Who owned the Bahamas-Cuban Lumber Co.?
Without a shadow of doubt, the Bahamas Cuban Lumber Company made a fortune from the pine cutting leases held in the Bahamas. Monies made from the pine trees in the Bahamas created generational wealth and empires while the average Bahamian of that era remained in relative poverty.
According the 1925 letters of Fernley Rattray Rae owner of the real estate company F.R. Rae & Co., located on 296 Bay Street, the Bahamas-Cuban Lumber company held all the leases of the pine land on Abaco, Andros and Grand Bahama.
But, who owned the Bahamas-Cuban Lumber Co?
The Bahamas-Cuban Lumber Co was part of the extensive lumber empire owned by the Brookes-Scanlon company from the United States.
Dr. Dwight F. Brooks (1849 – 1930) and Michael Joseph Scanlon (1861 – 1930) built a multimillion dollar lumber empire that stretched from Cuba, the Bahamas, Florida and several states throughout America.
The Brooks-Scanlon investment in the Bahama Islands began in 1906. Brookes and Scanlon needed to creat a locally incorporated company to hold the lessees and financial interests. They organized a business under the name of the Bahamas-Cuban Company, Limited. This company produced and distributed lumber throughout Cuba and the Bahama Islands.
Dr. Brooks was president of the enterprise. Michael Scanlon was vice-president.
Dr. Dwight F. Brooks was a physician who became a businessman with extensive interests. He eventually went into the lumber business and became known as a pioneer in the lumber industry, an industry that he knew in every detail.
Michael Joseph “M. J.” Scanlon
(1861 – 1930)
“Mr. Scanlon was vice president of the Bahamas Cuban Company, Limited, of Normans Castle, Abaco Island, the Bahamas. This company owns vast tracts of very valuable pitch pine timber in the Bahamas. It owns and operates an up-to-date sawmill plant with all modern appliances at Normans Castle and markets its output through its own distributing yards in Cuba. He is also vice president of the Brooks-Scanlon-O’Brien Company, Limited, Vancouver, British Columbia. This company owns a splendid body of timber in western Canada and is logging and marketing the logs at the rate of fifty to sixty millions per year. During the early part of 1922 he organized the M. J. Scanlon Lumber Company with a capital of seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars and acquired the mills and timber holdings of Cox Brothers Company at Massack, California.”
