Pollok Cemetery
Pollok, Angelina County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Since the late 1800s, this cemetery has served the residents of the town of Pollok. Before the end of the 19th century, the Pollok community was established near a railroad. Here, Richard Blair built the settlement's first sawmill, setting Pollok's vital lumber industry in motion. By 1899, Bodan Lumber Company established itself in the area. The output of lumber increased, stimulating the area's economy. Louis Lipsitz, a local sawmill owner, donated land for the original cemetery plot and over the years, its size has increased due to generous land gifts. Pollok Cemetery became the final resting place for many of the area's original settlers. The first burial was in 1899 when a Dr. Warren buried a child, Fannie DeBenon, behind the community meeting house. Veteran graves are also present, denoting military service as early as World War I. A Woodmen of the World headstone also stands, serving not only as a memorial of the deceased, but also as a symbol of the community founded upon sawmills. The Pollok Cemetery Association, founded in 1950, maintains the cemetery. Historic Texas Cemetery - 2005
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
The town of Pollok grew up around lumber in the late 1800s, when Richard Blair built the settlement's first sawmill beside a new railroad and the Bodan Lumber Company followed by 1899. Sawmill owner Louis Lipsitz donated the land for this cemetery, whose first burial—a child named Fannie DeBenon—came in 1899. Among its stones are the graves of veterans and a Woodmen of the World marker, fitting emblems for a community built on timber.
Why it matters
Pollok Cemetery preserves the memory of an East Texas sawmill town, part of the vast lumber boom that reshaped the region's economy and landscape around the turn of the twentieth century.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Richard Blair
- · Louis Lipsitz
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
German POWs in the East Texas Timber Industry
Lufkin, TX
During World War II the U.S. Army held roughly 425,000 Axis prisoners in camps across the country, and Texas alone housed about 50,000, mostly Germans, to fill wartime labor shortages. Lufkin became the only Texas town with two POW camps, put to work salvaging pulpwood and timber wrecked by a severe January 1944 ice storm. German prisoners at Southland Paper Mills' Camp Number 1 produced pulpwood until 1946, while a second camp at the fairgrounds ran briefly to clear ice-damaged forest.
Mantooth Farm
Lufkin, TX
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.
KRBA-AM Radio Station
Lufkin, TX
Commercial radio reached Angelina County in 1938, when the Redland Broadcasting Association won the area's first license and station manager Darrell Yates built and launched KRBA-AM from a Lufkin drugstore. Broadcasting news, drama, music, sermons, and Lufkin Panther football, the station adapted with the times — hiring women during World War II, previewing rock-and-roll, and introducing African American and Spanish-language programming in the 1950s and 1960s. It broadcasts still, a fixture of East Texas life into the 21st century.
The Daily Sentinel
Nacogdoches, TX
Nacogdoches was the cradle of Texas journalism, home to the state's earliest newspapers beginning in 1813. The Daily Sentinel grew out of that tradition in 1899, guided for decades by the Haltom family, and used its pages to champion civic improvements and chronicle the town's life; the addition of an Associated Press wire during World War I transformed it into a modern daily still publishing today.