M.T. Jones Lumber Company

M.T. Jones was a widely known and wildly successful lumberman, who started his firm, the M.T. Jones Lumber Company, around 1880, in Houston, Texas. Jones was probably best known as the uncle of Jesse H. Jones, Houston politician and businessman, who went to work for the Lumber Company’s branch in Hillsboro in 1895. Jesse Jones later managed the Dallas branch and, as stipulated by his uncle’s will, in 1898, moved to Houston to manage M.T. Jones’s estate and business holdings.

The company, beyond having multiple lumber yards throughout Texas, did extensive business dealings in Mexico, and M.T. Jones was involved in other business enterprises in the United States as well. In 1890, Jones started the Cow Creek Tram Company in Call, Texas, with George Adams and Dennis Call, and in 1892 he started the Emporia Lumber Company in Houston with Samuel Fain Carter. He was the operator, along with Thomas W. House, of the Galveston, La Porte and Houston Railway from 1896 until 1898, when it was sold under foreclosure to L.J. Smith of Kansas City.

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