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Excerpts from “A History of Montgomery County, Texas” Chapter V, Cities,
Towns, and Communities,
by William Harley Gandy”: For Sources, see
Endnotes: |
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Fostoria, Texas,
formerly known as Clinesburg, is a
mill town named for the owner of the Foster Lumber Company. In the late
1800's the Arnold and Perkins Company built a sawmill and soon they were
bought out by the Foster Lumber Company. Fostoria is still the site of one
of the largest sawmills in the country. 101 |
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More on
Fostoria Texas
FOSTORIA, TEXAS. Fostoria
is at the intersection of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway and State
Highway 105, seventeen miles east of Conroe in Montgomery County. In the early
1900s the town was called Clinesburg after the owner of a mill there. In 1901
the mill was sold to the Foster Lumber Company of Kansas City, Missouri, and the
settlement was renamed Fostoria after the lumber firm in 1903. Between 1910 and
1920 the population was reportedly 1,000, most of whom were employed in the
mill. The town reached its peak population of 1,500 between 1915 and 1925. In
1941 the mill produced 20 million board feet of lumber and was thus one of the
largest providers of Southern pine in the United States.
Fostoria was a company
town. The company store sold employees clothing, groceries, furniture, and
saddles and owned a hotel and barber shop for which company scrip was accepted.
The scrip was not redeemable anywhere else. Only the post office was not run by
the company, but it was closed after 1930. The Foster Lumber Company closed in
June 1957. After the mill closed, the company homes were sold, primarily to
former employees, and the business district was shut down. From the 1940s to the
1960s the population was 500. In the 1980s only a few scattered dwellings, a
cemetery, a pumping station, and a radio tower south of the city remained.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Montgomery
County Genealogical Society, Montgomery County History (Winston-Salem,
North Carolina: Hunter, 1981). Robin Navarro Montgomery, The History of
Montgomery County (Austin: Jenkins, 1975).
Rebecca L. Borjas
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