Z 2155.000 S
CHICAGO MILL AND LUMBER COMPANY RECORDS, ACCRETION



Box 1 is restricted.

Hermann Paepcke was born in Mecklenburg, Germany, in 1851. He was the son of Wilhelm and Louise Paepcke. Hermann Paepcke moved to Texas in 1872, and he established an export business. After returning to Germany for a year, Paepcke moved back to Texas in 1878 and married Paula Wagner, who was also of German lineage. They had at least one son, Walter P. Paepcke. The Paepckes moved to Chicago, Illinois, in 1881. Hermann Paepcke formed a partnership in a small lumber business and planing mill known as the Paepcke-Wagner Company. After a few years, Paepcke bought out his partner, added a box-manufacturing division, and renamed the business Hermann Paepcke and Company. As the business grew, Paepcke formed other companies, including the Chicago Mill and Lumber Company, the Chicago Packing Box Company, and in 1893, the Paepcke-Leicht Lumber Company. The latter would become one of the largest lumber-distributing companies in Chicago at that time.

From J. H. Leavenworth, Paepcke purchased a sawmill and twenty-five thousand acres of standing timber near Lake Ferguson in Greenville, Washington County, Mississippi, in 1898, and there he established the Chicago Mill and Lumber Company. The company was apparently operated as the Paepcke-Leicht Lumber Company at least through the 1920s. Other subsidiaries of the Chicago Mill and Lumber Company were established in Blytheville and Helena, Arkansas, and in Cairo, Illinois. The company owned over one hundred twenty-five thousand acres of land by 1909.

After the death of Paula Paepcke in 1909, Hermann Paepcke married Elizabeth Julia Robertshaw Meade in Greenville in 1912. Hermann Paepcke died in 1922, and Walter P. Paepcke became company president. In 1928, four companies were merged into the Chicago Mill and Lumber Company: the Arkansas Oak Flooring Company of Pine Bluff, Arkansas, and R. J. Darnell, Incorporated, the Hudson Hardwood Flooring Company, and the Penrod-Jurden Company, all of Memphis, Tennessee. As a result of the Great Depression, the Chicago Mill and Lumber Company consolidated and reorganized in 1933, and the company began contractual arrangements for its logging operations around that time.

Wilford H. Gonyea, a West Coast lumberman, tendered an offer to buy the company on June 29, 1965, and after the stockholders accepted, the Chicago Mill and Lumber Company ceased to exist as a corporation and continued operations as a partnership under the same name. The general offices were moved from Chicago to Greenville in September of 1965. The Chicago Mill and Lumber Company operated three sawmills and two box factories, and it owned over two hundred thousand acres of timberland primarily in Louisiana and Mississippi by 1980.

Scope and Content:

This collection contains correspondence and financial and legal records concerning the Chicago Mill and Lumber Company or the Paepcke-Leicht Lumber Company.

The correspondence consists of a few original letters regarding lumber storage that were exchanged between the Paepcke-Leicht Lumber Company of Greenville and the Three States Lumber Company of Memphis, Tennessee.

The financial records include a ledger, a record book, Internal Revenue Service reports, lumber price lists and sales orders, and check-stub registers.

A ledger contains records of the Paepcke-Leicht Lumber Company from 1925 through 1944. It includes credits and debits for accident expenses, accounts for individual employees, accounts with other companies, and boiler repairs. There is also a record of the hours each Chicago Mill and Lumber Company employee worked during the first eight months of 1945.

Several folders entitled Annual Information Return contain Internal Revenue Service reports from 1920 through 1923. These forms, which were prepared by personnel of the Paepcke-Leicht Lumber Company, list the wages for each Greenville division employee who was paid over one thousand dollars during the previous year. Included with the reports are a small amount of related correspondence and several lists of employees wages.

There is a List of Sales Orders Billed for the Greenville plant of the Chicago Mill and Lumber Company that lists total sales by date for different types of lumber. It covers July 1, 1925, through the end of 1925. There are a number of Chicago Mill and Lumber Company price lists for 1926 through 1928. These lists were mailed to the Greenville division by the central office in Chicago to establish prices for eight different sizes of lumber and approximately twenty different kinds of wood.

There are a number of sheets from 1930 check-stub registers of the Greenville division of the Chicago Mill and Lumber Company. They list the check date and recipient and usually include a short note concerning the nature of the payment.

The legal records consist of contracts and a settlement agreement. There are contracts from 1908 to 1924 for goods and services that the Standard Oil Company provided for several different subsidiaries of either the Chicago Mill and Lumber Company or the Paepcke-Leicht Lumber Company. Some of the company subsidiaries include mills at Greenville, Mississippi, and Chicago and Cairo, Illinois. There are a number of logging contracts for the Paepcke-Leicht Lumber Company that are numbered in a series. Although some numbered contracts are not present in the collection, contracts 174 through 187 concern the purchase of trees or lumber in Arkansas and Mississippi between the years 1922 and 1923. There is also a December 1923 contract between the Paepcke-Leicht Lumber Company of Greenville and the Thane Lumber Company for the purchase of timber in Desha County, Arkansas.

There is a 1923 settlement agreement between the Paepcke-Leicht Lumber Company of Greenville and the James E. Bell Lumber Company of Hollandale, Washington County, Mississippi. The settlement concerned some timber that was mistakenly harvested.

Series Identification:

  1. Correspondence. 1916. 1 folder.

    Box 4, folder 1

  2. Financial Records. 1920-1945; n.d. 11 folders; 3 items.

    3. Box 1, item 1 (restricted)
    Box 2, items 1-2
    Box 3, folders 1-2
    Box 4, folders 2-10

  3. Legal Records. 1908-1924. 9 folders.

    4. Box 3, folders 3-7
    Box 4, folders 11-14

Box List:

  • Box 1, item 2: financial records, 1945 (restricted).

  • Box 2, item 1: financial records, 1925-1944.
               item 2: financial records, 1930.

  • Box 3, folders 1-2: financial records, 1921-1922.
               folders 3-7: legal records, 1908-1924.

  • Box 4, folder 1: correspondence, 1916.
               folders 2-10: financial records, 1920-1928; n.d.
               folders 11-14: legal records, 1916; 1921-1923.