A local newspaper from Nacogdoches reported in October 1902 that “A big saw mill would have already been in course of construction there but for the serious sickness of its promoter, Mr. T. J. Williams of this city. Mr. Williams is still quite sick at his home on East Main Street, and it will be some time before he can get out to push his new enterprise.” On 19 November 1902 the paper noted that “T. J. Williams came home last night from Cushing where he is erecting a saw mill plant. The mill is about completed and Mr. Williams says he will begin cutting lumber Monday. He says the tracks of the T & NO railroad is laid to within a mile and a half of Cushing, and he thinks it will reach his mill by the time he is ready to begin shipping lumber.”
A county deed record of December 1902 notes that the Texas Lumber Company, of T. J. Williams, received from A. B. Martindale a mortgage on a sawmill at Cushing located along the tracks of the Texas & New Orleans. Equipment included besides the sawmill, a wagon, one road wagon, four miles, all the household goods, a boarding house, a blacksmith shop with its tools, all the dry goods and groceries in a local store building, and all the lumber on hand, for a sum of $3,500.
This mill was probably moved almost immediately to Cariker's Switch, situated on the Texas & New Orleans tracks, about one mile west of Cushing, where Martindale had owned a sawmill since 1903.