The E. T. Yates Lumber Company at Rusk on Yates Mill Road is documented in the Census of 1910. Not much is known about this plant other than it was close to Powell Land and Lumber Company on Powell Mill Road, and that between the two lumber companies, the residential listings took six pages in the census. Quite a number must have been company tenant houses. E. T. Yates, manager of a sawmill, lived in residence 112.
The Cherokee County records indicate that Yates may have had J. A. Bowman, a local sawmill man and lumber factor, as a partner. On August 5, 1911, J. A. Bowman & E. P. [misspelling of E. T.] Yates mortgaged to the First National Bank for $455 “330,000 feet lumber.”
Yates may have sold his mill in 1912 to Robert Jesse Ford and Jim Ford. Cherokee County chattel mortgage registers note the Fords mortgaged on February 24, 1912, to E. T. Yates Lumber Company for $5,000 “all lumber, 1 sawmill complete, all timber on 1,035 acres.”