Robert Sowers, with family and business connections in Chicot County, Arkansas, was a slaveholder, businessman, and steam mill operator in Cherokee County from before the Civil War until his death in 1887. The Sowers-Campbell Family Papers document that the Sowers-Wells operations milled lumber and ginned cotton, with business connections as far away as New Orleans and Arkansas. The sawmill produced sheathing, planking, rough dimension, and fencing. The law firm of Bonner & Bonner, at Rusk, often handled Sowers' business affairs.