| Historicial Development: | W. F. Blair moved from Ohio to Liberty County, Texas, in 1889. He soon built a small hardwood mill near the old Green's Ferry road, about three miles north of Dayton. By 1891, he was shipping lumber from that mill, possibly over a wooden rail tram line which connected with the Texas & New Orleans railroad at Dayton. The Blair and Company sawmill employed about twenty workers, and was rated at 10,000 board feet per day in the Southern Industrial and Lumber Review's 1906 listing of sawmills. The mill operated until at least late 1906 when it received a poor credit rating in the January 1907 published records of the Lumbermen's Credit Association. It may have operated as late as 1915. It is not known if the hurricane of 1915 contributed to the family moving to Oklahoma that year.
W.F. Blair and his brother, John Blair, ran a limited commissary store near their sawmill, with many items had to still be bought in nearby Dayton. There were no dry goods, bread, or meat for the workers. They could get canned goods (tomatoes, corn, peaches, pears, green beans), and cheese, crackers, flour, and cornmeal. Brouchard Frazier, of Houston, supplied the mill with goods by train from Houston to Dayton, then by wagon to the mill.
Blair supplied a school, grades one through eight, and a teacher for the Blairs' and workers' children. The county later paid the teacher. Teachers were Ira Davis, Pearl Tabb, Valeta Grimm, Minnie Guiher, and Kate Wells.
J. C. Stewart, a Methodist circuit preacher, conducted services in the schoolhouse, rooming with the Blairs from Saturday to Monday.
On the 1899 County Tax Roll, W. F. Blair and Company recorded a 1,053 acres, thirteen horses and mules, five wagons, and a steam engine and boiler worth $400. |