Frank Grader the Lumberjack?

Four years after his temperance movement troubles and DNC delegate run, we find Frank Grader in what seems like a completely different walk of life: encouraging Massachusetts capitalists to invest in the Arkansas lumber industry. Reader says, “Whaaat?!” Although I’m still trying to pin him down from one year to the next, Frank seems to have spent a lot of time in Memphis, especially around the turn of the century. So he would’ve been in the area during Reconstruction to see the various opportunities available to a man (sigh) with an entrepreneurial spirit and a little cash. Meanwhile, he’s right on about the opportunity Arkansas’s unique geography offered – the forests were ripe with timber ready to be trimmed, felled, sawed, and loaded onto the blossoming new rail system. For more information on the Southern lumber boom that followed the Civil War, visit The Encyclopedia of Arkansas History and Culture.

The Boston Journal, 26June1895

Loggers in Calhoun County, AR - circa 1890