Charley Blackburn sawmilled in the county until his death 1954, according to his daughter, Peggy Blackburn Gipson. It was a small operation, employing only two or three men. Charles Blackburn did independent-contract sawmilling for various local companies. A company note of the Angelina Lumber Company, in 1943, mentioned that he produced “good peckerwood lbr.” Mrs. Gipson reported her mother as saying that Blackburn “cut car stakes at his mill for Lufkin Foundry. The stakes were used to anchor the machinery that the foundry shipped on flatbed railroad cars. He also sold lumber to individuals for home use, as well as to the county for bridge building.”