Mantooth Farm
Lufkin, Angelina County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Members of the Mantooth family came to Angelina County in 1858. Albert Edwin (Eddie) Mantooth (1874-1969) was born in Homer, Angelina County, to Albert and Mary Richard Hall Mantooth. In 1897, Eddie married Sarah Annie Atkinson Mantooth (1879-1914). In 1909, they bought an 11-acre farm on the outskirts of the original Lufkin townsite. The farm produced crops, cows, chickens, mules, and horses that provided an income from trade in Lufkin. In addition to agricultural responsibilities, Eddie also served the community as the county tax assessor from 1908-1912 and tax collector from 1918-1924. Following the death of Eddie’s first wife, Sarah, he married Oleva Wisely (1895-1964) in 1920. Descendants of Eddie Mantooth and their families served the city of Lufkin for many years. Ernest Peyton Medford (1904-1976), the husband of Josie Ethel Mantooth (1907-1934), assisted the community with finances as the head of Lufkin’s only savings and loan. Willie Calvin Royle (1907-1972), the husband of Annie Jewel Mantooth (1908-1997), was a well-known educator and served as a teacher and principal at Lufkin High School. The Royles also operated the W.C. Royle Company, an office machine and supply sales company, at this site for over forty years. John Milton Hickman (1909-1978), husband of Rennie Mae Mantooth (1911-2000), assisted with the gulf pipeline through East Texas that supplied gas and oil during World War II. All three daughters lived in homes on this land and are remembered in the community for their charitable contributions. Mantooth farm and the families associated with it helped the town of Lufkin grow and prosper throughout the twentieth century. 175 years of Texas independence * 1836-2011
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
The Mantooth family put down roots in Angelina County in 1858, and in 1909 Eddie Mantooth bought an eleven-acre farm on the edge of Lufkin that fed both his household and the local market. Eddie also served as county tax assessor and collector, and the daughters and sons-in-law who followed became educators, bankers, and businessmen woven into Lufkin's growth. One son-in-law even helped lay the East Texas gas pipeline that fueled the nation during World War II.
Why it matters
The farm and its family trace how small East Texas landholders and their descendants helped a timber town mature into a modern community across the twentieth century.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
By the early twentieth century, Lufkin was a maturing town in the heart of the East Texas timber country of Angelina County. The Mantooth family had arrived in the county back in 1858, and by 1909, when Eddie Mantooth bought his eleven acres, the community was moving beyond its frontier beginnings toward something like a modern town, with banks, schools, and businesses taking shape.
This was the Progressive era, and the farm Eddie bought sat on the outskirts of the original Lufkin townsite — a small holding that both fed a family and produced a surplus for trade in town. It was the classic pattern of the era's small landowner: not a great plantation or a vast ranch, but a working farm whose real yield, over time, would be measured in the family it raised and the townspeople they became.
Across East Texas in these decades, timber towns were transforming into settled communities. The people who made that transition were often exactly this kind of family — landholders whose children moved from the fields into the offices, classrooms, and shops of a growing town.
People & events
Albert Edwin "Eddie" Mantooth (1874–1969) was born in Homer, in Angelina County, and in 1897 married Sarah Annie Atkinson (1879–1914). In 1909 the couple bought the eleven-acre farm on the edge of Lufkin, where crops and livestock — cows, chickens, mules, and horses — supplied both the household and a trade income in town. Eddie also served the wider community as county tax assessor from 1908 to 1912 and tax collector from 1918 to 1924. After Sarah's death, he married Oleva Wisely in 1920.
But the marker's real subject is what became of the next generation. Eddie's daughters and their husbands wove themselves through the life of Lufkin. Ernest Peyton Medford, who married Josie Ethel Mantooth, headed Lufkin's only savings and loan. Willie Calvin Royle, husband of Annie Jewel Mantooth, was a well-known educator — a teacher and principal at Lufkin High School — and with his wife ran the W. C. Royle Company, an office-machine and supply business, on this very site for more than forty years.
A third son-in-law, John Milton Hickman, who married Rennie Mae Mantooth, helped build the gulf pipeline through East Texas that carried gas and oil during World War II. All three daughters lived in homes on this land and were remembered for their charitable work — a family that, from one small farm, sent finance, education, and industry into the town around it.
Its place in the American story
The Mantooth farm tells a story that played out in thousands of American towns: how a modest family landholding could become the seedbed of a community's professional class. The move from the farm to the bank, the schoolhouse, and the storefront — often within a single generation — is one of the quiet, defining transitions of twentieth-century American life.
The family's reach also touches the national story directly. A son-in-law's work on the East Texas pipeline connects this small farm to one of the great logistical efforts of World War II — moving the oil and gas that fueled the American war machine. It's a reminder that the home front's contribution ran through countless ordinary hands in places far from the fighting.
And the pattern of civic service — a tax assessor and collector, a savings-and-loan head, a school principal, all from one family — reflects how American communities were built and held together, not by famous names, but by families who took on the everyday work of finance, education, and public administration.
If you visit
This is a landmark that rewards imagination over spectacle. Standing here, picture the edge of old Lufkin in 1909: eleven acres of crops and livestock on the town's outskirts, close enough that the day's produce could be traded in town. The city has long since grown out to meet and surround this ground.
Let the marker introduce you to a family rather than a single hero. Trace the daughters and their husbands — the banker, the beloved school principal who also ran a business on this very spot for over forty years, the man who helped lay a wartime pipeline — and you'll see a whole cross-section of a maturing town in one family's story.
As you explore Angelina County and the Piney Woods around it, keep this farm in mind as a lens: the timber and the mills built the region's economy, but it was families like this one, moving from the land into the life of the town, who turned a frontier county into a modern community.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Albert Edwin Mantooth
- · Sarah Annie Atkinson Mantooth
Themes & tags
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