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DAVID R. WINGATE:
AN EAST TEXAS CAPTAIN OF COMMERCE
By W. T. Block
Reprinted from Beaumont ENTERPRISE,
November 9, 1980, p. 11-G.
Sources: For a more detailed record, as well as the
footnotes citing various Galveston "News" accounts, see
W. T. Block, "An Early East Texas Captain of Commerce:
David Robert Wingate," TEXAS GULF HISTORICAL AND
BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD, XIII (Nov., 1977), 59-79.
Once in a great while, the frontier
history of East Texas has revealed a pioneer who clung
to his goals and ideals against all odds and with the
tenacity of a barnacle. In April, 1980, the Orange
County Historical Commission dedicated a state marker to
just such a person, who was one of the earliest
industrialists of Orange, and in fact anywhere in the
South. David Robert Wingate could be labeled as a
frontier East Texas captain of commerce in both
agriculture and industry, one whose vocabulary did not
know the meaning of the words "quit" or "fail."
As fate thrust one adversity after
another upon him, he quite literally, like Job of the
Old Testament or the phoenix of mythology, rose from the
ashes to rebuild and restructure his life, dreams, and
plans anew for tomorrow. History records quite
sufficiently that just to have lived on the Texas
frontier of 1850 was test enough of itself of a
pioneer's fortitude. Comanche Indians raided over a
large area, and there were no roads, autos, trains,
hospitals, supermarkets, miracle drugs, television,
modern technology, nor anything else that goes to make
life in the twentieth century so comfortable.
Daily living was particularly harsh
for everyone, including the 'well-to-do' of that era,
who had none of the technological advances and
labor-saving devices that even poor families take for
granted today, although slavery enabled some to avoid
the back-break labor endured by others. Life expectancy
was only 35 years, scores of young mothers died in
childbirth, one of every two babies never reached
adulthood, and the necessities of life literally had to
be wrenched from the soil rather than from the fast food
counters that exist today. It took lifetimes of
endurances and sacrifices of such people as D. R.
Wingate, people who were not only willing to penetrate
the wilderness, but also remained to fell the forests
and found the cities, thus making possible the good life
so taken for granted by all who are living today.
David Robert Wingate was born in
Darlington County, South Carolina, on February 20, 1819.
As a toddler, his parents moved to the Pearl River delta
region of Mississippi, east of New Orleans, where he
received a rudimentary education in the common schools
and grew up among the log camps and primitive sash
sawmills around Pearlington. Hence, it was no quirk of
fate that his life was destined to revolve around the
timber industry.
At age twenty, Wingate married
Caroline Morgan, a native Mississippian, which marriage
resulted in the births of seven children, five of whom
reached adulthood, namely, a daughter, Mittie Elizabeth
Norsworthy, and four sons, John, Robert Pope, David
Rufus, and Walter Jourdan, many of whose descendants are
still living in Orange County and neighboring areas.
Although Wingate lived in a different century, he shared
one aspiration with many people living today. He wanted
the best life for himself and his family and the best
education for his children that his labor and industry
could provide. Nor was he a political reformer of any
sort. Born as he was at the beginning of the Victorian
Age, he possessed all of the conservative philosophies
of his peers of that era. He accepted the institutions
on slavery and States Rights politics, including the
'right to secede,' as being natural byproducts of the
times in which he lived.
He was also very much a part of the
Southland that he lived in and loved, and in 1861, when
Secession ignited the furies of war, his allegiance, as
were those of his neighbors and friends, was soon with
the new Confederate States of America. And having
accepted the institution of slavery, he would likewise
have to accept the institution of emancipation,
eventually freeing about one hundred slaves of his own
when the Civil War ended.
There is no way that an adequate
record of such a life can be confined to a single page
of newspaper type. For a detailed account of Wingate's
life, the reader would need to consult the writer's
biography of him in the November, 1977, issue of "Texas
Gulf Historical and Biographical Record."
Suffice it to say that perhaps no
other man in early Southeast Texas faced such a series
of adversities over a span of fifty years. And in every
instance, he refused to surrender to misfortune, but
began immediately to plan and recoup his fortunes,
beginning with whatever he could sift from the ashes and
debris. During his lifetime, Wingate suffered a
half-million dollars in uninsured losses, mostly to
fires, and it hardly requires a business education to
translate that figure in yesteryears' currency into
today's inflated dollars.
During the 1840s, before leaving
Mississippi, the family lost two minor children, and
Wingate's first sawmill at Pearlington burned. He soon
rebuilt, however, later selling out when he moved his
family to Newton County, Texas, in 1852. At that time,
Wingate owned 83 slaves, and when he, his father, R. P.
Wingate, and his brother-in-law, Alfred Farr, moved to
Texas, they brought 165 Negroes with them.
Wingate bought 2,700 acres in Newton
County and began extensive farming on its 600 cleared
acres, for he had a multitude of mouths to feed. In
1859, the Wingate plantation there owned nine horses, 18
mules, 24 oxen, 65 milk cows, 100 steers, 150 sheep, and
400 swine, and in the same year, produced 350 bales of
cotton, 4,000 bushels of corn, 1,000 bushels of peas and
beans, 1,500 bushels of sweet potatoes, 700 pounds of
wool, 1,000 pounds of sugar, and 560 gallons of
molasses. His plantation grew one-sixth of all the
cotton grown in Newton County during that year.
Ultimately, Wingate's first love of
sawmilling was bound to surface again. There were
millions of feet of timber stumpage around the
plantation, but no market for sawed timber as there was
no way to get it to market. However, Wingate discovered
a large sawmill at Sabine Pass, Texas, that lay
abandoned and rusting in 1857, and he soon bought the
Spartan Mill Company, with its three circular saws. In
March, 1858, Wingate moved his family and 13 of his
slaves there and began the process of building the new
Wingate Mill Industries into the largest of their day in
Texas. During 1859, the sawmill cut 7,488 saw logs,
rafted down Sabine River and Lake, into 2,496,000 feet
of sawed lumber, worth $43,600. He soon built his own
fleet of lumber schooners for exporting his products
coastwise and to the West Indies. He soon expanded his
business to include:
". . . . A sash, door, and
blind factory and shops that turned out windows
and door frames. He manufactured cisterns and
tanks. . . .He also turned out special patterns
of some of them that were sent to Mexico and
Cuba. He was during a fine business in lumber,
tanks, and sugar vats with the West Indies when
the War Between The States came on and put a
stop to shipping. In 1861, he finished sawing up
logs and closed down with at least 1,000,000
feet of choice shop cypress and several million
feet of lower grade cypress and pine stacked in
his yard."
During the summer of 1860, the boiler
of the sawmill exploded, killing and maiming several
employees, but Wingate immediately rebuilt it. In 1861,
with export commerce stifled, he soon turned to
blockade-running for a new livelihood. One of his lumber
schooners en route to Cuba with cotton was captured by
the Federal navy. In 1862, he bought the steamer "Pearl
Plant" and attempted to run the blockade with it with
500 bales of cotton aboard. However, he ran the
steamboat aground on the mud flat at Texas Point, and he
and his crew had to burn the boat and cargo to avoid
capture and then wade ashore.
Earlier in the war, he had donated
all the logs needed to built old Fort Sabine. In August,
1862, a deadly yellow fever epidemic reached Sabine
Pass, and Wingate evacuated his family to Newton County,
where they remained throughout the remainder of the war.
On October 21, 1862, a Union Navy patrol came ashore at
Sabine, burned Wingate's sawmill and planing mill, in
addition to Wingate's palatial residence, which still
was filled with expensive furniture and the only piano
in the town.
From 1862 until 1874, the Wingate
family remained on their large plantation as the owner's
feet once more became implanted in the soil. Already,
the plantation had been known as the showplace of Newton
County, turning out between 200 and 500 bales of cotton
annually over a long period of years. In 1873, Wingate
bought the river sternwheeler "Ida Reese" in Galveston
and began freighting his and his neighbors' cotton to
the coast. But the "Reese' was soon snagged and sank
with a load of cotton in the Sabine river, a total
wreck. The writer reckons that the loss of three ships
and their cargoes amounted to at least $50,000.
Early in the war, the oldest Wingate
son, John, went to Jasper and enlisted in Capt. B. H.
Norsworthy's company, soon to see its first action at
the Battle of Shiloh. Young Wingate lost his only
picture of his sister Elizabeth on the battlefield, and
Norsworthy found it. The latter offered to return the
picture only if Wingate would introduce Norsworthy to
the sister. The couple were married at the war's end,
but John Wingate, after having survived some of the
bloodiest battles, was killed by a buggy horse three
months later. Wingate then raised his infant grandson,
John, Jr., as his own child.
In 1873, David Wingate and his wife
moved to Orange, for the thrill of the shrill sawmill
whistles was calling once more. He bought a one-half
interest in Eberle Swinford's Phoenix Mill, which
consisted of a shingle machine which cut 80,000 cypress
shingles daily and a circular sawmill. But Wingate soon
tired of a business in which he had to share
decision-making, and in 1877 he sold out to Charles H.
Moore, a Galveston lumber dealer.
In the same year the old sawmiller
began the new mill of D. R. Wingate and Company, which
was completed in July 1878. The capacity of its gang and
circular saws was 35,000 feet daily, and its first order
consisted of 250,000 feet of crossties for the Santa Fe
Railroad. In 1879, the mill cut ten million feet of
lumber and two million shingles, worth $100,000. But as
always, disaster seemed to be lurking somewhere in the
sawdust, and on November 29, 1880, the new mill burned
to the ground, a $50,000 loss.
Casting aside little more than a
sigh, Wingate began rebuilding a much larger mill to
cost $60,000, and by May, 1881, Wingate and Company's
gang saws were whirling again. Throughout the 1880s,
sawmilling was immensely profitable, and Orange's
railroad could carry lumber both east and west. At no
time did the supply of lumber match demand, and large
quantities were shipped from Orange aboard a fleet of 25
lumber schooners. Wingate's production averaged from
70,000 to 90,000 feet daily of lumber, and his shingle
machines turned out from 75,000 to 125,000 daily. But
again, disaster was lurking somewhere in the shadows,
and on June 1, 1890, the fourth of five sawmill fires
destroyed the new Wingate mill.
Because the planing mill and all the
stacked lumber was saved, Wingate's net loss was
$50,000, of which one-half was covered by insurance. For
the first time, Wingate showed no inclination to
rebuild, for by then he was 71 years of age and was
tiring of his occupation. But friends talked him into
creating a joint stock company, which soon rebuilt the
sawmill and D. R. Wingate and Company was back in
production. Eventually, this mill also burned, but it
happened in 1901, two years after Wingate's death. After
1890, Wingate took no active part in the lumber firm he
was president of.
Also in 1890, Wingate's wife died
after several years of a crippling illness, and one
might think the old pioneer might be content to retire.
But a new and immensely profitable "toy," rice farming,
had just arrived in the county, and Wingate was not
content until he was a rice farmer as well. Apparently
he felt unfulfilled unless he had his hands in sawdust
and his feet in the soil. Between 1893 and 1896, Wingate
made three large land purchases, totaling 625 acres,
near Orange. In December, 1892, he harvested and shipped
300 barrels of rice, which was a part of the first box
car of rice ever shipped from Orange County. By 1897,
Wingate was harvesting 2,500 barrels annually. His
son-in-law, Major Norsworthy, was perhaps the second
largest rice planter in the county, and was the owner of
the county's first steam thresher as well.
In 1898, Wingate's only daughter
died, and the old sawmiller appears to have lost his
lust for life thereafter. In November, 1898, already
becoming rather enfeebled, he suffered a prolonged case
of influenza, which gradually developed into pneumonia,
and he died on February 15, 1899, only five days short
of his eightieth birthday.
D. R. Wingate held a number of
coveted titles and positions during his life time. He
had served as a judge in Hancock County, Mississippi,
before his arrival in Texas. Later he was appointed
colonel of the Second Regiment, First Brigade, of Texas
Militia, but he left that post in 1861 when he was
appointed Confederate States marshal for the Eastern
District of Texas. In 1863 he was elected county judge
of Newton County, and served until 1866, when he was
removed by the military governor during Reconstruction.
Wingate could not take the "Ironclad Oath," that he had
not sworn allegiance to the Confederacy. In 1878 he
became county judge of Orange County and served in that
capacity until 1884.
In 1896, at age 77, one Galveston
"News" correspondent at Orange described Wingate as
being as "supple as many men of forty or fifty years of
age, his mind being as clear and vigorous as at any time
in earlier days. In July, 1896, the old pioneer sat down
with the same reporter and recounted with great clarity
and detail his fifty years of sawmilling, which appeared
in the "Daily News." The extent of respect and esteem
accorded him during his lifetime can be seen in long,
two-column obituaries which appeared in both the
Galveston paper and a surviving copy of the Sabine Pass
"News."
When Caroline Wingate died, her
funeral was said to have been the largest ever seen in
Orange up until that date, and it was no less so when
the sawmiller died nine years later. As to the
humanitarian aspects of his life, his decision to
rebuild in 1890 was prompted solely by his desire not to
leave his one hundred employees without work. Perhaps it
can also be observed in a part of his obituary which
read:
". . . After his immediate
family, the most sincere bereavement is felt
among his old ex-slaves, who had never
relinquished an imaginary right to rely on him
when in trouble, and when their little crops
failed, the Judge had always assisted them until
the next season enabled them to pull out. It
never occurred to a one of them to pay him back,
and Judge Wingate did not expect it, but this
did not deter the same people from asking him
for further help whenever adversity overtook
them again, nor did he suffer the recollection
of their indebtedness to tighten his purse
strings. He could no more resist an appeal from
his former slave than from his own child . . ."
With a heart as big as his purse, he
thus was ready to help others, but unfortunately he had
no one else to turn to but himself during his own hours
of adversity.
What made David Robert Wingate the
uncommon man that he was, and hence his life worthy of
remembrance, was his unique ability to refuse to bow to
misfortunes or to suffer defeat at their hands. Mishaps
seemed to track and plague the old pioneer
unrelentingly, and only a small fraction of the
tribulations he endured would have been enough to
overwhelm anyone of lesser fortitude.
Wingate was a "mover and shaker" in
the Newton, Orange, and Jefferson Counties of his day,
as well as in Mississippi. When markets were good, as
they were in the 1870s and 1880s, he recouped his losses
rapidly. And despite his many losses, he was still one
of the wealthiest men in the county when he died. Always
a positive doer and thinker, somewhat like the little
train that chugged uphill, Wingate always "thought he
could" - and he did! That's why his life story contains
an inspiration for most everyone who reads it.
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