By: Mary K. Hamner
Special to The Journal

Glimpses of past local history come now and then. Our sources are sometimes not documented ones but are stories passed down through generations. If we didn't have the stories, we wouldn't know where or how to begin the search for the real story. The search for the real story leads to Census records, land records, and old newspapers. The story of the H. D. Glass Company began with a token, a form of currency used to pay workers. Generally this currency was used at the company commissary.

Walker Loud wasn't looking for treasure but he found one. " I found it in a flower bed," he said. Perhaps his Father lost it or threw it away after the company went bankrupt and the token was no longer useful. The token is stamped H. D. Glass Company, Castor, La. It was worth one dollar in trade at the company commissary.

Martha Wimberly, a former Postmaster of Castor, was always a good resource for information and she shared the following. She, and her family, had traveled by train to Castor in 1921when Martha was twelve years old. " It seemed like the end of the world back then."She said. James Perry Wright, Martha's stepfather, had met Glass while they all lived in Lambert, Mississippi where the medical doctor was co-owner of a large plantation. Wright had been offered employment as bookkeeper of the H. D. Glass Sawmill, newly constructed just South East of the town of Castor, Louisiana. " My family came to Castor because of that mill," Mrs. Wimberly once said, " and we got too poor to leave!"

The Mill and it's story came up again more recently, stumbled across while looking for something else in microfilm copies of The Bienville Democrat, 1919-1921. Willie Mae Franks, correspondent of the CHS News column for the Democrat in 1919, had this to say: " Our principal, Mr. Caskey, states that the large hardwood mill, which is being located here will be here fifteen years. This will add not less than one hundred pupils to our school."

The February 21, 1920 issue says: " Machinery is being unloaded here for a 40,000 (?) capacity hardwood mill, which is to be located in the edge of the town of Castor. Dr. H. D. Glass of Lambert, Mississippi is owner and promoter. He estimates that he will have enough timber for a ten-year cut. Caterpillar trucks will doubtless be used for hauling logs to the mill, two ten ton "Holt" trucks having already been unloaded here for demonstration."

L. F. Jacob, who heard the story from one of the older heads, said the theory behind the Caterpillar trucks was that several log wagons could be hitched to it to haul logs out of the swamps. " It didn't work," Jacob said. " The truck tracks chewed up the ground so bad that it became impassable, worse than it had been before."

" H. D. Glass Company was a hardwood mill," Allen Hill said, " and they logged the timber out of Alligator Slough on Black Lake. Their operation was unique in that they used Liberty Trucks, surplus military vehicles of World War One to pull the log wagons. The trucks could pull two wagons at a time," Hill said.

Another local tells a story of a crawler tractor they used in the operation. " They would hook onto several wagons and then couldn't negotiate the curves in the wet muddy roads. Sometimes they would come out with a bunch of axles," he said.

The August 1920 issue of the parish newspaper says that: " By August of 1920 construction of the H. D. Glass Company mill had been completed and made ready for operation. The mill, we believe, is as well constructed as any lumber mill we have seen, and will (unlikely*) be a permanent industry in Castor. In conversation with an official of the company we learned they had enough timber on one tract owned by them to run the mill fifteen years. We are uninformed as to the capacity of the mill but understand that it will bring an additional population to that town of at least 500 people."

The conclusion of the story is somewhat shattering. The demise of the mill that had brought such hope and visions of prosperity to the Castor community was not reported on the front pages of the newspaper. Local news columnists didn't write about it at all. The resounding failure of the H. D. Glass Company came quickly and wound up in the back pages of the newspaper among the notices of sheriff's sales. H. D. Glass Company had one good year back in the 1920s and then a rainy season put them out of business.

Land that had been owned by Glass, six thousand one hundred and eighteen acres, more or less, was awarded to various creditors, in April 1921. Six log wagons, one mill house and machinery, two tractors, one Best, and one "Holt", one hundred and fifty thousand feet lumber, more or less, one hundred and twelve thousand six hundred and seventy nine feet logs, more or less, were among inventory being seized. Three hundred fifty feet of rail, one hundred pounds of spikes, ten pounds of track bolts, one set of irons for log haul up, and numerous other equipment items used in the Glass mill were claimed by his creditors less than one year after construction of the mill.

Recently, the ruins of the H. D. Glass Company came to light after a timber company's clear-cut of the site. Conjecture by local history enthusiasts is that the large brick structure, the most prominent of the ruins, could have been a foundation for a water tank.

A few bricks found at the foot of the crumbling structure bear the brand of a company and St. Louis, Mo. Large concrete foundations leave little doubt as to the size of the operation circa 1920. Earth works of one of the old railroad tramways loom nearby and is testament to the L&A Railroad and its importance to early sawmill operations.

The typographical error (unlikely*) in the early pages of the Democrat have proven almost prophetic. The then forty-three-year old Dr. Glass rightly judged himself in the wrong business. He obviously packed his bags and caught the next train back home to Lambert, Mississippi.

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