Series 4: Piedmont Company. 1934-1968

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Perhaps the largest venture Conger operated during his lengthy career, Piedmont Creosoting Company (later simply the Piedmont Company) had its headquarters in Staunton, Virginia, but largest plant and operations in Augusta, Georgia. Conger acquired the Piedmont Wood Preserving Company of Augusta in the early 1930s, dissolved the existing company, and reconstituted operations as the Piedmont Creosoting Company. This company utilized pole collection yards in Connecticut to supply New England customers, and some images of those yards are included here.

The files in this series contain the most detailed information about any of the companies Conger operated, most importantly represented by the surviving minute book of Board of Directors' meetings for most the company's history. One of the most valuable pieces in terms of knowing the nature and extent, as well as the details, of Conger's various pole ventures comes in the form of a scrapbook (now disassembled for preservation purposes). Entitled "From Forest to Field," it was prepared for Conger's eldest daughter, Dorothea, by A. B. Carlson, in June 1951. It carefully documents through text and images the operations of the Piedmont Company, using the work operations of the Company to supply an order of southern Yellow Pine poles for the Southern New England Telephone Company. The photographs were taken in the spring of 1949 and the text was drafted subsequently by Carlson of Southern New England Telephone. Poles were acquired from the "Hitchcock Forest" near Aiken, South Carolina, owned by E. F. Conger. The company plant in Augusta at that time shipped 100,000 poles per year. Images here show the plant and forest operations and some include depictions of African American workers. Also includes images of the treatment of poles with creosote (a mixture of oils) for preservation, as well as arrangements for shipping.

As noted above, this was one of Conger's firms that eventually became a holding company for investments, and some of the last files in this series document how Conger finally got out of the pole-producing and treatment business for good in the 1950s. The pole-treatment operations in Augusta and at other facilities throughout the eastern United States were eventually sold to a new company with an old name, Piedmont Wood Preserving Company, newly headquartered in Spartanburg, S.C. The file concerning the sale contains detailed materials on existing, often long-standing, company contracts that were transferred to Piedmont Wood Preserving Company, as well as materials on the sale of other assets and business contracts to Piedmont Wood Preserving Company.

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