Dorchester Illustration no. 2368 Stearns Lumber
Stearns Lumber Company 75th anniversary medal
The Stearns Lumber Company, which eventually covered forty acres, was opened by A. T. Stearns in 1849 at Port Norfolk where wood could arrived by ship or by rail. Born in Billerica in 1821, Albert T. Stearns established a retail lumber yard in Waltham in 1843. He sold that yard in 1849 and moved to Neponset, where the new yard grew to mammoth size. One of the specialties of the company was the production of wooden gutters, used extensively throughout New England in the construction of houses during the second half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th. By the early 20th century the wood used for this purpose was cypress. Introduced to cypress in 1871, Stearns became enamored of the wood, and in 1881 he contracted for a quantity of it near Mobile, Alabama. During the next two years he had 5,000,000 feet afloat at one time on its way to Boston. In 1883 he organized the Cypress Lumber Company and erected a big saw mill at Apalachicola, Florida, which became a model for cypress plants. In the early 20th century, the plant produced 20,000,000 each year. A. T. Stearns became known as the Apostle of Cypress. Stearns was the pioneer of ready-made houses in the United States, shipping portable houses to California via Cape Horn in 1851. His sons Frederick, Albert H. and Waldo H. joined him in the company. The company lasted until the 1930s.