HOW PIAVE GOT ITS NAME

       Piave is a community, located in the Northern part of Greene County, that has a unusual name. There have been several stories about it origin but that has been put to rest because of the research of Richard Bricker and Tony Howe. Bricker points out in his book "The Italian American Shipyard at Pascagoula", which is a story of Large Wooden ships that were built in the 1918-1920 era; that Henry Piaggio;  an Italian-born shipbuilder, who at first wanted to haul Gulf Coast pine timber to Italy where he had business ties;  established the International Shipbuilding Company. The Company had offices in Gulfport, Mississippi., Orange, Texas and New Orleans, La.

    In a unpublished report, Tony Howe, reports that on October 7, 1918,  John W. Blodgett signed a contract  to sell a block of timber to the Piave Mill Company. The Piave Mill Company was incorporated at Gulfport only two months before, on August 17, 1918, by Henry Piaggio, W. G. Jordan, and F. H. Dickman. The name Piave came from Piaggio, and most likely came from the river in Italy by that name. Piaggio built the Piave Mill  to supply lumber for his shipbuilding operations at Pascagoula. This mill was later sold to L. N. Dantzler Lumber Company, along with the timber interest in the Blodgett  of the Piave Mill Company.. The Mill was reorganized as the Virgin Pine Lumber Company. In April 1923  the operation was leased with option to buy to Crosby and Rowlands of Picayune, MS. who enlarged it until at one time it was the second largest mill in the world. L. O. Crosby was the general manager of this mill.