Jerry Hall, known as “ Buzz,” was an Afro-American sawmiller in Rusk County from about 1920 to just before World War II. Hall's mill was situated on a dirt road off Highway 95, past Highway 315 from Mount Enterprise, and near the first Negro school in that area. It ran from about 1920 to 1940. County deed records reveal that the sawmill may have been located on fifty acres of the Hudson Survey that Hall had purchased from Sally Whitefield in 1918 and 1919.
Hall's mill served all customers regardless of race.
Labor was a family affair, normally a three man crew consisting of Buzz Hall, and, at various times, his sons Booker T. Hall, Ardis Hall, and B. J. Hall and other workers as needed. The steam boiler powered an engine that ran a circular sawmill, a shingle machine, and a grist mills. The shingle machine was served by an automatic shotgun feed. The gin stand was eventually burned down by lightening. The grist mill, a two-stone affair, could grind more than one hundred bushels of meal daily.
Hall did his own logging on land that he owned as well as buying from independent contractors.