The San Augustine Manufacturing Company of John A. and Henry Polk had been operating at San Augustine since 1940. That year on the same day it bought lumber manufacturing equipment from the Cunningham Manufacturing Company for $3,82.07 and from Commercial State Bank a sawmill plant for $5,000 complete with all buildings and machinery. The mill site was located on out-lots 7 and 11 of the city. The company was doing its own logging on several tracts of land belonging to H. B. Arnold near Milam in 1942. G. Lane remembered that the company under the Polks, and later Stone, provided a commissary and tenant houses for its workers.
The Trinity Valley Section article of the Lufkin Daily News reported in 1943 that J. E. Stone operated a sawmill at San Augustine. Since J. E. Stone Lumber Company bought San Augustine Manufacturing Company in 1944, it can be assumed that the Polks may have been leasing it to Stone Lumber prior to the sale. The mill site was located on Out-lot 7 and part of Out-lot 11 in San Augustine.
G. Lane, J. McSwain, and Ernest Nash informed interviewer V. L Beasley of the Texas Forestry Museum in 1994 that the lumber company under both the Polks and Stone provided a commissary and tenant housing for the employees from the 1930s to the early 1950s.