George Stoddard

George Stoddard was one of the leading lumbermen of the Pacific Coast. He started the Oregon Lumber Company with David Eccles and Charles W. Nibley. He also owned Stoddard Brothers Lumber with his brother Joseph.

George was born in Wellsville, Cache Valley, Utah, on July 12, 1865. As a boy of eight years old, Stoddard worked in a shingle factory in Wyoming. In 1883 he worked with his father in a saw mill plant in Wyoming. Six years later he erected a saw mill at North Powder, Oregon, which was one of the first saw mill operations in that section. After he moved to La Grande, Oregon, his operations expanded.

At the time of his death on February 27, 1917, he was the president of the Stoddard Lumber Company in Baker, Oregon; vice president and general manager of the Grand Ronde Lumber Company of Perry, Oregon; vice president of the Nibley-Mimnaugh Lumber Company in Wallows, Oregon; and vice president of the San Vicente Lumber Company in Santa Cruz, California. He had served as president of the Eastern Oregon Lumber Producers’ Association and for two terms as president of the Western Pine Manufacturers’ Association.

He and his wife, Ellen Izatt Stoddard, had ten children. They are the subject of the book Sawdust in Their Veins: The Story of George Eckersley Stoddard and Ellen Spowart Izatt Stoddard: Their Ancestors and Descendants.