This is a preview of what I hope will be an interesting "History Hunt". I'll try to add to it this coming week.
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I was waiting for the local to leave Port Barre the other day.
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I was waiting for the local to leave Port Barre the other day.
While intently listening to the scanner, I overheard the Livonia dispatcher ask if another local had gotten the cars out of the Basile siding.
I'm familiar with Basile as much as anyone that doesn't live there and I didn't remember a siding. Looking at the satellite projection I can understand why I didn't know. The rails are a block off the main drag, US 190. From the east it starts at the illegal alien detention jail.
And, it ends before where the old depot was in town.
And, it ends before where the old depot was in town.
That wasn't enough take me over there. I started wondering about the origins of the town. The town is on the railroad. Being a lasting town it had to be a market place, products either incoming or outgoing. I knew that Basile sat on the edge of the upland forest making it a perfect place to gather and distribute forest products.
Sure enough, this Texas site which provides the names of Louisiana mill railroads, came up with this:
"Basile -- St. Maurice Lumber Co., 50M. Logging railroad, 4 1/2 mi.".
I had a foothold.
For fun, my next attempt would be to look at the area and try to find a location where a mill might have been.
West of town and Bayou Nespique, there it was, a possible location. Zooming in I imagined what could have been a rail yard. I may not have been wrong.
My next move was to pursue the name, "St.Maurice" mixing it in different ways with "Basile".
That didn't work out too well for the lumber company, but it did for the history of the
Methodist Church in Basile.
I did find this and a lot more ads for other historic mills.
The two entities, the church and the company merged.
You see, a founder of the church was a "McCain, Walton McCain. Check out the ad.
This was one of those extremely confusing genealogical spiels.
I cut out most of it as it would make you dizzy.
When explaining family relations, pronouns should be kept to a minimum.
Whatever, Walton is the key. My comments will be in brackets.
Clarence M. McCain, M. D.: Evangeline Parish, Louisiana Submitted by: Greggory E. Davies Date: Nov 1997 Clarence M. McCain, M. D. In the practice of medicine and in his experience as a business man Dr. McCain lived in a number of localities in Louisiana, finally returning to the community where he spent a part of his youth. He descended from the McCain & Hicks families, who have been in Louisiana since early times, and were of sturdy Scotch-Irish ancestry, and were people of note and worth in their communities.
Doctor CM McCain was born near the Ebenezer Camp ground in Ward Five of Winn Parish, January 21, 1872 , son of Felix McConnell and Sarah Hicks McCain.
{A discussion of the grandfathers followed which had no bearing on this search}
{I'll include a little of the gene'} Felix McCain, {father of Doctor Clarence McCain}, died in 1917, at the age of seventy-one ....... He was a farmer, ginner and operator of saw mills, {the father knew "saw milling"}owning a large acreage of land, and gave his children good public school education. For many years he held the office of president of the Winn Parish Police Jury. He took part in suppressing the historic Colfax insurrection. He was a member of the Masonic Order. Felix and his wife continued their working membership in the Methodist Protestant Church until 1910, when, having removed to the home oftheir son, Doctor McCain at Basile, {the subject of this writing) they joined the Methodist Episcopal Church. Felix McCain {the Dr.'s father} died at Basile, while at Basile, while his wife passed away in Alexandria in 1922, at the age of seventy-five. {Dr.Clarrence McCain and his wife} had a large family of sons and daughters;
........ and {son} Walton, who served as president of the Bank at Basile.
And that's not all, is it!! He was the St.Maurice Lumber Company's
General Manager as seen in that ad.
Back to Dr. Clarence......................... He practiced at St. Maurice {Winn Parish} near his birthplace, married there and remained in that locality ten or twelve years. He also opened a store, his brother being in active charge. In that locality he carried on a wide and successful practice and had a well established business until a certain drop in the price of cotton forced him into bankruptcy. He turned over his home, lands and goods to his creditors and then moved his family to Winnfield, where, associated with Dr. John Pugh, he took over the medical practice of the Germain & Boyd Lumber Company of Atlanta and Whitford for two and a half years.
Another two years he spent at Clarence in Natchitoches Parish and then moved to Basile in Evangeline Parish, where in addition to a general practice he acted as local surgeon for the Gulf Coast Railway for eleven years. While there he and his brother became chiefly responsible for the building of the Methodist Church. The original owner of the townsite was James Lewis, who had donated two lots for this church. Doctor McCain and his brother, buying the townsite for $ 10,000 gave a site more convenient to the church and with the aid of some local assistance, and the Church Exemption Society built the Methodist Episcopal Church there. These brothers were also responsible for the building of a girls' school, a Methodist Mission School. Doctor McCain acted as steward and trustee of the church at Basile. After eleven years of work in that community he moved to Elton, where in connection with his medical practice he engaged in rice planting. Doctor McCain in 1923 returned to his old home community at Montgomery in Grant Parish, where he continued his work as a physician and surgeon. (Source: Chambers' "A History of Louisiana", 1925. Submitted by Greggory Ellis Davies, Winnfield, Winn Parish, La.)
St.Maurice (A), Winn Parish, US 71 southeast of Nachitoches, above Montgomery.
How did the "St. Maurice" Lumber Company get its name? Possibly it was from Walton.
Just guessing.
Dad, Clarence, was involved with the railroad, how convenient. The mill, remember,
had its own little railroad.
Now more on Walton, the General Manager, and that's not all.
It is a shame that Walton and his wife are not mentioned. 
This is the next step.
June, 1913
Now that is confusing.
The St. Maurice Lumber Co. already had a mill there.
The ad below was published in June of 1913.
Possibly there was only a lumber yard there and not a mill?
Here we go:
1913
It will "equip" a hardwood sawmill..."
A great little page on "Stave Mills" can be found HERE.
I headed up there yesterday to look at that possible mill location.
My motorcycle broke down, but not out. I was able to ride it
all the way home without being able to disengage the clutch.
Interstates can be handy and luck at the 2 stop lights sure did help.
Sunday morning: the bike is repaired as it was a lose nut on the clutch basket.
No big deal.
It may have been a good thing since prowling back roads on Sunday is not
good idea.
Have you ever been chased by a herd of 4 wheeler atv hunting machines
with less than sober operators?
And have you ever seen those gun racks that allow the gun to rest
pointed forward?
They are fast mini-tanks.
You don't want to stir up the post barbecue privacy sensitive crowd on a Sunday
afternoon especially if the Cowboys or Saints have lost.
Agent 00-L checked in with several comments.
OO-L on my confusion:
You blogged:
Now that is confusing.
The St. Maurice Lumber Co. already had a mill there.
The ad below was published in June of 1913.
Possibly there was only a lumber yard there and not a mill?
To me, who was virtually raised in the log woods, this isn’t confusing at all. The ad of the St Maurice Lumber Company, Limited touted it as “manufacturers of YELLOW PINE LUMBER”—yellow pine being a softwood. It was reported in 1913 that St. Maurice sold to the Kern Company “the hardwood timber on about 7,000 acres.” (In Louisiana, standing timber can be sold separately from the land that it occupies via a timber deed.) It was also reported that Kern was planning to build a hardwood sawmill at Basile. That would be in addition to St. Maurice’s pine sawmill, already there (the first Methodist sermon having been preached in it in 1911). Pine and hardwood sawmills are not technologically cross-compatible.
So, St. Maurice had earlier bought up timber land (or perhaps just the timber on lands). Pine being the more valuable forest product, St. Maurice quickly established its pine mill, and sawdust began to fly. The bottoms within those lands would have been populated with hardwood timber, and hardwoods would have stood among the pines on the uplands as well. St. Maurice could have built its own hardwood mill, but it chose instead to resell the hardwood timber to Kern, which would make that investment.
I’m always glad to elucidate the confused.
Agent 00-L
Back to me.
So, if you ever need a good elucidation, let me know, I know a fella that can handle your problem, no incision required.