• Michigan family donates photo collection showing Waccamaw Lumber’s operation in Bolton.

By BOB HIGH
Staff Writer

Local historian Robb Cross was in the county library about four months ago doing his usual work – trying to find out more about Columbus County.

A man and woman entered and inquired of library employees if anyone knew anything about Bolton, the small eastern county town at the northern edge of the Green Swamp.

Cross overhead the conversation, and introduced himself. The man and woman were John L. and Evelyn Clark from Clarkston, Mich.

“They told me Mr. Clark’s grandfather was the superintendent of the Waccamaw Lumber Company, and Mr. Clark’s mother was born in Bolton,” Cross recalled.

Copies requested

There was more small talk, and Cross asked the Clarks if they had any photographs and/or documents about the Waccamaw Lumber Company.

There was an affirmative answer, and Cross asked for copies. The Clarks readily agreed, and exchanged names and addresses.

Two months later, Cross was again in the local library. He was told there was a package for him.

Cross opened the package and discovered an album of original photographs and a written document detailing the birth and growth of the lumber company that put Bolton on the map.

“I was floored. The Clarks didn’t send me copies. They sent the original album. The photographs and information is priceless for Columbus County people,” Cross declared.

Family donation

A conversation with the Clarks this week reveals that John L. and his brother Robert decided Columbus County was the best place for the originals. The Clark family kept the copies they made of the amazing photos.

“We were very pleased with what we found here,” John Clark said. Clark’s mother, Ellen Carpenter Clark, was born in Bolton in 1913. Her parents were E.F. (Edward Folke) and Carolyn Wright Carpenter.

The 63-year-old Clark, retired from AT&T, said his grandparents were married in April 1906. Carpenter’s wife was the daughter of Nathaniel Wright, a lumber baron from Canada who built a large lumber mill near Saginaw, Mich.

Wright sent his son-in-law Carpenter to Bolton in 1906 to oversee and manage Wright’s southern venture – the Waccamaw Lumber Company.

Three mills

Carpenter’s typed documentation of the company’s history states that the firm’s shingle mill was constructed in 1906, followed by the large sawmill in 1907 and a planing mill in 1908.

The Clark family’s record shows the large sawmill was destroyed by fire in 1916, and a smaller mill was constructed in 1917 by Carpenter to “finish out cutting timber left on lands.”

“We’re excited about this development. I’m an amateur historian, myself,” Clark declared. “I’ve been reading some of the lumber history, and what went on in Columbus County appears to be unusual.”

He said Carpenter was originally from Cincinnati and was one of five brothers. One of Carpenter’s forebears was Capt. Joseph Carpenter, who died in the War of 1812 in Ohio.

Moved in 1922

Clark said his mother, who died in 2002 at the age of 87, never mentioned Bolton to her family. “She wasn’t much of a talker, but she did say she had a black nanny when she was living there,” her son noted.

Ellen Carpenter, moved to Michigan in 1922 at the age of 9, and married James Francis Clark. She had an older brother, “Nat,” who was born in Bolton in 1911.

The home where the Carpenter family lived in Bolton is on 10th Street, between Gum and Poplar streets.

Several residents of today’s Bolton were excited when they viewed the photos last week. They picked out homes still lived in today, and found the two-story company headquarters building, the commissary and several other landmarks.

The mill was located behind the present International Paper Woodlands office toward present-day N.C. 211. Today, there’s nothing but pine trees in this area.

Lumber camps

The collection of photos includes one taken from one of the two water towers, plus many others showing the lumber camps in the Brunswick County areas of Makatoka and Camp Swamp – at least 20 miles south of Bolton.

There are several pictures showing train engines, a water tank at one of the camps, men constructing a spur line, and the old Honey Island trestle, the rail line raised to keep the track out of the water.

Other photos show individual homes, including “The Cottage,” a company-owned house where many management employees lived until it burned a few years ago.

“Jim Lattay, Frank Elliott, Johnny Vereen and Edwin Russ lived in “The Cottage” at various times,” O’Dell McKeithan of Bolton reported.

Census records show many other families in present-day Columbus County were part of the Waccamaw Lumber history.

For example, Walter Mottinger Jr., 20, is shown in 1920 living in the Bolton Hotel and working as a band sawyer in one of the mills. Mottinger later moved to Whiteville and raised a family here.

Clark said this week his grandfather (Carpenter) was living in Levering, Mich., a small town in the northern part of the state, when he died on Nov. 13, 1940 at the age of 61. The man formerly in charge of the Waccamaw Lumber Company was the Levering postmaster when he died.

Logs head to the Bolton mill.

Engineers, firemen pose in undated photo of Waccamaw Lumber Company’s largest engine.

Who were the employees of the old Waccamaw Lumber?

Census, birth records provide some information on Bolton residents from the early 1900s.

By BOB HIGH
Staff Writer

Bud Bennett, a current resident of Bolton who operates a portable sawmill, recalls that his grandfather, Ace Bennett, was a fireman on one of the Waccamaw Lumber Company’s engines in the early 1900s.

“He was born in Makatoka (a Brunswick County lumber camp in the middle of the Green Swamp 20 miles south of Bolton), worked for Waccamaw Lumber, and moved to Bolton,” the grandson noted.

O’Dell McKeithan said his father, Martin, was a skidder helping to load timber in the expansive swamp south and east of Bolton in the early 1920s.

“His brothers – Toby, Grover and Caleb – all worked here for the Waccamaw Lumber Company in the 1920s and 1930s,” McKeithan continued.

Census records

Many Columbus County families have connections to Bolton, although they no longer have the small eastern town as part of their address.

Who were some of those people working in a very large business that featured a sawmill, planing mill and one that manufactured cypress shingles? Who were the men who cut, loaded and hauled the massive trees more than 20 miles to the Bolton mills?

A quick look at the 1910 and 1920 census records teases the historian.

Was Lewis West from England the man who took more than 30 photographs of Waccamaw Lumber’s operation, a collection of pictures that has surfaced here within the last 30 days?

Lewis is in the 1910 census and his occupation is shown as “artist/photographer.” He’s living in the Bolton Hotel, and notes show he emigrated from England in 1907.

Three hotel cooks

George S. Gillespie is the manager of the hotel in 1910. Hattie Allen, Eveline Allen and “Fregie” Clemmons are shown as cooks in the hotel, and Rose or Rosa Jacobs is employed as a chambermaid.
Census records show 21 hotel boarders, all of the white race. A second hotel, specifically for blacks, is operated by Samuel W. White, a native of South Carolina, and he has 26 boarders.

White’s business had declined by 1920. The 48-year-old hotel owner has just 12 boarders in 1920, compared to the 26 shown 10 years earlier.

John H. Lynn, 33, and George Mitchell, 35, are in the 1910 census as locomotive engineers. In 1920, J.E. Canady, 26 and L.W. Baxley, 33, appear as operators of locomotives.

Troy family

Mary A. Troy is postmistress in 1910, and Sallie F. Troy, 50, has the position in the 1920 report. Are they from the same family?

Dr. Slade Smith, later of Whiteville was the Waccamaw Lumber doctor and a hotel boarder, in the 1910 census. By 1920 Thurston Formyduval was the doctor, living in the hotel.

David W. Merritt, a native of this state, is shown in the 1910 census as the superintendent of the shingle mill, and Otto F. Wolf, a native of New York, was superintendent of the sawmill.

E.F. (Edward Folke) Carpenter, a native of Ohio, was the superintendent of the entire operation, and it’s likely he’s the man who ordered the photographs.

Carpenter is the grandfather of John L. Clark of Clarkston, Mich., and it was John and his brother Robert who decided to donate the collection of photographs to the people of Columbus County.
Birth records

Birth certificates – in random years – show the following information about people working in Bolton:
John M. Smart, 45, a native of South Carolina, was a “hotel keeper” when his child was born in 1914.
John Brown, 30, was a lumber inspector. J.H. Stewart, 39, a native of Michigan, was superintendent of Waccamaw’s logging department.

Franklin E. McPhatter, 43, a native of Bladen County, is shown in 1919 records as an engineer living in Bolton. George Semmes McGrath, 30, a native of Georgia, was a stenographer-bookkeeper.

Arthur Milford Auger, 36, a native of Ontario, Canada, is shown in 1919 as a lumber inspector.

James J. Yeoman, 42, is a train fireman in 1923 birth records. Baxley – mentioned earlier as a locomotive engineer from census records -- is shown in a 1923 birth certificate as a native of St. Pauls in Robeson County.

Railroad employees

John Henry Foy, 36, a state native, is shown as the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad agent in Bolton in 1923, and J.L. Thurston, 41, a native of Tyrrell County, is superintendent of a mill in Bolton in 1923 birth records.

D.H. Andrews, 38, is shown in 1923 as an engineer and log skidder. Hinson Ludlum, 28, is listed as a fireman. John Mooney, 39, is a blacksmith; Thomas Grice, 23, born in nearby Orrum, is an engineer; Oscar Bailey, 22, is a train porter; Lester Harper, 32, a native of Florida, is a conductor; and Talley Horne, 21, is a railroad section master.

The 1921-22 birth records show the following:

“Claefounel” Young Lewis, 35, a native of Cumberland County, is a lumber mill superintendent in Bolton.
Duncan Alexander Thomas, 42, a native of Robeson County, is a salesman living in Bolton. H.B. Jackson, 25, works on the railroad.

Isaac Stanley Faulk, 30, a native of Loris, S.C., was a barber in the birth records. Seaton N. Richardson, born in Elizabeth City, is a 23-year-old bookkeeper. Z.V. Jones, 30, carried the mail.

Wilbur G. Williamson, 26, is an electrician; Charley Smith, 25, is a deputy sheriff; Eugene H. Johnson, 28, is a Waccamaw Lumber foreman; James N. Dale, 40, a native of Wayne County, is a Bolton merchant; and George Jones, 24, is a machinist.

Finally, George C. Smith, 33, is a railroad foreman; William R. Butler, 29, is a Waccamaw Lumber clerk; and Fred Johnson, 40, is listed as doing “heavy labor” in the 1921-22 birth records.

A final census note: In 1920 there were 164 dwellings in Bolton, and 164 families.