The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 86, July 1982 - April, 1983 Page: 12
616 p. : ill. (some col.), maps, ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Southwestern Historical Quarterly
Lutcher and G. Bedell Moore of Williamsport, Pennsylvania. Lutcher,
the son of an immigrant German butcher, was born in Williamsport
in 1836 and had been in the lumbering business since the early i850s.
Moore, the grandson of an early Episcopal bishop of Virginia, was born
the same year in New Jersey and had attended Dickinson Seminary
before moving west and joining Lutcher in a lumbering partner-
ship in 1862. By 1876 they were operating a successful lumber busi-
ness of moderate size, but timber in central and western Pennsyl-
vania was being rapidly depleted and the partners agreed to seek a
new location in another state. According to family and company tradi-
tion, they had considered Michigan and Wisconsin but decided that
they were too late to begin competing with the numerous established
firms in those areas. They had heard of the great yellow pine forests of
East Texas and Louisiana, and though sharing the typical white-pine
lumberman's prejudice against yellow pine because of its high resin
content, they decided to make a trip south and inspect the region and
its opportunities. If their findings proved promising, they planned
to purchase timberlands and a mill site and transfer their chief opera-
tions to the Gulf Coast. They made this journey in January-February,
1877, and recorded their travels, train connections, hotels, conversa-
tions, and impressions in a small, handwritten, pocket-sized diary,
which has been preserved. In addition to an account of the travelers'
activities the diary provides a valuable addition to the picture of
Texas in the post-Civil War generation.16
Leaving Williamsport on January 11, 1877, the pair journeyed by
train by way of Pittsburgh, Columbus, and Indianapolis, reaching St.
Louis early in the morning of January 13. There they stopped at the
Laclede Hotel for a couple of days and met several officials of the St.
Louis Iron Mountain and Southern Railroad who told them about
timberlands and gave them letters of introduction to men in Texas
16Diary, Henry J. Lutcher and G. Bedell Moore's Trip to Texas, 1877, Lutcher and
Moore Papers, Forest History Collections (Stephen F. Austin State University Library,
Nacogdoches, Texas); Robert P. Turpin, retired secretary of L&M Lumber Co., to R.S.M.,
Aug. 13, 1963, interview (Oral History Collections, Stephen F. Austin State University);
Boyd, "Fifty Years in the South Pine Industry"; Hamilton Pratt Easton, "The History
of the Texas Lumbering Industry" (Ph.D. diss., University of Texas, 1947), 121-125;
Burke's Texas Almanac and Immigrant's Handbook for 188i Containing Some Infor-
mation about Texas (Houston, 1881), 156. The original diary of Lutcher and Moore's
trip to Texas is in the possession of Mrs. Carolyn Negley of San Antonio, a descendent
of G. Bedell Moore. Mrs. Negley presented a bound facsimile of the diary to the writer
and it is now with the Lutcher and Moore Papers in the SFA Library. Judging from the
handwriting of the diary and other samples of the partners' correspondence, G. Bedell
Moore was the writer and keeper of the diary.
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 86, July 1982 - April, 1983, periodical, 1982/1983; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101209/m1/32/: accessed May 6, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.