His legion of friends in the south and southwest have called Mr. Rand by his first name for so long and have spelled it "Ed" for so long a time without even putting in the period following the letter "d" that it is not at all improbable that 90 percent of the people who read this article will not know until they see it in cold type that his first name is as it stands at the head of this brief sketch. It is a small name for a big man and it would be small if it were four times as long considering its relation to the person to whom it belongs if it was expected the size of the name would describe the man in his many and varied abilities and the place occupied by him among men in the southwestern yellow pine empire.

Mr. Rand is a Texan-Irishman by adoption and a Mississippian by birth. His father was a planter, born in Raleigh, N.C., in 1822, and is still living in eastern Texas near Atlanta, Cass county, going about his work with greater activity than most men of half his age.

Edwin Rand was educated in the common schools of Cass county. In 1870 he went to the Douglasville high school and spent two years in that institution. He then went to work for General Waterhouse at Dennison, Tex., in the general merchandise business. Young Rand was in the warehouse department of General Waterhouse’s business and stayed with him until 1876.

In 1876 Edwin Rand formed a partnership with C. C. Galloway and went into the cordwood, timber and tie business on the Texas & Pacific railroad. About that time the Texas & Pacific road was extended from Dallas to El Paso. The firm Galloway & Rand was domiciled at Kildare, Tex.

Later the company also had a mill at Queen City, Tex., on the same road, and when the timber was sawed out the partnership ended. Afterwards Edwin Rand organized the Atlanta Bank at Atlanta, Tex.

Mr. Rand was president of the Atlanta Bank two or three years and during that time the bank took charge of the Atlanta mills and ran them from 1891 to 1894. In 1890 Mr. Rand built the Texas, Arkansas & Louisiana railroad, running in an easterly direction through corners of the states of Texas and Arkansas into Louisiana.

In the course of events the bank got into business with the road and the Atlanta Lumber Company became the Atlanta Lumber Mills. The road is now a traffic line between Atlanta and Bloomburg, Tex. Mr. Rand operated that business until May, 1899, when he came to Woodworth. In the meantime he became interested in the organization of the Rapides Lumber Company, Limited, which started in 1890.

Mr. Rand owns one-third of the stock of the Rapides Lumber Company, Limited; is a stockholder in the Rapides Bank, of Alexandria, and in the San Juan sugar operations near Vera Cruz, Mexico.

Edwin Rand is a man of strong personality and has come into his own by hard fought and continuous battle in the commercial world, and accepts his honors and emoluments with the easy grace guaranteed to him by his long line of successful ancestors.