T. L. Bobbitt in an interview with Vernon L. Beasley reported that the Sowell sawmill and sawmill town was located at Macune, about ten miles southwest of San Augustine, from the late teens to the 1930s. The plant included sawmill and planing mill machinery, a gin, and a grist mill. Bobbitt recalled a store and tenant houses.
This may be the sawmill that Maxie Martin remembered being at Macune in 1900. J. Johnson remembered that at least two portable sawmills and gins were located here in the late 1920s.
According to San Augustine county records and tax rolls, J. E. Sowell and James L. Norwood in 1903 mortgaged for a 44-inch by 12-foot 35-horsepower HSG boiler, a 9-inch by 12-inch HSG steam engine, a #2 DeLoach sawmill, a 48-inch saw, and a DeLoach grist mill. Tax records reveal that in 1904 they were enumerated for $1,000 in boiler and engines, and in 1906 $500 in manufacturing tolls and $500 for a boiler and steam engines.
T. L. Bobbitt in an interview with Vernon L. Beasley reported that a gasoline-powered tie mill was located about twelve miles southwest of San Augustine in the 1930s. It was situated east of Highway 147 and south of Highway 103.