Hartwell Timber Co.

Elias Hartwell

Founder & Owner — Elias Hartwell was one of Briarmont’s earliest and most consequential figures: a timber baron, industrial founder, and man of immense ambition whose will helped shape the town long before Oakridge ever stood upon his…

Clarence Ashton

Clarence Ashton was one of the original eight men of the Hartwell Timber Company and served as its early head of operations. While Elias Hartwell supplied the ambition and capital behind the company’s rise,…

Edgar Briggs

Edgar Briggs was one of the early men of Hartwell Timber Co., first employed as a saw hand and camp medic before eventually rising to become foreman of the sawmill. Practical, steady, and deeply…

Holt Briggs

Holt Briggs was the son of a Briarmont millworker and the first of the three co-founders of Alpha Chi Epsilon Fraternity (AXE) . He was the only founder who had grown up inside the…

Ward Ashton

Ward Ashton was the third of the three co-founders of Alpha Chi Epsilon Fraternity (AXE), and in some ways the least obvious candidate for what he became. The nephew of a former Hartwell Timber…

Gideon Rourke

Gideon Rourke was Hartwell Timber Co.’s hauling foreman and ox-team lead, responsible for the brutal, necessary work of moving cut timber out of the forests and across the unstable ground around Briarmont. If other…

Amos Pike

Amos Pike was one of the most elusive men ever employed by Hartwell Timber Co., working as part of its scouting and surveying efforts during the company’s early years. He was known for his…

Nathaniel Vale

Nathaniel Vale was born around 1843 to a struggling farm family somewhere on the western plains, where drought, poor soil, and bad harvests kept hunger close at hand. At fifteen, he left home and…

Levi Boone

Levi Boone served as Hartwell Timber Co.’s camp carpenter and structural foreman, responsible for the rough-built infrastructure that allowed the company’s operations to function from season to season. While other men cut, hauled, surveyed,…

Bernard Kessler

Bernard Kessler was one of the older men employed by Hartwell Timber Co., already in his forties by the time Elias Hartwell brought him into the company. A skilled blacksmith with years of hard…

Hartwell Timber Co.

Founded in 1857 by Elias Hartwell, the Hartwell Timber Company began as a modest operation of eight men, including Hartwell, organized to supply lumber for the country’s rapid westward railroad expansion.