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Merrill & Ring Lumber Company records, 1865-1976

Overview of the Collection

Creator
Merrill & Ring Lumber Company
Title
Merrill & Ring Lumber Company records
Dates
1865-1976 (inclusive)
1890-1944 (bulk)
Quantity
308.28 cubic ft
Collection Number
0726, 0965
Summary
Records of a lumber company
Repository
University of Washington Libraries, Special Collections
Special Collections
University of Washington Libraries
Box 352900
Seattle, WA
98195-2900
Telephone: 2065431929
Fax: 2065431931
speccoll@uw.edu
Access Restrictions

Open to all users.

Some material stored offsite; advance notice required for use.

Request at UW

Languages
English
Sponsor
Funding for encoding this finding aid was partially provided through a grant awarded by the National Endowment for the Humanities
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Historical Note

Thomas Merrill, son of a Maine lumbering family, began a series of logging companies in Michigan in the 1860s. In 1886 he joined Clark Ring to form the Merrill & Ring Lumber Company, headquartered in Saginaw. As the white pine forests of the Great Lakes states thinned in the 1890s, Merrill & Ring bought timberland near Grays Harbor, on Vancouver Island, and especially on the northern Olympic Peninsula in Washington. In 1902 the company moved its headquarters from Saginaw to Hoquiam, Washington. The center of Merrill & Ring logging operations was in the rugged territory near the Pysht River, west of Port Angeles, Washington.

Merrill & Ring was often at odds with other lumber companies in the region. Since Merrill & Ring owned timberland in British Columbia, the company resisted the efforts of most lumber firms to raise tariffs on Canadian forest products. In the late 1920s and 1930s Merrill & Ring allied with the other large timber owner on the Olympic Peninsula, the Bloedel-Donovan interests, and successfully pressured the Forest Service and the Bureau of Indian Affairs to keep nearby public timber off the market. This drove many small sawmill and logging companies, who had already cut their own lands, out of business. It also slowed the extremely rapid cutting of timber in this region. Merrill & Ring was later active in the campaign to reduce the size of the Olympic National Park in the late 1930s.

Merrill & Ring managed its lands near Grays Harbor in cooperation with loggers Alex and Robert Polson. Although Merrill & Ring owned half of the Polson Logging Company, formed in 1903, Alex Polson still ran this company. Polson cooperated with Merrill & Ring in a number of ventures. Along with Merrill & Ring, Polson was a co-owner of the Ozette Timber Company, a firm which bought substantial amounts of timberland from the Quinalt Indians after the application of the Dawes Act to their reservation. In 1927 Polson joined Merrill & Ring and William Boeing in purchasing the Crescent Logging Company, another firm that owned land on the northern Olympic Peninsula. Merrill & Ring and Polson continued to diversify, adding a pulp mill in Port Angeles to their holdings in 1930. In the early 1940s the Merrill & Ring Lumber Company and its subsidiaries dissolved and transferred their assets to Merrill & Ring, Ltd. Merrill & Ring, Ltd. continues to run a sustained-yield logging operation along the Pysht River to this day.

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Content Description

Correspondence, legal documents, business records, plats, and other records, including those of affiliated firms, relating to the company's business, legal, and fiscal activities; together with materials concerning its labor and political relations, and dealings with trade associations, state and federal agencies, such as United States Forest Service, and Spruce Production Division of the War Dept., and others.

Correspondents include Thomas T. Aldwell, William Edward Boeing, Homer Truett Bone, Clarence Cleveland Dill, Lindley Hoag Hadley, Ralph Ashley Horr, Guy C. Myers, Miles Poindexter, Lewis Baxter Schwellenback, Martin Fernard Smith, George Corydon Wagner, Thomas D. Merrill, Sr., Clark Lombard Ring, William Chisholm, Timothy Jerome, Thomas D. Merrill, Jr., and Richard Dwight Merrill.

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Use of the Collection

Restrictions on Use

Literary rights have been transferred to the University of Washington Libraries.

The donors have requested that they be informed of use by any researcher outside the University of Washington community.

Preferred Citation

Merrill & Ring Lumber Company records. Special Collections, University of Washington Libraries, Seattle, Washington.

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Administrative Information

Arrangement

Arranged in 6 accessions:

  • Accession No. 0726-001, Merrill & Ring Lumber Company records, 1888-1944
  • Accession No. 0726-004, Merrill & Ring Lumber Company records, 1893-1956
  • Accession No. 0726-005, Merrill & Ring Lumber Company records, 1889-1976
  • Accession No. 0726-006, Merrill & Ring Lumber Company records, 1865-1937
  • Accession No. 0726-007, Merrill & Ring Lumber Company records, 1912-1919
  • Accession No. 0965-001, Merrill & Ring Lumber Company records, 1909-1947

Related Materials

Oral History Interview with Norm Schaaf and Joseph F. Murray

Processing Note

Partially processed.

The letters of the Merrill & Ring Lumber Company and its sister company, the Merrill & Ring Logging Company, are grouped together in all of these accessions, since the companies’ own filing systems made no distinction between the firms.

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Detailed Description of the Collection

 

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Subject Terms

Personal Names

Corporate Names

Geographical Names


2007 (Last modified: 1/31/2020)

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