USA > Pennsylvania > Lycoming County > Picture of Lycoming County, 1st ed > Part 6
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A popular method of punishment was the "dunce's hat," which was placed upon the head of the stupid pupil. To his embarrassment he was forced to stand on an elevated spot be- fore his schoolmates. Generally, the teacher or "' "'master" was respected by his pupils and their parents, but after the close of his term he was the object of many pranks. There was dissen- sion in some communities regarding courses of instruction. The Germans naturally wanted their children taught in native tongue, but the other nationalities insisted that the instruction be given in English. These differences became so heated that separate buildings were erected at Jaysburg for the Pennsylvania German and the Scotch-Irish.
There was no free transportation to the schools in the pioneer days. Children 'were accustomed to walking four miles through lonely forests or unfrequented trails to their log school house. Dressed in homespun or in furs they were immune to the freezing weather of the mid-winter months. School was in session only in the winter months, when pupil and teacher could be spared from work in the fields.
There were no blackboards in the early schools. With a piece of keel or charcoal the teacher would write the A. B. C.'s on the walls or the pupils' desks. There were no textbooks for
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the advanced pupil. A spelling book, the Bible or prayer book, or an occasional newspaper served that purpose.
Later the Yankee schoolmaster introduced Daboll's arith- metic and the New England primer, together with some ad- vanced educational ideas. He substituted a droll wit for the cudgel and employed fun and frolic for his weapon. Unfortu- nately the memory of the feud between the Connecticut Yankees and the Pennsylvanians over the Connecticut Claim still per- sisted and many residents were still prejudiced against Yankees. In spite of this prejudice, the schoolmaster organized subscrip- tion schools, introduced the "spellin' skeule" and "singin' skeule" and the debating society. He soon convinced young people that it was fun to,"hook up Dobbin to the shay" and go to a schoolhouse gathering. Much credit is due the "writin' master." Before the days of the typewriter the art of writing was more important than it is today. Equipped with a "pen knife," the teacher sharpened points on goose quills at recess and noontime. The results of his teaching are found in old county court records. The beauty of the script has not improved with the steel pen. If one wishes to satisfy his mind as to whether or not the privations. and discomforts endured by the early scholars and teachers were worth what they cost let him but study the lives of the men who were a product of these mental nurseries. Forth from them came authors, statesmen, jurists, merchants, generals, patriots, and others who stamped an in- delible impression for good on the pages of history. That they acquired a foundation for honorable citizenship, a realization of the possibilities of human effort, an appreciation of the blessings of liberty and a spirit of patriotism that led them to sacrifice freely their lives that this nation might live is indisputable.
QUESTIONS CHAPTER VII
1. From. where did the early settlers of the West Branch Valley come? Why did they choose this location?
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A PICTURE OF LYCOMING COUNTY
2. By what route did the German immigrants reach Lycoming County from Germantown?
3. What were some of the hardships suffered by the early settlers?
4. How did the settlers obtain leather for shoes?
5. What were the duties or tasks of the pioneer women? Write a letter about pioneer life.
6. What was the name of the first railroad in Lycoming County?
7. Describe how houses were built in pioneer days.
8. What were the recreations of the pioneers?
9. What did the early settlers use instead of coffee and tea?
10. What were some of the early customs?
11. How were the log cabins illuminated?
CHAPTER VIII
Lumbering
W HEN the pioneers came to Lycoming County they found a wild and romantic region. Nine-tenths of it was a gloomy wilderness covered with an abundance of large timber, existing in tangled profusion. Nó wonder the Indian set fires to facilitate hunting. He had little use for wood. He was, in fact, unable to cut it easily with his axe of stone. When the white man ar- rived Lycoming County still had virgin forests of the finest hemlock and white pine.
FIRST TIMBER CUT
The first trees were cut for a twofold purpose: logs were needed for the erection of cabins, and the land had to be cleared for the sowing of crops. After the log huts had been built, trees seemed to the pioneers more of a liability than an asset. Since many of them had chosen land heavily covered with trees, the problem of getting rid of them was a major one. The easiest and most logical method was to burn them. Our grandfathers can well remember great piles of burning timber, of inestimable value at today's prices, consigned to the flames for lack of a market.
THE FIRST SAWMILLS
After the early settlers had cleared land for crops, their attention was directed to the improvement of their log houses. This required finished lumber and furnished the impetus for the erection of the first crude sawmills. One of the earliest and simplest devices for manufacturing lumber was the pit saw, a
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A PICTURE OF LYCOMING COUNTY
Portable Sawmill
common cross-cut rip saw with one man in a pit and another on top of the log furnishing the power. Improvement came with plain "up and down" saws powered by water. This saw was improved from time to time by adding "slabbers" and flat or rolling gangs. An important innovation was the first steam sawmill introduced by Peter Tinsman on January 1, 1852. It was located on the river bank at Williamsport, east of the later Shaw mill.
With the steam mill came the circular saws. Two objections to the circular saw were, first, the width of the kerf made by it wasted lumber; and secondly, it frequently was not big enough to cut large logs. The band saw was a long step forward in the
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process of sawing lumber; it is used today in all large operations and in many smaller mills. The band saw is an endless belt of flexible steel-saw which cuts logs of large diameter and makes a narrow kerf.
FIRST MILLS IN COUNTY
It is believed that Roland Hall built the first sawmill in 1792. The mill was on Lycoming Creek about four miles from its mouth. Although a crude apparatus, it produced lumber for many of the first houses in Williamsport. Six years later Samuel Torbett erected a mill on Bottle Run and Thomas Caldwell attached a sawmill to his gristmill on the same creek.
Since the early mills were powered by water, they were naturally located along streams. As the water mills became out- moded they were converted into steam mills. The early steam mills stayed along the streams because there was an abundance of timber in the valleys, logs could be floated to the mills, and, in many instances, lumber could be rafted directly from the mills to distant markets.
THE BUSINESS OF LUMBERING
The first requisite in the business of lumbering was the acquisition of timber. The early lumbermen either bought the timber land outright or in fee-simple. Many of them owned hundreds of acres of land for which they had no use after the timber was gone. These men often became "land poor." To overcome this condition, and in order to conduct the business on less capital, the lumbermen bought only standing trees of a cer- tain size, leaving the title to the soil and mineral rights to the original owner. Sometimes the buyer paid for timber on a certain tract without measuring the log feet by scale. A timber estimator would travel over the tract and calculate from ob- servation the amount of lumber it would produce. It was sur- prising how accurately he estimated. Another much-used method
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A PICTURE OF LYCOMING COUNTY
Bark Peeling Scene
of purchasing timber was that of scaling the logs after they were cut. Expert scalers, selected by agreement between seller and buyer, determined accurately the number of log feet.
After the timber had been purchased the next step was the cutting. There was little guesswork. Usually a jobber cut the logs at an agreed price for a thousand log feet. A crew of lum- berjacks felled the trees, cut them into proper sizes, and piled the logs on nearby skidways or along streams.
TWO PERIODS FOR CUTTING
Because of the importance of the bark in lumbering, timber was cut at two periods of the year. Hemlock trees could be peeled only from early spring until about July 1st, when because
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of sap conditions the bark could no longer be stripped. Hard- wood trees, with the exception of some kinds of oak, were not peeled, and could therefore be cut in the fall and winter. The hardwoods could be handled more economically then because they had already been stripped of their leaves by frost.
GETTING LOGS TO THE MILL
After the logs had been cut and piled the next operation was transporting them to the mill. Since there were two kinds of timber - the heavy hardwoods and the lighter woods such as white pine and hemlock - it was necessary to employ dif- erent methods of transportation to the saws. Only the lighter logs, such as hemlock and pine, would float; the hardwoods, such as oak and maple, were transported on sleds.
Floating or "driving" logs began with the first spring freshets or as soon as the heavy ice had cleared away. In some instances the work was done on a natural rise of water, but the lumber- men often built splash dams to facilitate the splashing or wash- ing of the logs downstream. Only experienced men were used in floating. Equipped with heavy, high topped, calked shoes, thick woolen clothes, and a peavey or "picklever" or "cant hook," the drivers chased the logs and broke up jams. Al- though care was exercised to prevent the formation of jams, the logs often became twisted into a tangled mass. The most skillful driver then had the dangerous job of releasing the key log. If he could not budge it, the jam was dynamited, with the re- sultant waste of valuable timber. Men and teams of horses fol- lowed the drive. It was a common sight to see horses, with men on their backs, swimming in the log-choked streams.
On the larger streams, such as Loyalsock Creek, the driving crews were usually accompanied by large ark rafts in which they ate and slept. The tired men often crawled into the hard bunks without changing their wet and frequently icy clothing. Old
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lumbermen who took part in the drives contend that the man who slept in his wet clothing suffered no ill effect and that colds, pneumonia, and rheumatism were unknown among those who followed this custom.
SLEDDING
The sled was an important vehicle in the lumber business. Because it was low, large logs could easily be placed upon it. The narrowness of its track enabled it to negotiate mountain trails, and a team of horses could draw an amazingly heavy load on snow or ice. When it became necessary to go farther back into the mountains to cut floatable logs, sleds were largely used to transport them to the streams. The heavy hardwoods had to be hauled all the way from the woods to the mills. During winters when the snowfall was light, logs were hauled day and night. Logs left in the woods through the summer greatly de- creased in value; also there was always the chance they would be destroyed in the numerous forest fires. When night hauling was necessary, the woods and log roads were illuminated with torches. Horses and men were often so tired that they slept dur- ing the midnight lunch period.
SLIDING
Another method of moving logs toward the mills was the slide. By hewing logs on one side and placing the sides together in a series, a long trough or chute was made from the top of a mountain to the stream. After the slide was oiled or iced, logs were placed in the trough and started toward the water's edge where they piled up in a rough and tumble landing. To regu- late the speed of the logs in their wild ride it was necessary to insert protruding spikes at intervals along the slide to retard motion. In spite of these devices for controlling momentum the logs would often make terrifying jumps from the speedway.
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LUMBERING
CAMP LIFE
Although the life of the lumberjack was strenuous, it was not without compensations. The atmosphere in which he lived and worked was conducive to health and high spirits. Though he sometimes worked from dark to dark the healthful mountain air laden with the aroma of pine and hemlock aroused a ravenous appetite which he satisfied with plain well-cooked food. After supper he could look forward to a restful night in the loft of a wind swept cabin. He was not surprised to find a carpet of snow in his loft when he heard the early breakfast call, "Come and get it!"
The earliest lumber camps, like the pioneer dwellings, were built of logs, but after the sawmills were erected it was more economical to construct these temporary structures of cheap lum- ber and slabs. They were the plainest kind of buildings, with three rooms on the first floor :- kitchen, dining room and a lobby. The second floor had one large bunk room for the crew and fre- quently a smaller compartment for the boss. The furniture was crude: benches instead of chairs, a long dining room table of the picnic variety, and bedroom equipment of boards and straw.
The most popular room in camp was the lobby. With a big chunk stove loaded with beech or maple radiating welcome heat, a table, cards, and plenty of tobacco, the woodsmen were fixed for the evening. It is unfortunate that many of the tall tales and stories have been lost, for these plain, unlettered men were prime storytellers. One of the popular discussions in the bark-peeling season centered about the subject of rattlesnakes. Timber, particularly hemlock, seemed to attract rattlesnakes. There were instances where certain tracts could not be cut dur- ing the summer season owing to the prevalence of these dan- gerous pests. A bark-peeler considered the killing of three or four rattlesnakes part of his day's work. One Lycoming County
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A PICTURE OF LYCOMING COUNTY
2
Crew at Lumber Camp
camp reported that had the men skinned all the "bell-snakes" they killed and tacked the hides on their sizable shanty, it would have been completely weather-boarded.
RECREATION
There was little time or opportunity for recreation. The camps were far from social centers, and evenings in the lobby were too short for more than a round or two of "seven-up." Because of the long hours of labor most of the men were ready to "hit the hay" shortly after supper. Rainy days were spent in grinding axes, repairing tools, greasing harness, calking and nailing shoes, mending and washing clothes. Sunday was wel-
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comed as a day of well-earned rest. Men who lived near the camp would occasionally go home for the day, but most of them stayed in camp from spring until the 4th of July. Many of the men did not draw their pay during their entire stay, and, since their wages were above the average, they accumulated sizable bank rolls. They lost no time getting to the nearest town. Wil- liamsport, because of its size and accommodations, was the most popular resort.
SAWMILL LIFE
Sawmill men, like woodsmen, possessed great powers of endurance. The morning whistle blew promptly at six o'clock, and the saws began to whir immediately. Every man had to be at his post, for a sawmill was a well organized machine. The day's output of lumber depended, in large measure, upon the head sawyer. If no logs were slabbed by the main saw there were none to be finished by the gang saws, the edgers, the cut- offs, and the lath mill. The head sawyer paid little attention to what happened to the log after he had performed his initial operation. If he pushed the logs along too fast for the other sawyers, that was not his worry. When he outstripped the crews he was feeding, he felt he was deserving of his higher wage. His job was not without its hazards. When a saw was forced beyond its capacity, it was not unusual for it to break or to burst into flying pieces.
Another valuable man about the sawmill was the master mechanic. He had to be versatile indeed. His principal work was to keep the saws sharp, but he was called upon to fix every- thing from the simple "bull-wheel" which dragged the logs up the "jack-slip" to the complex twin-engines which furnished the power to move the carriage forward and backward.
Speed was the byword of a mill. The "setter" and the "dogger" who rode the carriage had to be particularly fast. The head sawyer gave them little time to adjust their instruments.
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A PICTURE OF LYCOMING COUNTY
The log must go on; the slab must go off, to fall on "live- rollers," guided by "off-bear" men toward the rear of the mill. The finished lumber finally reached the end of the mill. Here it was pushed on hand cars to the pilers, the biggest and strong- est men on the job. Equipped with heavy leather aprons and "hand leathers" to protect them from splinters, they placed the heavy planks on an orderly pile. They were among the highest paid men in the unskilled class.
The working hours, as late as the 90's, were from 6 A.M. to 6 P.M. with an hour for dinner. They worked six days a week. During winter the plant was illuminated by torches morning and evenings. Sometimes the mill ran all night with only the poor light of oil torches. Wages ran from 80 cents per day for boys to $4.00 for the sawyer and head mechanic. The lumber pilers received $2.00 a day and found. Most of the men were boarded by the mill owners in a nearby camp or house. If the worker paid his own room and board, he was allowed 40 cents a day extra.
During the long summer days there was an hour or two for daylight recreation after supper. Some of the men went fishing, some swam in the mill pond, and others held a contest in "log cuffing" or "log rolling." Two men shod with calked shoes would ride a log to deep water and, with their feet, roll or spin it rapidly. The first man to tumble lost the game.
One summer a sawmill crew had the good fortune of hav- ing an extraordinary entertainer among them. Mike Scully, the blacksmith, had a penchant for snakes. He had not been a member of the sawdust crew very long before he advertised, "Don't kill snakes. I pay money for live ones." Mike had been wise in choosing a location for the snake business, for there were plenty of snakes with which to operate. His verbal adver- tisement by way of the "grapevine" was so effective that a stranger soon inquired for the purchasing agent of the Scully
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LUMBERING
Snake Company, Limited. The stranger, a Mr. Catchem, had snared a particularly fine specimen of yellow rattlesnake and was anxious to get a market quotation. Mr. Scully, wishing to create the impression that his company's working capital was unlimited, informed the owner of the reptile that his sample was fine and asked how many dozens he had at home ready for delivery. The salesman replied by saying that he was just the junior partner of the firm of Snarem and Catchem, but, since his firm owned hundreds of untapped rattlesnake dens he was sure that Mr. Snarem would not bother with small orders. He preferred to do business on a wholesale scale. Mr. Catchem left his rattler - in exchange for 50 cents - and said he would report back in a few days.
The news of the purchase spread like measles. Mike was deluged with snake vendors. The fire in his forge was neglected, his irons had to be reheated, his work piled up, and he almost lost his job, all because so much of his time was spent on snake deals. But he accomplished his purpose. He created one of the best menageries of its kind in the county. The warehouse of the Scully Snake Company was filled and purchasing stopped.
Mike's pets needed exercise and training. They also needed an audience to cheer them when they performed laudable feats. and the mill-men had free grandstand seats to the circus. With every performer on his pedestal and the ringmaster in the center the show was on. Each actor had his chance to do a stunt. They tied themselves into fancy and difficult knots, shaped themselves into ornate pendants about their keeper's neck, con- torted themselves into stylish bracelets and anklets, and con- tested with each other in distance striking. Of course the com- petitors were classified. The water snakes competed in the aquatic events, the garter snakes in the stretching contests, the black snakes and racers in sprints, the adders and vipers in hissing and blowing, the green snakes in preening and showing, the milk
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A PICTURE OF LYCOMING COUNTY
snakes in milkiness, and the copperheads and rattlesnakes in plain viciousness.
WILLIAMSPORT, THE LUMBER CITY
In 1838, forty-six years after Hall erected his primitive mill, Williamsport's first sawmill was built at the foot of Locust Street. Although it contained only four "up-and-down" saws powered by four water wheels it was known as the "Big Water Mill." Lumber was manufactured on a commercial scale and shipped to distant markets. With the success of the Big Mill others sprang up as if by magic.
One of the most influential men in the development of the lumbering business, not only in Williamsport but all along the West Branch of the Susquehanna River, was Major James H. Perkins. He was born in 1803, in the village of South Market, New Hampshire. At middle age he had accumulated a fortune in the calico business in Philadelphia. Believing he could further increase his wealth by entering the lumber business in Lycoming County, he came to Williamsport in 1845. Shortly afterward he purchased the Big Water Mill. Armed with capital, business experience, and plenty of energy, Perkins soon demonstrated that the lumbering industry had a brilliant future. After oper- ating the mill for a number of years he sold it and constructed a more modern steam mill at DuBoistown, which he success- fully directed for fourteen years.
When the timber in the immediate vicinity of Williams- port was exhausted, a cheap method of transporting logs from a distance had to be found. There were millions of trees farther up the river. The logical way to get the logs to the mills was to float them; but this process required a device for stopping them when they reached Williamsport.
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LUMBERING
THE BOOM
In order to solve this problem Major Perkins put into operation a device that was to revolutionize the lumber industry and to make Williamsport famous for lumber throughout the country. The boom (the word comes from beam) consisted of a chain of logs stretched diagonally across the river. At the height of its development the boom extended from Williams- port to Linden, a distance of six miles, and was able to hold 300,000,000 feet of logs at one time.
At the peak of operations the lumber kings of Williams- port operated some thirty great sawmills. To feed these giant hungry machines, in 1873, the peak year, 1,582,460 logs were required, which when converted into lumber amounted to 318,342,712 board feet. Today there is not a large sawmill in the county. Virgin trees are few and scattered, and the second- growth is small in size of logs as well as in tracts. The tan- bark industry, which was so important at one time that hemlock trees were cut and stripped for their bark and the wood allowed to rot in the forest, is now virtually defunct. Other tanning materials from which tannin is extracted, such as que-bracho- wood from South America, are now substituted for native bark. Most of the lumber is manufactured in the portable mill, some- times called the "vest-pocket" mill, a compact piece of machinery which may be moved easily from place to place. The mill is transported to the timber instead of the opposite. Finished lumber is delivered to the market by motor truck.
THE FORESTS TODAY
"I regard the forest as a heritage given to us by nature, not for spoil or to devastate, but to be wisely used, reverently honored and carefully maintained."
Baron Ferdinand von Mueller.
Log Boom in Susquehanna River
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LUMBERING
The war on the forests of Lycoming County has left a sorry aftermath. Gifford Pinchot, first chief of the United States Forest Service, once told a group of western lumbermen that if they continued cutting timber as fast as they had been cutting it, their forest would be cleared in thirty years.
"Mr. Pinchot," replied the leader of the group, "there is enough timber tributary to our mills to keep them going for seven generations."
That was in 1915. Today the timber is gone, the mills are closed, fifteen hundred workers are scattered. This is not an isolated case, but illustrates a condition that obtained not only in the West but also in Lycoming County.
As late as the middle 90's a thousand board feet of grade- A hemlock lumber, after it had been hauled by wagon a dis- tance of ten miles, sold for $6.50. Less than twenty-five years later this same amount of lumber brought $36.50. The price of lumber today is so high as to make building costs prohibitive. Many buildings recently constructed in the county have not a piece of native timber in them. Most of the lumber has been transported for hundreds of miles. Because of high lumber and transportation costs all kinds of substitutes have been employed. Trees that were once considered worthless are today transported miles and manufactured into lumber that would have been classed as cull by the lumbermen of yesteryear.
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