As northern timberlands were depleted, timber buyers turned to the dense forests of the South. In March 1902, S.W. Sterling, a timber buyer for a firm in Grafton, Ohio, was buying timber in Missouri when he heard about the fine timber at Parkin. Sterling bought a mill just south of the Old Indian Mound. Between 1902 and 1904, Henry Coldren moved his Grafton, Ohio, lumber company to Parkin. In 1906, Sterling and Coldren merged their two companies and established the Northern Ohio Cooperage and Lumber Company. The mill provided work for many people at a time when there were few jobs other than agriculture, and three-quarters of the sawmill workforce was African-American men.