Did you know that this October 29th will mark the 100th anniversary of the death of Henry Weston, one of the most successful and well-known businessmen in the history of Hancock County? Born in Skowhegan Island, Maine, in 1823, Henry Weston moved to New Orleans in early 1846 looking for business opportunities and a healthier climate. (His family had a history of suffering from tuberculosis.) While looking for a possible job on the wharf in New Orleans, Weston noticed a schooner hauling lumber from Gainesville, Mississippi. The captain of the schooner told him of the booming logging industry in the neighboring state. Weston left New Orleans on that very schooner (having been hired as deck hand) on its return trip to Gainesville. Almost immediately upon his arrival in Mississippi, he was hired by Captain William J. "Bill" Poitevent of the Poitevant and Favre Lumber Company for $49 a month. Weston's talent and ambition soon resulted in his being named the "sawyer", the most prestigious and highest paid job at the mill. Word spread quickly about this first class sawyer, prompting his being hired as manager of the Judge David Robert Wingate's sawmill in Logtown, Mississippi in July of 1846.
While enjoying his work, Weston found the culinary habits of the area rather perplexing. He wrote to his brother Levi in early 1947: "They live too well in this country for me. They kill everything with pepper and salt and spices and mix it so that you could not tell what the original is. We breakfast at 7, din (sic) at 2. A great many dine at 3. Sup at 6. So you see that they have 7 hours between breakfast and dinner and that we eat too much dinner every day."
Weston continued to operate the Wingate mill even as ownership of the mill changed. In 1856 Weston himself obtained an ownership interest in the mill and by the time of the Civil War, he and his partners would have full ownership of this Logtown mill as well as a large tract of land adjacent thereto. In addition to the mill and the land, Weston and his partners owned $20,000 worth of slaves. (At that time almost all the laborers in the mill – with the exception of foremen and sawyers – were slaves.) Each partner was drawing $5000 per year salary, an enormous amount for the time. Lumber business profits prior to the Civil War were large compared with investment and labor costs. In a rare boast, Weston said he "made money like smoke."
In 1858 Weston married Lois Angela Mead, whose father, a Gainesville doctor, was originally from Massachusetts. They made their home in what was once the D.R. Wingate home in Logtown and it was in this home that all of their nine children were born. This home, demollished a century later to make way for what what was to become the Stennis Space Center, was said to have been the second oldest house in Hancock County. It was built of heart pine and was located in a setting of massive oak trees and shrubs.
The mill, under the name of the W.W. Carrie Company, continued operations during the early part of the Civil War but in 1862, with the capture of New Orleans and their markets blocked, the mill closed and its equipment buried in the forests of southern Mississippi for the remainder of the war. With the mill closed, Weston tried his hand at some farming and other things including being appointed Captain of the Patrol for an area along the Pearl River. The Patrol was formed to protect citizens (particularly widows and women whose husbands were at war) from irregulars and jayhawkers.
After the war, the mill resumed operations and began to prosper again. In 1874 Weston bought out his partners and became sole owner of the mill. In 1888 the company was incorporated as the H. Weston Lumber Company with two new partners, John Sidney Otis and H.U.Beech. For a number of decades this lumber company was one of the largest employers in Hancock County. At its peak the company’s holdings were almost two million acres in Mississippi, Louisiana, Mexico, Oregon and British Columbia. Markets had expanded from the domestic to international with much of its lumber going to South America and Europe. At one point this lumber company was purported to be the largest lumber company in the world.
Henry Weston died on October 29, 1912 in Logtown at the age of 89. This human import from Maine spent a total of 64 years in the lumber business – a business that would make him a multi-millionaire. Two of his sons , Horatio Stephen and John Henry, took over operation of the company until it ceased operations in 1925, closing completely in 1930. Most of the company’s 150,000 acres of land were sold to the International Paper Company.
Now but an echo and a few footprints in the area, the H. Weston Lumber Company and its owner remain a big part of Hancock County history.