[Granville-Hough] 12 May 2009 - more on Lumber Camps

[Trustees and Executors for Granville W. Hough]

From: harold hopkins <hhopkins3 at comcast.net>
Subject: Re: LumberCamps  12 May 2009
Date: Tue, 12 May 2009 10:36:41 -0700

At the house where I grew up in Mize , on a white chalk hill 
overlooking the Mize Elementary School across the road, our backyard 
was within sight of the old E-G line that forked off the railroad 
between Laurel and Mize just east of Mize, and I used to watch from 
our backyard and count the empty and full logging railcars going 
northwest  to and from Laurel and Cohay Camp.  About 1935  I visited a 
teenager named Ezra Rogers, who  lived there at the camp.  We had to 
walk there from Mize, which was a good distance.  I cannot now 
remember whether we walked from Cohay to Raleigh and from Raleigh to 
Mize.  I don't think we walked directly down the railroad line to 
Mize.   Ezra was a few years older than I and he had walked to Mize -- 
or walked first to Raleigh and then to Mize -- for the purpose of 
courting the girls at Mize. The day I visited Cohay, there was a 
small  tornado and the residents -- or some of them -- climbed into 
what I would guess was a community storm pit, in which there were 
several dozen people,  maybe close to a hundred.  I had walked up the 
old Eastman Gardiner RR line to various fishing holes on Cohay and 
Hatchapaloo creeks fairly often, but never all the way to Cohay Camp.  

At one time, mail was delivered from Mize to Cohay by a small gasoline-
driven railcar somewhat similar to an automobile. I seem to remember 
that some of these rail vehicles could be operated by a hand pumping 
device, but my memory's not that good.

George and Silas Gardiner and Lauren Eastman, their in-law, were 
lumber industrialists who ran out of trees in Iowa and moved to 
Laurel, Mississippi,  about 1890 where the hills and coastal plains 
for miles around were heavily timbered with longleaf pines and sold 
for only a few dollars per acre by dirt farmers, who  didn't have the 
labor to clear out the pines for agriculture. After the trees were cut 
off the land was then resold to farmers, although the turpentine-laden 
stumps usually remained in the group until the 1940s and World War II 
when they were pulled up for making explosives. Unfortunately, under 
Mississippi law, the mineral rights are separable and the seller is 
not required to include the mineral rights along with the land, as in 
Louisiana, for instance.  So the lumbermen from the north -- or their 
heirs -- mostly retained these rights,  and benefited from them so far 
as I know, without having to pay taxes on them. Now, when you buy land 
in Smith County, for one, the mineral rights may be retained by an 
earlier owner, or may be purchased separately from him. Mineral rights 
also can  be leased separately to oil prospectors.  I think the  
landowner may get a small portion of mineral proceeds from the lessor, 
and I suspect something has to be paid to the landowner for rolling 
machinery and pipes over his property, fencing, roadways, etc.

Those converted railcars that served as dwellings at  Cohay camp were 
also in use in other parts of Smith County -- at last in the 1930s.  
They were called "shacks," and when I was a kid I used to think all 
"shacks" were converted box- or rail-cars.