The Beaumont Journal mentioned an unidentified Manton sawmill in 1904, which was probably the Angelina Orchid Company. The firm operated a sawmill and a box and crate factory at Manton in the first part of the century. It failed about 1912. F. M. Hooks Lumber Company bought the land, commissary, and tenant houses. When he cut the timber out, Hooks moved his sawmill and planing mill elsewhere.
Guy Croom records that the small mill was between the old Moffett school and church. Logging was done by mule.
Manton was, according to Archie Birdsong Matthews and Bob Bowman, a small sawmill center after the turn of the century. Located in northeast Angelina County on the tracks of the Texas & New Orleans. Webb noted that Manton “was a sawmill town in the early 1900's and had a population of 150 in 1910.”