The Mansfield Brick Company was started about 1900 by Mr. T. P. Edwards, a native of England. His family consisted of his wife, who was a native of Janesville, Wisconsin, and daughter, Jennie. Mr. Edwards was known for his two English bulldogs, a rarity in this area at the time. A group of businessmen from El Dorado bought the plant in 1923 and Mr. A. W. Talton came to Mansfield to manage it. The name was changed from Mansfield Brick Company to Choctaw Brick and Gas Company. Mr. Talton, a native of Dubberly, Louisiana, brought his family with him, consisting of wife Ileta, two sons, Wiltz, Jr., and Joel, and two daughters, Carol Avis and Enid Adrian, born in El Dorado. Another son, Cullen Ashley, was born in Mansfield. The plant was an important employer in the community in the 1920s and 1930s, later being sold to the Acme Brick Company of Fort Smith in about 1933. It was sold to a lime company of Oklahoma, and then to a glass company, which operated it for several years. (SEE MANSFIELD GLASS COMPANY)
Side note from the submitter:
The buildings are now gone and the clay that was dug to make the bricks and tile have now become a beautiful multi-acre lake. The Johnson family of Mansfield purchased the property after the glass plant closed. In the early 1970s, Jim Johnson and his late wife Donna James Johnson (my sister) took the lumber from a demolished one-hundred year old Victorian home on 6th Street in Fort Smith and built a wonderful three bedroom home overlooking the lake. Horses, mules, chickens, turkey, quineas and deer run the property unharmed. Mr. Johnson has relics from the history of his property including original minnow traps and the wooden mold that was used to make them, and cases of lamp shades that were never shipped. Perhaps the greatest find is a clear glass globe, which measures about 2 1/2 foot square, that was meant to be used on the old gasoline pumps. I have never seen another one of its kind.
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