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Kergosien Sawmill history told
Fenton sawdust firing p
By WAYNE DUCOMB JR.
Crews operating heavy equipment are completing a more than two-year project in which two mammoth Fenton Community sawdust piles are being mined to fire factory boilers.
Pitts Construction Co. of Waynesburo has been moving tractor-trailer rig loads of sawdust daily from the site of the former Kergosien Sawmill at the confluence of Bayou LaTerre and Rotten Bayou—the original location of Fen-
ton.
The two piles are located on property owned by Dr. Richard Walle of New Orleans.
Clara Kergosien of Bay St. Louis reports her late grandfather, Adolf Kergosien, owned the mill which began operation just after he moved here from Brittany, France in 1859 and married Elodie Mauffray of the community.
“He (Adolf Kergosien) came to the
United States on a trade boat and sailed on schooners from-New Orleans to Fenton where he met my grandmother,” Kergosien explains.
The schooners were utilized to transport supplies to and lumber from sawmills which dotted Hancock County.
At that time, local companies were vigorously strip-cutting lush virgin forests, milling logs for lumber and marketing the product in New Orleans.
BOUND FOR MILL—A Pitts Construction Co. employee operates front-end loader dumping sawdust into a tractor trailer parked at the old Kergosien Sawmill site. The sawdust is utilized by International Paper Co. plants in Moss Point and
Mobile to fire mill boilers. The Waynesboro construction company has been hauling sawdust from two Fenton Community mounds for more than two years. (Staff photo by Wayne Ducomb Jr.)