Hicks Brothers foreclosed on the “Queen of the South” lumber mill belonging to T. J. Oliver for failure to discharge a debt in 1889. The site included a cotton press, cotton gin, a blacksmith shop, an engine, and a boiler. By 1891, Hicks Brothers funded a mortgage on lumber property for Bryan Brothers of Tenaha: a Cushman sawmill, logging cars, one wagon, and eight oxen. Hicks Brothers were listed in the Galveston Weekly News, on April 13, 1893, as sawing 30,000 feet daily. On September 5, 1896, the Brothers sold lumber worth $2,000 to M. T. Jones Lumber Company of Houston.
The History of Shelby County noted that E. S. and C. B. Hicks gave land to the Houston East and West Texas during the early 1880s to entice the railroad to establish a depot where the town [of Tenaha] was to be laid out. In 1885, the sawmill and a commissary was built just east of the present townsite. The planing mill was erected in 1892.