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Life along the St. John
River during my early boy-hood was full of activity; and in the
forest or on the farm every moment of the day, from dawn until
twilight, was given up to labor. The period was one of abounding
prosperity. The demand for timber from abroad, especially for masts
and spars, was apparently unlimited and as the forests were cleared
away the fertile soil, especially in the intervales, yielded rich
harvests. These opportunities were the goal for an unending stream
of immigrants principally from Ireland and Scotland.
The St. John River,
the broad thoroughfare to the sea, was a constantly shifting
panorama of the industries which prevailed along its banks, from the
wilderness above to the city at its mouth where the tide rolls in
with resistless energy from the Bay of Fundy. At Hartland and Spring
Hill I saw, as a child, the products of the forest go by in an
endless stream of rafts, the towboats laden with supplies for the
farms, the canoes of the Indians and white men, the pirogues of the
Acadians carrying to market the woolen garments made from their own
flocks of sheep and maple sugar obtained in the woods. Even at night
it was not still. Through the darkness flared the flambeaux of the
fishermen, the lure of the salmon of which its waters yielded rich
harvest.
The lands bordering
upon the river from the mouth to Grand Falls, over which I have seen
huge logs plunge like chips in a torrent, were considered from the
point of view of the time a well settled area. Villages and small
settlements were numerous and at intervals between them were small
water-mills, taverns and stores at which the farmers obtained their
supplies. In addition to the common occupations, farming and
lumbering, vessel-building had become a well established industry.
It was carried on at Hartland, Squire Nevers' place, and at
Taylortown and Sheffield - the one above, the other below,
Mangerville. It is recorded that Benedict Arnold, who took refuge in
the province and lived for a time at St. John, came into possession
by not altogether honorable means of the Lord Sheffield, the first
ship built on the river. As far back as 1800, sixty-seven ships were
launched on St. John; and at one time during that period two hundred
square rigged vessels lay in St. John harbor awaiting cargoes.
I have, of course, no
direct recollection of Maugerville, where I was born. It has since
shrunk to a quiet hamlet, and the house of Colonel Miles, where I
first saw the light of day, undermined by the river, has been
obliterated. The same melancholy fate has overtaken the Allen and
Murray estates at Spring Hill. Only a few of the buildings which
were standing in my time, including the two little Episcopal
churches at which the people of the neighborhood worshiped, remain.
My earliest
experiences were at Hartland, Squire Nevers' place, and on the farm
at Greenfield. The landmarks most distinctly fixed in my memory in
this vicinity were Charles McMullen's "castle," a short distance
below Hartland, Robert Carr's store and hotel on the main river near
Greenfield, Tupper's store and the gristmill and blacksmith shop on
Buttermilk Creek. However unimportant they might appear from the
latter-day point of view, in the social and industrial scheme of
things that prevailed in New Brunswick during the early part of the
last century these supply stores, mills, taverns, and blacksmith
shops were institutions of much consequence from which the activity
of the neighborhood radiated.
For those who were
old enough life meant, at this time, little more than hard work. My
father gave his attention to the farm, hiring in the summer-time. In
the winter and spring he was away in the woods, lumbering or
logging. This routine was followed by most of the men on the upper
St. John; and not a few of them, when the long day was over, came
home to thresh grain and attend to the needs of their live stock.
Many times while driving homeward after a belated excursion in the
neighborhood I heard the sound of the beating flails coming through
the darkness from the barns along the roadside.
Our manner of living
was simple. There was little leisure and the luxuries were few, but
our activity in the woods and on the river kept us in bounding
health and good spirits and we did not regard our lot as at all
difficult. Stoves were, in this region at least, unknown. The big
open hearth, with its blazing logs, its pots and kettles, was the
center of domestic activity. Beside it stood the dyeing pot, the
large old-fashioned spinning wheel, and the other crude implements
of the day with which the wool from the sheep of which every farm
maintained a flock, large or small - was carded, colored, and spun
to be woven into cloth.
Public schools had
not yet been established. The education of us children was committed
to the charge of two Irish schoolmasters who taught with the aid of
a birch rod and, as part compensation, were received as boarders and
lodgers in the households of their pupils, going from one to another
in succession. Even this rudimentary schooling was limited. As soon
as a boy was old enough to share the pressing burden of labor his
attention was absorbed by the farm or the forest, and the girls were
called upon to perform some of the manifold household duties
including carding, spinning, and weaving. Under the rigid rule of
necessity they even made their hats out of braided wheat straw, in
which art they became adept, and a modest ribbon for adornment was
counted a valuable treasure. I remember distinctly the gravity of
the investigation that followed the disappearance of one when I was
a small boy.
The general diversion
of the period was the "frolic," a neighborhood affair combining
industry with pleasure corresponding to the ''bee" in New England.
There were "frolics" for mowing and reaping, for carding wool,
quilting, clearing the forest, and hauling and raising barns,
almost every kind of work that could be carried on collectively with
one's neighbors. The host, as beneficiary of the concerted effort,
provided refreshments as elaborate as the modest scale of living
afforded, among which, for the men, was a generous supply of rum,
the favorite beverage of the time.
About this time,
1837, during the hay-making season, I set out one morning with one
of our neighbors named Campbell, a vigorous old Irishman whose
sympathies were with the Unionist cause, to cut out from his flock
grazing on the commons three or four sheep which were to be
slaughtered to provide mutton for the men working in the fields. It
was a warm day and the work of rounding up the animals strenuous,
and we sat down on on the grass by the roadside to rest. Campbell,
then an old man, propped against a tree, took from his pocket an
Irish newspaper, the only medium through which we received news of
what was going on in the old world, which must have been several
weeks old at least, as it was brought by sailing vessel, adjusted
his heavily rimmed spectacles and proceeded to read aloud to
himself. Lying beside him, with one eye on the sheep, I listened
attentively. In his slow and deliberate fashion entirely oblivious
of my presence he read of the death of William IV and the accession
of Queen Victoria, then eighteen years of age, to the throne of
Great Britain and Ireland.
After my mother's
death I was left to a large extent to follow my own inclinations, as
my father was away much of the time in the woods and the only
parental authority we recognized reposed in my elder sister. Perhaps
in my vagaries I covered a larger field than other small boys
because of my comparative freedom, and wandered more or less at will
over the neighborhood. But I was in no wise different. I frequented
the swimming hole by a cedar tree which I visited in 1855, 1856,
1880, 1894, and 1903, and fished in a small lake back of the farm at
Greenfield with one of our neighbors, Andy McMonigle, who
occasionally gave me an Irish fish book,all fish hooks seemed to be
of Irish origin. If that were lost I fell back on a bent pin, which
served very well, as the abundance of the fish made up for what I
might have lacked in the way of tackle.
The most important
historical event of which I have a clear recollection was the
controversy in 1839 over the boundary between Maine and New
Brunswick, sometimes called the Aroostook War. In the diminishing
perspective of three quarters of a century this incident appears to
have been of little consequence, but in the environment in which I
lived it loomed large in its proportions and to the people of the
province it was a matter of grave portent.
The region involved
in the controversy was that in which my father lumbered and was
generally known as Madawaska, the territory originally occupied by
the Acadians when they were transferred from their earlier
settlements along the St. John. Along the border there had always
been more or less smuggling. In my boyhood I had known of such
devices as trap doors in the bottom of sleighs which could be sprung
permitting the loads to fall in the snow by the wayside when a
revenue officer hove in sight. Disputes also arose over the
ownership of timber and the crisis was finally precipitated by
clashes between the civil authorities of the State of Maine and the
Province of New Brunswick.
Under the shadow of
war in 1839 lumbering operations in Aroostook County and along the
upper St. John generally ceased. On March 1st eight hundred
fusiliers arrived in St. John from Cork and five hundred British
regulars were sent to Madawaska. The farmers and lumbermen of the
vicinity under British jurisdiction were pressed into service to
haul soldiers to Quebec where the garrison was being strengthened;
and on sides of the boundary the militia was held in readiness for
war, trains of sleighs laden with soldiers and munitions stretching
along the roads through the forests.
The Yankees erected a
blockhouse on the Aroostook River called Fort Fairfield, and at the
mouth of the Fish River, where I afterward lumbered with my father,
was Fort Kent, named for the Governor of Maine, whose fame has
survived in the slogan:
"Maine went
Hell bent
For Governor Kent."
When hostilities
threatened and the militia of New Brunswick was called out, my
father, as orderly sergeant, went into service. These forces were
quartered in an unfinished church at Tobique where he, by reason of
his rank, occupied the pulpit. In the vicinity was also a force of
grenadiers, regular troops. Between the two there was always more or
less friction and ill feeling which was manifested in frequent
brawls and fights, and on one occasion the grenadiers invaded the
church in which the militia was housed and were on the point of
charging them under arms when Colonel Nugent, their commanding
officer, arrived just in time to prevent what might have been a
serious encounter.
Both regulars and
militiamen frequented Tibbetts's tavern, about a mile up the Tobique
River. One afternoon my father went to this place to warn two of his
men, John Laird and James McMonigle, to return to quarters before
their leave expired. Two grenadiers, who were in the bar-room at the
rear of the tavern drinking, went out shortly after he entered and
secreted themselves in a hallway. When he passed a moment later they
struck him down with a handspike, leaving him lying unconscious on
the floor. Here he was discovered by McMonigle and Laird who, after
summoning aid, armed themselves with pine clubs and set out in
pursuit of the assailants.
They found them on
the river bank a short distance from the tavern. Laird felled his
man with a blow, but McMonigle's club broke. He thereupon grappled
with the grenadier and in the struggle the two men rolled over and
over, down the river bank to the ice below. Fortunately for
McMonigle, he brought up on top and proceeded in a blind fury to
beat the soldier with the remnant of his weapon until others
intervened. As a penalty for the assault one of the grenadiers,
after a trial, was transported to Botany Bay; the other died at St.
John before he was sentenced. For six weeks my father was
incapacitated and never fully recovered from the effects of the
injury he sustained which, I have no doubt, shortened his life,
although he was eighty-five years on when he died.
Some of the incidents
of this period which I remember bore a less serious aspect. About
this same time Stover Ryan, a Yankee, whom I met a number of years
afterward at Janesville, Wisconsin, while hauling a small cannon on
a sleigh, left his charge and went into a tavern to refresh himself.
John Bradley, one of the men employed by my father, saw the
unguarded piece and, stirred with patriotic fervor, set about to
unlash it and dray it to a water hole in the ice on the river, where
he purposed to consign it to watery oblivion. Before he succeeded
Ryan appeared and he took to his heels. This was not the only one of
Bradley's patriotic exploits. He also set fire to the Yankee
blockhouse at Fort Fairfield, but the blaze was extinguished before
much damage was done. The blackened logs remained, however, a
monument to his prowess.
Fortunately, the war
over the boundary was averted largely through the efforts of Sir
John Harvey, Governor of New Brunswick, and General Winfield Scott.
These men had become intimate friends through unusual circumstances.
General Scott saved Sir John's life in the War of 1810 at the battle
of Lundy's Lane, and not long afterward Sir John performed the same
service for General Scott at Quebec where, while a prisoner of war,
he was set upon by several Indian chiefs who were bent on killing
him. They were selected to take up preliminary negotiations and
signed a protocol at Augusta, Maine, on March 23, 1839.
Subsequently, in accordance with the terms of the Webster-Ashburton
treaty, the controversy was submitted to arbitration and the
boundary was fixed by the King of the Netherlands.
The part played by
Daniel Webster, then Secretary of State, in the negotiations made
him the target indirectly for much bitter criticism. When President
Harrison, by whom he was appointed, died and was succeeded by
President Tyler, Webster did not resign with the other members of
the cabinet. For this he was denounced by his party colleagues, the
Whigs, whom Tyler had antagonized, and virulent attacks were made
upon him. After the boundary controversy had been settled he
explained publicly, in a speech at Faneuil Hill, that he had been
performing a patriotic duty by remaining at his post against his
will until the treaty negotiations had been completed and turned the
guns of his oratory upon those who had been criticizing him for his
action.
At this time the
dominating industry along the St. John River which overshadowed
every other activity was lumbering. It was to the forests that the
province owed in greatest measure its prosperity and its rapid
development. From the very outset of its history they attracted the
attention of explorers. French and English navigators skirting the
shores of the St. John River observed that the trees were of a size
far greater than those yielded by the forests of the old world, and
because of their straight trunks and great height were incomparable
for masts and spars. Nowhere else, it was thought, could such timber
be obtained, and the constantly increasing size of sailing vessels
demanded loftier masts for their equipment.
When the English
dominion was extended into Canada, after the battle of Quebec, the
English government itself adopted a plan prohibiting the cutting of
pine trees within three miles of the shores of the river St. John.
Later surveyors of the Crown were sent into the woods to select
trees suitable for masts which they marked with broad arrows.
Afterward this plan was abandoned and a law was passed allowing a
bounty for trees beyond a certain size. This, I believe, is still in
effect, although it is no longer observed.
Immediately after the
Revolution, when the supply from the colonies was cut off, the
British government entered into contracts with New Brunswick
lumbermen to provide masts for the Royal Navy, and two or three
firms took up the work. The arrival of the first cargo at Halifax on
the way to England in a navy transport was considered of such
importance that it was announced to the British Secretary of State
by the Lieutenant-Governor.
The rivalry to obtain
suitable trees was keen among these early operators. The importance
which the industry assumed may be gathered from the Francklin, Hazen
and White correspondence, according to which success was measured in
terms of the number and size of logs obtained. "I take this
opportunity," Peabody, one of the agents, wrote to his firm in 1782,
of acquainting you that I have the offer of about 20 sticks from
Samuel Nevers and Mr. Tapley. The sticks is well sized, one mast of
30 inches & one 23 inch Yard, and others of lower sizes. I finished
hauling masts at Roosagwanis last Thursday. Got out 37 sticks
without any misfortune, & tomorrow morning shall move our Teams to
Glazier's, where I expect to get out 40 or 45 sticks."
With Samuel Nevers
and Sherman Tapley, then engaged in the masting industry, my father
became associated later on; and in this environment I grew up as a
boy. It was but natural under the circumstances that I should have
been attracted to the forest and, whether I liked it or not, that my
experiences should have taken me in the way of lumbering. As it was
I submitted without reluctance and learned willingly many lessons
which I was able to apply to great advantage in the West, where I
hauled masts and spars for many of the vessels on the Great Lakes.
Even offers of a university career did not divert me. For nearly
four score years I have held constantly to this course into which my
destiny guided me.
The greater
proportion of merchantable timber at this time was ton timber or
hewn timber, although some lumber was sawed in the small water-mills
along the river and at St. John. A ton or load was twelve inches
square and forty feet long. Sometimes as much as eight or ten tons
were obtained from a single pine tree and timber from twenty to
thirty inches square was exceedingly valuable. In this form it was
transported, in ships built especially for that purpose, to England,
Ireland, and Scotland, where it was in great demand, and whip-sawed
by hand.
To digress for a
moment: I doubt whether anyone has a keener realization than I of
the extent to which the timber resources of the United States are
being exhausted. When I was a boy the thousands of rafts floated
down the St. John River gave evidence of the wealth of the forests
that were falling before the axe of the colonist and the lumberman.
Later, when I went to Maine with my father, the upper reaches of the
Penobscot poured a constant stream of logs down to the busy mills
between Oldtown and Bangor. What the great stretch of continent to
the westward was to yield in the way of timber was as yet a closed
book, some of the pages of which I myself turned from day to day in
the way of work and experience. It fell to my lot in some measure to
blaze a way through some of the most extensive forests that have
added millions to the wealth of the country and contributed more
than can be easily estimated to its upbuilding.
Within the limits of
a single lifetime, a rather long lifetime, perhaps, what once seemed
to be illimitable stretches of virgin forest in New Brunswick, in
Maine, in Wisconsin and Michigan, have melted away before the
westward tide of settlement. The scarcity of timber that seemed so
remote then is now ominously close. I have seen the pine forests of
Wisconsin and Michigan, untracked by white men, disappear, the hard
woods going and the developed farms spreading over what was not many
years ago the heart of the wilderness.
East of the Rocky
Mountains timber has been cut so rapidly that there is now a
scarcity of raw material for lumber, ties, pulpwood, and other
products. The question of reforestation is upon us. Devastated areas
must be replanted and the resources that still remain to us
husbanded. This, of course, will be a slow process. From now until
our efforts have yielded fruit we must look to Canada, where there
is an immense wilderness of forest north of Lake Superior and west
of Hudson Bay, for lumber, pulp and pulpwood. From this region the
eastern portion of the United States can be supplied, and for this
reason I believe there should be no tariff on lumber or any raw
material coming from Canada. As a matter of fact, I am in favor of
the free admission of all raw material.
Twenty-five years ago
the Menominee River region was producing more logs than any other
place in the world, between seven and eight hundred million feet a
year, and many of the more experienced lumbermen were reaping the
harvest that had been awaiting the axe from immemorial times. If the
prediction had been made then that the pine timber would have been
exhausted in a quarter of a century, it would have been received
with derision. Yet this has come to pass.
There are still great
forests in California, Oregon, and Washington, but I now venture to
make the prophecy that in another twenty-five years this supply will
be practically exhausted if restrictive measures are not imposed
upon the activities of the lumbermen. What with the cutting and the
waste, the devastating forest fires, and the persistent and
resistless extension of the cultivated land areas, timber will be
scarce and we shall be obliged to look to the British possessions
for our supply. |
