 80% of its own logging.7
One Jefferson County
archival document, indeed, reveals that the Centennial mill was rafting
logs down the Neches River as early as 1879. Because saw logs in the
river belonged to different owners, the lumberjacks and raftsmen branded
logs in the same manner that ranchers branded cattle, and upon reaching
Beaumont, the
logs were 'corralled' and sorted out for each owner. |
There was a code
of honor among sawmillers that if a log were delivered to the wrong
mill, the log would be sawn, but it would be measured and proper disbursement
made to the rightful owner. The county's Log Brand Book reveals that
the Centennial mill registered its log brand 'S' on August 4, 1879.
8
Another news article recorded that the Centennial Sawmill had installed
its own planing mill at Beaumont
by 1881. Early in March of that year, A. P. Harris, editor of the
Orange, Texas,
newspaper, visited Beaumont and reported everything he had witnessed
in the "Sawdust City," as follows:
We visited next the great Centennial mill of S. C. Olive and J. A.
Sternenberg, extensive indeed, and employing more machinery, we thought,
than any other in the City of Beaumont making lumber, shingles, etc.,
and also running planers. We met Mr. Olive on the yard… We found the
yard crowded, with material ready for shipment, and two circular saws,
the 5-gang saw, the planers, and the other mass of machinery were
in full operation.9
Generally,
the decade of the 1880s presented an unprecedented demand for lumber,
and mill men everywhere made handsome profits, whereas the subsequent
decade saw years of financial depression and limited money for expansion,
depressed lumber markets and curtailed profits. By 1881, a Centennial
advertisement confirmed that the firm was branching out to other lumber
manufactures, mainly fence pickets and cypress cisterns.10
During the early 1880s, however, periodic low water in the Neches
River created perennial log shortages that adversely affected all
of the Beaumont
sawmills. In addition, the infant Texas and New Orleans Railroad,
for many years, was unable to supply sufficient box ears to the Beaumont
mills equal to their lumber output, and the railroad rationed available
ears to the mills daily, each according to its lumber capacity. This
was the principal cause for the organization of the East Texas and
Louisiana Lumbermen's Association, based at Beaumont,
in 1881. |
In 1880, the
Augustus Kountze banking interests of New York, Denver, and
Sabine Pass, who owned the Sabine and East Texas Railroad from
Beaumont to
Sabine Pass,
announced their intent to complete the railroad to Rockland, Texas,
a decision that would enable the Kountze Brothers to market their
250,000 acres of virgin timber lands in nearby counties. Both Olive
and Sternenberg began considering the building of a new sawmill in
Hardin County, an
area where a thousand square miles of virgin saw logs, most of them
between three and five feet in diameter, would be available. Logging
via their own narrow-gauge tram railway would alleviate the seasonal
shortages of saw logs, which the Centennial mill endured in Beaumont.
They hoped that the Kountze Brothers, with almost unlimited capital
to invest, could break the stranglehold of the box car shortages,
once their railroad was completed. However, as soon as Olive and Sternenberg
began planning their new Hardin
County sawmill, the Kountze interests sold out their railroad,
its new right-of-way through "the pineries," and its rolling stock
to the Texas and New Orleans Railroad, which for so long had failed
to supply the mill men with enough rail cars. As a result, the proprietors
made no attempt to sell or dismantle the Centennial mill until such
time as they could determine for certain how profitable the new Hardin
County mill would be. In fact, they continued to improve and enlarge
the Centennial mill at Beaumont
during all of the year 1881.
Even after the completion of the railroad bridge over Pine Island
Bayou and the first rails entered Hardin
County in January, 1881,11
Olive and Sternenberg were already planning the building of their
new Sunset Sawmill and the new Hardin
County mill town it would spawn. At first, they enlarged their
partnership, granting a one-third interest to A. B. Doucette, a well-known
Village Creek logging contractor, who years later, would lend his
surname to another mill town in Tyler
County. By 1882, the original proprietors released Doucette from
the agreement, presumably at his request, and bought back his interest
for $5,600.12
In March, 1881, their Hardin
County plans were set back somewhat by a fire that seemed so prophetic
of conflagrations of the future, described as follows:
The shed of the [Beaumont's]
Centennial Sawmill caught fire… Wednesday, but by the exertions of
the employees of that mill, what might have been a flaming inferno
was averted…13 |
Even
before the rails of the Sabine and East Texas reached the new railroad
camp at Kountze,
Olive and Sternenberg began shipping cars of lumber to Hardin
County and freighting it by wagon over the remaining miles to
the new mill town of Olive. Mill machinery and supplies followed
in August, 1881, and within a few weeks, one newspaper observed that:
Messrs. Olive and Sternenberg's new Sunset Sawmill in the Hardin
County pineries, on the East Texas [rail] line is being pushed
ahead to completion. This is an enterprising firm and deserves every
success.14
Three weeks later, the same editor added: "A few miles farther [north
of Kountze], the
Sunset Sawmill of Olive and Sternenberg will cut its first lumber
on next Monday morning."15 No
description of that earliest mill machinery at Olive survives, but
it probably was a duplicate of the Centennial mill's machinery, capable
of sawing 40,000 feet daily. Cutting equipment installed at three
other new sawmills at Beaumont
(although one less circular saw than the Centennial had) between 1878
and 1880 were identical, a single 5-gang saw and one circular saw.16
Another early description of the proprietors' two mills survives,
as follows:
In 1876, they [Olive and Sternenberg] built the Centennial mill at
Beaumont, at
that time the largest sawmill in the South, and they operated it until
1883. In 1881, they built the Sunset mills at Olive, which
they operated in connection with the Centennial mill until the latter
was dismantled. Since then, they have turned their whole attention
to the Sunset mill, which they have continually improved and enlarged
until it is a first class mill in every respect and second to none
in the state…17 |
In
1880, before the rails reached Hardin
County, heavily-forested pine lands, with virgin timber of four
or five feet in diameter, were a drag on the market at 25 cents an
acre. As soon as the rails and mills began to arrive in 1881, the
price of timber lands advanced, but there was quite a variation in
price that the proprietors paid, probably because of the distance
from the mill and the amount of tram trackage to be laid. In 1887,
they paid from 50 cents to $6.00 an acre for four tracts of land,
as follows: to U. M. Gilder, $150 for 320 acres; to S. B. Turner,
$100 for 160 acres; to P. A. Work, $450 for 640 acres; and to East
Texas Land and Improvement Company (the real estate arm of Kountze
Brothers, bankers), $1,000 for 160 acres.18
Beginning in 1881, Olive and Sternenberg faced an unknown facet of
the lumber industry not previously encountered by them - the need
to operate a logging tram railroad. Although they had previously logged
the southeast Hardin
County forests for the Centennial mill, all timber removed by
them had been so near to the Neches River and its tributaries that
only mules and oxen had been needed. Hence, after building the Sunset
mill they purchased a locomotive, five flat cars, and railroad iron.
By 1889, the Sunset tram was five miles long.19
By 1887, however, Olive and Sternenberg had grown weary of the logging
end of the lumber industry. On December 31, 1887, they signed an indenture
with two logging contractors, Gustav Linderman and J. S. Davis, to
supply logs to the mill for $2.20 per thousand feet, log measure.
The sawmillers agreed to furnish supplies and maintenance for the
tram, and the contractors agreed to buy for $7,200 all of Olive and
Sternenberg's forest equipment, including 29 mules, 22 yokes of oxen,
as well as harness, saws, axes, cant hooks, and sundry items.20
In 1889, the proprietors signed a new partnership agreement, admitting
two new members, each with a newly-acquired one quarter interest,
and detailing the duties of each member. Olive would continue as outside
financial agent, buying all lands and timber and selling all manufactures,
much of which went to his retail outlets around Waco. Sternenberg
would continue to oversee operations, maintenance of mill machinery
and the tram road. V. A. Petty, the secretary-treasurer who had just
acquired a quarter interest (half of Olive's half), would continue
to keep the books, accept and disburse funds, supervise the company
store and saloon and make their purchases, and provide for the payroll,
inventories, and profit and loss statements. |
Sternenberg's
oldest son, G. Adolph Sternenberg, who acquired half of his father's
interest, became his Father's understudy in the operations of the
mill and tram road. The partners set each of their monthly salaries
at $125.21.
Apparently, the four partners established the value of all equipment,
timber, and lands in 1889 at $90,500. In his indenture with V. A.
Petty, Olive valued his half of the business at $45,223, and Petty
agreed to pay him $22,611 in four equal, annual installments, beginning
in 1890. No indenture between J. A. Sternenberg and his son is recorded
in Hardin County.22
There
also appeared in 1889 the first newspaper description of the town
of Olive and its sawmill, as follows:
The mill is located in the very heart of the long leaf yellow pine
section, has a capacity of 65,000 feet daily, and the lumber turned
out is of an excellent quality. Among the improvements recently added
is a large dry kiln, with a storage capacity of 80,000 feet… Olive
has a population of about 500 and is supplied with schools and churches
for both white and colored [people]. Mr. [J. A.] Sternenberg spends
most of his time in a house surrounded by trees, flowers, and vines,
which at this time are laden with all the finest varieties of grapes,
and the company is taking advantage of this fact and now planting
a fifty-acre vineyard, from which good results are anticipated.23
A year later, the same Galveston News correspondent was back
on a tour of the East Texas sawmills, and he visited Olive during
August, 1890. A noticeable improvement had taken place on the tram
road, which by then had reached seven miles in length and employed
two locomotives and 18 log cars. However, mill employees were back
logging the forest, the previous method of contracting the logging
having apparently proved unsatisfactory. The correspondent added: |
Within
the past year, many new improvements have been made at this place,
among which may be mentioned a neat little passenger depot for the
convenience of the public, one room of which is a post office, nicely
arranged and well kept.
Messrs. Olive, Sternenberg and Co.,… have just added to their other
improvements a large and commodious business office, nicely furnished
with every convenience. Mr. V. A. Petty, a young man of sterling business
qualities, who has been with the company for eight years, is now not
only secretary-treasurer, but also a member of the firm, giving his
attention to the onerous affairs of the office. Mr. G. A. Sternenberg,
the accomplished son of Colonel J. A. Sternenberg, is another new
member of the firm, and keeps a watchful eye on the business of the
plant, which is one of the largest and best-equipped on the line of
the Sabine and East Texas Railway.
The commissary, which does a large business, is in charge of A. B.
Hall, while the orderly and well-stocked saloon is presided over by
W. A. Brooks. The large force in the woods is under the direct supervision
of Mr. Joe Payment… one of the most important men connected with this
enterprise.
Olive itself is quite a little burg, and is supplied with school
and church buildings, a hall of the Knights of Honor (a fraternal
order), also one for public entertainments. Moreover, it has a newly-organized
brass band, consisting of twelve young men of culture and refinement.
The members are Sam Barnett, the band leader; V. A. Petty, who plays
the B-flat cornet; U. A. Sternenberg, C. F. Sanders, W. Brooks, Arthur
Furby, J. Melancon, A. Miller, and J. Miller. The boys, rigged out
in their dress suits and beaver hats, look charming, and when they
go out to play . . . they become the heroes of the hour and the admiration
of the ladies. [For years, the Sunset band played for Beaumont's annual
firemen's masquerade and leap year balls.]… One always finds here
Colonel J. A. Sternenberg, who in his vine-clad home, always extends
to his guests that generous hospitality that makes a visit to Olive
an unforgotten pleasure.24
Throughout 1890, there was great demand for and an increasing shortage
of lumber in East Texas,
which forced up the price by $3 a thousand feet, and left the Sunset
mill with a very low inventory of two million feet on its yard.25
The market, however, was soon to turn sour as the nation entered a
disastrous depression. Luckily, the decade of the 1890s, due to major
expansion of the American railroads, brought unprecedented demand
for railroad crossties, bridge timbers, and depot materials, which
kept many East Texas sawmills free of bankruptcy as demand for lumber
for housing plummeted.
As an example, in September, 1891, Beaumont's
Reliance Sawmill signed the largest sales contract, for 100,000,000
feet with the Omaha, Kansas City, and Galveston Railroad, ever recorded
for a Southwestern sawmill, an amount so large that it would have
required the entire output of five sawmills for more than a year.
During 1892-1893, about one-half of the Sunset mill's output was sold
to the Reliance Sawmill to enable the latter to meet the terms of
its contract.26 |
No information
has been located concerning the Sunset Mill's conversion from the
obsolete circular saws to a double-cutting band sawmill, but the writer
believes that probably occurred in 1898. The first band sawmill in
Southeast Texas that the writer has knowledge of was installed in
the new Cow Creek Lumber Company mill at Call,
Texas, in 1895. The following article, although not specific in
mechanical detail, describes the overhaul of Sunset mill during the
summer of 1898, as follows:
Messrs. Olive, Sternenberg and Co., Olive, Texas, have started up
their new sawmill after a shutdown of six weeks, and now have one
of the best sawmills on the Sabine and East Texas railway. When they
shut down on July 15 they put about thirty mechanics and laborers
to work repairing and remodeling; in fact, they have almost built
a new mill out and out… Old machinery has been overhauled, and modern
machinery has been added. The capacity of the mill has been increased
by about 30,000 feet daily… While the mill was being fitted up, a
large force of men, under the management of J. S. Davis, ran some
five or six miles of new tram road to their large tracts of long-leaf,
yellow pine timber…27
By
the fall of 1899, both Olive and J. A. Sternenberg decided to retire
from the sawmill business. The latter sold his undivided one-quarter
interest to his son, G. Adolph Sternenberg, for $1.00. Olive released
to V. A. Petty his remaining one-quarter interest in the mill and
in 6,670 acres of timber land owned in common, as well as individual
tracts Olive owned outright. By 1901, Olive, Sternenberg and Company
was appearing in deed records as "a corporation composed solely of
V. A. Petty, president, and 0. A. Sternenberg, vice-president and
general manager."28
The 1900 decennial census of Olive, Texas, reveals that the
town's population was 976 persons, of whom 804 were White and 172
were Black. In both the 1880 and 1900 censuses, J. A. Sternenberg
was enumerated separately from his wife Emilie, but his son 0. A.
Sternenberg and daughter Emma, both single, were living in his household.
J. A. Sternenberg had already retired in 1900, listed himself as a
"capitalist," and reported that he had been married for 37 years.29
|
The Sunset Sawmill
suffered its worst misfortune after midnight on May 1, 1904, when
the sawmill caught fire from unknown sources and burned to the ground.
The fire was so advanced when discovered that it was only with great
difficulty that the planing mill and lumber yard could be saved. The
estimated loss of the sawmill, which had a daily cutting capacity
of 75,000 feet, was $40,000, a part of which was covered by insurance.
The company soon announced that the mill would be rebuilt, and to
the extent possible, company employees would be used to rebuild it.
Nevertheless, as usually resulted from a disastrous sawmill fire,
many employees found it necessary to move elsewhere when their livelihoods
were severed.30
Two months later, a Daily News correspondent returned to Olive
and left what is perhaps the best published record of the town and
its people. A new 100,000-foot mill was at that moment being built,
and "employment is given to 200 men." The company also took advantage
of the shutdown to stockpile logs and repair and extend the main tram
road, as follows:
The company has nine miles of tram road in operation and is adding
more when needed… In bringing the logs to the mill, four large locomotives
are used and Mr. [M. P.] Hargraves is engineer on the main line. Shay
engines are used on the spurs to bring the logs from the skidways
to the main tram… Mr. G. A. Sternenberg is superintendent; Mr. A.
G. Boudreaux, mill foreman; Mr. Jules Berg, planer foreman; Mr. Arthur
Sternenberg, yard foreman; and Mr. J. F. Alexander, woods foreman…
There are 5,000,000 feet of lumber on the yard, and enough timber
land is available to last five more years.31
Alas, the correspondent was already predicting the town's ultimate
fate when the available timber had all been cut, and only "stump land"
surrounded the mill. He also left the following excellent description
of Olive, as follows:
The
town has a current population of 700, of which eighty are pupils of
scholastic age. Public school is maintained eight months in the year,
and the school building is modern in all its appointments. A nice
church in which all denominations have the privilege of worshipping…
The company store closes at 6 o'clock each evening, and the saloon
closes at the same hour… Somebody said it is the only saloon in Texas
that observed regular business hours.32 |
The reporter
wrote most about Olive as a Farming, orchard, and stock-raising
community. He recognized that the town could not always rely on lumber
manufacturing, but seemed to think Olive could always survive as a
farming center, as follows:
When the lumber interests have gone and boll
weevils have made it impossible to raise cotton,
fruit and vegetables will have to be raised as a matter of self defense…
It is a fact that peaches ripened… this year two weeks earlier at
Olive than at Jacksonville
and the Bell Commission Co. at Beaumont…
said emphatically that the Olive peaches are the best that come to
Beaumont… Mr.
Rufus Harrington raised five acres of sweet potatoes… [worth] $80
an acre.
Two years ago, a canning factory was put up at Olive… The factory
is owned by a stock company composed of local people, and has a daily
capacity of 5,000 cans… The company that owns the canning factory
also owns a 25-acre fruit and truck farm one mile from town… Mr. J.
S. Davis had 500 head of sheep and recently he shipped 900 pounds
of wool… Mr. John Holland has 500 head of fine cattle, and others
are engaging in hog and poultry raising… Mr. Guy Work has 300 head
of goats… Mr. Alvin Jones raised eighty bushels of corn to the acre
last year… Mr. V. A. Petty has a nice fruit and truck farm and will
set out more trees soon. As a fruit and truck growing proposition,
Olive deserves liberal consideration…33
Despite the correspondent's plea for a rural farm economy for Olive
to replace that of lumber, such was not to be, and the town died with
the timber and sawmill. The reporter's statements indicate that much
time and effort at Olive must have been devoted to blasting and removing
stumps in order to procure the cleared land necessary for farms and
orchards, but in 1904, no sawmill in East Texas practiced the concept
of reforestation, which belonged to a much later time period.
In November, 1904, a Beaumont
newspaper observed that "the big mill of Sternenberg and Petty at
Olive is now ready to commence work. It has a daily capacity of 100,000
feet."34 |
The same editor
noted that Olive, Sternenberg and Company cut all of its logs
on the east side of the East Texas Railroad. Although no details of
mill machinery survive, the writer believes that two double-cutting
band saws were installed at Olive in 1904, and that any experienced
mill man would agree that nothing less than two such band saws could
cut 100,000 feet daily.
By 1907, all members of the Sternenberg family except G. A. Sternenberg,
his wife, and two children, had departed permanently for Houston.
Although only 38 years of age, he was already entertaining the idea
of retiring from active management of the sawmill so that he could
spend most of his time in Houston,
and he soon moved back there as well. To complicate further the problems
of mill management, V. A. Petty moved his family to San
Antonio about the same time. To compensate for their leaving,
Petty and Sternenberg brought into the business five of the latter's
first cousins, Charles A. Sternenberg and Emil P. Sternenberg, brothers
of San Diego, California, as well as Frederick W. Sternenberg of Paige,
Bastrop County, Texas,
and the latter's two sisters (who were twins), Paula and Annie Sternenberg.
The young women were to be trained as bookkeepers, and at intervals,
the three young men were to be sent to Houston
to attend Massey Business College and acquire some background in business
management.35
In April, 1908, G. A. Sternenberg, while he and his wife were building
a new home and residing at Houston's Tremont Hotel, contracted typhoid
fever and died after an illness of two weeks.36
Immediately, his young widow became half owner of Olive, Sternenberg
and Company and active in the company's management. For some unknown
reason, the new proprietors became dissatisfied with the original
firm name, and one of their first actions together was to deed all
community property to the new "Olive-Sternenberg Lumber Company."37
For years the writer has believed (with no known documentary proof
that he could cite) that the sawmill at Olive had shut down in 1907.
A faction of people at Kountze
believed that all the buildings there except one had either been torn
down or moved away in 1909. Still others there believed the end of
the town came in 1914. |
It
is now evident to the writer that the Olive sawmill's demise
came in March, 1912, with most of the people deserting the town within
the next few weeks. The lone, abandoned building which survived the
town by 55 years was burned as a high school athletic prank in 1968,
and is supposed to have contained all of the Olive-Sternenberg Lumber
Company books and records.
The writer likewise believes that Olive acquired its greatest population,
probably as many as 1,200, about 1905 because a 100,000-foot mill
would have required a work force of 250 or more men to log and operate
it. He likewise believes that the mill operated at full capacity for
the next three years, or at least until the death of U. A. Sternenberg
in 1908. Certainly, by then the scarcity of available timber was growing
critical, perhaps necessitating a reduction in the number of logs
processed daily, and requiring the owners to allow the employees to
seek other sawmill employment before their jobs were severed. Between
1908 and 1910, the proprietors bought up every available tree that
was within reach of their sawmill tram road, either as timber rights
or land bought outright. And certainly, one purchase of June, 1909,
was to extend the mill's existence for perhaps two additional years.
The owners paid Creighton-McShane Oil Company of Nebraska $18,000
for timber rights on their 3,580 acres of land (5½ square miles) and
were also granted a five-year option, if needed, to complete the logging.38
The census of 1910 also confirms that life was fast ebbing from the
old mill town of Olive. The census enumeration did not identify
the town by name, as in 1900, but only as "Precinct No. 1," making
it' somewhat more difficult to determine exactly where the town of
Olive began and ended. However, the writer recognizes the names of
many of the old-time Sunset mill employees, who were scattered out
among the 120 houses left in Olive, and a census total of about 450
persons (nine pages).39 |
The
last Sternenberg family members recorded at residence 263 in Olive
were Fred W. Sternenberg, "lumber manufacturer," and his wife; the
former's cousin, Charles A. Sternenberg, "lumber manufacturer" and
boarder; and the former's two sisters, Paula and Annie Sternenberg,
each age 26 (twins), who were two of the four company bookkeepers."
In that age of male dominance in the business world, they must have
been the subject of much conversation, even if they were the superintendent's
sisters.40 Emil P. Sternenberg
was attending Massey Business College in Houston
when the census was enumerated. No division of duties has been found
for Fred and Charles Sternenberg, but it appears that they shared
equal responsibilities for running the sawmill.
Apparently, many of the old Sunset mill employees planned to remain
until the last whistle blew, as well as others such as Dr. Lee Selman,
physician, and Amos Rich, attorney, both of whom had been in private
practice in Olive for many years. Other employees in the census
with long company seniority included John Holland, locomotive engineer;
August J. Boudreaux, mill foreman; B. S. Fitzgerald and Hugh McDonald,
bookkeepers, Jules Berg, planing mill foreman; J. F. Alexander, woods
foreman; Robert Bunkley, yard foreman; A. Bean and Frank Harper, sawyers;
J. F. Richardson and Joe Hargraves, blacksmiths; W. O. McKennon, store
manager; M. P. Hargraves, locomotive engineer; and George B. Welch,
lumber salesman. J. T. Preston ran a boarding house.41
During the closing years of the town, it appears that the railroad
may have chosen Olive as its southern headquarters for track
repairs and perhaps repairs of rolling stock as well. Among others
enumerated there were J. N. Reed, "section foreman, railroad," and
E. V. Collins, "builder in ear shops."42
The author noted a few other items of interest during those closing
years of the sawmill town of Olive. In 1907, a lodge of the
Improved Order of Redmen was organized there.43
A Hardin County
local option election in March, 1910, generated 94 votes at Olive,
54 votes for and 37 opposed, and that at a time when electors were
limited to white males, age 21 or older, who had paid their poll tax.44
During the same month, the entire town chartered a train and visited
Port Arthur
while the huge sperm whale was on exhibit there.45
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In May, 1911,
during a Southeast Texas survey to determine the volume of wood waste
products being generated daily, the Olive Sternenberg Lumber Company
reported that it cut 37 tons of such by- products (log slabs, shavings,
etc.) each day, an indication that the mill was still cutting timber
at about half-capacity.46 Perhaps
the last thing of local interest to occur there was the marriage of
Charles A. Sternenberg, mill superintendent, on March 1, 1912, a date
by which he was surely aware that the mill would be closing down in
three weeks.47
It
is indeed ironic that the beginning days of Olive and the Sunset
Sawmill are better chronicled than the closing days thirty years later.
The Hardin County Deed Records, which usually had bestowed so much
information for the writing of this story, become suddenly silent
and especially vague about the last days of the mill and town. Likewise,
there are no recorded contracts, bills of sale, etc., involving the
purchase of mill machinery or its disposal in the Deed Records. Nevertheless,
other sources confirm the closing of the sawmill in 1912, and one
factor in particular suggests that it shut down in March of that year.
The long obituary of John A. Sternenberg of Houston
in May, 1914, states that "this [Olive] mill operated for 31 years."
And that figure added to the founding year of 1881 adds up to 1912
as the year of the mill's demise. The obituary also stated that J.
A. Sternenberg "had acquired large property holdings in Beaumont,
Houston, and San
Antonio." Earlier, Sid Olive, who had amassed quite a respectable
fortune, died at Waco on August 4, 1906.48
A Beaumont tax list of 1908 verifies that J. A. Sternenberg was a
substantial owner of business property there, rendered for taxes at
$31,000.49
For seven years, beginning in 1905, some one at Olive had contributed
a weekly or semi-monthly social or "gossip" column, published in the
Beaumont Enterprise and captioned "Olive, Texas." Ordinarily,
the columns contributed very little to the town's history, usually
documenting on the activities, visits, etc. of a few prominent families.
Although the columns appeared three times in March, 1912, they ended
abruptly with the issue of March 25, and did not resume at any time
thereafter. |
An Olive-Sternenberg
document in the archives of the Olive Scott Petty Company of San
Antonio reveals how quickly the mill, town, and business enterprises
(which belonged to the company) disintegrated during the spring and
summer of 1912. The lumber company published a 14-page list of equipment
offered for sale and dated July 15, 1912. Since no band saws, circular
or gang saws, or planers appeared on it, it is assumed these items
had already been purchased by another company, probably Kirby Lumber
Corporation. However, such diverse items as one barber chair and razors
(from the barber shop), lots of prescription and patent medicines,
unused corks and bottles (from the drug store), saloon equipment,
and a huge volume of surplus hardware from the company store and sawmill,
typewriters and safes from the company office, and other items were
offered for sale.50
After 1912, there are other indications that the Olive residents disappeared
rapidly until only a ghost town remained, an expected occurrence whenever
livelihoods were severed. According to Mr. Clyde See of Kountze,
chairman of the Hardin County Historical Commission, all buildings
were quickly removed or torn down until only the single building that
housed the final office and books of the Olive-Sternenberg Lumber
Company and burned down in 1968, survived. By 1913, Fred W. Sternenberg,
Jr., had moved to Austin
(although he remained secretary of the lumber company for several
years thereafter), and Charles A. Sternenberg had moved to Beaumont.51
Instead of buying more timber after 1912, the Olive-Sternenberg Company
began to sell their limited marketable trees to logging contractors
at $5 per thousand feet of "stumpage" (log measure), to be cut elsewhere.52
By 1915, however, the lumber company was basically a real estate firm,
leasing tracts of land to oil drillers who contracted to sink an oil
well within thirty days.53 In
1917, the Olive-Sternenberg Lumber Company, still owned by V. A. Petty
and Emma B. (Mrs. G. A.) Sternenberg, leased 9,962 acres of cutover
stump land to Charles Mitchell for the purpose of oil drilling, and
that lease agreement noted that Olive, even if limited to a
single building, was still headquarters of the lumber firm. |
Obviously, some
local person was still in the employ of that company as a land agent,
but any number of deed records checked has failed to disclose his
identity.54 As late as 1920,
Petty, who subsequently died at San
Antonio in 1929, and Mrs. Sternenberg still owned the firm. And
by 1918, V. A. Petty, Jr., who with his father operated as the Olive
Petroleum Co., was also dealing in Saratoga
oil field leases, one of which he sold to Texaco for $2,500.55
As of recent date, much of the forest land where Olive once stood
still belongs to 95-year-old Olive Scott Petty of San
Antonio, a son of the proprietor, who has graciously furnished
the writer with much information and many pictures of the town of
Olive, the sawmill, and proprietors.
For many East Texas oldsters
of mill town vintage, the passing of the sawmill meant the passing
of the quieter, simpler, and friendlier days when life was less complicated
and lumber was king of the forest. A stroll, however, through the
brambles, underbrush, and infant tombstones in Olive Cemetery
would quickly remind some passer-by that life in that frontier "sawdust
city" had its share of sorrows as well - an age when only one of two
American children ever lived to reach adulthood. The best-preserved
tombstone, still surrounded by its original wrought-iron fencing,
carries the lament in the German language of a young, immigrant widow,
grieving for her husband, Johannes Nikolaus Paulsen, who died in 1897.
And on any still, clear day at sunset, that same passer-by, provided
he has captured the nostalgia that the graveyard emits, might still
hear the faint murmurs of yesteryear's sobs and laughter, or catch
the distant echo of the big band saw's screech, as he silently tiptoes
through the pine needles where once the town of Olive stood. |
©
W.
T. Block, Jr.
"Cannonball's
Tales" › July 3, 2006 column
Note of Thanks
The writer acknowledges with gratitude the help of Mr. Clyde See,
Chairman, Hardin County Historical Commission.
(The writer is grateful to Mr. Lee Larkin, archivist/historian of
the Scott Petty Company in San Antonio, for biographies, documents,
and copies of numerous Olive, Texas, photographs a century old and
beautifully preserved.)
References
›
Recommended Book
East Texas Mill Towns & Ghost Towns › |
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Related Article:
The Legend of the
Olive Ghost Train by W. T. Block, Jr.
"That's the old Olive ghost train and it makes one round trip every
Halloween Eve. Ain't nobody but you seen it in recent years though.
And there ain't no tracks or crossties on the old Olive tram road
anymore 'cause they were all torn up years ago..."
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