Tuesday, September 4, 2012

It is no secret that the Bevil municipality, present day Newton and Jasper counties, has a rich history, even if many of the details have been obscured by the passage of time... Once the eastern edge of a vast frontier, the area experienced the lawless days of the wild west, the civil war, and the industrial revolution from a unique vantage point. My love for history probably stems from growing up hearing amazing stories of a Holmes family patriarch nicknamed "Goldy" because he only paid his debts in gold, of a Great-Great Grandfather who once shot a Texas Ranger while wearing women's shoes to throw authorities off his trail, of ancestors who barely survived Indian massacres, and lore enough to fill a library.

In researching the Autrey-Williams house, countless stories have uncovered themselves, and I sometimes feel like an overstimulated kid in a candy store, not knowing which direction to explore next... My most recent foray into the past started with the Western Naval Stores, headed by Latta Autrey, and headquartered in Newton. Without that company, the house at 717 North would never have been built.

Since it was Labor Day weekend, I felt it appropriate to check out some of the labor camps, one of which is all but forgotten, that fueled the economic engines of early 20th century Newton and Jasper Counties.

The Western Naval Stores Company was a venture backed by the Gillican-Vizard (later the Gillican-Chipley) Company of New Orleans, it was created to tap the westernmost reaches of the longleaf pine forest. An article in the 24Aug1907 Fort Worth Star lauds the creation of "one of the largest turpentine stills west of the Mississippi" on the Burrs Ferry, Browndel, and Chester railroad near Aldridge, in northwestern Jasper County. This still was the first outpost of the newly created company, and became its largest worker camp, supporting a town called Turpentine, and a post office that ran from 1909 to 1926. Aldridge was a mill town started by William Hal Aldridge with heavy involvement of John Kirby, and as of the 1910 census had a population of 562, the population of Aldridge was volatile and depended on the operation of the mill itself, which was prone to fire. The Post Office at Aldridge ceased operation for the final time in 1923. Like many other towns started by lumber companies - Bon Wier, Wiergate and Kirbyville in their early days, Aldridge and Turpentine's sole purpose was to house workers and serve the interests of the company. Unlike some other mill towns, both Aldridge and Turpentine found no other purpose along with other company towns such as Wenasco, that was 5 miles north of Jasper, whose name is based on an abbreviated version of the name of the company that created it, and when the companies that created them went bankrupt or pulled out of the area, the towns disappeared.


Turpentine and Aldridge, linked by the Burrs Ferry, Browndel, and Chester Railroad, both appear on a 1918 land office map of Jasper County below:


I recently set off on an excursion to try to find the site of the old town of turpentine with Brad, my Mom, Nephew Merka, and Misty and John Gipson. Misty and I scoured the internet and found very little as to the exact location of the town. Most mention of the town was in contemporary publishings from the early 1910s, describing the location of turpentine using Aldridge and the Burrs Ferry, Browndel and Chester railroad as reference points... which proved to be a problem because while a shell of the old Aldridge mill remains, the town of aldridge, and the railroad itself are long gone, with few traces of their existence to be seen... An old friend, John Wall was able to locate an article written in 2007, and a period  topographic map of turpentine he layered onto Google Earth to provide us a perfect pinpoint of where the town should have been, on the eastern banks of Sherwood creek and the northern side of the long gone railroad.

After driving about 35 minutes from Newton, it was hard to imagine the trek for Latta Autrey before modern roads... he not only managed the operations of the Western Naval Stores Company, in Turpentine and various other locations, he also is listed as postmaster for the Turpentine Post Office from 1909-1914. When he ceded postmaster duties to Geo. E. Seale in 1914, Latta became president of the Guaranty State Bank in Newton, so he may have delegated responsibilities in Turpentine, and been able to spend more time in Newton and the home he had built there in 1912.

After driving down an old Forestry Service road for a few miles and having to park because the vehicle could go no farther, we walked a further half mile through a recently logged field. Suffice it to say that deep woods off, coupled with afternoon sun in SouthEast Texas, makes spontaneous combustion almost as much a fear as the West Nile the OFF was supposed to pre-empt... haha. We arrived at the location we hoped was Turpentine, and were greeted with the following, semi anti-climactic view: 

After some  investigation, we found the old Sherwood Creek that was almost dry, and a broken piece of a large porcelain bowl... after a little more investigation we found 5 or six railroad spikes, and a horseshoe...  You wouldn't think such paltry finds could be exciting, but those items told us we were in the right place. It was hard to believe that an industry so important to SouthEast Texas, creating vast fortunes for many people, could vanish almost completely. All that was left of Turpentine were a few manmade earthen mounds the logging activities hadn't yet leveled, and countless iron scraps and trash.

Below is an iron band that held together a barrell, maybe it was used to store Turpentine, the liquid gold that sustained the town - we will never know.



Life in turpentine camps was rough. Bob Bowman, a well known East Texas historian, quoted Chester Norris of Broaddus as saying of Turpentiners in 1973 - "They'd kill each other...one or two every Saturday night. If they didn't have gambling and a barrel house to get drunk in, they'd move on to camps where they did have 'em." Turpentiners, as the workers were called, were often looked down on by more "legitimate" foresters, and there was a bit of animosity between the turpentine workers, exacerbated in part by the problems the mill workers had with the trees that had been tapped for turpentine. In a letter from Mr. Aldridge to C.P. Myers on 17Feb1914 held in Kirby Lumber Company Records, Mr. Aldridge claims that as many as four times a day, a nail left in a tree tapped for turpentine would "Spike" a saw blade, causing “a thousand dollars in lost time changing saws, and damage done to the saws.” 


While we were there, at the place where Turpentine once thrived, it was hard not to think just of Latta Autrey, and the big house in Newton it's activities helped finance, but of the workers who lived and died here... a quick search turned up the following biography in "From the desk of Henry Ralph" by Geraldine Primrose Carson: Henry Smith Ralph was born on 11 Jan 1838 in Ebenezer, Jasper Co., TX. He died on 25 Sep 1924 in Turpentine, Jasper Co., TX. He was buried in Ebenezer Cemetery in Jasper Co., TX. Henry served as a sergeant in the 13th Texas Dismounted Cavalry, Co. G, Burnett's Regiment, Walker's Division in the Civil War with his neighbors. This unit fought with Waul's Division in Louisiana and Arkansas. Henry enlisted 3-1-1862. Henry also served in the Texas Legislature.

We then continued on to Aldridge, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, which is much more accessible, and easier to find in the Boykin Springs Recreation Area... As we walked up the trail, through a section where once the houses of "white" workers were located, we walked past the old mill pond to see a huge concrete wall looming in the shadows of the pines on the other side. Aldridge closed for the final time after financial issues, strains in the relationship between Kirby and Aldridge, and finally a fire in 1918 shut down the last sawmill to operate at Aldridge. Kirby continued to operate Aldridge as a camp, shipping logs to his other mills, until the railroad was ripped up in 1925. All that remains of Aldridge today can be seen in the photos below: