April 2025
WASHINGTON, GA — “Walk softly and carry a big stick,” the old adage advises, as articulated by our 26th President, the Rough Rider himself, Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt. Down in Georgia, where Roosevelt’s mother spent her childhood, the Thornton boys—brothers Gene and Neil and Gene’s son Mark—prefer to talk softly and haul loads full of big sticks, as many loads as the mills and Mother Nature will allow. After all, that’s how they make their living, the only way of life they’ve ever known.
Inside This Issue
COVER: Thornton Roots Run Deep In Georgia
WASHINGTON, Ga.—“Walk softly and carry a big stick,” the old adage advises, as articulated by our 26th President, the Rough Rider himself, Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt. Down in Georgia, where Roosevelt’s mother spent her childhood, the Thornton boys—brothers Gene and Neil and Gene’s son Mark—prefer to talk softly and haul loads full of big sticks, as many loads as the mills and Mother Nature will allow. After all, that’s how they make their living, the only way of life they’ve ever known.
Article by David Abbott, Managing Editor, Southern Loggin’ Times
SOUTHERN STUMPIN': 20 Years In...
I’ve always heard that time flies when you’re having fun. Boy has that turned out to be true, with and without the fun: the last 20 years have flown by in the blink of an eye.
As I write this month’s column, it was 20 years ago, in March 2005, that I started working at Hatton-Brown Publishers. Doesn’t seem like 2005 should be 20 years ago, but here we are in 2025, and look how much the world has changed, and how much it hasn’t, in the two decades that have passed since then.
Article by David Abbott
BACKWOODS PEW: A Needle In A Forest
It is hard to go into a forest, espe- cially in the coastal plain, and not come into contact with briars. They seem to materialize from the very dust. They roll through the understory, often creating the look of concertina wire strung through the woods to discourage entry.
Excerpt from Side Roads, Snares, and Souls, Bradley Antill author.
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Triple Threat
The Thorntons are men of few words, but their results in the woods speak for them.
Article by David Abbott, Managing Editor, Southern Loggin’ Times
WASHINGTON, Ga.—“Walk softly and carry a big stick,” the old adage advises, as articulated by our 26th President, the Rough Rider himself, Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt. Down in Georgia, where Roosevelt’s mother spent her child- hood, the Thornton boys—brothers Gene and Neil and Gene’s son Mark—prefer to talk softly and haul loads full of big sticks, as many loads as the mills and Mother Nature will allow. After all, that’s how they make their living, the only way of life they’ve ever known.
Gene, 74, and Neil, 67, along with Mark, 53, run the operation. Their company, G&N Logging, Inc., is continuing a family tradition that’s been going since just a few years after the Second World War. Gene and Neil’s father, Gene, Sr., and their uncle Clark started shortwooding together under the banner Thornton Brothers Logging in 1949. G&N (for Gene and Neil) is the successor of Thornton Brothers Logging.
The second generation Thorntons, Neil and Gene, Jr., grew up in the woods with Gene and Clark, just as the third generation, Mark, grew up in the woods with them. “That’s all we ever done,” Gene states.
Their uncle Clark worked with Champion early on, and the family has clear-cut tracts that he helped plant 30 years earlier.
Gene, Sr. and Clark started logging when they were only teenagers, around 16, and kept working till they were in their 80s. Remarkably, Clark was still at it when Gene, Jr., and Neil took over on September 1, 2014…65 years after he started.
“When my uncle turned 62, I asked him, ‘I reckon you gonna retire, aren’t you?’” Gene recalls. “Nope,” was Clark’s reply. “I seen too many people who worked hard all their life out here and a year or two later they’re dead because they ain’t done nothing. So I’m gonna keep going.” And he did. “He ran a cut-down machine till he was 80 years old,” Gene says. Clark did finally retire in 2014 and lived a few more years after that, eventual- ly succumbing to bone cancer.
Gene and Neil both laugh when they consider the prospect of following that pattern: will they still be working in the woods when they’re in their 80s? “Probably gonna be there till I die,” Gene grins, sounding enthusiastically resigned to it. Neil agrees, adding, “I’ve seen too many retire and then two years later they’re gone.”
“We been in it all our life,” Gene reiterates. “It’s all we ever done.”
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