Roy Haney is a Tennessee woodsman through and through, so much so that he’s practically got tree sap flowing through his veins.
Since 1993, he and his wife, Chris, have operated their Haney Family Sawmill at sites in Rutherford, Cannon and DeKalb counties. For the past 10 years they have run the sawmill in Liberty, about 26 miles southeast of Lebanon, behind their handsome 1921 brick mansion, a remodeling project that may never end.
Haney is rightly proud of his work as a sawyer as he and his hands take projects from the logs through the finished project all on one property. One of their greatest pleasures is being able to see a family making their dreams come true, a step at a time.
“We say every day is like Christmas because we don’t know what that log is going to give us until we unwrap it,” said Haney about the timber they cut down to size.
“We’re just a country operation that offers custom sawing for the public. If you want to build a lumber shed or barn or whatever your dream is, we will saw the lumber for you. We also offer custom sawing if you bring your own logs.”
The self-confessed history buff said, “My family had been in Jackson County before Tennessee was a state. I never saw a chainsaw till I was 18 years old. I knew they existed but had never touched one.”
As for the house he and his mate purchased in 2010, he recollected, “We passed by here for 30 years saying we wished we owned the place. When it came up for auction, we bought it. And then I said, ‘Honey, do we need 4,400-square feet?’ ”
Chris, his honey of 44 years, shares the history of their two-story home, explaining, “We moved in 2012. The house was built in 1920 and finished in September 1921. It was built by Herschel Bratton, who was a lawyer and the head U.S. Marshal in Memphis.
“It has 13 rooms, 11-foot-high ceilings, four fireplaces and the original oak floor and original windows, and all the molding was made from pre-wormy chestnut. The oak floors came by train to Watertown and were then brought in wagons by mules to the site. We’ll work on this house forever.”
The family business
The couple opened their first sawmill in Milton and ran it for five years before moving and starting a second one between Auburntown and Woodbury, which they operated 12 years. Roy was working at Nissan when they moved to Liberty, so Chris ran their current sawmill the first six years. Their four daughters (Fawn, Crystalena, Heather, Wendy) were raised around their sawmills.
“My family was all sawyers. My grandfather worked for the Milwaukee Railroad and built trestles,” said Chris, who added that she and Roy do about 75% of their cooking in winter on a wood stove.
The two met when Roy decided he wanted to learn how to ride a horse while stationed at Mountain Home Air Force Base in Idaho. Chris, a Montana native, taught him to ride. They decided there were only three places they could call home: Idaho, Montana and Tennessee. However, after Roy and Chris left the Air Force, he took an engineering job in Canton, Ohio. In 1982, Nissan opened a plant in Smyrna, and that was when they high-tailed it to Tennessee.
“My background and love has always been in the past,” said Roy, who was introduced to a sawmill at the tender age of 9. “One morning my father, who had the honor (during World War II) to get off at Normandy and walked to Czechoslovakia on the front line, told me and Danny, my 14-year-old brother, ‘Let’s go. We’re going to the woods.’ We took our John Deere B tractor, an ax and a crosscut saw. We dropped six white oak trees, and my mom and dad dropped seven, all with a crosscut saw. We snaked them out with that tractor. We pulled up all the logs and we decked them in a pile and that was it.
“I was very happy the next Friday. The logs were gone. I didn’t know where the logs went, but I knew it was going to be work. My father never told us what we were doing. However, Saturday morning at 6 o’clock, Papa got us up again. ‘Let’s go boys.’ We went over to the ridge above Gainesboro, and it was the first time I saw my great-uncle Sanford Johnson, known as ‘Sant,’ who had the first sawmill I ever saw.
“That day I loaded all the logs onto the carriage, which goes back and forth on the old Frick sawmill. Sant operated the controls, and my brother and father off-loaded the lumber on to the truck. When we got all the white oak sawed, I looked at my father and explained to him, ‘when I grow up, I think I want to have a sawmill.’ My father told me, ‘Son, that’s one thing you do not want.’ One of my greatest regrets in life — my father passed away in 1991 — I was able to get my first sawmill in 1993 in Milton, and he never got to see it.”
Showing off the wood
The Haneys buy 90% of their timber, mainly poplar, red oak, white oak and cedar, from loggers out of DeKalb, Cannon, Wilson, Smith, Rutherford, Putnam and White counties. They are pleased to note that they are one of the few places that offer shingles made of wood and lap siding and are about the only place within 300 miles to provide Eastern red cedar split-rail fencing.
Their split-rail fences (“all cut here, split here and delivered from here,” said Roy) grace the grounds of Stones River National Battlefield, Shiloh National Military Park, Oaklands Mansion in Murfreesboro and George Washington’s Birthplace National Monument in Westmoreland County, Va. They also provided 1.2 miles of split-rail fence for an estate bordering East Division Street in Mt. Juliet.
The couple has demonstrated their craft for 25 years at the Wilson County Fair.
“I had a young boy come to the sawmill, and he looked at the mill and told his dad, ‘I thought 2x4s came from Walmart?’ I called the head of Fiddler’s Grove and volunteered to demonstrate. At the fair I sawed logs and showed children where 2x4s come from. This August, good Lord willing, we’ll be back at the Wilson County Fair,” said Roy.
“I am blessed to have the opportunity to meet new people, interact with them and watch their dreams unfold — maybe having the pleasure to add a little spice of knowledge and watch dreams become reality. It just don’t get better.” said the sawmill man.
