Samuel Moore Coles, Huntsville, AL., then Caddo Parish, Louisiana

Submitted by Mike Miller
Date: 1999-2000






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Samuel Moore Coles.  All the years since he left school Samuel M. 

Coles has given to some phase of the lumber industry.  He is now an 

executive in a business whose products have been known nationally 

through advertising campaigns and are distributed in every state of 

the Union.  He is secretary and manager of the Perfection Oak Flooring 

Company at Shreveport.



Mr. Coles was born in Huntsville, Alabama, July 12, 1889, a son of 

Robert T. and Lucy V. (Wortham) Coles, and is a representative of 

a family whose genealogical records extend back in unbroken lines 

to the Colonial period in our country's history.  The founder of 

the family in America was Major John Coles, who came from Ireland 

and settled in Virginia early in the eighteenth century, and 

tradition has it that he built one of the first houses in 

"Richmondtown," now Richmond.  He was born in 1706, and at the 

age of thirty-two years (1738) married Mary Ann Winston, daughter 

of Isaac Winston, of Hanover County, Virginia.  He was a worthy

citizen and was long a vestryman of St. Johns church, and dying 

in Richmond, in 1747, was buried beneath the chancel of that church.



William Coles, a younger brother of Major John Coles, followed his 

brother to Virginia and settled in Hanover County.  "Woodville," the 

ancestral seat of the Coles family, was erected in 1796 by John Coles, 

the second, on land which was a part of the second grant from Colonial 

authorities, in the name of the Crown to the Coles family.  This estate

has remained in the possession of and has been occupied by members 

of this family for four generations.



Isaac Coles, a son of Major John Coles, was born in Albemarle County, 

Virginia, in 1747, and became a member of the class of 1768 at the 

College of William and Mary.  He was a landholder and planter of 

great wealth, owning extensive lands in Halifax, Pittsylvania and 

Brunswick counties, and was a dominant factor in the public and 

political questions of his day.  He was elected a member of the 

House of Burgesses in 1774, and the records show that he served as 

a member of the Committee of Public Claims, and also the Committee 

of Propositions and Grievances.  He served during the Revolutionary 

war in the State Militia, being eventually promoted to the rank of 

colonel, and was for some time a member of the State Senate.  He was 

elected to the First Congress, and was re-elected in 1793, serving 

until 1797.  He was a close friend and earnest supporter of Thomas 

Jefferson, and the policies he advocated.  He married Catherine 

Thompson, and died in 1813. 



Robert T. Coles. son of Isaac, married Elizabeth Patton, and they 

had a son, also named Robert T., who married Lucy V. Wortham, and 

they became the parents of Samuel Moore Coles, whose name heads this 

sketch.



Samuel M. Coles graduated from Columbia Military Academy of Columbia, 

Tennessee, in 1908, and very soon afterwards entered the employ of the 

Bliss-Cook Oak Company, oak lumber manufacturers at Blissville, 

Arkansas.  He was with that company until 1911, then with the Globe 

Lumber Company at Yellow Pine, Louisiana, was with the Arkansas Short

 Leaf Lumber Company at Pine Bluff, and then became sales manager for 

the Arkansas Oat: Flooring Company of Pine Bluff.



From Pine Bluff Mr. Coles came to Shreveport in the early part of 

1922 and took charge of completing the construction and machinery 

installations in the new plant of the Perfection Oak Flooring 

Company.  This plant started operations June 26, 1922.  The company 

manufactures oak flooring exclusively, and owns one of the largest 

plants of its kind in the country. Oak flooring made at Shreveport 

might be found in homes in every state of the Union.  The capacity 

of the plant is 75,000 feet of flooring per day. Two hundred and 

twenty-five men are employed, the pay roll being $6,000 per week, 

and the plant has not lost a day since it started.  Every piece of fl

ooring leaving the factory hears the name Shreveport.  The plant is 

equipped with eight standard dry kilns, five S. A. Woods side matchers, 

two sets of American end matchers, three sets of D. M. Rose end matchers, 

W. B. Mashoit ream and rip saws, four Casey-Hedges boilers, developing 

1,200 horsepower, the fuel used being the plant's sawdust.  The engine 

is a 24x42" Filer-Stowell, made in Milwaukee, all the transmissions 

being likewise furnished by the Filer-Stowell Company.  There is not 

a second hand or old type piece of machinery or equipment in the mill 

anywhere.  The plant is located for shipping purposes on the V. S. & P.

and Texas & Pacific railroads.

As secretary and manager of this company Mr. Coles occupies an 

important place iii the hardwood lumber industry of the country.  

His company has membership in the Oak Flooring .Manufacturer's 

Association of the United States and the Shreveport Chamber of 

Commerce.  The only interruption to Mr. Cole's past continuous 

experience in the lumber business was the year he was with the 

Headquarters Department of the American Army at Camp Dodge, Iowa, 

during the World war.  He enlisted in 1918. was assigned to duty as 

above noted, and received his honorable discharge January 22, 1919.



NOTE:  The referenced source contains a black and white photograph 

of the subject with his/her autograph.



A History of Louisiana, (vol. 2), pp. 47-48, by Henry E. Chambers.  

Published by The American Historical Society, Inc., Chicago and New York, 1925.