 | A history of Caroline county, Virginia |  |
INDUSTRIES
EXCELSIOR MANUFACTURING
If we exclude farming the manufacture of excelsior easily
becomes the outstanding industry of Caroline. The introduction
and establishment of this industry in the county by George P.
Lyon, of Woodford, in 1896, was indeed the first introduction of
this business to the entire South.
Mr. Lyon, in 1896, was residing at Woodford, and operating a
small general merchandise store, from which he was deriving a
comfortable living; but seeing no probability of accumulating
anything for the proverbial rainy day, he began to take an inventory
of the resources around him with a view to developing
other business and adding to his slender income. In this he
differed from the vast majority of men who, when incomes are
unsatisfactory, seek the golden fleece in another country. It is
a trite observation that the best land, best pastures, greatest
opportunities are all over in another country—far, far away.
There is an old Persian tradition to the effect that one Ali Hafed
sold his farm by the River Indus and went away to search for
wealth and died in poverty in a distant land, while his successor
discovered diamonds on the farm Ali Hafed had left behind and
so became as rich as Croesus. The greatest gold mine in California
was found on a farm which had been sold to enable the former
owner to go to Southern California to search for gold. The greatest
oil field in Pennsylvania was discovered on a farm which had been
sold for less than one thousand dollars in order that the former
owner might go farther north and engage in the oil business
with a kinsman. The greatest coal mines in West Virginia were
sold "for a song" to enable the man who had owned the "good-for-nothing
hills" for years to go to the "Golden West" and make
his fortune.
The founder and developer of what has proven to be the
greatest manufacturing industry in the county might have sought
his fortune elsewhere and failed, as many men have done before,
but, taking inventory of the resources around him, he decided
that the excelsior business, of which he had learned something
from friends at the North, could be established to advantage in
Caroline, where material was plentiful and labor prices reasonable.
Accordingly, Mr. Lyon set about establishing his first excelsior
mill with no experience and little capital; but the information he
enterprise was successful from the beginning. Through a Baltimore
friend advantageous marketing arrangements were made
and soon the business was making splendid returns, considering
the capital invested. The returns from the first mill were so
pleasing that other mills followed in rapid succession and the
output, which at first was one car load per week of the manufactured
product, soon increased to thirty car loads per week on
daylight run alone.
When the excelsior industry was first established in Caroline,
it was thought, by all men engaged in the business, that the raw
material consisted of poplar wood only, but Mr. Lyon, seeing
the need of a cheaper grade of excelsior for rough packing, began
to manufacture excelsior from pine wood, and was soon successful
in creating a market for this product. As time passed on the
pine product became the leading excelsior on the market and is
now in demand not only for packing, but for all purposes for
which any other type of excelsior may be used.
Thus the excelsior industry has created a demand for the
small pine timber of the county, which prior to the establishment
of the industry, was used for fuel only and was of little value,
stumpage being bought freely at that time for ten cents per cord.
Since that time, especially during the World War, young pine
timber has sold for as much as five dollars per cord on the stump,
and the increased value of the pine timber, added to the profitable
employment given many men in the manufacture of the same,
has added much wealth and prosperity to the county.
There are now more than a score of excelsior mills in Virginia,
the larger number of these being in Caroline county along the
R., F. and P. Railroad.
Mr. Lyon served as Supervisor in Port Royal District for
many years and in 1923 was elected to represent Caroline in
the House of Delegates.
LUMBER MANUFACTURING
The first sawed lumber in Caroline was manufactured by the
pit and whipsaw method. It took two men to operate those
primitive machines. A hole was dug in the ground, over which
a crude scaffold was built. The log was then put on the scaffold
and one man stood in the pit below the log while the other stood
and then "lined" on the upper and lower sides at every place
where it was to be sawed. This was sometimes done with pokeberry
juice. The men then drew the saw up and down through
the log, sawing off a board about every hour. Two able-bodied
men could hardly saw more than two hundred feet per day in
this way. This method was assisted later by water power mills,
using an up-and-down sliding frame with straight saw in the
center with the log fed to the saw on rollers, later by the log fed
to the saw on a carriage and using headblocks to set the log out
to cut off each board, the carriage being gigged back by hand.
Later the circular saw was introduced. Captain Henry H.
George built "Thornberry" in Caroline County, making the bricks
for his house on the premises and sawing the timbers and the
lumber for his house with a whipsaw, using one man in the pit
below the saw-log and one or two men on the scaffold above the
pit, sawing all of the lumber for his home and the various buildings
on his farm of Thornberry by man power.
Sometimes in the later fifties Captain H. H. George purchased
a steam engine and boiler and a circular sawmill and planted this
mill on his farm "Thornberry"—sawed lumber for himself and
for his neighbors, which business was carried on until the beginning
of the Civil War. During the latter part of the War, Captain
George was detailed to saw timbers and lumber for the Confederate
Government to use in building the fortifications around Richmond
and other Government uses. He went back to his regiment after
this was done and returned to his home after Lee's surrender at
Appomattox.
On reaching "Thornberry" he found it stripped of everything
movable, by the Union troops who had visited that section
many times during the return of the Northern Army to Washington,
but found the troops had not destroyed the saw mill. He
got to work as soon as possible and began sawing lumber and
continued in this business of manufacturing and selling lumber
until within a few years of his death, which occurred at his home
on June 26, 1902, in his seventy-ninth year.
Archie S. George went into the saw mill and lumber business
with his father, Captain H. H. George, in the year 1882 and they
continued the business for several years and finally sold their
mill to Joseph and Cecil L. Baker and Captain H. H. George
forty years.
Lewis D. George engaged in the lumber business in June,
1879, with his father, Henry H. George, and Mr. John George
Coleman and this firm continued actively in the business of
manufacturing lumber until October 1, 1881, at which time H. H.
George, Jr., second son of Captain H. H. George, bought out the
interest of John G. Coleman, in the same business and then
L. D. George and H. H. George, Jr., traded their father H. H.
George, Sr., two farms for the saw mill and logging outfit and they
ran the business as George Brothers from October 1, 1881, to
April, 1887, at which time L. D. George bought his brother's
interest in the business.
L. D. George has been in the business continuously from June
1879, at which time he bought an interest in the business with
his father and John G. Coleman, until the present time. Having
no children and being desirous of perpetuating the business that
he had been years in building up, he incorporated the L. D.
George Lumber Company, in 1911 and later in 1915 he incorporated
the Rose Hill Lumber Co., Inc., a close corporation, all of the
stock being held by L. D. George, his wife, Carrie L. George,
and John W. Clarke, who is secretary of the company. They
have an up-to-date planing mill, a large woodworking shop,
well equipped machine shop and do all of their machinery and
other repairing, except casting. They make anything in woodwork
that is used in building, besides many specialties for the
Northern markets. They manufacture every specie of lumber
from native Virginia hardwoods and Virginia pine in every shape,
from framing lumber to the smallest moulding or turning.
When the George family began in the lumber business there
was no other in Caroline, or, so far as is known, in any adjoining
county. There has not been a time since 1850 that there has
not been one or more of this family in the business. When the
present head of the firm began sawing in 1879 there were only a
few mills in Caroline county, but within ten years after he began
in the business there were over forty mills sawing lumber in
Caroline and there are many mills in the county cutting lumber
today. Some of the men who have been in the business longest
have cut over the same tracts three to five times and there is
still timber to cut. During the past fifty years there has been
shipped from this county; possibly as much or more than from
any county in this section of the country.
There has, in former years, been great waste of material by
the crude manner of harvesting the timber and fitting it for
market. Millions of dollars of wealth have year after year gone
up in smoke from the slabs, edgings and trimmings made at the
saw mills, as well as tops of trees and large branches that have
been left to rot and go to waste, after the logs have been taken
from the trees.
THE MANUFACTURE OF SUMAC EXTRACT
Sumac is indigeneous to many sections of this country. That
which grows in the Eastern part of Virginia and the Carolinas
produces a larger percentage of tannin than the sumac of any
other section. In fact there is no sumac of any country finer
than this, save that which is imported from Sicily, and the Sicilian
sumac is only superior because of the superior methods of gathering,
drying, baling, etc. The sumac shipped from Palermo is carefully
picked, only the small twigs on which the leaves grow being
gathered, while in Caroline county much of the stem is broken
with the leaves and there is little or no tannin in the stems. The
Sicilian sumac is carefully cured in the shade, although called
sun-cured and is bright and strong, while in Caroline county the
green product is frequently dumped in piles in sheds, or allowed
to lie on the ground, until it has molded to a dark color, thus
destroying fifty per cent. of the tannin. A chemist from the
Agricultural Department (Mr. Veitch) visited Caroline in the
interest of the sumac industry and while in the county prepared
some sumac as nearly after the Sicilian method as possible, and
this Caroline sumac, when tested and compared with the Sicilian
product, proved superior. The Government has issued bulletins
on the cultivation, gathering and curing of sumac, which, if
followed, would probably make it unnecessary to import the raw
material from Europe.
Sumac was used in Virginia nearly a century since in the
tanning of light leathers and nearly one-half century ago the
extract was manufactured by the Knox Brothers in Fredericksburg.
This plant was moved to Milford, in Caroline county,
in 1913, and was operated for a time by Thomas Haigh. Mr.
now operates it. It is said to be the largest plant of its kind in
the United States. The sumac extract is used extensively in the
tanning of light leathers and as a mordant to fasten colors in
all textile fabrics.
| A history of Caroline county, Virginia | |