General Info:
It was during those times and in that small town setting that my grandfather Levi Hill Jr. found various things to do in order to make ends meet. He worked for a while with his father as a farmer and a general store operator. And then at some point he began selling and servicing coin operated pool tables and vending machines. It was in the mid nineteen forties that he found a steady position in the nearby city of #Augusta selling industrial mill supplies for a company called #Lombard Iron Works. Lombard was primarily a foundry. They also made and sold parts for heavy machinery. The job of selling mill supplies was perfect for my grandfather. He had studied engineering at #Clemson University, was good with numbers and had a natural talent for machine works. In addition, he was an excellent salesman who never met a stranger. It wasn’t long before he and one of his fellow salesman decided to form a partnership and go it alone. In 1942, they started their [own] mill supply company in Augusta, naming it Richmond Supply (for the county of its location, Richmond). For a year or two they successfully operated their partnership until my grandfather offered to buy out his partner. Richmond Supply Company has been in our family since that time. When Levi Jr first started the business the first thing he did was purchase an old brick building that became his warehouse. It was located on 7th street, just a few blocks down from his earlier employer Lombard Iron Works. This building [while old even at that time] had plenty of space and was well suited for warehousing all kinds of industrial supplies like sprockets, chain, bearings, drive belts, tools, pipe fittings, planer knives and saw bits. Richmond Supply on 7th street thrived, supporting the area’s sawmills, foundries, and textile mills with supplies necessary to keep their operations going. As the United States entered the war, the military’s need for products escalated and so manufacturers were busy. #Steel parts were needed, textiles, lumber — most every resource that our country could provide, the military needed. The Great Depression had come to its end, and the United States was at war. Having learned a little something about the lumber business from a friend of his in his hometown of Sandersville, my grandfather also started a lumber sales operation in conjunction with #Richmond Supply. Quite naturally, he called it Richmond Lumber and found success too in this business. With a natural gift for salesmanship, he began moving truckloads of pine and hardwood lumber to the building trades all over the South. Operating those two businesses for a period, he welcomed his son (my father) Levi III to the business in 1951. Levi Hill III joined Richmond Supply after a time in the United States Air Force and a short period working for Savannah River Site, otherwise known as “the bomb plant.” He was enthusiastic about the mill supply business and himself a natural salesman and all-around gentlemen