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. History Early history 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 of timberland in the six southernmost counties of Mississippi. Sawmills The sawmill's Moss Point location was well situated for receiving logs that were rafted down the Pascagoula and Escatawpa Rivers and their tributaries. But in order to access their inland timber-holdings, the company built a railroad from Vancleave, Mississippi, northwest into what would become Stone County. Processed lumber from their sawmills was transported by rail, then loaded onto company ships for export through the Gulf of Mexico to Mexico, South America, the Caribbean Islands and Europe. By 1913, the company was the largest exporter of lumber in