Las Sabinas, Volume 6, Number 3, July 1980 Page: 5
47 p. : ill. ; 28 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Kirby, like Link, started out as a lawyer, "reading
law" in the office of attorney Samuel Bronson Cooper of
Woodville who was also a member of the Texas Senate and
later a United States Congressman.
Cooper used his influence to have Kirby named Calendar
Clerk of the State Senate during the 1882-84 session.
Before he was admitted to the Bar in 1885, Kirby
married Lelia Stewart of Woodville. The next year he was
hired to represent a group of Eastern landowners in a
case involving title to three leagues of land. After a
successful conclusion of the case, Kirby was named
manager of the land organization his employers formed
called the Texas and Louisiana Land and Lumber Company
and the Texas Pine Land Association.
By the time he was 30, Kirby was head of the two
largest timber companies in the State. He moved to
Houston and joined the law firm of Hobby and Lanier
in 1890. He began construction of the Gulf, Beaumont
and Kansas City Railroad to improve timber logging and
continued to buy up timber lands at cheap prices. About
1896 he built his first sawmill and founded the town
of Silsbee. In 1901 he formed the Kirby Lumber Company
which operated a dozen East Texas mills, five logging
camps and five local logging fronts, employing about
16,500 persons.
F. H. Farwell was the general manager for Lutcher
and Moore and built the old Spanish type house that
stood on Green Avenue across from city hall and in
later years housed the Little Mexico Restaurant. He was
said to be a dog fancier and maintained a kennel as
a sideline.
Today the signs of the lumber kingdom no longer
fill our town. The sawmills are gone, their blades
long silenced. Even the greatest of these, The Lutcher
& Moore Lumber Company has faded into the past. The
last visible signs, buildings, storage sheds, offices
and grounds on DuPont Drive were donated to the West
Orange School District for a vocational training
center after the business was sold.115
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Orange County Historical Society (Tex.). Las Sabinas, Volume 6, Number 3, July 1980, periodical, July 1980; Orange, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth255462/m1/12/: accessed July 18, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Orange County Historical Society.