The Timber Tycoons Author:Parke Rouse Jr The end of the Civil War in 1865 left the South poor and desolated, but the Camp family of Franklin, Virginia, saw opportunities to revive it. The six brothers went to work as lumbermen, soon spreading south to Florida. In 1887 thet incorporated the Camp Manufacturing Company, converting the region's pine trees into building materials for a pros... more »perous new South. In the next century the company became one if the most productive in the nation, giving work to many in southern Virginia, the Carolinas and Florida. In the 1930s it spread into pulp papermaking and in 156 it merged to form Union Camp, one of the nation's major forest products firms. Today it ranks among the top 200 of the Fortune 500 giants of American industry.
The Camps' story is a chronicle of Southern industrialization. It is also the story of a remarkable family of gifted businessmen, who shared their fortune with their communities. In the Camps' lifetime their area of souther Virginia and Northern North Carolina has provided a better life for both whites and blacks, Camp Company owners gave generously to schools, churches and communities; the five philanthropies they created have continues to aid civic and cultural causes.« less