Dennis Bearden Family: Sharecropping and Labor in Lumber and Turpentine Part 4

Several of Dennis Bearden's grandchildren continued to work in the lumber industry.

The World War I draft registration cards dated 1917 listed both Estes and Jonas Bearden as working in Kokomo. Estes’ household included his wife and three children, who lived in the Barto community of Pike County. Jonas (also recorded as Jones) lived with his wife and one child in a community I have not yet been able to identify. James and his father Lucius worked at the Fernwood Lumber Company . Chalmers Bearden was employed one hundred miles north of Pike County by the Eastman, Gardiner & Company in Cohay, Smith County.

Eastman, Gardiner & Company was a family-owned company. When the lumber supply was depleted in one area, the company moved its operation to another site.  The Cohay lumber camp was unique because it was established from portable building structures that were moved from the Wisner lumber camp to Cohay using the nearby railroad. 

During the 1920s, the once-thriving lumber industry began to decline. Many lumber companies had stripped vast tracts of longleaf pine and hardwood forests, leaving the land barren with little effort to replant. The growing use of cardboard for shipping further reduced the demand for wooden materials. Likewise, the turpentine industry declined as steel replaced wood in shipbuilding, eliminating the need for turpentine to waterproof vessels. The introduction of cheaper synthetic substitutes led to the fall of natural turpentine production. As a result, sawmill towns and turpentine camps, which were once teeming with workers, gradually disappeared, leaving widespread unemployment in both industries.

By the 1920 census, Estes had found work with the railroad, while James was employed at the planing mill in Pike County. A decade later, in the 1930 census, Jonas and Chalmers Bearden were listed as farmers in Madison County, and Lucius Bearden had also returned to farming in Pike County. There was an economic shift as many former industrial workers turned to farming for survival.

-----The Tree Gardener