Historicial Development: | According to Waller County historians, E. L. Dyer moved his sawmill to an area in 1920 that was four miles west of Todd and a mile and a half from the Waller County Line. The mill was listed in the Southern Lumberman's Directory of American Saw Mills and Planing Mills edition of 1928 as located at Stoneham. In fact, Dyer along with Edgar G. Cude bought out the entire interest of the entire interest of the C. A. Stone and Jeff Danford sawmill plant and community located near Stoneham, on June 23, 1920. On April 21, 1921, Cude sold out his entire interest in both sawmills at Stoneham, along with the machinery, buildings, trams, and logging equipment.
This was a planned sawmill community built around a huge rectangle. Many of the inhabitants of the community were Mormon, including Dyer. The church was on the south end while logging was conducted on the north side. Employees of the mill and members of the Dyer family lived in houses that split the large clearing in the center. The inhabitants used the local company commissary. Local schooling was available for black children and white children were bussed into Plantersville during the 1930s. By 1934, E. L. Dyer had opened a sawmilling business at Navasota. The logging operation moved to Navasota in 1946.
In 1947, Mrs. Lela F. Dyer, the widow of E. L. Dyer, sold the entire company and interest to Onis Dyer and Lois P. Dyer: including accounts, notes, cash, machinery, timber deeds, mules, horses, logging equipment to include two trucks, all of the office and its furniture, the sawmill, the planing mill, the commissary, the tenant houses, all located on 299 acres of the S. Drewery Survey.
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