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Note: N633 They lived at Ellis township, Pulaski Co., 1900 and 1910.
When Betty Pritchard died in 1955, everything went to her husband, Albert. The value of their holdings amounted to $51,992.00. When Albert died in 1966, he had set up a trust fund to last 20 years. His heirs included his five surviving children and the widow and children of A.L. Pritchard Jr. His address at the time of his death was Route 1, Box 100, Little Rock, AR. From more than one source, it's been told that for some years, prior to his death, Albert was a member of a religious order, other than the Methodist Church. He believed strongly that when he died, he would come back to earth. He preached this strongly to his children. After his death, his daughters would go to his home each week and clean the house and keep it in good order, even leaving a light on. It's not know for how long this lasted, but his descendants are still having to wait.
The following is an article written in the Arkansas Democrat, November 8, 1964. 75 YEARS AS A LUMBERMAN Albert Pritchard of Martindale community near Little Rock is 90 years old and can look back now at 75 years in the sawmill business. At 15, he became an actual partner with his father, the late Thomas J. Pritchard, and he started having responsible duties in connection with lumber even earlier-at 15. "When I was 5," Pritchard recalled, "I hauled lumber from Saline County to Mabelvale. I sat in a soapbox on the wagon frame, and my brother drove our other team. We got mighty cold. I wore a coat several sizes too large and tied the long sleeves below my hands to keep my fingers from freezing." Pritchard attended school in a log house in Mabelvale but he was learning more than was in his books, even in his earliest days. He learned that "dense" pine makes good lumber with a close grain; he became schooled in calculating the number of square feet of lumber in a tract of timber to an incredibly close degree. Tree selection, managing machinery, handing his own business and marketing his product were more skills he acquired, one after another. He remembers many details of those early days. "There was a lot of virgin timber around here then," he explained. "Pa would get orders for 12 or 15 carloads at a time; we stacked it to the telephone wires in Mabelvale." Buyers came from all around, and he has seen large sales transacted by means of a check for a large amount of money being written out on a piece of brown paper bag. Often money was sent by express in a gunshot bag to Mabelvale, to pay for lumber. Although he was a youngster, he frequently, carried big money payments to his father. He said: "After my wagon was unloaded, the express agent would tell me, "Al, I have a package for your Pa. Can you deliver it? It might be three or four thousand dollars but he would wire it hard and fast to the coupling pole and I always made a safe delivery." The Pritchard family for a time made a crop in spring and summer, ran a gristmill and gin in the fall and worked at the sawmill in winter; Pritchard recalls driving mules around in a circle to operate the gin. But his father had never fully recovered from a Civil War injury and finally decided it best to sell the other business and, with his family, "take to the woods" following the mill. This began a strange new life for young Albert--living in tents at mill camps, mingling with woodsmen and becoming accustomed to the smell of new lumber and burning sawdust. "It had an effect on me that I never got away from," he said reminiscently. At first he worked at odd jobs that his father delegated to him, but he began to feel fascinated by the big saw. One day the sawyer looked at him, standing near, and said "Kid, you can have it--I'm quitting." When the message was relayed to his father, the elder Pritchard gazed at young Albert with confidence and said, "You are my son; this is my mill. Get in there and learn." It was a nervous young boy who stood beside the gleaming circle saw and guided his first log into its razorsharp teeth. He was well aware that he was standing close to death. But, as he sawed then, he could not foresee that one day he would saw lumber to build houses for himself and his grandchildren. He became not only an expert sawyer, but also learned to file and set his saw and to keep it in top shape. In 1892, when Pritchard was nearing 18, a big flood on the Arkansas river overflowed a mill owned by his brother and some of the men were left jobless and homeless. "One of these families, the Stiles, was brought to our place," he recalled. "I liked the daughter, Betty, and later married her." He chuckled about the flood bringing him a wife. They became parents of eight children, five boys and three girls, and acquired a car which was one of three cars in the county then. "Some car, that Ford," he said with a laugh. "We not only had to crank it--sometimes we poured hot water in it, build a fire under it and jacked up a wheel to persuade it to start so we could take the children into Little Rock to school. The Pritchards bought additional land as time passed, in Pulaski and Saline counties. Much of it belonged to the federal government or to the railroad companies and could be bought under the Stone and Timber Act in 40-acre plots by paying a $100 surveying fee, he explained. Hauling logs to the mills was often a problem in rainy weather, he recalled, and Ellis Mountain near the site of the mill at that time, caused much difficulty. But, going in-groups, the wagons waited so that the first one could help the next one and so on, until all were up the slippery hill. The mill was moved to its present location near Alpine Swimming Pool in 1930. Pritchard and two of his sons, who were taken into the business as partners in 1952, have homes on the mill grounds, two sons died in infancy and another in adulthood. The Pritchards operated the pool for awhile. They dammed springs in the hollow above the pool to form a small lake, whose waters are piped to the 16,000-gallon tanks needed to run the boiler in the mill. "We don't work full-time at the mill now," Pritchard explained. "Some of the men are getting a little old and we've sold quite a bit of our land. We only cut on about 2,000 acres. And we never plant pines--they grow faster than we can cut them." They cut about a million feet of lumber a year now and sell all of it in Arkansas, both retail and wholesale, he said. A working day starts with him, at 90, getting up at 5 a.m. and having son Dave come to breakfast with him; his wife is no longer living. The mill crew goes to the woods to cut and haul; meanwhile, Pritchard files his saw, a helper keeps the boiler fired, they clean up, son Jack oversees the kiln and stacking of the lumber, and Dave does the office work. They start sawing at 1 p.m. and continue until 4. The logs are unloaded on a ramp, rolled one at a time down into the carriage and fastened securely in a vise-like grip. Each log is then guided along the track to the saw by Pritchard himself. The rough planks are run through an edger to take off the bark and are next stacked and spaced on a cart which runs by track into the kiln. The lumber dries here for 72 hours at 200 degrees before being taken to a planer and dressed to a smooth finish. Finally, it is graded and stacked under a shed; rough lumber is stacked on the yard. Pritchard said he is looking forward to becoming 100. He especially wants to see a grandson, Tappy Pritchard receive his degree from the University of Arkansas. As for himself, Pritchard wants to go on sawing. His advice for attaining a long life is: "Eat good, sleep good and do good." ---Arkansas Democrat Magazine
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