Increment no - 8 - my story

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Mr. Anderson, Mr. Rich, or Uncle Rich
Mr. Rich was the owner of the Company and town.
Mr. Anderson was a unique man; he was a kind gentle person and loved his employees and their families and they loved him. He was a small man in statue; he was about 5ft.-6 inches tall, and weighed about 150 lbs. He had a full head of white hair, and usually wore a gingery suit and straw hat. Everyone that knew Mr. Anderson or was a close friend to him called him Mr. Rich, or uncle Rich.


His immediate family consisted of his wife Ollie; they had two daughters, Edith, and Nina, and three sons Isaac, Johnnie, and Ralph. Only Ralph and Johnnie ever live at Hillwood most of Mr. Anderson’s family continued to live in Laurel Mississippi, but son Ralph. And son Johnnie spent some time there in the earliest years and Johnnie was our first store manger; he stayed in boarding house with his Father. Mr. Anderson owned other businesses in Laurel and Isaac took the supervision over them. I know he owned the Ford dealership, and another sawmill in Laurel. I believed that he had a cattle farm as well.

I do not remember or know much about Johnnie but he was running the store when my family arrived in Hillwood. I know that Johnnie had a reputation for being a fast driver. We would kid around with others that you better be careful Johnnie is on the road going to town. I know that Johnnie had cancer and did not work at Hillwood for a short time and went back to Laurel and died in a short period of time. I believe that Johnnie was very instrumental in choosing the name of the town and company.
The name of the Company was named Ralph Lumber Company for the son of Mr. Rich Anderson

The Cattle

Mr. Rich brought several herds of cattle to Hillwood thru the years and turned them loose within the 45,000-acre plat and let them graze in the woods and fields. He fed them hay thru the winter months but nothing in the summer months. He had a cattle gap built across the road half way between Hillwood and Mount Mariah school and church


that helped kept the cattle within the company land and stay out of the farmers fields and wonder from its home plat. There was only one road entering in to the town.

I remember that one year he had brought a new herd of cattle and son Ralph was put in charge of branding the cattle. One of our log truck drivers Archie Pearce called himself a cowboy, I think he had worked on a cattle farm over in Mississippi and he was pretty good. Mr. Rich owned a couple nice saddle horses and Archie would round up the cattle and us boys would help hold them down while some one would use the branding iron that was pretty exciting for us boys to experience.

There was a period of time that Mr. Rich decided that we would butcher some of the good heifers for beef. He put Jim Camp to be the chief butcher and had some of us boys to be helpers. We got down on a big nice branch where we had plenty of good clean water and Mr. Camp picked a nice big oak tree with a large limb extending from the trunk of the tree so we had a lot of room where we could work around the animal take the hide off and remove the entrails from the animal. Mr. Rich sold a lot of the beef to a canner to put in cans to be sold. We also sold some of the beef we would take a quarter beef and cut it into round steaks. A pound of round steak cost about .20 cents at that time. I never did know there was any other cut of beef but round steak until I went in to the army.
This is end of increment – 8 -