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In August, 1840, when I
was little more than eleven years old, I began my career in
lumbering. With seven men,—five of whom had blackened eyes, evidence
of the rum-drinking and fighting commonly indulged in by the Irish,
Scotch, and English along the river at this time,— I set out for my
father's camp on the Miramichi road, six miles up the Shiktehawk
River, about ten miles from my home in Greenfield. I rode a black
horse with which we "snaked" our two canoes around the rocks where
the current was swift, and twice swam across intersecting streams
clinging to the hames of my mount.
At the camp were
fifteen men, with fourteen horses, felling the trees, hewing them
into ton timber and piling them on rollways on the banks of the
river whence they were floated down the the St. John for the export
trade. In accordance with the system of the time Sherman Tapley, an
associate of Squire Nevers, as the "supply man," advanced the
equipment and provisions for the camp. My father as contractor had
full charge of and was responsible for the operations carried on.
The winter of 1840
and 1841 was unusually rigorous. The snow was seven feet deep, and
whether for this or some other reason the country was overrun with a
horde of wolves which, it was supposed, had migrated from the
ice-bound wilderness to the north in search of food. At the camp
they did not molest its, but they invaded the sheep folds at the
farms in Packs and slaughtered the unfortunate animals by the
scores. Some of the poorer families for lack of secure stables were
obliged to take their small flocks into their houses at night for
safe keeping.
Work at the Camp moved according to a well-measured routine. The men
arose shortly before daybreak and went to work in the woods on
snowshoes, beginning as soon as the light was sufficient to enable
them to see clearly. Except for the brief interval of rest at midday
for dinner which I brought to them, they kept at it steadily until
nightfall, when they returned to camp. Being too tired for
diversion, as a rule, they went to bed shortly after supper. So life
moved for them (lay after day until the approach of spring unlocked
the fast-frozen streams, and the timber was floated down to market.
The only respite from labor was afforded by Sunday, and on that day
axes were ground, repairs made, and the camp set in order for
operations during the week.
To me was assigned the duty of cooking.
Although not very proficient, I managed well enough, as our fare was
limited to pork, beans, bread, molasses, tea, and dried apples,—not
a well diversified diet but as good as could be obtained under the
circumstances. The men were satisfied mainly, perhaps, because the
time did not afford a higher standard by which they might measure
the shortcomings of their own lot. Nor did their health suffer for
lack of luxuries, edible or otherwise. Sickness was rare. In my long
experiences in the woods in New Brunswick, in Maine, and in later
years, in Wisconsin and Michigan, I discovered that ordinary
ailments and diseases were phenomena of community life and that
their prevalence was largely in proportion to the complexities of
the modern way of living. In the isolated camps in the pine forests
they had no place.
Logging and timber making, of course,
had its dangers. During this same winter one of the men of our camp,
Kinney Landers, was killed, and another, named Hoyt, was injured
while breaking out a rollway. Both men, citizens of the United
States, were pinned under the rolling logs and Landers was crushed
to death. For the funeral, I remember, the activities of the camp
were suspended for three or four days when time was most valuable.
There were also many cuts and gashes due to the slipping of axes on
the frozen timber, but infection of the wounds was extremely rare -
I do not remember a case of what has been called blood-poisoning -
and recovery rapid.
Most of the lumbering at this time was
done by men who, like my father, contracted to fell the trees and
hew the logs into square timber. Capital was scarce and the
contractors generally were obliged to obtain their supplies of
credit, a condition that was unfortunate for those who were most
active in the industry. Unscrupulous capitalists, in many instances,
took every advantage of the harsh debtors' laws to acquire
possession of the fruits of the labor of the men who suffered
hardship and privation in the forest and upon whom the burden of
production rested most heavily. When the timber had been cut the
creditors, under cover of the drastic law, swooped down upon the
contractors and seized it for debt before it could be delivered. The
contractor himself was thrown into a debtor's cell. Some of tile
largest lumbering firms in Canada resorted to this practice, which
became a positive evil, and hundreds of the most efficient lumbermen
in New Brunswick to escape the sheriff fled across the border and
took refuge in Maine, where they contributed much to the prosperity
and upbuilding of the country.
In the winter of 1840 and 1841 one
Purdy, of the firm of Purdy and Dibble, storekeepers, arrived at our
camp with a deputy sheriff of the county, named Craven, on their way
to arrest 'William Rogers, a neighboring contractor and to seize his
timber and equipment for debt. My father's sympathies were naturally
with Rogers and, while acting as host to Craven and Purdy, who
remained over night, lie sent a boy, William Coulter, out
surreptitiously to warn him of their coming. Rogers entrenched
himself behind natural barriers by driving his horses up the byroads
and blocking the main thoroughfare by felling trees across it. When
Craven and Purdy arrived at his camp on foot they found it deserted
and returned home without accomplishing their purpose. Before they
could renew their attempt Rogers succeeded in making arrangements to
tide himself over the difficulty.
Craven was a spectacular figure in the
neighborhood, a duelist of some renown and a picturesque character.
A few days before he had visited our camp he had an encounter with
William Dustin, at Scotch Corners, just outside of Woodstock, and
was slightly wounded under the arm. Ultimately, however, his bravado
resulted in his downfall. A few years after this incident he went to
California, joining the early rush to the goldfields, and was
lynched, I believe, by the vigilantes in 1849.
In 1843, when I was fourteen years of
age, my father went to Maine amid settled in township number eleven,
in Aroostook County, at a place now known as as Ashland, where he
purchased a farm. Shortly afterward he became a citizen of the
United States.
Aroostook County, bordering upon New Brunswick and drained partly by
the tributaries of the St. John River, was as much a timber region
as the adjoining territory though more sparsely settled. The
Yankees, whose operations along the headwaters of the Penobscot had
made Oldtown with Bangor the most important lumber producing center
of the United States, had already penetrated the Madawaska region,
where their activities had precipitated the boundary dispute of
1839. They worked in the same camps with the Canadians, floated
their logs down the Aroostook and other rivers into the St. John,
and at this time began to compete with the New Brunswick firms in
the production of square timber for export.
The territory comprising the State of
Maine had been originally a part of the State of Massachusetts, to
which was reserved, when the division was made, the timber on every
Old township. Among others the firm of Sinclair, Jewett and March,
one of the oldest and largest of the lumbering concerns of Bangor,
which had operated extensively along the Penobscot, purchased tracts
of this stumpage in Aroostook County and established a number of
camps for the production of square timber.
With the management of the business of
the firm Jewett, a capitalist, and March, a banker, had little to
do. The directing spirit of the enterprise was Jefferson Sinclair,
one of the most honest and practical lumbermen of a time when
lumbering was the most important of Maine's varied industries. In
this field Mr. Sinclair, to whom I was to owe so much of whatever
success I have achieved, was without equal. His operations were very
extensive and he directed them with a masterfulness and finality of
decision that made him the Napoleon of lumbering in the chief seat
of the industry in the United States. His logging camps were
scattered over a large area in Aroostook County, in the watersheds
of the St. John as well as of the Penobscot, and his logs and timber
were floated down both rivers.
The boom at Oldtown, probably the
greatest of its kind in the world at the time, where the logs coming
down the Penobscot were sorted for the mills which lined the banks
of the river from that point down to Bangor at the head of
tidewater, was a monument to his constructive genius. He built it in
company with Rufus Dwinel, thereby establishing a precedent that has
been followed on all of the important lumbering streams of the
country up to the advent of the railroads.
In logging the Yankees were probably
more expert than the Canadians but had less experience in making ton
timber, and for this purpose Mr. Sinclair engaged men who had done
work of this kind on the St. John. My father was one of these. He
entered into a contract with Sinclair, March and Jewett, and during
the winters of 1842, 1843, and 1844 employed between twenty and
thirty men in the region around Eagle and Portage lakes on the road
from the Aroostook River to the mouth of Fish River. Here I received
my first practical experience in lumbering and acquired the
knowledge of logging which was to be of incalculable value to me in
Wisconsin and Michigan.
Jefferson Sinclair
From these camps, where men were trained
to meet the rigors of the wilderness and to overcome the obstacles
that lumbering entailed, hundreds of pioneers scattered over the
timber regions of the West. They were a hardy lot, mostly of
English, Irish, or Scotch birth or parentage, who mastered the
variety of trades required by their occupation and were at home
alike in forest, on farm, and on stream. There were in the older
region also a number of French-Canadians among whom were what we
designated "jumpers" or "jumping Frenchmen," the victims, to all
appearances, of a nervous ailment which subjected them to the whims
of sensory impulses. At a sharp command or upon hearing a sudden
noise or being struck a sharp blow, they jumped spasmodically,
sometimes with disastrous consequences to themselves. I have known
them to jump out of a boat into the water when told unexpectedly to
do so. Dr. George M. Beard, a physician, who conducted a series of
experiments with them a number of years ago, said of them: "These
jumpers have been known to strike their fists against a red-hot
stove; they have been known to jump into fire as well as into water;
indeed, no painfulness or peril of position has any effect on them;
they are as powerless as apoplectics or hysterics, if not more so."
According to the methods of logging
which prevailed in Maine, when a tree was felled a pathway was
cleared through the deep snow to the main road and the log with one
end chained to a sled was dragged from the stump. The hauling was
done by teams of three yoke of oxen, the driving of which was one of
the most difficult and remunerative accomplishments of the lumbering
craft. Ox teamsters, who were looked upon as persons of a higher
category by the swampers and axemen, were paid in some cases, as
much as sixty dollars a month, while the foreman of the camp
received only from twenty-six to thirty dollars and their wages were
little short of munificent according to the scale then maintained.
The use of oxen in logging can be traced
back directly to the period before the American Revolution when the
English and French governments began to draw upon the forests of
Maine and New Brunswick for white pine for masts and spars. Only the
oxen trained for that purpose, with their slow, steady pull, were
strong enough to drag the huge trunks, some of them more than three
feet in diameter and a hundred feet in length, out of the woods. In
1815 and later it was the practice in Maine to drive them even
singly in hauling timber to the rivers.
In my father's camps I set out to master
the art, for such it was, learning not only to drive the oxen but to
train them. This latter task required about two months for a team of
six and could be accomplished at all only by the exercise of the
greatest patience and forbearance. The animals were driven with a
goad stick, about four feet long, five eighths of an inch thick at
the large end and a half-inch at the smaller, with a brad about a
half-inch in length. Outside of Maine and New Brunswick whips were
commonly used.
The rivalry among the drivers in the Maine forests, of whom there
were hundreds, perhaps thousands, was extraordinarily keen. Contests
in hauling trees or starting boats laden with stone held as
important a place in the diversions of the day as the more athletic
sports or races of the present. Fortunately, I made the most of my
opportunity. The knowledge I acquired stood me in good stead in
after years when we did most of the masting on the upper lakes. At
Escanaba, Michigan, sixty-five years ago I ranked among the best
drivers; and I took, and still take, a great deal of pride in that
accomplishment.
In 1844 I went down the Fish River and
the St. John on the first log drive of large proportions in those
waters. Before this time timber and logs were brought down from the
upper river loose in small quantities to a point below Grand Falls
where they were gathered together into small rafts. These were poled
as far as Spring Hill, at the head of tidewater, made into larger
rafts, and floated down with the tide to St. John.
The Yankee lumbermen first adopted the
practice of bringing the timber down the rivers loose in large
quantities and established the methods of log driving which were
followed in the West. Here again I was to profit by my experience.
The lessons I learned from Jefferson Sinclair, who built the boom at
Oldtown and superintended this first great drive down the St. John,
I applied to great advantage on the Menominee River, which came to
be as important in the fifties and later as the Penobscot had been
before and produced hundreds of millions of feet of timber every
year. On the
St. John drive there were two crews, each consisting of one hundred
men, one under the direction of George Lincoln, the other under
Henry Colton. My function was to serve as "cookee," or assistant to
the cook, in which capacity I accompanied Colton's crew. The
position was not so difficult as might be supposed. The cook, a
personage of some importance in the environment in which he moved,
was not merely, my superior but a very good friend. For three
months, or until the drive was completed, we tented together, and
during our leisure moments I taught him to read and write while he
taught me French. Colton, who afterwards went to Pennsylvania, where
he had charge of the boom at Williamsport, also took me under his
special protection and asked me to come and live with him. We
constituted, if not a picturesque, at least a very congenial trio.
The course of the drive was through
Portage, Eagle, and Long lakes to the mouth of Fish River and thence
down the St. John. In the hazards encountered,— the breaking of jams
and the passage of dangerous rapids,— I, of course, did not share.
None the less the journey was eventful. The timber was to have been
collected at Glazier's boom, seven miles below Fredericton, and
rafted the remainder of the distance; but the boom proved unequal to
the strain put upon it and broke, and we were compelled to continue
our operations down to St. John.
This enabled me to secure my first
glimpse of a city. I and the vessels at anchor in the harbor. It was
taken, however, under the protection of some of the members of the
crew, as the belligerent Irish boys around the wharves were only too
glad of an opportunity to war upon an unsuspecting lad from the
country who undoubtedly indicated by his actions that the
environment was a novel one. It was July by the time we returned to
Aroostook. I
came in contact, more or less, at the camps and on the drive with
Mr. Sinclair and, fortunately for me, attracted the great
lumberman's attention. This was the beginning of the friendly
interest he took in me which was to exercise the most potent
influence in the molding of my career. In the fall of that year,
1844, Mr. March fell ill at Ashland. As soon as he had recovered his
strength sufficiently he set out, with Mrs. March, for his home in
Bangor, and I was commissioned to accompany him as driver with the
understanding that I was to be taken into the Sinclair household
after our arrival. From Ashland we went to Mattawamkeag and from
there down to Bangor, following the old stage road.
This was a famous thoroughfare, through
one of the busiest sections of the United States, skirting the
Penobscot River. The stages, staunch Concord coaches elaborately
finished, were the highest achievement of the craft of the wagon
builder and seated more than a score of passengers. The drivers,
jauntily attired and wearing kid gloves, were persons of imposing
presence. From their lofty position on the box, where they
manipulated the reins of the six horses with impressive dexterity,
they surveyed the traveling public with an air of tolerant
superiority. Nor did they stoop to the care of horses. This function
was performed by the hostlers at the stations every ten or fifteen
miles along the route.
Eight years later, in 1852, I made the
journey from Holton to Mattawamkeag over the military road and down
to Bangor over the same route. On this occasion there were two
coaches, one carrying twenty-seven passengers, the other an extra
with the surplusage of travelers following close at our heels. The
driver, named Crockett, turned the reins of the first coach over to
me when we arrived at Oldtown, while he went back to take the
passengers in the extra coach to their destinations, and I drove in
state up to the Wadleigh Hotel, where a hostler came to take charge
of the horses.
These drivers were constantly undertaking errands for the people
living along the stage route. Women hailed them as they passed and
commissioned them to buy calico, thread, or other articles in
Oldtown or Bangor, which they delivered on the return trip. Crockett
told me that he frequently spent several hours shopping in the
evening in Bangor to purchase a variety of things to be delivered to
persons along the route the following day.
At Oldtown, at the head of the rapids in
the Penobscot, we came to the sawmills operated by water power. For
the last ten miles of the journey the banks were lined with these
establishments, the flower of the great lumber industry which
prevailed there for seventy years.
At Bangor, then a city of twenty-five
thousand people and one of the most important business centers in
New England, I lived with the Marches for several months until Mr.
Sinclair came down in the following spring. This was a turning point
in my career, although I might not have been aware of it at the
time. It marked the end of my experiences in the older environment
of New Brunswick and Maine and the beginning of a series of events
which were to take me away from my family into what was then the far
West, where the country was in the making. In the interim, however,
I saw something of the life of the city as a member of the household
of Mr. Sinclair, who included me in his own family circle and
treated me as a son, then and afterward taking advantage of every
opportunity to put me forward in the way of experience and teach the
lessons to which, more than anything else, I owe my success in the
field of of practical lumbering. Mrs. Sinclair, too, looked after me
with maternal solicitude and sympathy.
For a time I was able to resume the
schooling which had been cut short by the exigencies of life in New
Brunswick. I went to Miss Merrill's, on State Street, for several
months, where I profited, no doubt, by coming into contact with the
boys of the neighborhood. But the other aspects of Bangor were more
fascinating to me. The shipping in the harbor was absorbingly
interesting and under the spell of the romance of the wharves I
conceived the ambition to become a sailor, which I sought to achieve
afterward on the Great Lakes. The idea was encouraged by Mrs.
March's brother, who had sailed before the mast, and Captain Eustis,
the owner of a ship, who lived opposite the Sinclairs on State
Street. The former taught me how to splice ropes and tie sailors'
knots. The latter proposed that I ship on his vessel as a cabin boy
with his son George, promising that we would have no other duties
than to keep his cabin swept and clean. Every bit of knowledge I
picked up of the handling of the big square- riggers, which then
shed luster upon Maine's commercial greatness, I garnered carefully;
and even the fleet of lobster boats and fishing vessels, which came
close to the heart of the city, absorbed my attention. Lobsters at
this time were especially abundant. They were hawked about the
streets in barrows and the largest of them could be purchased for
five cents, with pepper and salt, if one were minded to eat them on
the spot. These
experiences were of short duration, a fleeting glimpse of the city
as I went from one wilderness to another. Before the year was out I
was to start again for the unsettled country. |
