Stamps, Arkansas in the 1900s

Work

Pine ruled the day

The central employer was Bodcaw: 450 to 500 employees² worked in a plant with two large sawmills and three planer mills². Its claimed output was 350,000 board feet a day^1,2.

Money

Paid, housed, and charged

Many workers lived in company-built houses², with rent at $1.60 per room for a four-room house². The company store¹ could sell necessities from groceries to coffins.

Faith

Congregations separated out

Baptists, Methodists, and Presbyterians first shared a church, but by the decade’s middle the Presbyterians had a frame church built in 1905^1,4. Church calendars and lodge meetings shaped public time.

Law & power

Company and rails mattered

Municipal government was new because Stamps incorporated in 1898¹, but the daily power lay heavily with Bodcaw and the railway. The Louisiana and Arkansas Railway had its principal shops here¹.

Home & table

Rows of mill houses

Most Bodcaw hands lived in company-built houses². Water reached many homes by pipe, though surface wells and bored wells² still served the town.

Who lived here

A new town quickly filled

The town counted 1,021 people in 1900¹, after the railroad and sawmill made a settlement into a municipality. The local racial order stood on Lafayette County’s past of enslavement and Reconstruction³ and the region’s Jim Crow segregation.

Roads & news

Rail and paper carried news

News came by train and print: the Cotton Belt line¹ had opened the county, the L&A reached Hope in 1902¹, and the Lafayette County Democrat began in 1905¹.

What people feared

Mill work was hazardous

The sources name steam dry kilns, planer mills, and sawmills², machinery that made Stamps prosperous but dangerous. For death and burial, even the company store sold coffins¹.

Year by year

1. 1898Stamps incorporated as a town while the Louisiana and Arkansas Railway was also incorporated by Bodcaw owner William Buchanan. here¹
2. 1900The federal census counted 1,021 people in Stamps. here¹
3. 1901President William McKinley was assassinated, making Theodore Roosevelt president. the country
4. 1902The Louisiana and Arkansas Railway line was built north from Stamps to Hope. here¹
5. 1903Bodcaw Bank opened in Stamps. here¹
6. 1905The First Presbyterian Church was built and the Lafayette County Democrat began publication in Stamps. here^1,4
7. 1906The San Francisco earthquake and fire shocked newspaper readers across the country. the country
8. 1908The Ford Model T went on sale, though trains still mattered most for Stamps’s lumber economy. the country

Pictures from the time

What the sources say

• Stamps was incorporated on April 11, 1898, so in the 1900s it was a very new municipality. from the sources¹
• The 1900 census counted 1,021 people in Stamps. from the sources¹
• Stamps grew around a sawmill settlement named for Hardy James Stamps, whose daughter Ella Crowell was the first postmistress when the post office was established in 1888. from the sources¹
• Around 1899, the Bodcaw operation at Stamps had two large sawmills, three planer mills, two steam-operated dry kilns, and many acres of lumber yards. from the sources²
• Lake June, the Bodcaw mill pond, covered nearly 100 acres. from the sources¹
• The Louisiana and Arkansas Railway was incorporated in Arkansas in March 1898 by William Buchanan of the Bodcaw company, and its principal shops were initially in Stamps. from the sources¹
• Between 450 and 500 Bodcaw employees worked at the Stamps mill, and most lived in company-built houses rented at $1.60 per room for a four-room house, with $1 extra for each papered room. from the sources²
• The Bodcaw company store in Stamps sold groceries, men’s and women’s clothing, hardware, and even coffins. from the sources¹
• The St. Louis Southwestern Railway, commonly called the Cotton Belt, had extended a line across Lafayette County in 1882, making the later lumber town possible. from the sources¹
• A church at Stamps was shared by Baptist, Methodist, and Presbyterian congregations until the Presbyterians erected their own church; the surviving First Presbyterian Church was built in 1905. from the sources^1,4
• A Masonic lodge was built in Stamps in 1898, and its building included an auditorium with a stage for traveling shows. from the sources¹
• The Bodcaw Bank opened in Stamps in 1903. from the sources¹
• The Lafayette County Democrat began publication in Stamps in 1905. from the sources¹
• In 1902, the Louisiana and Arkansas line was built north to Hope, linking Stamps to the St. Louis–San Francisco Railway. from the sources¹
• At the turn of the century, the Louisiana and Arkansas Railroad connected Hope and Shreveport and was initially intended to serve Bodcaw Lumber Company interests at Stamps. from the sources³
• The Bodcaw mill was reputedly the largest yellow-pine sawmill in the world and could daily produce and ship 350,000 board feet of virgin shortleaf and longleaf yellow pine lumber. from the sources^1,2
• Water was piped to most company houses, while surface wells and bored wells were also in general use. from the sources²
• Lafayette County’s main cash crop was cotton, but farmers also grew edible grains, hay for livestock, cane for sweetening, and vegetable gardens. from the sources³
• The 1860 federal census had recorded 4,146 white citizens, 4,311 enslaved people, and seven free people of color in Lafayette County, leaving a postwar society shaped by slavery and Reconstruction. from the sources³
• Arkansas imposed Jim Crow segregation in this era, so public schooling, travel, churches, and civic life were divided by race across the region. inferred
• No online source found in this quick search gives a complete 1900 racial breakdown for the town of Stamps itself. not known
• No online town directory from the 1900s was found here, so street-by-street businesses beyond the company store, bank, newspaper, lodge, railroad, and churches remain unclear. not known

Sources

1. Stamps (Lafayette County). Encyclopedia of Arkansas
2. Railroad Era Resources of Southwest Arkansas. Arkansas Historic Preservation Program
3. Lafayette County. Encyclopedia of Arkansas
4. First Presbyterian Church, Stamps, National Register nomination. Arkansas Historic Preservation Program

Nearby, about the same time