Dyson Building Center is Rich in Sawmill History
The original Dyson Building Center.
By Neal C. Dyson
Passersby may be familiar with Dyson Building Center as a large retail hardware store and lumberyard located on Point Lookout Road in Great Mills, Maryland. Few of those passersby may realize that the family business dates back nearly a century with the first 50 years of operation being primarily that of a sawmill business. Despite the mill not being in operation for over 40 years, many employees of the past and current customers still refer to Dyson Building Center as “The Mill”.
Artifacts and old photographs that hang from the walls of the hardware store bring a present day reminder of the company’s milling past and the milling history of Great Mills itself. A few of the current employees were around during the sawmill days and can be heard reminiscing about their experiences working or seeing the mill that once stood at Dyson Building Center. The sawmill that stood at Dyson Building Center was the most recent continuously operating sawmill in Great Mills, a town named in honor of the many mills that once occupied its limits.
Sawmilling began at Dyson Building Center, then known as Dyson Lumber Company, somewhere after the turn of the last century. Early documents and pictures show Sammy Dyson operating a mobile sawmill in the 1920’s. Sammy and his employees at that time would disassemble the sawmill, moving it from location to location. This allowed them to move to available tracts of timber rather than have to deal with the logistics of having it cut and hauled to Great Mills. The Dyson family later decided to upgrade the size of the sawmill to meet greater demand and a growing community as a result of the addition of Patuxent River Naval Air Station in the 1940’s.
The new sawmill would no longer be mobile and took up permanent residence at the current site of the Dyson Building Center lumberyard. The size of the new 100 horsepower mill was unprecedented in this area at that time. It was one of the first electric powered mills in Maryland, requiring an upgrade of the electrical power at the property from single phase to 3-phase power.
“That was a powerful machine”, said Samuel “Lee” Dyson, a co owner of Dyson Building Center and part of the third generation of the family business. “It could really cut some lumber.”
Lee remembered working at the mill as a young man and even once taking a school field trip to visit his own family’s business. Lee took a woodworking class at Great Mills High School in the 1960’s where they actually visited the electric powered sawmill at Dyson Lumber Company to see logs turned into lumber products.
Lee’s brother Joseph C. Dyson, better known as “JC”, worked at the mill as a young man also and was happy to discuss the sawmill history made by the generations of family that ran the company prior. JC described the mill as consisting of a large circular saw for cutting the logs, a planer for finishing the top and bottom of the lumber, and an edger for finishing the sides of the lumber. His father, Leroy Dyson, and his grandfather, Sammy, had served as sawyers, foreman or chief operators of a sawmill.
“I remember being caught skipping school one day by my father and him making me work at the mill as punishment instead of telling my mother,” said JC, also a co owner and the current president of Dyson Building Center. “I thought I was getting off easy but that day was rough carrying wet and heavy 4” by 12” boards all day.”
JC went on to describe one of his most vivid memories being the day his father was called to respond to a medical emergency at nearby Cecil’s Mill. JC was a young child watching his father work at the hardware store when on April 22, 1959 his father received a frantic call. Cecil’s Mill had an accident with their sawmill and they needed Leroy’s help. H. Robb Cecil was working as the sawyer that day at Cecil’s Mill when, according to JC’s memories, a component of the mill called a “dog” had struck H. Robb resulting in his eventual death. Leroy shut down the mill so medical personnel could assist H. Robb.
Serious accidents were not uncommon for early sawmills. The mill at Dyson Lumber Company was no different. Leroy’s brother Joseph Dyson lost a finger working at the mill and Leroy himself had lost a portion of his hearing. Leroy’s daughter Vi Guzman, a co owner with over 40 years of experience working at the family business, remembers her father insisting that he not use ear protection while working at the mill. “My father insisted he be able to hear the blade cutting through the log,” said Vi. “He felt that was the only way he would know whether or not it was working properly.”
The mill at Dyson Lumber Company was shut down in the 1970’s. The market for rough cut lumber and custom cutting of logs had diminished, replaced with large mills producing dimension lumber used for the majority of construction applications today. Components of the Dyson sawmill were sold to other mills still operating throughout Southern Maryland at the time.
Vi shared a few more of her early memories of the mill. “My mother would not let us children go down to the sawmill during the day while it was running. We would go down at night and collect scrap slab wood. I remember building a tree fort with my brothers and sisters behind the lumberyard which may still be there today.”
Vi also mentioned how much fun it was to play on sawdust piles located near the sawmill. She remembered them looking almost like “huge mountains”. “We used to climb to the top and then slide down,” said VI. “We would also push our hands deep into the piles of sawdust because the piles would still be hot from the sawing earlier that day.”
Dyson Building Center began making the transition away from strictly sawmilling operations in 1954 when Leroy and Marie Dyson, Leroy’s wife and the company’s office manager at the time, decided to open a retail hardware store. That small 1,000 sq ft hardware store was started by the second generation of the Dyson family business and has come a long way since, now consisting of over 6 acres of retail space to include a full service lumberyard.
The fifth generation of family members is about to begin working at the business. Employees at Dyson Building Center average over 20 years of experience and some have over 40 years of continuous service to the company. Sawmilling and rough cut lumber are also becoming more popular again which suggests sawmilling could once again be a viable business plan in the future for the Dyson Building Center. Two sawmill period vehicles from Dyson Lumber Company are currently on display at the St. Mary’s County Fairground’s Farm Museum.
