Burton & Woodill in Louisiana had a small sawmill across the Sabine River from Orange. The failure of the piston-driven saw mandrel caused the plant's sale to Bancroft & Sons in 1874. They made it into a planing mill. On Sunday, March 26, 1877, the mill burned, possibly by outlaws. Henry Thompson, a well-to-do shingle wholesaler, financed the building of a second mill with the right to buy its output, but the Bancrofts had to relocate next to the railroad in Orange. The census of 1880 revealed a capital value of $15,000 with an average of thirty men and three boys, working nine hours during the winter and eleven and a half during the summer for $4.00 daily (skilled) and $1.50 (unskilled). Bancroft paid $11,000 in wages during eight months of operation. With $18,000 in materials, a gross value of production was manufactured at $35,000.
Their third mill was built between 1885 and 1890. Bancroft Lumber did not initially do its own logging, but eventually organized its own steam logging railroad, the Tram Arthur, which extended into the pineries in Orange and Newton counties from its terminus of the Sabine River. Sawtimber would be skidded into the River and rafted to the mill.
A fire in 1892 destroyed 4.6 million feet of lumber, worth $35,000 and insured for $17,000. The new mill was “one of the best arranged, most compact, yet least crowded with machinery in the Southwest.” Despite a Texas & New Orleans railroad contract in 1883, the mill was closed for months at a time because of the scarcity of cypress logs. In 1900, in 268 days it produced 23 million feet. The company developed an extensive foreign trade. With the death of Thomas Bancroft in 1896, the company reorganized as Bancroft Lumber Company. Unable to handle a mountainous debt, Bancroft Lumber Company sold out to Kirby Lumber Company in 1901, for $410,000.
(See Peavy-Moore Lumber Company at Orange for a continuation of the history of this mill site.)