Ozan Lumber Company - Origins and Expansion

Origins and Expansion

The company can be traced back to 1891, when Texas businessmen J.H. Bemis and his cousin Benjamin Whitaker opened a mill in Prescott, Arkansas, calling it the Ozan Lumber Company. Bemis had originally moved to Texas from New York. One of his four sons, Horace Erastus Bemis, who died in 1914, had purchased the Prescott and Northwestern Railroad, which would play a vital part in transporting the timber and company supplies, effectively providing the Bemis family with everything they needed for the mill to succeed.

H.E. Bemis would operate the mill in partnership with his brothers, J.W. Bemis and William N. Bemis, and it would eventually see its greatest success under W.N. Bemis's son, James Rosborough Bemis, known as J.R. Bemis. Over the course of the next decade the mill became extremely successful, with the Bemis family becoming especially wealthy as a result. Benjamin Whitaker was no longer a part of the mills operations by the early 20th century, having sold out to J.H. Bemis, the primary stock holder for the company.

Along the turn of the century, mill towns were popping up all around Arkansas, most notably Graysonia, in Clark County. In December, 1915, the Bemis brothers merged their company with the Grayson-McLeod Company, creators of Graysonia, and by that time Graysonia had gone from being a small logging camp to a thriving town of more than 1,000 people, with a movie theater, three hotels, numerous restaurants and cafes, a school and a church. The merger prompted the new company name of Ozan-Graysonia Lumber Company.

J.H. Bemis died in 1918, leaving his sons to run the company. W.N. Bemis and J.W. Bemis were the main share holders, and both had been active in the company since its beginnings. In 1919, J.R. Bemis, the son to W.N. Bemis, moved to Graysonia to learn the lumber business. He was twenty years old at the time, but he and his father thought it best that he learn the business, as it would one day be his to run. He remained in Graysonia until July, 1920, when he traveled to St. Louis and began working with Don Lambert, learning how the lumber sales business worked from the standpoint of working off commission. By 1921, J.R. Bemis had returned to Prescott.

J.W. Bemis died in 1922, leaving W.N. Bumis and his son J.R. the only remaining Bemis family share holders. J.R. took over the management of the Ozan Lumber Company, while his father opened a wholesale lumber business in St. Louis. In 1929, J.R. and his cousin Hubert Whitaker opened a wholesale lumber business in Prescott, with J.R. managing the production and Whitaker handling the sales. The Ozan Lumber Company by this time was operating in Whelen Springs, in Clark County. Although the Great Depression was on by this time, the Ozan Lumber Company never slowed, and was invaluable to people in that region of Arkansas in the way of employment.