The T. H. Leaverton Lumber Company had been connected with lumber manufacturing in Grapeland since 1906. T. H. Leaverton was recorded as producing 12,000 feet daily that year. T. H. Leaverton was listed in the 1928 edition of the Southern Lumberman's Directory of American Saw Mills and Planing Mills as running a planing mill operation at Grapeland.
Interestingly enough, he had not been listed in either the 1905 or 1907 Reference Book of the Lumbermen's Credit Association, nor in the 1915 issue of the Department of Commerce's Directory of American Sawmills. Either he or the company had been inactive for a period of time, or, at least in the case of 1915, when no sawmill had been listed for Grapeland, Leaverton had simply not been recorded.
W. T. Block believes Leaverton was the Herbert Leaverton who was enumerated in the Census of 1910, living at Residence 352 of Enumeration District 62, as a “sawmill lumberman and employer.”