USA > Michigan > A history of the northern peninsula of Michigan and its people, its mining, lumber and agricultural industries, Volume I > Part 38
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2. Loaded
3. In the Sawmill
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up of the ice, and the coming of the spring freshet, in order to get the logs out of the creeks and over the rapids of the river during high wa. ter. As river driving was, at best, dangerous, the men that undertook that work were always a husky lot of fellows. They always dressed for the occasion, and were a picturesque lot, with their mackinac jackets of various brilliant colors, their trousers chopped off a little below the knee, or torn off and fringed, and with their foot-gear, variously con- structed according to the nature of their work; some with tall boots of either rubber or leather, but most of them with heavy woolen socks and heavy leather boots or shoes, into the soles of which were driven steel corks that protruded for the length of about half an inch for the pur- pose of enabling the wearer to not only secure a foothold for himself upon the logs upon which he had to work in the water, but also to en- able him. by the combined use of these corks and a long pipe pole, to control the movement of a single log upon which he would ride to di- rect its course. Often, in the flood-time, logs would go down so rapidly with the current of the stream that they would gather upon rapids and lodge there, and the succeeding logs would pile one upon another and by the force of the water and the resistance of the logs ahead they would be thrown almost vertically into the "jam"; in fact, be piled and heaped up and so crisscrossed as to make an immense mass that to look at would seem immovable. Many times have these log jams occurred and filled the river for miles, including, in a single jam, many millions of feet of logs. To break these jams was a work that required the skill and experience which only river drivers could have, and even to the most skilled of those the work was hazardous; for they must work in front of this immense jam and loosen the key logs in order to start the mass to moving. With the greatest of care. sometimes when the start comes it is with such force and in such a manner that the most skilful operators are thrown beneath the logs and lose their lives in the rapid current of the stream. Such occurrences have been known where the men involved were drivers of twenty years' experience, and supposed to know practically every detail pertaining to the work. On the coming down of the drive in the spring the mills would be in readiness to re- ceive the logs; always having received a thorough overhauling and re- pairing by the millwrights. so as to be, as far as possible, ready for a continuous season's run.
FIRST AND MODERN MILLS
The first mills in the Peninsula were erude affairs as compared to those of later date, but with the growth of the industry and with the settlement of surrounding states, creating a demand for lumber, im- provements in mills and milling facilities, as in logging operations, kept pace with the times. In the early mills the log was hauled onto a roll- way adjacent to the saw, by the use of a horse, and then, on the roll- way it was rolled to the saw and there adjusted upon the saw carriage, by men with cant-hooks. The saw was usually a single circular saw. from
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which the lumber was carried away by hand. These erude mills with which operations began were soon superseded by those with improved machinery until the logs were brought from the river into the mill by means of an endless chain operating over a long slide. There they were received by a scaler, who sealed them and recorded the scale, and if they were of different ownership the scales were kept separate aceord- ing to the mark upon each log indicating its owner. As improvements in milling developed, the gang saw was introduced, and thereafter the band saw, as well as the steam feed-the product of a local inventor, Mr. D. C. Prescott-to meet the demands of the occasion; whereby the log moves automatically, and with great rapidity, against the saw, on the carriage of which the log is also turned automatically by machin- ery under the control of the sawyer, who operates it with a view to making the log prodnee its utmost of the best grades of lumber. Through- out the mill, all subsequent operations are performed by machinery and the various kinds and grades of lumber prodnet are carried to their re- spective departments by machinery, acting automatically; the slabs and waste edging being diverted to the wood saws where they are eut up for use as firewood. To an operator of a saw-mill in the very early days, who has not seen the gradnal development that has been accom- plished, the modern mill is a wonder of the world.
PIONEER AND GREAT LUMBER COMPANIES
As to the early saw-mills of the Peninsula, Menominee seems to have been far in the lead in point of time; the first having been built in 1832 by Farnsworth & Brush, and the second in 1841, by Charles Me- Leod, while the first mill on the Escanaba was built about 1841 and the second in 1844. A saw-mill was constructed on Beaver island by the Mormon Settlement about 1849 or 1850, to supply local demands, and the first mill at Ontonagon was built in 1852, with a capacity of five thousand feet of lumber per day. Those mills were perhaps suitable to the needs of the times, but were trivial affairs when brought into comparison with an up-to-date mill of the present day, or even with those in the palmy white-pine days of twenty years ago.
In the decade from 1850 to 1860 lumber manufacturing began in earnest, and it was in 1851 that the N. Ludington Company, one of the great lumber corporations of the Peninsula, was organized and took over the mill that had been constructed at Flatrock ( Escanaba) in 1844, by John and Joseph Smith; Daniel Wells, Jr., of Milwaukee, was the official head of this company at the time of its organization, and eon- tinued his connection with it until his death, his activities covering al- most the entire history of white pine lumbering in Michigan. Hon. Isane Stephenson, of Marinette, at present United States Senator from Wisconsin, has also been identified with this company almost, if not quite, from its organization, and may be said to have been its active head throughout the company's successful history. The N. Ludington Company was the pioneer of the large lumbering corporations, and has
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outlived all its early great competitors, being still actively engaged in manufacturing lumber, and with timber to insure a supply for several years to come. In addition to its mill at Escanaba, this company also early entered the Menominee Valley district, and constructed its mill at Marinette, Wisconsin, in the years 1856 and 1857.
At the same time, the forerunner of another of the large corpora- tions came into the Menominee field, in the person of Abner Kirby, of Milwaukee, who commenced building in 1856 and began sawing lumber in Menominee in 1857, in the mill which, in 1861, became the property of the Kirby, Carpenter Company, on its organization. Hon. Samuel M. Stephenson had become interested in this mill with Mr. Kirby in 1859, and with Mr. Kirby and Messrs. Augustus A. and William O. Car- penter. organized the Kirby Carpenter Company, which was for many years conducted under the active management of Mr. Samuel M. Steph- enson, and which grew in business capacity until its two monster mills, with accompanying planing mills and machine shops, about twenty years ago, ranked as the most complete lumber manufacturing plant in the world; its property then exceeded in value $6,000.000, and was prob- ably worth nearly double that figure.
In the same year, 1856, the New York Lumber Company constructed a large mill at the mouth of the Menominee river, on the Wisconsin side, the same being the property more recently owned by the Menominee River Lumber Company, and in which many men of great prominence in national, state and great business affairs have been interested, in- cluding H. H. Porter, early the general manager of the Chicago & Northwestern Railway Company; Jesse Spalding, lumberman, banker, and at one time collector of the port of Chicago and and Philetus Saw- yer, capitalist, lumberman and for a long period United States senator from Wisconsin. While this mill is on the Wisconsin side, it has been closely identified with Michigan interests and has drawn largely upon the Upper Peninsula for its timber product.
As the individual mills will be written of in the chapters on the re- spective counties we will, in this instance, paxs the construction of some mills, which though prominent factors in the lumber world are not to be compared with those of the great lumber companies.
In 1863 the first mill of the Ludington, Wells and Van Schaick Company was built in Menominee. the company being formed of Daniel Wells, JJr., of Milwaukee; Harrison Ludington, of the Cream City. later governor of the state of Wisconsin; Isaac Stephenson, and Robert Stephenson. The company was then known as R. Stephenson and Com- pany. Later Isaac Stephenson conveyed his interest to Anthony G. Van Sehaick, and in 1874 the Ludington, Wells & Van Schaiek Company was organized and took over the property. This company promptly constructed an additional mill, and the two had a sawing capacity of 35,000,000 feet of lumber per year ; and the company, under the active superintendenee of Robert Stephenson, became a prominent factor in the lumber-producing world.
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Having mentioned three brothers, Isaae, Samuel and Robert Steph- enson, as being severally identified with three of the largest lumber eor- porations that ever existed in this northern country, it is proper to record that these gentlemen were products of the lumber sections of New Brunswick, and came to the Upper Peninsula as young men, with practically no education except such as experience in lumbering af- forded them, but with an abundance of energy and common sense, and just as opportunities for fortune making were opened up by the placing of our pine lands upon the market. This is not the place for their biog- raphies, but it is proper to say that all three made good in the lumber- ing world, and, although the mills in which they were severally inter- ested were owned by great corporations, they were known and univer- sally spoken of as "Ike's Mill," "Sam's Mill," and "Bob's Mill," and by many of the old settlers these mills are so known and referred to to- day, going further, to be specific, by saying-"Sam's New Mill," "Bob's Old Mill," etc .; and, to all old settlers, these men were "Ike," "Sam" and "Bob;" even after Isaae held down a seat in Congress and then in the United States Senate, and Samuel also became a member of Congress.
MENOMINEE RIVER BOOM COMPANY
But, to return from the lumbermen to the lumber. Many other eor- porations entered the field that has seemed to have an unlimited supply of white pine, with the result that that great supply diminished with astonishing rapidity, which may perhaps be best illustrated by a refer- ence to the operations of the Menominee River Boom Company.
The company was first organized in 1866 for the purpose of improv- ing the Menominee river and its tributaries. It was then known as the Menominee River Manufacturing Company, and in 1877 it was re-or- ganized as the Menominee River Boom Company. and during the cor- porate existence of the two companies it has had charge of the handling and sorting of practically all logs that have come to the mouth of the Menominee river by water. What amount of logs was sawed by the several companies operating prior to 1866 will probably never be known.
The Boom Company's records show its first scale of the logs passing through the booms to have been in 1868, so far as the records are now accessible, and the total logs handled by all the mills on the river, aceord- ing to that scale, that year, was 62,809,804 feet, scaled for merchantable lumber.
It had taken about ten years of active lumbering to bring the annual product up to that amount. In 1889, twenty-one years later, the zenith year in white-pine lumbering on the Menominee, when the Menominee was the largest lumber port in the world, the product, according to the Boom Company's scale, reached the magnificent amount of 642,137,318 board feet.
If one will stop to consider, he will realize that an annual cutting of such an amount, or nearly that amount of timber, means the destruc- tion of vast areas of forests, and the converting thereof into large sums
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of money, and it is not surprising that the white pine lumbering era was of short duration.
Efforts have been made to ascertain the total amount of lumber that has been eut from the peninsula, but without success, and accurate fig- ures upon this point can probably never be arrived at. Comparatively accurate figures might be arrived at as to the lumber shipped from im- portant points, but even these rail shipments of logs have formed a con- siderable factor for the past ten years' business, and no scale record thereof has been kept. Shipments are by weight, and the weights of pine, cedar and the various hard woods differ so materially, and there being no designation of the kinds of logs in some of the shipments, the confusion is at once so great as to render solution impossible. Then, too, for many years past many little interior mills have been shipping lumber and many jobbers have been shipping logs in con- siderable quantities to outside mills, while small mills at Bay Shore points have produced their logs independently of any boom com- pany, and shipped their products by schooner or small "hookers," so that large quantities of logs and lumber have left the peninsula without any accessible record thereof being retained.
THE PINE LUMBER BUSINESS
That the pine lumber business has run into large proportions is shown by figures of what has been handled by the boom companies. The rec- ord of the Menominee River Boom Company shows the gross lumber scale of the logs that have passed its booms from the year 1868 to the year 1910 to be 10,633,315.606 feet, which vast amount has been con- tributed to the commerce of the world, and has returned approximately a mill-run average value of $15 per thousand, or $159,499,734.09.
Add to this the product of the years before this record was kept, the overrun in lumber of the Boom Company's scale, the logs that have been brought in by rail, and the products of rail-way and bay-shore mills, and the product of the Menomince river valley will approximate if not exceed $200,000,000 worth, which is probably at least three-fourths of the product of the entire peninsula.
The vanishing of the pine forests has brought into demand the cedar and hard wood forests, and the recutting of the pine lands, so that the lumber interests of the Peninsula are still immense, and are destined to continue for many years to come. Naturally, the manufacturing is more widely distributed, and while large mills are still operating in old mill- ing centers, many large and well-equipped mills are located inland, re- ceive almost their entire logging product by rail, and ship their lum- ber likewise.
To illustrate that the lumbering business of the peninsula is still, and is destined to continue an active factor in business, the I. Stephen- son Company at Wells, Delta county, in its mills, a part rebuilt in 1910, has an annual production of lumber, 100,000,000 feet ; shingles. 75,000,000; lath, 75,000.000; and maple flooring, 20,000,000 feet, be-
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sides 75,000 posts and 10,000 poles; and it expects to be able to con- tinue this record for approximately twenty years.
The J. W. Wells Lumber Company, at Menominee, constructed in 1910, a mammoth fire-proof, hard-wood flooring factory, and is (1911), constructing, in connection therewith, a modern saw mill. using concrete in large quantities, with steel frame, and up-to-date in every way, with two nine-inch Prescott band mills, one eight-inch Diamond resaw, one fifty-two inch Wickes gang, shingle machine, tie mill, wood and lath mill. The maximum capacity of the mill, based on a twenty hours a day run, is, per annum, 50,000,000 feet of lumber, 20,000,000 pieces of shingles. 5,000,000 lath, and 100,000 ties, with the resultant produet in fire-wood. This company has large holdings of timber lands and is con- tinually purchasing, and expects to have a supply for at least twenty years to come.
Much more could be written of the incidents of lumber history in this peninsula but local details must be left to the history of the re- spective localities.
ESTIMATE OF PENINSULA PRODUCT
To arrive at the amount in feet, or in money value. of the entire lumber product of the peninsula is more difficult even than in the Me- nominee river section ; for, in the mining regions especially, local con- sumption has played a large part, and the records thereof are practic- ally a minus quantity and lumbermen variously estimate that the prod- uct of the Menominee River valley has been from three-fourths to four- fifths of the entire prodnet. Escanaba River, which is probably the next largest, has had approximately 1.500,000,000 feet of pine and with such other data as is obtainable, it appears that to put the Menominee product at three-fourths of the whole would be not far from right, which would give us a timber prodnet in the Peninsula, to date, of about $250.000,- 000. There is no data as to the amount of timber still standing, but there are vast quantities, especially of hard woods, and a movement has been inaugurated by lumber interests to learn the amount.
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CHAPTER XVII; 7 MILITARY HISTORY?
TRANSFER OF FRENCH TO ENGLISH RULE-AMERICANS OCCUPY THE UP- PER PENINSULA-MEXICAN WAR-CIVIL WAR-SPANISH-AMERICAN WAR AND PRESENT COMMANDS.
The general history of this Peninsula up to the year 1814 discloses the fact that this portion of the country was almost continuously, directly or indirectly, involved in or affected by the wars and conflicts that fol- lowed, one after another from the time of Queen Ann's war to the close of the war of 1812, involving at different times the English, French and American governments and numerous Indian nations. So much of the military history of those periods has gone to make up the concurrent history of this Peninsula that to give it here would be matter of repeti- tion, and we pass with the simple reminder that the respective grants from the governments of England and France so conflicted with each other that there arose sharp disagreements between the claimants under those grants, with the result that conflicts in the mother countries were easily transferred to this, and the bone of contention here resolved it- self into the location of the division boundary and early placed this section as a prominent point in the field of contest.
The territory now known as the Upper, or Northern Peninsula of Michigan was under military rule, first of France and then England until it became a portion of the territory of the United States, at the close of the Revolutionary war; and even for a term of years after its session to the United States, by treaty, did the English government ex- ercise its military control thereof, for purposes already mentioned.
TRANSFER OF FRENCH TO ENGLISH RULE
The transfer of rule from the French to the British was in 1760, following the contest in which occurred Braddock's defeat, the battles of Niagara, Crown Point and Lake George, and the deaths of the brave Generals Wolfe and Montcalm. The capitulation effected the surrender by the French to the British of all remaining important Canadian posts, including Michilimackinac. In the proceedings to effeet the actual
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transfer to the British, the French inhabitants became officious in arous- ing the protest of the Indians, which resulted in the Pontiac Conspiracy, which took public form with the great speech of Pontiac delivered near Detroit April 27, 1763, and in which conflict the first prominent event was the massacre of Michilimakinac, then located on the northern point of the Southern Peninsula, on the site of the present city of Mackinaw. The massacre occurred the following month, and the details thereof have been already quite fully written of. Its terrors of savagery, reeking with atrocities bathed and dripping in human blood, savagely celebrated by the practice of cannibalism, wherein the flesh of white soldiers was eaten and their blood drunk by the infuriated Indians, are too awful for repetition. The escape of Alexander Henry, a trader, was simply miraculous, he having been secreted by friendly Indians in a garret, and there preserved from discovery during a search of the garret by be- ing covered with a lot of prepared birch baskets; and later by being adopted by one of the Indians as a brother.
After this massacre the post was unoccupied, except by the Indians and a few friendly traders who ranged this part of the country until about a year thereafter, when Capt. Howard took command and the post was again under the control of an English garrison.
As has already been written, the Northern Indians took part in the siege of Detroit, and were active in other Indian disturbances that fol- lowed, one upon another, until the breaking out of the Revolutionary war, during which war the Indians were allied with the British, and the post at Mackinac remained in the occupation of the English, and sent forward many Indians to assist in resisting the Americans; Detroit then being the western center of the British command.
Again, to write of the Revolutionary conflict, as the same pertains to this Peninsula, would be but repetition, and we mention it here, but to preserve the chronological order of the military events that have af- fected in one way or another the Upper Peninsula; many of the events mentioned having had practically no direct effect except to postpone the settlement of the Peninsula.
AMERICANS OCCUPY THE PENINSULA
Following the treaty of peace of 1783 the English continued in ac- tual possession of the territory until 1796, under the pretext that the Americans had not complied with certain treaty provisions, and follow- ing the example set by the French when the English acquired the right to the territory, the English in turn incited the Indians against the Americans, so that Indian hostilities continued to keep the country in a turmoil, and the Indians made claim to all the country north and west of the Ohio, and sought to hold it by force. This resulted in action by congress, providing troops for the protection of the frontier, followed by the Indian wars wherein Tecumseh secured a large degree of united action in an Indian confederacy, claiming that all the land belonged to all the Indians, and that no nation could release any portion of it, but
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that all Indian nations must join to effectuate a legal release of any ter- ritory. At this time there were but few white settlements in Michigan, one of which was on Mackinac Island when there were about one thou- sand inhabitants, including the traders of the surrounding country, and there was a garrison of ninety men. As has been written, the War of 1812 took active form, and an attack on Mackinac was made, and its surrender to the British was demanded, before the commanding offieer at the post had any intimation of the declaration of war. General Hull has been greatly blamed by military men and historians, and may, per- haps, have been in a measure at fault for the surrender of Michigan posts to the British, but had the general government at Washington heeded General Hull's advice as to the country's unpreparedness, and its necessities in the line of military and naval defenses, there might not have been such ready surrender of American posts. It is to the credit of General Hull that in the previous winter he recommended the same course followed by the government later with such signal success, under the active leadership of Perry of the navy and Harrison, of the land forces.
In 1814 the attempt of the Americans to recapture the post at Mack- inac was unsuccessful, and Major Holmes lost his life in a contest wherein he fought at great odds and with awful results, of which the general history has already made mention. After the withdrawal of the American forees to prepare adequate re-enforcements, and before another attack was made, peace came to the two English speaking na- tions by the signing of the treaty of Ghent December 24, 1814. The government of the United States thereafter maintained its garrison at Mackinac, and soon after the expedition of General Cass in 1820, con- structed a fort and maintained a garrison at Sault Ste. Marie.
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