When Samuel Nesbitt Maze entered the lumber business in 1848, he began an enterprise that would grow and flourish for a century and a half...and beyond. Today, the fifth generation of Maze family is still providing construction materials to help build America and the world.
An Irish immigrant from Castleblaney Country Monaghan, Maze arrived in the United States in 1836 and was a masonry contractor for several years before deciding to try his hand at the lumber business. He located his modest yard in the small town of Peru, Illinois - on the banks of the Illinois River. The yard stood just a few hundred yards from the south end of the new Illinois- Michigan Canal. Dug by men and horse power, it was also 1848 when the canal first linked Peru and the Illinois and Mississippi rivers to Lake Michigan.
The Original Office.
Maze had a small barge built - named the Elk - and used mules to haul loads of local grain to Chicago by way of the I-M Canal. Before leaving Chicago to return to Peru, the Elk was loaded with white pine from huge timber stands in Wisconsin - for sale to Samuel Maze's contractor friends, farmers, and others who asked him to bring them lumber. Thus the yard was born.
