John E. Monk operated and owned a sawmill at or near Crockett sometime after 1900. He sold it for a short time to W. G Craig who resold it to Monk in 1903, according to Houston County records. Equipment included the “sawmill and fixtures, engine and boiler, all belting and tools, being the same outfit I brought from him [Monk], 1 log wagon” and “two yokes of oxen, all lumber on the mill yard near Crockett, Texas.”
Monk's sawmill appeared in 1907 in the listing of Reference Book of the Lumbermen's Credit Association.
Aldrich, in his History of Houston County, states that Monk witnessed the baptism of Sam Houston into the church.