PART C: THE D. R. WINGATE LUMBER COMPANY
by W. T. Block
David Robert Wingate was another pioneer Orange settler, who lost five sawmills to fires, although only three of the fires occurred in Orange County. His first sawmill that burned in 1846 was located on the Pearl River, Hancock County, Mississippi.45 His second loss to fire occurred in October, 1862, when the Union Navy came ashore at Sabine Pass, Texas, and burned the Wingate and Company sawmill, planing mill and millwork plant.46
After having returned to and having lived on his Newton County plantation for several years, Wingate moved to Orange County in 1874, at age 54, where he owned 33 acres of land on the Sabine River, adjacent to John Fielding's shipyard.47 When he arrived in Orange, there were only three small mills in operation there, W. B. Black's sawmill (which in 1876 was dismantled and sold to the Beaumont Lumber Company); R. B. Russell and Son's steam shingle mill; and Eberle Swinford's Phoenix Mill; and all the products of those three mills had to be shipped by water because the Texas and New Orleans Railroad from Houston did not reach Orange until 1876.48
In 1873, a year before Wingate moved his family to Orange, he bought a half-interest in Swinford's mill. The Phoenix Mill, which they operated under the firm name of Wingate and Swinford, was located on the Louisiana side of the Sabine River, and it manufactured shingles, lumber, and lathes. By 1878, the Phoenix Mill's new rotary shingle machine could cut 80,000 daily. Wingate, however, soon tired of a business of which he was not the sole owner, so in 1877, he sold his interest in the Phoenix Mill to Eberle Swinford's other partner. Thereafter, C. H. Moore and Eberle Swinford operated two mills at Orange, the Phoenix or "Upper" Mill and the Conway's Bayou or "Lower" Mill, which the partners had purchased from Gilmer. The two mills had a combined daily output of 160,000 shingles.49
Construction on the new D. R. Wingate sawmill, located on the Sabine River adjacent to Josiah Jordan's Excelsior shingle mill, began in October, 1877, and was completed by July, 1878. Its first bill of lumber was 250,000 feet of crossties, cut at the rate of 35,000 feet daily.50 The new mill had cost $50,000 to build and its daily cutting capacity was equal to seven car loads.51
During the census year ending July 1, 1880, the mill statistics of the Wingate Lumber Company were recorded in the county's Schedule V, Products of Industry, as follows:52
. . . D. R. Wingate Lumber Company, Orange, Texas. Capitalization: $35,000; employees: maximum, 50; average, 45; daily work hours: 11 throughout year; daily wages: skilled, $3.00; unskilled, $1.50; annual wages paid: $20,000; months in operation: 12; equipment: one 4-gang saw, one circular saw; 3 boilers, one 125-horsepower steam engine; raw materials and value: cypress and pine logs worth $60,000, mill supplies worth $5,500; product: 10,000,000 BF of lumber, 2,000,000 shingles; origin of logs: Sabine River and tributaries--mill did all of its own logging.
Like Alexander Gilmer, economic misfortune seemed to stalk the old sawmiller's footsteps wherever he went, and on November 29, 1880, the new Wingate sawmill burned to the ground. A newspaper article carried a report of the conflagration as follows:53
. . . We regret to learn of the burning of Judge D. R. Wingate's mill at Orange on Saturday last. We learn that the carelessness of the watchman in leaving a boy in charge of the mill was the cause of the disaster. This was one of the finest mills in the South, and Judge Wingate's loss is estimated at $50,000. The Judge is one of the best men in this section, and we heartily sympathize with him in his severe loss. .. .
With little more than a sigh of regret, Wingate and his mill hands began clearing away the debris and started rebuilding. By May, 1881, a much larger Wingate sawmill and attached shingle mill were back in operation. The new mill cost over $60,000, and during the 1880's, it cut between 70,000 and 90,000 feet of lumber and from 75,000 to 125,000 shingles daily.54>/p>
During the 1880's, Wingate recouped his losses rapidly, for markets were stable, profits were high, and lumber demand exceeded supply. Most lumber milled in Orange was shipped to Galveston and points in Central and West Texas. After 1890, the lumber economy was less palatable due to a severe depression and lumber overproduction. However, the Texas sawmills along the coast survived by developing foreign markets, and the expanding railroads continued to purchase large quantities of cross ties, bridge and trestle timbers, and lumber for depot buildings.
A newspaper article of 1888 left the following description of the D. R. Wingate Lumber Company as follows:55 . . . Another mill we would like to mention if that of D. R. Wingate, who. . .has acres covered with lumber and is turning out thousands of feet daily. The capacity is about the same as Gilmer's. . . .Mr. McKeever is in charge of the machinery, Mr. Rufus Wingate is superintendent, and Mr. Sam Swinford is the head man in the main office. . . .
In June, 1890, Judge D. R. Wingate faced for a second time the total loss of his large Orange sawmill by fire. The conflagration began in the mill's boiler room on June 1, 1890, and within fifteen minutes the flames had spread to the second floor of the sawmill. The planing mill and most of the stacked lumber escaped the inferno, thus reducing the total loss to about $50,000. A $25,000 fire insurance policy reduced the net loss even farther to about $25.000.56
At first, Wingate planned not to rebuild, since he was already 71 years old and his personal interests were turning to rice farming. However, he finally relented and allowed the firm of D. R. Wingate and Company to be reorganized as a joint stock company, under the supervision of his son-in-law, B. H. Norsworthy, and another Orange lumberman, John McKinnon. By 1895, controlling interest in Wingate's mill, as well as the adjacent Orange Lumber Company sawmill, passed to a Houston holding company, composed of Colonel M. T. Jones as president and A. F. Sharpe as secretary-treasurer.57
D. R. Wingate died in Orange on February 15, 1899, only a couple of days short of his eightieth birthday.58 As a result, he was not alive in April, 1902, to witness the third and last loss by fire of a D. R. Wingate sawmill in Orange.59
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.
2015 -present All Rights Reserved.
