George E. Singletary operated a steam-powered sawmill on Wire Creek near the Neches River in the 1890s. He did no remanufacturing of lumber. He had moved his mill to Singletary Switch by 1900.
Singletary employed county convicts to haul lumber. The prisoners would load eight or nine thousand feet of planed lumber onto an 8-wheel log wagon. Four yokes of oxen (eight oxen) were yoked to the wagon. The wagon would leave about midnight so that the animals could stay cool. They would drag the wagon to Brunswick, where it would be unloaded. According to Mrs. Grady Singletary in Shiloh Church and the People, Singletary also clothed and fed his prisoners, for whom he paid the county fifty cents each daily.