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A Camp locomotive, 1915. The Camp mill brought in timber by railroad on flat cars. Camp created the Roanoke Railway Company in 1990.
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Paul Douglas Camp (1849 - 1924). A son of George and Sallie Catchins Camp and a Franklin native, P.D. started his first sawmill when he was only 27 years old. He lived by the motto, "Can't is not in the Camp's vocabulary."
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The Franklin - Southampton community with substantial help from the Camp Foundation, raised $3 million to build Southampton Memorial Hospital, opened in 1963. The Camps also donated 92 acres for the Paul D. Camp Community College, opened in 1971.
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The Franklin mill, 1907.
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James Leonidas Camp (1857 - 1925) J.L. became president of the firm in 1924. After his death in 1925, his son, James L. Camp Jr., became president and started moving Camp into ??? paper making in the 1930s.
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The No. 6 recovery boiler, completed in 1977, burns a pulpwood by-product to produce steam generated electricity for the entire mill.
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The Camp tugboatt, Corinthia. The mill received logs, towed up river on barges from Virginia and North Carolina, at its Blackwater River waterfront.
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Camp board members (back row) and fifty-year employees (front row), 1948. James L. Camp Jr., pictured fifth from the left, back row, started the Virginia Forestry Association in 1943.
 
Paul and James Camp started P.D. Camp and Company, a ??? business in 1877. The brothers bought R.J. Neely's sawmill in 1886 and established Camp Manufacturing Company in 1887. The original Franklin mill was steam powered and lay on a ten-acre tract adjoining both the Blackwater River and the Seabound & Roanoke Railroad. The company developed a reputation for quality and grew steadily throughout its history. Camp enlarged its plant and added smooth-dressed lumber to its product line in 1891. The Camps bought additional mills and woodlands from 1896 to 1907. Though shaken by the Panic of 1907, Camp Manufacturing recovered and bought more mills and timerland in Birginia and the Carolinas. The largest employer in Franklin, Camp maintained its timer operations during the depression and opened a pulp and paper plant in 1937. During the '40s the company, now a publicly held corporation, started making grocery bags and waterproof paper. In 1951 Camp built a white paper plant and merged with a New York firm to create Union Bag - Camp Paper in 1956. Traded on the New York Stock Exchange, the company changed its name to Union Camp Corporation in 1966 and continued to expand. International Paper bought Union Camp in 1999.
"The Camp Family has influenced the City of Franklin and Southampton County more than any other one family. Not only has the Camp's mill provided employment for numerous citizens in Southampton County, but the Camp family has and does give generously of its time and money as the city and county's civic, charitable, and political leaders."
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