page_title: L.N. Dantzler Lumber Company
section_title: Early history
hierarchical_section_title: L.N. Dantzler Lumber Company / History / Early history
caption_attribution_description: English: Receipt from L.N. Dantzler Lumber Company, Moss Point, Mississippi, USA
context_page_description: L.N. Dantzler Lumber Company began as a small sawmill owned by William Griffin in Moss Point, Mississippi. L.N. Danzler bought it in the 1870s and, with two sons, incorporated the business in 1888. Originally, the main business was the manufacture of lumber from southern yellow pine, but in 1949, the company switched to tree farming of southern pines and sold timber by selective cutting to yield a variety of wood products. The family-owned business prospered for 75 years but was sold to International Paper Company in 1966.
context_section_description: L.N. Dantzler Lumber Company had its beginning shortly before the American Civil War, when William Griffin acquired a sawmill at Moss Point, Mississippi, where the Pascagoula River and Escatawpa River converged. Lorenzo Nolly Dantzler married Griffin's daughter in 1857. He began to work with his father-in-law and purchased the sawmill from Griffin in the 1870s, later establishing it under his name.
  With financial assistance from a New Orleans lumber merchant, L.N. Dantzler had a larger sawmill constructed along the Escatawpa River at Moss Point, and it began operation in 1885.  The new sawmill began by processing 70,000 board feet of lumber per day, but within six years had increased daily production to 125,000 board feet. The new mill had kilns and machines for planing and edging the rough-cut lumber into finished products.
  Dantzler persuaded two of his sons, J.L. and L.N. Dantzler, Jr., to join the company, and the three incorporated the L.N. Dantzler Lumber Company on March 1, 1888.  The lumber company became the first privately chartered corporation in Mississippi.
  For 20 years, the company relied on contract loggers to supply their sawmills, but in the 1890s, the company began buying large tracts of land to insure a more reliable source of timber. By the early 1900s, the company had acquired about 400,000 acres (160,000 ha) of timberland in the six southernmost counties of Mississippi.
caption: 1895 receipt from L.N. Dantzler Lumber Company
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