| Historicial Development: | Rudolph Prince, according to Hazel Kesinger and Inez Brown who lived with their families at the mill town near Palestine, moved his sawmill from Parkerville, Nacogdoches County, in 1928 to a site at or near Palestine. The young girls' families followed Prince to Palestine to continue working for him. About 1931 Prince moved his equipment to Porter Springs, Houston County. The Kesinger and Brown families returned to Parkerville to make their living at share cropping on the Stripling farm.
The sawmill and small mill town was similar to that at Parkerville in Nacogdoches County. Mrs. Kathryn Hunter noted that her first remembrances of life were involved with Prince's Mill. The main mill and town were located in the southwestern part of Nacogdoches County during the 1920s, about a mile or two from what is now FM 789. The second mill was located about two miles from Parkerville. The sawmill community had been established by Rudolph Prince. Mrs. Hunter was a small child when her parents, Lloyd Johnson and Annie Christian Johnson, moved to Prince's Mill. Mrs. Hunter recalls that the little community had ten to fifteen tenant houses of both the box and shotgun patterns, a small commissary, a little dance hall, and a “brush-arbor” church, which may have held Catholic services, for she remembered that she first heard the Spanish language at the little church from a “little man from Mexico” who came to hold services. The Johnson's house was larger because Mrs. Johnson kept at least three boarders at their home. Kerosene provided lighting, and water was drawn from a well. |