The Employee Database lists names and information on over 10,000 individuals who were employed by transportation companies or companies that operated their own transportation departments, such as the many East Texas lumber mills who routinely operated private railroads, and payrolled whole departments in their maintenance and operation.

The database attempts to “reconstruct” obsolete employee record information that has been devastated by fire, flood or decay, or discarded by policy or disinterest. Although a worker's history may no longer exist in a proper company record, pieces of the indiviual's history is often duplicated elsewhere, e.g. courthouse documents, census schedules, records of various local, state and federal agencies, old city and industry directories, newspapers, family records, etc. The missing information needs only to be "reconstructed" from these varying sources and combined into a single record. Every region of Texas is represented in the database, and our goal is to increase the database by 10,000 names per year, a goal we expect to meet in 2006. Additionally, we hope to begin expansion into Louisiana over 2006 and 2007.

Here is a list of Information contained in the Employee Database:

• Full Name
• Duties
• Years of service
• Birth and death dates & information
• Spouses
• Links to known biographies and obituaries
• Miscellaneous notes