Voth is in northern Jefferson County on U.S. Highway 69/96/287. The community was called Elwood prior to the establishment of a Keith Lumber Company sawmill there in 1902, when the name was changed in recognition of lumberman Henry Voth. With easy access to Beaumont via the Texas and New Orleans and the Gulf, Beaumont and Kansas City railroads, Voth became a thriving sawmill community during the early 1900s; its population was estimated at between 500 and 750 residents by the mid-1920s. The Kirby Lumber Company acquired the Voth sawmill in 1922 and added a hardwood mill two years later. Although the new hardwood mill was shut down in 1930, the older pine sawmill continued to operate until the early 1950s. Voth's population slowly dwindled as the lumbering activities declined. In the early 1940s the number of inhabitants was about 600. Ten years later the figure had fallen to 300. Black residents lived in an area known as Corbinville, and Hispanics resided in Stonetown. As part of its general plan for expansion, the city of Beaumont annexed the unincorporated Voth community in 1957, thus extending its city limits to Pine Island Bayou.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Judith Walker Linsley and Ellen Walker Rienstra, Beaumont: A Chronicle of Promise (Woodland Hills, California: Windsor, 1982).

Robert Wooster
 

Handbook of Texas Online, s.v. "," http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/VV/htv10.html (accessed March 3, 2008).

(NOTE: "s.v." stands for sub verbo, "under the word.")