J. B. Barnes and H. C. went into the planing mill business in 1905, for they mortgaged, for $800, to the Bank of Tenaha a complete planing mill with a planer-matcher, an edger, a boiler and steam engine, eight horses, sixteen oxen, and two log wagons. Obviously, they were going to do their own logging as well as planing.
By the next year, Parker had organized the H. C. Parker Lumber Company of Tenaha and had bought a second mill just across the county line in Panola County, a sawmill near Wood's Post Office that he sold to S. H. Forte. It is known that Forte sold the mill at Wood's Post Office to the Trammell Lumber Company of Shelby County. Parker must have acquired yet another sawmill, for a Shelby County mortgage register entry of August 1907 mentions Parker's “two sawmills.” He bought out Barnes' interest in the planing mill for Barnes' name is dropped from H. C. Barnes' mortgages in the Shelby County chattel mortgage registers.
Parker added a sawmill to his planing operation near Tenaha. Equipment that he maintained at both mills included: a Curtis 61/2-inch by 30ft steam shotgun feed thirty feet long, later upgraded to two Curtiss 61/2-inch by 40-ft steam shotgun feeds, #5 8-inch 4-side moulder and cutting heads, a #2 Fisher-Davis righthand sawmill and carriage, a #2 DeLoach cutoff saw, an Atlas 12-inch by 14-inch steam engine, an Atlas 52-inch by 14-ft boiler, a Dixie #1 2-saw edger, at least two 56-inch circular saws, a #9 HooHoo double surface-sizer and knives, and a J A Fay & Egan 6-inch by 9-inch flooring machine.
By 1928, he had dropped the planing operation and converted to a circular sawmill, cutting 15,000 feet daily of hardwoods and pine.