| Historicial Development: | The Jefferson Lumber Company was a big player in lumber and logging in Northeast Texas before 1900. W. B. Ward and James Hervey Bemis, both primary owners of Jefferson Lumber, had been selling company acreage as early as 1885, according to county records. The firm had large plants at Jefferson and Linden and created a new plant at Atlanta about 1889. John D. Hanes wrote that the Atlanta plant was south of the Sheets Brothers lumber mill. Atlanta, according to the Handbook of Texas, was established on the Texas and Pacific route about 1872. By 1890 it had a population of 1,794. Marion County Deed Record reveal that Jefferson Lumber Company, with J. H. Bemis as President, bought 1,600 acres in 1889 from R. M. and E. L. Galloway and R. M. Galloway's commissary, oxen, and wagons. W. G. Ragley was superintendent by the next year, after the closing of his own mill in the southwest part of Jefferson. In July, 1892, the company was in financial straits. Its ownership of W. B. Ward, Jno. H. Bemis, W. B. Chew, and Elijah Robinson ordered its Trustees, H. A. O'Neal and E. A. Allday, to sell the company to Kildare Lumber Company, W. B. Ward, President for $171,000. Property included the plants, the Kildare Mill and Mill No 2 and planing mills, at Kildare with the Kildare & Linden ( a locomotive, twenty-four logging cars, a box car, a passenger car, and twelve miles of tracks, with stations at both towns); and the sawmill and planing mill at Atlanta, with the Atlanta & Mt Pleasant (two locomotives). Robinson gave a quit claim on Kildare Lumber Company on July 19, 1892. During the next decade, Jefferson Lumber had financial difficulties. On August 15, 1898, Ed Rand, A. C. Smith, and M. Jacobs conveyed to W. A. Rule the assets of the former Kildare Lumber Company, worth $25,000 of sawmills, planing mills, railroad stock, etc. Rule, as agent of the National Bank of Commerce ,could sell the property if the note was not met. The plants were taken over by Clark & Boice Lumber about 1900.
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