Henry Hoxie "Harry" Thompson, Sr. (1880-1959), biography c. 1910
[St. Louis Lumberman magazine ]
 
 
 
 
  Source: St. Louis Lumberman, Oct. 1, 1910, p. 70.
 
     
     
  Hoxie H. Thompson.  
 

We are pleased to present in this connection a brief biographical sketch of a gentleman whose name and features are more or less familiar to yellow pine men generally, and more particularly to those who visit Texas with any measurable degree of frequency. As most of our readers already know, Hoxie H. Thompson is the treasurer of the Thompson Brothers Lumber Company, manufacturers of yellow pine, with general ofllces at Houston, Tex.

The subject of this sketch first saw the light of day at Kilgore, Tex., on the 15th of July, 1880. He attended school at Alexander Institute in that city under the care of Rev. 1. Alexander from September, 1888, to June, 1893. 111' September of the latter year the Thompson family moved to Sherman, Tex., and young Hoxie entered the Austin College preparatory department, taking up the college course in 1897, from which he graduated in June, 1901. While making rapid headway in the prosecution of the various studies at Austin C'ollege, young Thompson at the same time enjoyed all forms of sports, including baseball, tennis and football. In September of 1901 he went to Ithaca, New York, where he entered the Civil Engineering Department of Cornell University, graduating in the Civil Engineering degree in June, 1905. While attending Cornell he was a member of the Alpha Tan Omega fraternity, and the year spent with the fraternity members at Ithaca he now recalls with pleasure and cherishes as a very valuable part of his university career.

In the spring of 1903, owing to a severe epidemic of typhoid fever at Cornell, Mr. Thompson left Ithaca and entered the service of the Missouri, Kansas & Texas railroad, joining a surveying party in field work near McAlester, Okla. While engaged in this service, he ran transit on location work, and subsequently took charge of the construction work for the party. In September of 1903 Mr. Thompson returned to college at Ithaca, and, after finishing his college course two years later accepted a position with the Great Northern railway on construction work in eastern Nebraska, his first assignment being ten miles of construction. In March of 1906 he was transferred to the Columbia River Division, where he ran transiton location in the Cascade Mountains. He continued to labor in this field until August, 1906, when he returned to Texas, this being just about the time that the Thompson Brothers Lumber Company purchasedtheir plant at Doucette.

In this same year, 1906, Hoxie H. Thompson entered upon another new phase of his career, which has proved a very happy one in every respect. On December 17th of that year he married Miss Goree Gregg, of Sherman, Tex., whomhe had known for thirteen years. Rev. Dr. I. Alexander performed the marriage ceremony, this being the fourth of the kind that he had performed for the Thompson family. After a short trip through the North with his bride, Hoxie Thompson went to Poughkeepsie, N. Y., where he took up a business course at the famous Eastman College. He was still at that institution when he was called home in March by reason of the death of his father. He then became identified with the mill end of the Thompson Lumber Company's business, and had charge of the mill at Willard, Tex., until February, 1909, when the company cleared the site for the mill at New Willard, at which place he remained until the plant was put in operation in January of 1910. He moved to Trinity, Tex., at the beginning of the construction of the mill at that place the first of this year, and has charge of the building operation there at the present time. The company expects to start this mill in operation within the next forty-five to fifty days. it will be a double band mill with a gang equipment and all the latest and most up-to-date accessories of a thoroughly modern saw mill plant.

As stated at the beginning of this sketch, Hoxie H. Thompson is the treasurer of the Thompson & Tucker Lumber Company and the Thompson Brothers Lumber Company, and is also chief engineer of the B. & G.N. railway. The Thompson-Ford Lumber Company’s mill, another of their properties, which is located at Grayburg, is a double band mill with a capacity of 125,000 feet per day. The mills at Doucette and New Willard both have practically the same equipment, with daily capacity of about 125,000 feet; and the mill at Trinity will have two single cutting bands and gang, with a capacity of 150,000 feet per day. All of these mills are new and have the very latest equipments and a supply of timber behind them to run them eighteen or twenty years at the least.

Hoxie H. Thompson is a man of wide general culture, and his splendid knowledge of civil engineering coupled with his intimate acquaintance with the lumber business, has made him a very valuable member of this well-known lumber corporation.

 
     
     
     
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Text and images were digitized and proofread from the original source documents by Murry Hammond. Contact Murry for all corrections and contributions of new material.