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RAFTING  DAYS 

IN  PENNSYLVANIA 

Compiled  by 

John  C.  French,  John  H.  Chatham,  Mahlon  J. 
Colcord,  Albert  D.  Karstetter  and  Others 


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Edited  by  J.  Herbert  Walker 

(Secretary  of  Pennsylvania  Alpine  Club) 

With  a  Foreword  by 

Henry  W.  Shoemaker 

(Member  State  Forest  Commission  of  Pennsylvania) 

Altoona,  Pennsylvania 

Published  by  Times-Tribune  Co. 

19  2  2 


.W/5 


JAfJ--5'23 


WHITE    PINE    RAFTING    TIMBER 

Forest    County 


INDEX 

Page 

Foreword          __------  3 

Pennsylvania's  Forest  Needs  are  Urgent  Now     -  4 

Old  Rafting  Chant    (Poetry)            .         .         -         .  16 

Rafting   Tales   Give   Glimpse    of   Lumbering   Days 

of    Years    Ago         -----         -  17 

Susquehanna  Rafting  Surpassed  Other  Streams  29 

Rafting  Days  on  the  Susquehanna's  North  Branch  33 

Rafting  Days  Across  the  Atlantic  Ocean         -         -  41 

Rivermen  Were  Carefree  Lot,  Happy  in  Their  Work  45 

Allegheny  River  Rafting  Days  and  Rafting  Tales  48 

Forest  Lore  of  Rafting  Days  on  the  Delaware         -  54 

Clarion   River  Was    Famous    Rafting    Stream    of 

Keystone            __-_---  58 

Believe  Last  Raft  Floats  Down  the  Clarion  River  62 

Bubbles  on  Water  Good  Sign  of  Rafting  Times       -     .      63 

Running   Arks   on  the   P^amous    Karoondinha          -  71 

Tionesta  Rafting  Days  and  Later  Forest  Conditions  77 

Two  Hundred  Billion  Board  Feet  of  Fine  Lumber  in 

Heydey     -- 83 

Some  Notable  Floods  of  the  Bounding  West  Branch 

of  Susquehanna         _--__-  92 

Glossary    of    Rafting    Terms,    by    Former  Active 

Raftmen    - -     -         -  105 

Rafting  Terms           ------  112 

Appearances  and  Customs  of  the  Early  Raftsmen  114 

Cut  of  11,233  Board    Feet,    Probably    One    Man's 

Lumber  Record         - 117 

River  Items 121 


FOREWORD 


To  those  gallant  men  of  rafting  and  lumbering 
days,  when  Pennsylvania  rightfully  bore  the  title  of 
Penn's  Woods,  men  who  labored  in  the  giant  forests 
of  pine  and  hemlock  and  later  hardwoods,  who  bravely 
piloted  the  giant  rafts  from  headwaters  to  Marietta 
markets,  and  to  those  who  now,  seeing  the  need  of 
forest  conservation,  are  applying  their  energies,  to 
make  Pennsylvania  again  a  lumber  producing  state, 
these  pages  are  respectfully  dedicated. 

The  glimpse  into  the  days  of  long  ago  when  rafting 
was  a  busy  trade  and  lumbering  held  full  sway — given 
in  this  booklet  by  those  well  known  philosophers,  nat- 
uralists and  gentlemen,  John  C.  French,  of  Roulette, 
Potter  County;  M.  J.  Colcord,  of  Coudersport,  Potter 
County,  and  John  H.  Chatham,  bard,  of  McElhattan, 
Albert  D.  Karstetter,  Loganton,  Clinton  County,  and 
by  that  gifted  young  apostle  of  Conservation,  J.  Her- 
bert Walker,  Altoona,  is  a  pleasing  one.  May  the 
stories  they  tell  of  unbroken  forests  seventy- five  years 
ago  fill  us  with  a  greater  desire  to  preserve  and  conserve 
something  of  Pennsylvania  for  Pennsylvanians  who  ap- 
parently don't  want  it  saved. 


Henry  W.  Shoemaker. 


Altoona  Tribune  Office^ 
October  12,  1923. 


Pennsylvania's  Forest 
Needs  Are  Urgent  Now 


By  J.   HERliEKT   AVALKEll 

ONLY  a  raft  or  two  come  down  the  West  Branch 
of  the  Susquehanna  River  each  recurring 
springtime — grim  reminders  of  those  glad  days 
and  free  of  fifty  or  seventy-five  years  ago  when  this 
waterway,  as  well  as  all  the  other  large  streams  of 
the  state,  was  the  means  of  transporting  the  giant  cuts 
of  timber  in  the  forest  fastnesses  on  tlie  headwaters 
of  the  stream.  Gone  are  the  mighty  forests  of  spruce 
and  pine,  gone  are  the  towering  forests  of  hardwood. 
A^anishcd  also  are  most  of  the  men  of  those  days, 
sturdy  and  true,  strong  in  their  beliefs,  their  likes 
and  dislikes,  yet  men  withal.  Out  of  the  picture  have 
passed  those  picturesque  characters  of  the  l)ackwoods 
and  the  river  front.  Into  the  past  have  gone  the  raft- 
men  with  their  'coonskin  caps  and  their  frock  coats ! 

Gone  also  are  the  many  sawmills  that  lined  the 
hanks  of  the  mighty  stream.  A'anished  are  the  hotels 
that  lined  the  waterway  and  catered  to  the  rafting 
trade.  Damaged  or  washed  away  are  many  of  the 
dams  through  which  the  rafts  were  taken  on  many  a 
perilous    journey    down   the    river  to    Marietta    and 


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PENNSYLVANIA  RAFTING  DAYS 


farther  points.  Even  the  paths  trod  by  the  feet  of 
countless  raftmen,  who  walked  their  weary  way  back 
to  some  starting  point  after  delivering  the  rafts  down 
the  stream,  have  almost  passed  into  oblivion.  Here 
and  there,  along  the  great  waterways,  one  can  get 
only  a  glimpse  of  the  trails  made  by  the  raftmen,  sing- 
ing their  backwoods  songs,  as  they  toiled  back  to  their 
homes.  With  the  passing  of  most  of  the  raftmen,  also 
have  gone  the  strains  of  the  violin  played  on  the  deck 
of  the  raft.  Gone  are  the  shouts  of  the  raftmen  and 
their  songs  of  rafting  days.  Manv  of  the  villages 
which  dotted  the  stream  and  which  sprang  up  through 
and  lived  l)y  the  rafting  trade  alone,  have  followed 
most  of  the  larger  sawmills  int(^  oljlivion  and  many 
of  these  towns — bright,  happy  and  gay  in  rafting  days 
— have  settled  down  to  a  quiet  old  age  as  calm  and  as 
peaceful  as  the  non-turbulent  streams  of  summer 
flowing  sweetly  by. 

With  tlic  passing  of  the  rafting  days  and  rafting 
men  it  is  altogether  fitting  and  proper  that  at  least 
something  of  those  stirring  days  should  be  recorded 
— something  of  a  gHmpse  into  one  of  the  greatest  eras 
of  Pennsylvania,  one  of  the  greatest  trades  the  state 
ever  experienced,  to  briefly  descril^e,  if  that  is  pos- 
sible; at  least  a  faint  picture  of  that  time.  It  has  been 
an  extreme  pleasure  for  the  editor  to  enter  into  the 
task  which  this  book  brought  forth  and  if  in  a  small 
way  it  will  have  helped  to  engender  a  greater  appre- 
ciation of  Pennsylvania  and  her  forests  of  other  days, 
a  greater  interest  in  conservation  and  a  larger  desire 


PENNSYLVANIA  RAFTING  DAYS 


to  record  more  of  the  period  about  which  this  book 
is  written,  the  task  of  those  who  have  prepared  the 
articles  and  all  others  who  had  anything  to  do  with 
the  publication  of  it  will  have  been  amply  repaid.  It 
has  been  a  labor  of  love ;  and  the  task  has  been  sweet. 
Just  how  near  Pennsylvania  approached  the  period 
of  the  "last  raft"  remains  to  be  seen.  Every  year  we 
hear  of  the  last  raft  coming;  down  the  Susquehanna 
river,  and  each  recurring  year  another  and  ofttimes 
several  rafts  come  down  the  mighty  stream.  We  may 
never  reach  the  borderline  of  the  '*last__rg"ft,"  '^inre 
the  con.S£?x-VAtii:m-^1irip^  of  Hon.  OifiFnrd  Pinrhnt  ^re 
taking  such  a  deep  root  through  his  devoted  efforts 
and  the  encouragement  and  cooperation  given  to  the 
cause  by  all  right-thinking  people,  but  this  we  do 
know  that  we  approached  dangerously  too  near  to 
that  borderline  of  the  "last  raft"  and  it  will  take  hun- 
dreds of  years  to  place  Pennsylvania  where  the  state 
has  a  right  to  be  in  forest  production. 

Through  an  awakened  public  conscience  and  an  en- 
lightened populace  to  the  needs  of  forest  conservation 
Pennsylvania  during  the  past  two  years  has  done  a 
great  good  in  the  matter  of  a  direct  forest  policy  that 
will  bring  results.  The  State  Department  of  Fores- 
try, under  the  able  leadership  of  Hon.  Gifford  Pinchot, 
greatest  of  foresters  in  the  United  States,  aided  by 
Major  R.  Y.  Stuart — now  commissioner — and  an  able 
board  of  forest  commissioners,  as  well  as  the  active 
cooperation  of  water  companies,  mining  companies, 
sportsmen's   organizations,  walking  and  hiking  clubs, 


PENNSYLVANIA  RAFTING  DAYS 


land  owners,  farmers  and  the  people  in  general,  has 
been  able  to  accomplish  a  great  deal. 

A  million  dollars  was  provided  by  the  legislature  to 
put  down  forest  fires.  Half  of  this  amount  was  spent 
the  first  year  and  this  is  what  was  done : 

Fifty  new  steel  fire  towers,  most  of  them  sixty  feet 
high,  have  been  erected  at  the  most  advantageous 
places  in  the  state.  Every  tower  was  completed  and 
connected  with  men  organized  into  effective  firefight- 
ing  crews  before  the  fire  season  began.  An  entirely 
new  system  of  fighting  forest  fires,  pronounced  by 
the  U.,  S.  Forest  service  to  be  the  best  in  existence, 
was  devised  and  installed.  Fire  wardens  and  other 
fire  fighters  were  equipped  with  new  tools,  among 
them  being  a  combination  rake  and  brush  hook  super- 
ior to  anything  yet  invented. 

With  this  equipment  and  new  management  the  for- 
est fires  were  not  only  cut  down  in  number  last  fall 
and  this  spring,  but  the  acreage  was  greatly  reduced. 

Now  the  Department  of  Forestry  is  working  on  a 
larger  system  of  forest  fire  towers  which  will  be 
placed  at  different  points  in  the  state,  so  that  when 
the  summer*  is  completed  Pennsylvania,  which  even 
now  has  a  greater  number  of  fire  towers  than  any 
other  state  in  the  Union  and  a  more  efficient  fire  fight- 
ing organization,  will  be  greatly  ahead  of  any  com- 
monwealth in  its  efforts  to  preserve  and  conserve  the 
timber. 

Yet  no  matter  what  the  effort,  nor  no  matter  how 
many  people  engage  in  this  worthy  project,  which  of 

*(1922) 


PENNSYLVANIA  RAFTING  DAYS 


course  must  be  carried  on  to  the  fullest  extent,  the 
forests  of  spruce  and  pine  and  hemlock  that  stood  on 
the  headwaters  of  Pennsylvania  streams  a  hundred 
years  ago — forests  which  were  cut  without  regulation 
or  thought  for  the  morrow — can  never  be  brought 
back.  Miles  upon  miles  of  unbroken  forests,  stretch- 
ing as  far  as  the  eye  could  see,  the  growth  of  hun- 
dreds of  years,  yes  even  centuries,  leveled  almost  in 
the  twinkling  of  an  eye  because  people  thought  there 
w^as  no  end — now  five  million  acres  of  barren  waste, 
good  only  for  raising  trees,  if  we  can  keep  the  fires 
out  and  carry  on  a  planting  program.  And  we  must 
plant;  but  we  can  never  hope  to  approximate  the  fine 
forests  that  once  w^ere  the  crowning  glory  of  Penn's 
Woods  in  the  days  of  which  we  write  and  before. 

Maine  was  once  a  timber  state.  Today  her  people 
are  being  solicited  to  subscribe  to  a  fund  to  save  her 
remaining  forests.  What  is  true  of  ]\Iaine  in  regard 
to  the  dwindling  timber  supply  is  also  true  of  every 
other  eastern  state.  The  United  States  is  using  about 
five  times  as  much  lumber  as  it  is  producing.  Timber 
is  one  of  the  nation's  most  valuable  natural  resources. 
When  it  is  gone  it  is  gone  until  nature  has  time  to  re- 
place it  by  a  long  and  tedious  process.  Conservation 
is  the  key  to  the  situation  and  the  replacement  of  every 
tree  that  is  cut  down.  If  people  don't  do  it  from  a 
personal  interest  in  reforestation,  then  state  laws 
ought  to  compel  a  man  to  plant  a  tree  every  time  he 
removes  one,  unless  he  can  show  that  its  removal  is  a 


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PENNSYLVANIA  RAFTING  DAYS 


benefit  to  his  property,  his  own  or  his  family's  health 
or  to  growing  timber. 

The  subject  of  the  future  of  the  lumber  industry  in 
Pennsylvania  is  a  large  one  and  can  best  be  approach- 
ed by  a  study  of  the  past  developments  of  the  industry, 
its  present  resources  and  a  look  into  the  future  as 
sensed  by  the  increase  in  forest  cooperation.  A  look 
into  the  lumber  industry  of  a  half  or  more  century  ago 
is  given  in  this  booklet. 

In  1850  the  United  States  produced  five  billion 
board  feet  of  lumber  with  New  York  leading,  Penn- 
sylvania second,  Maine  tliird,  Ohio  fourth,  Indiana 
fifth  and  ^Michigan  sixth. 

In  1860  the  total  production  w^as  eight  billion  feet. 
Pennsylvania  then  led  with  New  Y^ork,  Michigan, 
Alaine,  Ohio,  Indiana  and  Wisconsin  following  in  the 
order  named. 

In  1870  the  production  had  risen  to  12,755,000,000 
feet  and  Michigan  topped  the  list  with  Pennsylvania, 
New  YY)rk,  Wisconsin,  Indiana,  [Maine,  Ohio  and 
[Missouri  next  in  rank.  The  centre  of  population 
definitely  passed  in  this  decade  to  the  Lake  States 
where  it  remained  for  thirty  years.  Michigan  led  the 
other  states  of  the  Union  from  1870  to  1900  when 
Wisconsin  took  the  lead  until  1905. 

The  shift  of  the  lumber  production  centre  from  the 
east  to  the  west  began  with  the  rise  of  the  state  of 
Washington  to  a  leading  place.  Since  1905,  with  the 
single  exception  of  the  year  1914,  the  state  of  Wash- 
ington   has   held    supremacy  as  a    lumber    producer. 


10  PENNSYLVANIA  RAFTING  DAYS 

Today  out  of  a  total  cut  of  33,798,800,000  board  feet 
the  order  of  the  states  is  as  follows:  Washington, 
Oregon,  Louisiana,  Mississippi,  California,  Arkansas, 
Alabama,  Texas,  North  Carolina,  Wisconsin,  Vir- 
ginia, and  Florida.  All  the  rest  of  the  states  produce 
less  than  a  billion  feet  yearly. 

Pennsylvania,  greatest  lumber  state  in  1860.  has 
passed  out  of  the  picture ! 

It  is  said  that  the  United  States  still  has  2,200  bil- 
lion board  feet  of  merchantable  timber,  sufficient  to 
support  a  yearly  cut  of  40  billion  feet  for  55  years — 
but  we  must  make  an  effective  national  and  state  for- 
est policy  which  will  forever  safeguard  the  American 
lumber  supply. 

To  go  into  details  of  such  a  forest  policy  would 
carry  one  far  aheld,  into  every  corner  of  the  United 
States.  Various  measures  have  been  proposed  and 
fully  discussed  in  the  various  lumber  conventions  and 
conservation  meetings.  The  essential  thing,  however, 
is  to  KEEP  A  FOREST  ON  THE  LAND  and  to 
reforest  areas  which  are  better  suited  to  growing  trees 
than  for  any  other  purpose. 

The  history  of  the  lumber  industry  in  the  United 
States  shows  a  migatory  movement  from  the  East  to 
the  Lake  States  and  thence  to  the  Pacific  Coast.  Tliis 
is  the  last  stronghold !  All  this  has  come  to  pass  in 
two  generations.  At  the  present  time — with  the  lum- 
ber now  standing — we  have  only  enough  to  last  for 
two  generations !  After  that  we  shall  have  to  depend 
upon  homegrown    products,  the    results  of    planting 


PENNSYLVANIA  RAFTING-  DAYS  11 

NOW  and  in  after  years.  In  the  meantime  we  will 
pay  for  our  laxity  by  hea\y  freight  charges  on  every 
thousand  feet  of  lumber  shipped  across  the  continent. 
Since  the  bulk  of  our  people  live  in  the  East  and  over 
half  of  our  remaining  timber  supply  is  in  the  West, 
the  freight  charge  is  today  in  excess  of  what  it  costs 
to  manufacture  lumber  on  the  Pacific  Coast. 

We  have  forest  land,  we  can  keep  it  producing 
trees,  wc  can  replant  such  areas  as  have  been  denuded. 
If  we  do  not  delay  in  adopting  a  proper  forest  policy 
we  can  assure  by  the  practice  of  forestry  the  future 
of  the  American  timber  supply.  There  is  no  other 
way. 

Pennsylvania  can  aid  greatly  in  bringing  back 
forested  areas  and  reducing  the  cost  of  lumber  to  the 
people.  Five  million  acres  of  waste  land  in  this  state 
can  produce  nothing  else  and  are  suitable  for  nothing 
else  than  the  growing  of  timber.  The  Forestry  De- 
partment, under  wise  leadership  and  with  some  co- 
operation, has  accomplislied  a  great  deal — but  the 
future  of  the  timber  supply  for  Pennsylvanians  rests 
with  them  and  with  them  alone.  Aside  from  the  tim- 
ber supply  that  Pennsylvania  can  produce,  every  dollar 
earned  from  state  forest  products  carries  a  certain 
amount  for  the  public  schools. 

Mr.  A.  O.  Vorse,  chief  of  the  bureau  of  informa- 
tion of  the  State  Department  of  Forestry  says : 

"The  wood  situation  in  Pennsylvania  is  serious.  In 
1850  Pennsylvania  stood  second  among  the  states  of 
the   Union   in   lumber   production — in   1860    she   was 


12  PENNSYLVANIA  RAFTING  DAYS 

first — now  she  holds  twentieth  place.  In  1918  Penn- 
sylvania produced  30,000,000  board  feet  of  lumber 
and  consumed  2,632,965,000  board  feet.  This  shows 
that  she  produced  only  20.1  per  cent  of  the  lumber 
consumed.  It  has  also  been  found  that  of  the  thir- 
teen pulp  mills  operating  within  the  state,  and  con- 
suming annually  about  one  half  million  cords  of  wood, 
four  import  all  the  wood  they  use,  eight  import  more 
than  75  per  cent  and  all  but  three  of  the  mills  import 
more  than  50  per  cent  of  their  wood.  Only  26  per 
cent  of  the  wood  used  by  the  pulp  mills  is  grown  with- 
in the  state,  which  means  that  71:  per  cent  is  imported." 

Five-sixths  of  our  virgin  timber  in  the  United 
States  is  gone.  Two-thirds  of  all  the  states  with 
eighty  million  people  and  more  than  four-fifths  of  the 
farm  values  of  the  country  depend  for  timber  on  the 
few  remaining  states  which  will  cut  more  than  they 
consume.  Within  ten  years  the  entire  country  will 
have  to  depend  on  two  or  three  states  for  nearly  all  its 
soft-wood  lumber  supply.  Moreover  what  we  can- 
not secure  at  home,  we  cannot  buy  abroad,  for  more 
than  half  of  the  nations  of  the  world  are  dependent 
for  timber  supplies  upon  forests  beyond  their  own 
boundaries.  Even  ]\Iexico  imports  her  lumber  supply, 
while  the  Canadians,  if  they  should  give  us  all  they 
have,  could  not  meet  our  needs  for  more  than  a  gener- 
ation. 

The  demands  we  make  upon  our  forests  are  gigan- 
tic. Alore  than  half  of  all  the  lumber  used  in  the 
world  is  consumed  in  the  United  States.     Meanwhile 


PENNSYLVANIA  RAFTING  DAYS  13. 

we  are  replacing  by  growth  only  one-fourth  of  what 
we  cut  and  our  remaining  supplies  are  dwindling  to 
an  early  end.  It  is  clear  that  we  must  grow  what  we 
need  or  go  without. 

Those  who  have  written  of  early  lumber  and  raft- 
ing days  in  Pennsylvania  and  whose  articles  appear 
in  this  booklet  have  been  among  the  most  active  con- 
servationists of  the  present  time,  even  though  some 
of  them,  back  in  their  rafting  days  and  lumbering 
days  little  thought  that  such  a  condition  of  lumber 
want  would  come  about.  Sorry  for  the  slipshod 
method  of  lumbering,  wasteful  lumbering,  of  those 
early  days,  most  of  the  woodsmen  and  raftmen  of  that 
time  have  been  prominent  in  conservation  work  in  the 
past  twenty  years,  glad  of  the  opportunity  to  do  what 
they  can  to  bring  about  better  lumber  conditions  in 
his  state. 

Chapters  in  this  book  by  John  C.  French,  of  Roul- 
ette, Potter  County;  M.  J.  Colcord,  of  Coudersport; 
John  H.  Chatham,  of  McElhattan,  have  all  been  pre- 
pared from  first  hand  knowledge  of  the  times  and  in- 
cidents of  which  they  have  so  ably  written.  A  great 
deal  of  additional  data  was  secured  by  Mr.  French 
from  William  Hazlett,  Civil  war  veteran  of  the  149th 
Pennsylvania  Volunteers  (Bucktails)  of  Roulette, 
Pa.,  who  built  rafts  and  boats  on  the  Allegheny  1866- 
1875  and  ran  them  to  Portsmouth,  Ohio,  and  other 
river  points.  For  the  elucidation  or  other  knotty 
problems  Mr.  French  extends  his  thanks  to  James 
Lewis,   raftman,   and    former   pilots,   the   late   Edwin 


14  PENNSYLVANIA  RAFTING  DAYS 

Grimes,  Wm.  S.  Brine,  Jack  Scrogg  (Seneca),  and 
his  brother,  Thomas  Scrogg,  of  Carrollton,  N.  Y.,  and 
A.  D.  Karstetter  of  Loganton,  CHnton  County. 

Mr.  French,  in  a  recent  letter  says :  "While  on  a 
brief  journey  in  the  ethereal  world  I  met  some  of  our 
old  friends  who  have  resided  there  for  some  time. 
They  seemed  happy  and  busy  as  ever,  as  when  they 
were  here  in  Pennsylvania.  Frank  H.  Goodyear  had 
planted  a  vast  tract  of  hemlock  forest  all  over  the 
place,  and  he  was  supervising  its  welfare ;  Grover 
Cleveland  had  the  streams  and  lakes  stocked  with  trout 
and  other  game  fish  he  was  fond  of  and  Theodore 
Roosevelt,  who  had  just  arrived,  was  stocking  the 
forest  with  wild  animals  and  beautiful  birds." 

Mr.  French  might  now  add  the  immortal  spirit  of 
the  late  Dr.  Joseph  Trimble  Rothrock,  the  "Father  of 
Forestry  in  Pennsylvania,"  who  gave  forty-five  years 
of  his  useful  and  active  life  to  the  betterment  of 
Pennsylvania  forests  and  the  insurance  of  a  continued 
lumber  supply  for  the  state.  It  will  be  well  for  us  all 
to  follow  out  the  teachings  and  actions  of  the  late 
lamented  forestry  leader  in  the  Keystone  State. 

It  is  a  far  cry  from  the  rafting  days  of  1850  and 
1860,  when  through  the  exploitation  of  the  forests 
approximately  200  billion  feet  of  board  timber  of  all 
kinds  was  cut  from  Pennsylvania  forests  to  today 
when  the  state  only  produces  a  meagre  amount  and 
stands  twentieth  in  the  list  of  lumber  producing  states 
of  the  Union — dropping  from  its  honored  first  place 
in  1860.     It  is  a  long  step  from  the  days  when  rafts 


PENNSYLVANIA  RAFTING  DAYS  15 


filled  the  streams  and  the  carefree  song  of  the  river- 
men  floated  over  the  broad  bosoms  of  every  large 
waterway.  The  460,000,000  acres  of  timberland  in 
the  United  States  which  remain,  if  they  produced  fifty 
cubic  feet  a  year  per  acre,  could  almost  meet  the  pre- 
sent demands  and  present  needs.  But  they  have  been 
so  mishandled  that  fifteen  cubic  feet  per  acre  is  all 
they  grow,  while  the  population  is  increasing  and  the 
use  of  wood  is  multiplying.  Keep  out  the  forest  fires. 
Plant  more  trees.  Regulate  the  cutting.  Cooperate 
with  the  advocates  of  forestry.  If  all  these  ideas  and 
plans  are  carried  out,  under  the  wise  leadership  we 
now  enjoy,  Pennsylvania  may  again  be  able  to  feel 
honored  by  the  title  of  Penn's  Woods. 

Altoona  Tribune  Office, 

October  12,  1922. 


16 


PENNSYLVANIA  RAFTING  DAYS 


Old  Rafting  Chant 


HUS   drifting   to   sea   on   a 
hick  of  white  pine, 
For  grub  and  the 

wages  we're  paid, 
The  scoffers  who  rail 

as  we  buffet  the  brine. 
May  see  us  in  sun 
or  in  shade; 
But  true  to  our  course, 

though  weather  be  thick, 
We  set  our  broad  sail 

as  before. 
And  stand  by  the  tiller 
that  governs  the  hick. 
Nor  care  how  we  look  from 
the  shore. 


Rafting  Tales  Give 
Glimpse  of  Lumbering 
Days  of  Years  Ago 


By   JOHN    C.    FRENCH 

THE  tales  of  rafting  lumber  and  timber  on  the 
larger  streams  of  Pennsylvania  give  many 
glimpses  of  the  immense  forests  of  white  pine 
(Piniis  Sfrobus)  that  once  stood  on  the  hillsides  and 
along  the  valleys  of  the  Keystone  State  anti  indicate 
to  us  the  active  forest  life  of  the  men  engaged  in  the 
industry  connected  with  lumbering  and  exploiting  the 
trees  that  made  up  the  forest  in  each  locality  where 
operations  were,  from  time  to  time,  established. 

The  first  explorers  sought  for  gold ;  but  they  found 
trees  of  many  kinds.  The  first  exports  from  the  New 
World  to  the  Old  World  were  products  of  the  forest. 

The  statelv  white  pine  tree  was  easily  the  king  of 
forest  trees  in  Pennsylvania  and  the  most  valuable  to 
the  people  who  had  come  from  denuded  districts  of 
Europe  to  our  ample  forests  of  so  many  varieties  of 
valuable  trees  that  had  become  scarce  in  their  former 
homes.  They  resolved  to  protect  the  forests  from 
devastating  fires  and  to  keep  tracts  for  future  use  on 

17 


18  PENNSYLVANIA  RAFTING  DAYS 

every  farm.  They  soon  forgot  these  good  resolutions. 
On  this  phase  our  former  chief  of  the  Pennsylvania 
State  Forestry  Department,  Gifford  Pinchot,  said 
many  years  ago : 

''They  came  from  a  country  where  wood  was  com- 
paratively scarce  and  where  the  penalties  for  its  de- 
struction were  severe  and  strictly  enforced.  The  re- 
spect for  the  forest,  which  had  been  bred  in  their  an- 
cestors by  the  early  English  game  laws  and  continued 
in  themselves  by  enactments  of  extreme  rigor,  was 
brought  over  to  the  new  land  almost  without  change, 
but  it  was  not  destined  to  last.  A  growing  realization 
of  the  vast  resources  at  their  command,  together  with 
the  bitter  struggle  of  the  farmer  against  the  forest  in 
the  early  days,  gradually  replaced  care  with  careless- 
ness and  respect  with  a  desire  for  destruction.  The 
feeling  bred  by  the  battle  against  the  forests  began  to 
take  a  dominant  place  in  the  minds  of  the  people  and 
to  prepare  that  attitude  responsible  for  destruction." 

And  so  the  giant  white  pine  (pinus  strohiis)  and  the 
abundant  wealth  of  wild  life  among  the  trees  were  at- 
tacked and  destroyed  by  our  ancestors,  and  the  Orig- 
inal Men  (Lenni  Lenape  Indians)  were  pressed  back, 
step  by  step  in  stubborn  protest  against  the  unreason- 
able carnival  of  waste  they  beheld  around  them,  and 
this  nightmare  of  waste  expanded  the  forest  opera- 
tions along  the  valleys  of  the  Colony  and  later  Com- 
monwealth during  the  eighteenth  and  nineteenth  cen- 
turies. From  the  pine  trees  and  their  products  of 
lumber,   timber,   staves   and   shingles,   the  rafts   were 


PENNSYLVANIA  RAFTING  DAYS  19 

constructed,  boats,  arks,  barges  and  scows  built  and 
loaded  for  the  markets  on  rivers  below,  and  the  mer- 
chant ships  loaded  for  the  coastal  markets  and  foreign 
trade.  A  great  commerce  developed  and  expanded 
as  a  tree-devastated  Europe  clamored  for  more  and 
more  pine  lumber. 

At  the  beginning  of  the  twentieth  century  we 
aroused  from  our  slumber,  glanced  at  the  spectres  of 
denuded  hills  rising  toward  heaven  in  the  agony  of 
desolation  and  despair,  groaned  piteously  over  the  re- 
sults that  frowned  upon  our  vision,  and — we  dreamed 
on  of  a  renewed  forest. 

After  two  decades  we  are  doing  something  to  re- 
store a  grand  forest  around  headwater  springs  that 
supply  the  rivers.  It  is  well !  But  let  us  never  dream 
again !  Steadily  for  two  solid  centuries  we  must  plant 
trees,  preserve  the  tree  volunteers  on  denuded  hills, 
on  hills  fitted  by  the  Creator  for  nothing  else  but 
for  bearing  trees,  trees  and  more  trees,  now  and  for- 
ever, the  fire-devil  must  be  excluded  from  our  poten- 
tial forest  areas.  Then  civilization  may  dominate 
and  renew  our  forests  until  the  Keystone  State  may 
boast  of  five  million  acres  of  trees  where  now  a  desert 
reigns. 

From  our  original  white  pine  forests  the  rafts 
floated  on  the  rivers  to  supply  the  markets  with  forest 
material  in  the  several  sections,  and  a  great  foreign 
commerce  developed..  The  historian  has  dwelt  at 
great  length  in  ages  past  on  peoples  in  political  move- 
ments;  the  many  achievements  of  diplomats  to  pre- 


20  PENNSYLVANIA  RAFTING  DAYS 

serve  peace  in  the' world;  and  of  warriors  and  wars 
upon  the  various  battlefields  of  the  earth  as  of  more 
vital  interest  than  the  matters  of  business.  The  times 
are  changing.  Commerce  dominates  the  international 
intercourse  today.  Conquest  no  longer  pays  for  the 
cost  it  occasions. 

Commerce  always  has  been  a  controlling  factor  in 
making  the  world's  history,  despite  the  records  we 
may  read  in  ancient  tomes  and  modern  treaties.  The 
assumed  ethical  basis  of  events  has  been  more  camou- 
flage than  revelation  of  national  sanctity  at  the  con- 
ference table ;  but  there  is  evidence  now  that  the  lead- 
ers of  men  have  discarded  the  trappings  of  deception 
and  stand  upon  their  just  rights,  as  business  organiza- 
tions ;  for  all  government  is  merely  the  business  of  a 
state's  or  a  nation's  business  control,  organized  for 
governing  a  people.  It  has  always  been  more  import- 
ant that  people  should  live  than  that  they  should  live 
under  a  particular  government  or  in  any  particular 
place.  The  quest  of  a  livelihood  has  guided  the  mi- 
grations of  races  and  has  been  the  inciting  cause  of 
discoveries,  settlement  and  conquest.  Encouragement, 
protection  and  control  of  trade  have  been  the  most 
frequent  subjects  of  legislation.  Although  the  world 
at  large  accords  manufacturer  and  merchant  a  posi- 
tion coordinate  with  that  of  the  warrior  and  states- 
man, and  out  of  this  new  appreciation  have  come 
histories  of  industry ;  no  comprehensive  history  of  our 
important  and  original  forests  has  ever  been  compiled. 

Young  adventurers   went   into   the   forest  to  labor 


PENNSYLVANIA  RAFTING  DAYS  21 

during  the  past  two  hundred  years  and  the  trees  were 
felled  and  cut  into  logs  to  drive  to  the  sawmills  for 
sawing  into  lumber.  Large  quantities  were  hewed 
on  four  sides  for  squared  board  timber,  bound  into 
great  rafts  and  floated  to  sawmills  on  the  larger  rivers. 

They  began  by  clearing  away  a  few  of  the  trees  and 
building  a  camp  of  round  logs,  the  walls  of  which 
were  seldom  more  than  five  feet  high,  and  roofed  with 
bark  or  boards.  A  pit  was  dug  under  the  camp  to 
protect  anything  liable  to  injury  by  freezing.  The  fire 
was  at  one  end  wnth  a  chimney  of  rough  stones  and 
clay  for  a  smoke  flue.  Hay  or  straw  was  strewn 
across  the  whole  breadth  of  the  structure,  on  wdiich 
the  men  lay  down  together. to  sleep  with  their  feet  to 
the  fire,  covered  by  a  warm  blanket  in  cold  weather, 
when  most  of  this  work  was  done.  When  one  awak- 
ened the  fire  was  replenished  by  throwing  on  large 
billets  of  wood.  One  was  employed  as  cook  to  have 
breakfast  ready  at  daylight,  consisting  of  bread,  pota- 
toes, meat  and  tea  sweetened  with  molasses.  Dinner 
was  about  the  same  as  breakfast,  and  supper  the  same 
as  breakfast  and  dinner,  with  entrees  of  beans,  fish  or 
soup. 

The  young  woodsmen  and  raftmen  were  enormous 
eaters  and  they  drank  much  rum,  or  other  spirits, 
which  they  scarcely  ever  diluted.  Their  constitutions 
were  undermined  by  their  customs  and  the  strenuous 
labor  in  the  forests  and  on  the  rafts.  Exposure  to 
winter's  frost  and  snow  was  nothing  like  the  snow 
water  of  the   spring  freshets  in   which  they   worked 


22  PENNSYLVANIA  RAFTING  DAYS 

day  after  day,  wet  to  the  middle  and  often  immersed 
from  head  to  foot,  and  they  needed  stimulants  of  ard- 
ent spirits  to  keep  going.  Premature  old  age  was  the 
fate  of  many  of  the  men. 

After  settling  and  delivering  the  logs  or  the  rafts 
at  the  agreed  destination  in  each  case,  they  often 
passed  some  days  or  weeks  in  indulgence,  in  drinking, 
smoking  and  dashing  around  in  a  long  coat,  waistcoat 
and  trousers,  Hessian  boots  or  laced  shoes,  'kerchief 
of  many  colors  around  their  necks,  and  a  watch  with 
long  chain  and  many  seals  decorating  each  vest.  How- 
ever, many  other  of  these  men  purchased  farms,  be- 
came thrifty,  married  and  raised  families  of  strong 
sons  and  pleasing  daughters.  Not  a  few  of  them  be- 
came partners  in  large  forest  operations,  and  some 
followed  other  lines  of  successful  business.  No  doubt 
the  prayers  of  devoted  mothers  were  answered  in 
many  cases.     Let  us  so  believe ! 

A  great  belt  of  coniferous  (evergreen)  timber 
stretched  across  northern  Pennsylvania,  mingled  with 
broad-leaved  (deciduous)  timber.  At  first  the  white 
pine,  the  various  hard  pines,  and  oak,  cherry  and  ash 
timber  attracted  the  attention  of  buyers  of  lumber. 

The  tales  of  rafting  days  on  the  various  streams 
as  given  in  this  booklet  indicate  the  chief  sections 
within  this  state  where  the  buoyant  white  pine  was 
found  at  the  various  dates,  for  it  depended  on  the 
river  courses  for  transporting  it  to  the  ocean.  The 
hemlock  timber  and  bark  reached  the  markets  later, 
as  did  most  of  the  hardwoods,  after  the  railroads  had 


PENNSYLVANIA  RAFTING  DAYS  23 


been  built  from  the  ocean  through  the  timber  districts 
of  the  state. 

Our  volume  of  lumber  output  expanded  until  the 
census  for  1850  showed  that  New  York  state  only, 
exceeded  that  of  Pennsylvania,  and  we  held  first  place 
in  1860  and  in  1870.  Then  in  1880  only  Michigan 
surpassed  us.  In  1890  we  held  fourth  place,  being 
surpassed  by  ^Michigan,  Wisconsin  and  Minnesota. 

All  of  the  early  explorers,  travelers  and  scientists 
dilated  upon  the  abundance,  high  quality  and  utility 
of  our  white  pine.  The  Frenchman,  Andre  Michaux, 
who  may  well  be  termed  the  Father  of  American 
Forest  Botany,  in  his  "North  American  Sylva"  de- 
voted much  space  to  lauding  white  pine  ana  its  habi- 
tat.    From  personal  observation  he  wrote : 

"The  upper  part  of  Pennsylvania  near  the  sources 
of  the  Delaware  and  the  Susquehanna,  which  is  moun- 
tainous and  cold,  possesses  large  forests  of  white 
pine  ^;<  *  *  *  Beyond  the  mountains  near  the 
springs  of  the  river  Allegheny,  from  150  to  180  miles 
from  its  junction  with  the  Ohio,  is  cut  all  the  white 
pine  destined  for  New  Orleans,  which  is  2900  miles 
distant.'' 

His  son,  Francois  Andre  Michaux,  succeeded  his 
father  and  wrote  of  our  forests  as  they  were  seen  dur- 
ing the  first  decade  of  the  last  century,  perhaps  about 
1805,  more  particularly  of  about  deciduous  trees  in 
Pennsylvania  which  he  described  and  classified;  but 
his  botanical  names  do  not  all  agree  with  those  now 
in  accepted  use.     Peter  Kalm,  a  Finnish   naturalist, 


24  PENNSYLVANIA  RAFTING  DAYS 

visited  our  forests  in  1749,  and  he  wrote  also  of  our 
magnificent  oaks  and  white  pines  from  the  Delaware 
river  to  the  Ohio  boundary  line. 

These  representatives  of  the  old  days,  with  the  tales 
of  rafting  scenes  on  the  rivers,  surely  will  lift  the 
curtain  a  little,  and  give  us  the  longed  for  realization 
of  the  drama  that  was  enacted  here  in  the  great  belt 
of  white  pine. 

^Memory  recalls  the  yoke-fellow  of  man  in  the  past 
operations  among  the  white  pine  trees — I  mean  the 
ox ;  the  maple  yoke  with  liickory  bows  and  the  equip- 
ment for  applying  the  strength  of  oxen  to  the  task  of 
moving  the  white  pine  sawlogs ;  up  goes  a  corner  of 
the  curtain.  Another  peep!  An  old  logger  takes  up 
the  tale  and  says : 

''When  I  first  went  to  work  in  the  woods  it  was  in 
1854  and  only  oxen  were  used  for  hauling.  Xo  one 
thought  of  beginning  operations  until  snow  had  come 
so  that  supplies  could  be  sledded  into  the  camps.  For 
hauling  logs  a  team  of  four  to  eight  oxen  was  yoked 
to  a  bobsled — a  short  sled  witli  a  single  bar  upon  which 
was  placed  a  heavy  timber  called  a  bunk  which  served 
to  strengthen  the  bar  and  to  prevent  it  from  being 
worn  out.  On  this  bunk  the  ends  of  the  logs  were 
placed  and  securely  chained,  the  other  ends  dragging, 
so  that  the  team  moved  tlie  load  by  sheer  strength. 
Then  too  the  logs  before  being  loaded  had  to  be  barked 
— that  is,  the  bark  was  hewed  ofi:  of  one  side,  so  that 
tliey  could  be  dragged  with  greater  ease.     This    took 


PENNSYLVANIA  RAFTING  DAYS  25 

time  and  the  operation  was  later  replaced  by  wagon 
or  wheel  sleds. 

"There  was  no  Varding'  of  logs  then  as  was  done 
later,  all  logs  being  hauled  directly  to  the  'landing.' 
To  load  the  sled  for  each  trip  the  oxen  were  taken 
from  the  pole  or  sled-tongue,  and  used  to  drag  or  roll, 
the  logs  upon  the  sled — a  very  slow  process.  The 
sleds  and  yokes  were  made  after  the  crew  arrived 
at  camp,  the  sleds  without  a  scrap  of  iron  in  them 
except  a  clevis  pin  at  the  end  of  each  tongue.  The 
yoke  bows  were  brought  into  the  woods,  hung  to  the 
necks  of  the  oxen.  For  tlie  yokes  we  hunted  up 
crooked  birch  trees  with  the  right  bend  in  their  trunks 
and  hewed  and  shaved  them  into  shape,  or  we  made 
yokes  from  maple,  buttonwood  or  i)epperigc  trees. 
Later  with  a  pair  of  horses  and  the  wagon-sled,  a 
man  could  do  as  much  in  a  day  as  we  did  before 
with  a  bobsled  and  eight  oxen.  The  change  from 
oxen  to  horses  effected  a  very  great  saving  in  time 
and  expense  of  logging,  for  men  moved  more  quickly, 
wasting  much  less  time.  When  moving  pine  logs  cost 
six  dollars  in  the  Sixties,  hemlock  logs  in  the  Eighties 
were  moved  over  the  same  ground  and  distance  for 
only  two  dollars  and  fifty  cents  a  thousand  feet,  board 
measure  by  Scribner's  log  rule,  by  gum !  Better  wages 
were  paid  by  hemlock  operators  to  the  men  in  the 
Eighties  than  DuLois  and  Grantier  paid  in  the  Six- 
ties." 

Though  the  homily  above  may  sound  like  Greek 
language  flowing  freely,  I  warrant  that  every  grand- 


26  PENNSYLVANIA  RAFTING  DAYS 

father  can  translate  most  of  it  into  the  patois  that  we 
now  call  ''Our  English  Tongue."  The  veterans  of  our 
Civil  war  understand  it  now,  and  spoke  that  way  in 
1861-5,  and  earlier. 

O  tempora  mutantur !  The  times  change,  and  our 
forests  have  disappeared  from  our  hills  and  valleys 
as  those  from  Lebanon,  Canaan  and  Assyria  went  in 
bygone  ages,  leaving  deserts  of  sand  and  rocks  over 
which  the  crow  must  now  carry  his  rations  or  starve, 
as  he  journeys  to  the  Tigris  or  Euphrates.  Where 
rise  the  springs  of  Alount  Peaslee,  to  form  the  five 
rivers — the  Punjab  of  Potter  County — including  the 
Allegheny,  Genesee  and  Pine  Creek,  broad,  fertile 
fields  spread  out  before  the  beholder's  eyes  as  once  did 
fruitful  Sharon  from  Herman  and  Ebal  and  from  the 
now  barren  ^ Fount  Tabor. 

On  October  30,  VJ21,  a  party  of  kindred  spirits  left 
Coudersport  in  a  touring  car  on  pleasant  recreation 
bent.  These  were  Col.  Henry  W.  Shoemaker  and 
John  H.  Chatham,  AIcElhattan;  A.  O.  Ahorse,  Harris- 
burg;  Judge  Albert  S.  Heck  and  jMahlon  J.  Colcord, 
Coudersport  and  John  C.  French,  Roulette,  the  writer 
of  this  chronicle. 

Up  the  Allegheny  river  the  party  w^ent  to  Mount 
Peaslee  where  the  perennial,  crystal  spring  bubbles 
forth  from  the  throne  upon  which  the  ancient  ^loqua 
sat  to  rule  the  rivers  w^hen  the  world  was  young. 
Thence  they  went  to  the  south  base  of  the  hill  where 
a  similar  spring  goes  away  toward  the  midday  sun, 
the  beginning  of  Pine  Creek,  the  ancient  Tiadaghton 


PENNSYLVANIA  RAFTING  DAYS  27 


down  whose  way  one  may  gaze  from  the  porch  of  the 
Morley  manor  house  for  many  miles,  where  the  giant 
pines  once  sang  to  the  southwind  their  song  of  plenty ; 
thence  the  party  went  to  the  north  base  and  gazed  into 
the  limpid  spring  that  originates  the  river  Genesee, 
that  proceeds  directly  to  the  Arms  of  the  Almighty, 
as  redmen  called  Lake  Ontario,  when  forests  lined 
each  shore  of  every  stream  and  crowned  every  hill. 
The  deciduous  forest  remains,  in  many  tiny  groves  on 
Mt.  Peaslee,  but  the  coniferous  forests  along  Tiadagh- 
ton  are  no  more. 

"Sentimental  gush,"  you  exclaim.  IMayse  it  is  so, 
and  yet  the  most  practical  thing  you  will  read  of  for 
a  whole  month.  The  people  of  France  are  sentimen- 
tal, and  how  practical  they  appeared  not  so  very  long 
ago.  And  longer  ago,  we  knew  it  at  Yorktown,  and 
also,  here  in  Pennsylvania.  From  1785  to  1807, 
Andre  Michaux  and  his  son  devoted  much  time  to 
the  study  of  our  forests,  and  wrote  their  ''North 
American  Silva,"  a  valuable  work.  But  F.  Andre 
Michaux  was  sentimental  in  1855,  when  he  wrote  his 
will,  leaving  two  legacies  available  for  the  improve- 
ment of  our  forests : 

''Wishing  to  recognize  the  services  and  good  recep- 
tion which  my  father  and  myself,  together  and  separ- 
ately, have  received  during  our  long  and  often  peril- 
ous travels  in  all  the  extent  of  the  United  States,  as  a 
mark  of  my  lively  gratitude,  and  also  to  contribute 
to  that  country  to  the  extension  and  progress  of  agri- 
culture,   and    more    especially    of    silviculture    in    the 


28 


PENNSYLVANIA  RAFTING  DAYS 


United  States,  I  give  and  bequeath  to  the  American 
Philosophical  Society  of  Philadelphia,  of  which  I 
have  the  honor  to  be  a  member,  the  sum  of  $12,000; 
I  give  and  hequeath  to  the  Society  of  Agriculture  and 
Arts  in  the  State  of  ^Massachusetts,  of  which  I  have 
the  honor  to  be  a  member,  the  sum  of  $8000 ;  these 
two  sums  making  180,000  francs,  or  again  $20,000." 

Let  us  all  emulate  his  example ! 


BILL  BKKWEK,   "HICK"   FKEACHER 


Susquehanna 

Rafting  Surpassed 

Other  Streams 


IJy   JOHN    H.    (  HATHAM* 

RAFTING  was  at  one  time  a  great  business  on  all 
the  large  streams  of  Pennsylvania.  It  was  a 
prosperous  l)usiness  for  many  years  on  the  Del- 
aware, Schuylkill,  Susquehanna,  Allegheny  and  their 
larger  tributary  streams.  But  the  rafting  ])usiness  on 
the  Susquehanna  surpassed  that  on  all  the  other  rivers 
and  streams  combined.  A  number  of  factors  made 
possible  this  great,  but  in  many  cases  hazardous,  pros- 
perous business.  The  large  volume  of  water  and  the 
condition  of  the  river  l)ed  were  favorable  to  rafting. 
The  Susquehanna  drains  21,000  square  miles  within 
Pennsylvania  and  (5,000  square  miles  in  New  York. 
The  water  flowing  in  the  Susquehanna  River  at  the 
Maryland  line  represents  a  drainage  basin  equal  to 
60  per   cent,   of   the  total   area   of    Pennsylvania.       A 

*Infcrmation  supplied  to  Prof.  J.  S.  Illick  by  John  H. 
Chatham  (poet,  naturalst  and  teacher),  of  McElhattan,  Clin- 
ton County,  Pa.  Mr.  Chatham  began  rafting-  in  1862,  wlien  he 
was  15  years  old,  and  continued  in  the  business  until  1873 — a 
period  of  18  years.  Each  spring-  he  made  four  trips,  beg-inning 
at  Lock  Haven  and  ending-  at  Columbia,  Marietta  or  Wrig-hts- 
ville.  Mr.  Chatham  is  uoaa'  75  years  old  and  delights  in  telling 
tales   about    the   olden   days. 

29 


30  PENNSYLVANIA  RAFTING  DAYS 

further  factor  which  helped  develop  rafting  was  the 
large  quantity  of  timber  about  the  headwaters  of  the 
Susquehanna  suitable  for  rafting. 

The  rafting  business  at  one  time  employed  many 
men,  and  during  spring  the  river  was  densely  dotted 
with  floating  rafts,  varying  in  size  and  representing  a 
large  number  of  owners. 

The  rafts  were  made  up  in  eddys  and  other  placid 
places  along  the  river  where  the  water  was  fairly  deep. 
A  large  number  were  made  up  about  Lock  Haven. 
The  logs  were  usually  25  to  80  feet  long,  placed  along 
side  of  each  other  and  then  lashed  together  with  lash- 
poles  (halyards)  usually  made  from  water  birch  or 
ironwood  saplings  The  lash-poles  were  fastened  to 
the  logs  with  wooden  bows  about  IG  inches  long,  1^ 
inches  wide,  and  from  ^  to  2  inches  thick. 

The  bows  were  usually  made  of  white  oak,  split  and 
bent  before  being  used.  Holes  were  then  bored  into 
the  logs  with  rude  crank-handled  augurs  and  the  lash- 
poles  fastened  by  fitting  and  fastening  the  bows  into 
the  holes. 

The  ordinary  raft  was  from  150  to  300  feet  long 
and  up  to  26  feet  wide;  the  general  width  was  24  feet, 
this  being  the  greatest  width  allowed  by  chutes 
through  which  the  rafts  had  to  pass.  The  longest 
raft  brought  down  the  river  in  the  early  days  was  320 
feet  long,  and  the  longest  single  piece  of  timber  was 
115  feet  long  and  12  inches  square  at  the  small  end. 
Small  rafts  were  called  "pups".  *'A  pair  of  pups" 
was  a  name  applied  to  two  creek  rafts. 


PENNSYLVANIA  RAFTING  DAYS  31 


There  were  rafting  divisions  on  the  Susquehanna 
just  as  we  find  them  today  on  the  railroads. 

Division    I  extended  from  Clearfield  to  Lock  Haven. 

Division  II  extended  from  Lock  Haven  to  Columbia, 
Marietta  and  Wrightsville. 

Division  III  extended  from  Marietta  to  tidewater. 

It  was  at  Columbia,  Marietta  and  Wrightsville  and 
other  terminal  points  of  the  second  division  where 
two  sets  of  practical  men  met — the  raft  owners  and  the 
timber  merchants.  Those  were  great  trading  days, 
when  woodsman  guile  was  set  up  against  Yankee  wit. 

The  rafting  crews  varied  somewhat  in  size.  The 
crews  operating  between  Lock  Haven  and  Marietta 
consisted  of  two  to  four  and  sometimes  eight  men. 
The  up-river  rafts  often  consisted  of  ten  men,  as  the 
raft  owner  could  not  pay  his  men  until  the  timber  was 
sold,  and  took  them  on  to  Marietta.  Two  men,  as  a 
rule,  manned  one  raft  and  four  men  a  fleet.  A  fleet 
consisted  of  two  rafts.  The  tasks  of  the  four  men 
were  as  follows : 

1  Pilot 

2  Steerers 
1  Helper 

Total,  4 

From  Marietta  to  tidewater  the  crew  usually  con- 
sisted of  nine  men — five  on  the  front  end  of  the  raft 


32  PENNSYLVANIA  RAFTING  DAYS 

and  four  at  the  rear  end,  the  large  number  being  re- 
quired 1)ecause  of  the  hazarous  and  rocky  condition  of 
the  river  l)ed  l)elow  Cokimbia. 

Timl)er  was  cheap  in  those  days.  The  price  of  raft 
timl^er  averaged  about  14^/^  cents  per  cubic  foot.  The 
l)est  white  i)ine  and  white  oak  1)rought  only  25  cents 
per  cubic  foot.  Spars  were  then  in  great  demand. 
They  were  from  90  to  100  feet  long  and  brought  $100 
apiece. 

In  the  early  days  the  timbers  were  hewn,  that  is, 
squared,  before  being  placed  in  rafts.  Later  on  the 
logs  were  brought  down  "in  the  round".  Alost  of  the 
ratfs  were  made  up  of  logs  of  white  pine,  hemlock  and 
other  kinds  which  float  easily.  But  occasionally 
heavier  timl^ers  were  brought  down  in  rafts.  Towards 
the  end  of  the  trip  the  logs  became  water  soaked 
and  entire  rafts  were  about  completely  submerged. 

A  box  of  cold  food  and  a  wigwam  tent  was  often 
the  only  equipment  upon  the  rafts.  Whiskey  was  plen- 
ful  and  cheap  in  those  days.  Every  few  miles  the 
floating  rafts  would  be  approached  by  whiskey  distrib- 
utors, who  operated  in  rowboats  from  their  base  of 
supply  on  the  shore.  Air.  Chatham  was  one  of  the 
very  few  lumljermen  who  never  used  liquor  in  any 
form  .during  the  time  he  rafted  on  the  Susquehanna. 

Getting  up  material  on  ''Rafting  on  the  Susque- 
hanna" must  make  one  feel  like  being  "in  some  banquet 
hall  deserted,"  stated  Mr.  Chatham,  as  he  closed  his 
storv. 


M      i 

S5    « 


Rafting  Days  On 

The  Susquehanna 's 

North  Branch 


By  JOHN   C.   FRENCH 

ALL  the  territory  drained  by  the  Susquehanna  and 
its  tributaries  was  originally  forest  clad,  and 
what  a  noble  forest  it  was !  The  giant  pines,  130 
to  200  feet  tall  and  two  to  six  feet  in  diameter — some 
of  them  larger  and  taller — stood  in  the  glens,  amidst 
the  hardwoods  and  hemlocks,  wholly  unconscious  of 
the  part  they  were  to  play  in  the  drama  of  development 
of  the  country. 

By  1790  the  valleys  had  been  penetrated  by  the 
hardy  pioneers  to  the  south  and  east.  In  Bradford 
County  (then  Ontario  County)  Anthony  Rummer  field 
built  a  sawmill,  1774,  in  the  township  of  Standing 
Stone,  which  derives  its  name  from  a  high  rock  stand- 
ing in  the  Susquehanna  River,  a  landmark  for  the  In- 
dians and  the  earliest  white  men  who  settled  the  region 
near  "the  southern  door"  of  the  Iroquois  confederation. 
Conrad  Weiser,  in  1737,  on  his  way  to  Onondaga  for  a 
conference  with  the  Six  Nations,  described  it. 

The  township  was  erected  in  1841  from  parts  of  the 

33 


34  PENNSYLVANIA  RAFTING  DAYS 

townships  of  Herrick  and  Wyssox.  The  site  of  the 
mill  is  on  the  Rummerfield  Creek,  where  water  power 
was  cheaply  available.  Amos  Bennett  built  a  mill  on 
Bennett's  Creek  in  Asylum  Township.  After  the  land 
bought  by  the  Commonwealth  of  Pennsylvania  from 
the  Indians  at  Fort  Stanwix  in  1784  was  opened  for 
sale  in  1785,  Prince  Bryant  bought  600  acres  in  Athens 
Township  and  soon  built  a  saw  and  grist  mill  on  his 
land.  Soon  afterward  Casper  Singer  on  Towanda 
Creek,  Abial  Foster  and  Jonathan  Ho^comb  on  Sugar 
Creek,  Martin  and  Cephas  Stratton,  William  Means 
and  others  built  mills  at  Van  Gorder's  on  Towanda 
Creek,  and  other  Bradford  County  streams  from  which 
rafts  of  lumber  were  sent  down  the  Susquehanna  to 
Port  Deposit  for  Baltimore  markets. 

From  Wyoming,  1787,  Captain  Joseph  Leonard  and 
his  family  moved  up  the  Susquehanna  in  a  canoe  and 
made  the  first  permanent  settlement  at  Binghamton, 
New  York,  then  a  forest  of  pines  and  hardwood  trees. 
He  was  followed  the  same  year  by  Colonel  Rose 
Joshua  Whitney  and  a  few  others  with  their  families, 
and  a  saw  mill  was  soon  built  to  supply  lumber  for 
homes  and  for  rafts  to  Maryland.  In  the  lower  Can- 
isteo  Valley  in  Addison  Township,  Steuben  County, 
New  York,  just  north  of  the  Pennsylvania  border, 
George  Goodhue  in  1793  built  a  saw  mill.  -This  was 
one  of  the  famous  pine  regions  of  New  York,  a  central 
point  and  resort  for  all  the  lumbermen  along  the  line 
of  the  two  great  pine  lumber  states. 

Hornell,    Tuscarora,    Woodhull,    Jasper,    Canisteo, 


PENNSYLVANIA  RAFTING  DAYS  35 


Greenwood  to  "Deadwater,"  as  Addison  was  called, 
rafts  lined  the  streams.  The  men  who  guided  the 
Canisteo  rafts  to  Chemung  and  Susquehanna  ports 
were  the  most  efficient  raftmen  in  freshets  to  be  found 
in  the  country.  Charles  Williamson  built  two  saw 
mills  near  Bath  on  the  Cohocton  in  1792.  Mud  Creek 
and  the  Cohocton  were  cleared  of  obstructions  at  once 
to  make  both  navigable  for  arks  and  rafts  of  pine  lum- 
ber from  the  mills. 

George  McClure,  born  in  Ireland,  1770,  came  to 
America  in  1790  and  located  in  Steuben  County,  New 
York.  He  became  a  man  of  prominence  in  that  section, 
and  was  spoken  of  as  "General''  McClure.  Finally  he 
lived  at  Elgin,  Illinois.  In  1800  he  ran  an  ark  down 
the  Cohocton,  Chemung  and  Susquehanna  to  Harris- 
burg,  en  route  to  Baltimore.  The  narrative  of  his  ex- 
perience as  a  lumberman  is  interesting  and  typical  of 
the  time  and  section. 

"I  built  an  ark  seventy-five  feet  long  and  sixteen  feet 
wide,  and  got  out  a  cargo  of  pipe  and  hogshead  staves 
which  I  knew  would  turn  to  good  account  should  I  ar- 
rive safely  in  Baltimore.  All  things  being  ready,  with 
cargo  on  board,  a  good  pitch  of  water  and  a  first-rate 
set  of  hands,  we  put  our  vessel  into  the  stream  and 
away  we  went  at  a  rapid  rate.  In  half  an  hour  we 
reached  White's  Island,  five  miles  below  Bath.  There 
we  ran  against  a  large  tree  that  lay  across  the  river. 
We  made  our  ark  fast  to  the  shore,  cut  away  the  tree, 
repaired  damages  and  next  morning  took  a  fair  start. 
It  is  unnecessary  to  state  in  detail  the  many  difficulties 


36  PENNSYLVANIA  RAFTING  DAYS 


we  encountered  before  we  reached  Painted  Post,  but  in 
about  six  days  we  got  there. 

"The  Chemung  River  had  fallen  so  low  that  we  were 
obliged  to  wait  for  a  rise  of  water.  We  made  a  fresh 
start,  after  four  or  five  days,  with  a  fair  pitch  of  water, 
and  in  four  days  ran  200  miles  to  Mahantango,  a  place 
twenty  miles  from  Harrisburg,  where,  through  ignor- 
ance of  the  pilot,  we  ran  upon  a  bar  of  rocks  in  the 
middle  of  the  river,  where  it  was  a  mile  wide. 

''There  we  lay  twenty- four  hours,  no  one  coming  to 
our  relief  or  to  take  us  on  shore..  At  last  two  gentle- 
men came  on  board  and  told  us  it  was  impossible  to  get 
the  ark  off  until  a  rise  of  water.  One  of  the  gentlemen 
inquired,  apparently  very  casually,  what  it  cost  to  build 
an  ark  of  that  size  and  how  many  staves  we  had  on 
board.  I  suspected  his  object  and  answered  in  his  own 
careless  manner.  He  inquired  if  I  did  not  wish  to  sell 
the  ark  and  cargo.  I  told  him  I  preferred  going 
through,  if  there  were  any  chance  of  a  rise  of  water — 
that  pipe  staves  in  Baltimore  were  worth  $80.00  per 
thousand,  but  that  I  would  consider  any  fair  offer  for 
ark  and  cargo.  He  offered  to  pay  me  $600  for  the  ark 
and  load.  I  told  him  that  was  hardly  half  their  value 
in  Baltimore,  but  that  for  $(S00  I  would  close  a  bargain 
with  him.  He  said  he  had  a  horse,  saddle  and  bridle  on 
shore  worth  $200  which  he  would  add  to  the  $600  of- 
iered  to  me.  We  all  went  ashore.  I  examined  the 
horse,  closed  the  bargain  and  started  for  Bath  on 
horseback.     I  lost  nothing  by  the  sale,  but  if  I  had 


PENNSYLVANIA  RAFTING  DAYS  37 

succeeded  in  reaching  Baltimore,  I  should  have  cleared 
$500. 

"That  same  spring  Jacob  Bartles  and  his  brother-in- 
law,  Mr.  Harvey,  made  their  way  down  Mud  Creek 
with  one  ark  and  some  rafts.  Bartles'  mill  pond  and 
Mud  Lake  afforded  water  sufficient,  at  any  time,  by 
drawing  a  gate  to  carry  arks  and  rafts  out  of  the  creek. 
Harvey  lived  on  the  West  Branch  of  the  Susquehanna 
and  understood  the  management  of  such  craft.  Thus 
it  was  ascertained  that  by  improving  the  streams  we 
could  transport  our  produce  to  Baltimore — a  distance 
of  300  miles — in  the  spring  of  the  year  for  a  trifle. 

''My  next  venture  in  business  was  attended  by  better 
success.  My  brother  Charles  kept  a  small  store  at 
Bath,  New  York,  and  during  the  year  of  1800  we 
entered  partnership.  I  moved  to  Dansville,  opened  a 
store  there  and  remained  there  one  year.  We  did  a 
safe  business  and  took  in,  during  the  winter,  4,000 
bushels  of  wheat  and  200  barrels  of  pork.  I  built  four 
arks  at  Arkport  on  the  Canisteo  River  and  ran  them  to 
Baltimore,  loaded  with  the  wheat  and  pork  in  the  spring 
of  1801.  These  were  the  first  arks  that  descended  the 
Canisteo.  My  success  that  year  gave  us  a  fair  start  in 
trade.  My  brother,  meantime,  went  to  Philadelphia  to 
buy  a  fresh  supply  of  goods  for  both  stores ;  but  on  his 
return  trip  he  died  very  suddenly  at  Tioga  Point. 

"He  had  purchased  about  $30,000  worth  of  goods. 
With  my  family  I  returned  to  Bath,  continued  the  store 
at  Dansville,  opened  another  at  Penn  Yan,  and  a  small 
store  at  Pittstown,  in  Ontario  County  (Bradford  Counr 


38  PENNSYLVANIA  RAFTING  DAYS 

ty  now),  Pennsylvania.  At  that  time  I  bought  the 
Cold  Spring  Mill  site,  midway  between  Bath  and 
Crooked  Lake,  and  300  acres  of  land;  also  800  acres 
of  forest  land  from  the  Land  Office,  to  secure  the  whole 
privilege  of  the  mill  site.  There  I  built  a  saw  mill,  a 
flour  mill,  a  fulling  mill,  and  a  grinding  machine  for 
local  custom  work. 

*'In  1814  I  sold  my  Cold  Spring  mills  to  Henry  A. 
Townsend  for  $14,000,  and  built  other  mills  at  Bath. 
In  the  spring  of  1816,  I  ran  to  Baltimore  a  million  feet 
of  pine  and  100,000  feet  of  cherry  boards  and  curled 
maple  lumber,  besides  flour  and  produce.  I  chartered 
three  brigs  and  shipped  the  maple  and  cherry  lumber 
and  500  barrels  of  flour  to  Boston,  Mass.  The  flour 
sold  there  at  a  fair  price,  but  the  lumber  lay  a  dead 
weight  on  my  hands.  At  length  the  inventor  of  a  ma- 
chine for  spinning  wool  by  water-power  offered  to  sell 
a  machine  for  $3,500  and  take  the  lumber  in  payment. 
I  closed  the  bargain  with  him  and  embarked  in  woolen 
manufacture  at  Bath.  I  obtained  a  loan  from  the  State 
and  was  doing  well  until  Congress  reducea  me  tariff 
that  protected  home  industry  to  a  mere  nominal  tax  on 
imports  from  other  countries.  Immediately  after  that 
this  country  was  flooded  with  foreign  vabrics,  and  few 
woolen  factories  in  the  United  States  survived  the 
shock." 

Confirmatory  of  the  arks  of  Messrs.  Bartles  and 
Harvey,  mentioned  above,  by  "General"  McClure,  a 
record  entered  by  the  County  Clerk  of  Steuben  County, 


PENNSYLVANIA  RAFTING  DAYS  39 

New  York,  in  Vol.  I,  "Record  of  Deeds,"  is  of  interest, 
viz : 

"This  fourth  day  of  April,  one  thousand  eight  hun- 
dred, started  from  the  mills  of  Frederick  Bartles  on  the 
outlet  of  Mud  Lake  (Frederickstown),  two  arks  of  the 
following  dimensions :  One  built  by  Col.  Charles  Wil- 
liamson, of  Bath,  72  feet  long  and  15  feet  wide;  the 
other  built  by  Nathan  Harvey,  71  feet  long  and  15  feet 
wide,  were  conducted  down  the  Cohocton  (after  going 
through  Mud  Creek  without  any  accident)  to  Painted 
Post  enroute  to  Baltimore.  These  are  the  first  arks 
built  in  this  county  except  the  one  built  on  the  Cohoc- 
ton, at  White's  saw  mill,  five  miles  below  Bath,  by  Mr. 
Patterson,  Sweeney  and  others,  from  Pennsylvania,  70 
feet  long  and  16  feet  wide,  started  about  the  20th  day 
of  March,  this  same  year. 

"This  minute  is  entered  to  show  at  a  future  day  the 
first  commencement  of  embarkation  in  this  (as  is 
hoped)  useful  invention. 

"By  Henry  A.  Townsend, 

"Clerk  of  Steuben  County." 

It  is  shown  that  many  Pennsylvania  lumbermen  oper- 
ated on  the  north  side  of  the  boundary  !ine  in  the 
State  of  New  York.  This  was  owing  to  claims  of 
Connecticut,  settled  at  the  end  of  1799.  The  Royal 
Charter  of  1662  gave  to  Connecticut  the  New  England 
coast  south  of  Massachusetts  and  west  of  Rhode  Island, 
extending  westward  to  the  "South  Sea"  across  the  con- 
tinent, including  the  part  of  the  grant  to  William  Penn 


40 


PENNSYLVANIA  RAFTING  DAYS 


in  1681,  lying-  north  of  the  forty-first  parallel,  north 
latitude.  This  meant  a  line  through  Stroudsburg, 
Hazleton,  Catawissa,  Clearfield  and  New  Castle — a 
royal  heritage  of  timber,  coal,  iron  and  oil,  in  dispute. 

'  When  the  Capitol  at  Washington,  D.  C,  was  rebuilt 
in  1816,  the  pine  and  hardwood  lumber,  taken  down 
the  Susquehanna  from  early  saw  mills  was  used.  Some 
from  New  York  State  and  more  from  Pennsylvania. 
Anson  Seymour,  of  Chenango  Forks,  New  York,  had  a 
large  quantity  of  seasoned  lumber  which  was  stored  at 
Baltimore.  Government  contractors  were  glad  to  buy 
largely  of  him,  at  good  prices,  for  the  new  legislative 
halls  of  the  nation. 


Rafting  Days  Across 

The  Atlantic  Ocean 


"P 


By  JOHN   C.   FRENCH 

HILADELPHIA  is  justly  renowned  for  ex- 
cellence and  elegance  in  shipbuilding.  None  of 
the  colonies  equalled  her ;  and,  perhaps,  no  place 
in  the  world  surpassed  her  in  skill  and  science  in  this 
matter.  At  the  present  day  (185T),  other  cities  of  the 
Union  are  approaching  her  excellence. 

"In  early  times  they  constructed  at  Philadelphia  great 
raft  ships  of  much  larger  dimensions  than  the  late  ones 
from  Canada,  called  the  "Columbus"  and  "Baron 
Renfrew,"  which  in  the  present  day  are  regarded  as 
iionpareils. 

"A  little  before  the  War  of  Independence  the  last 
raft  ship  was  built  and  launched  at  Kensington ;  and  in 
1774-5  one  was  built  and  launched  at  Slater's  wharf,  a 
little  south  of  Poole's  bridge,  and  navigated  to  Europe 
by  Captain  Newman.  Our  raft  ships  were  generally 
for  sale  and  use  in  England,  when  our  timber  was  plen- 
tiful and  cheap.  They  would  carry  off  800  logs  of 
timber,  competent  to  make  six  ships  of  250  tons  each. 
An  eye-witness  who  saw  one  of  these  mammoth  fabrics 
descend  into  her  destined  element  said  she  bent  and 

41 


42  PENNSYLVANIA  RAFTING  DAYS 

twisted  much  in  launching,  but  when  on  the  water 
looked  to  the  eye  of  the  beholder  much  like  another 
ship  in  form. 

"Before  the  Revolution  a  raft  ship,  named  the  "Baron 
Renfrew"  (probably  the  largest  ship  ever  built,  being 
above  5,000  tons  and  double  the  measurements  of  an 
ordinary  seventy-four),  made  her  voyage  safely  to  the 
Downs.  But  the  pilots  being  unwilling  to  take  her  into 
the  western  channel,  because  of  her  great  draft  of 
water,  undertook  to  carry  her  around  the  Goodwin 
sands,  where  they,  being  unable  to'  beat  up  against  the 
strong  north  wind,  got  her  ashore  on  the  French  banks, 
near  Graveslines,  where  she  was  broken  up  by  the 
heavy  sea.  Nearly  all  of  her  cargo  was  saved.  Rafts 
of  great  size  were  made  of  her  lumber  and  towed  to 
France  and  into  the  River  Thames.  Some  of  them 
contained  fifteen  to  twenty  thousand  cubic  feet  of  tim- 
ber. On  top  of  one  of  them,  which  was  towed  to 
London,  was  the  foremast  spar  of  this  mammoth  ship, 
a  single  tree  90  feet  in  length,  a  noble  specimen  of 
American  white  pine." — From  Watson  s  "Annals  of 
1857,  Abridged^ 


It  should  be  observed  that  the  foregoing  record  was 
made  before  the  "Great  Eastern"  was  built,  to  enable 
Cyrus  W.  Field  to  lay  the  great  cable  for  the  Atlantic 
telegraph.  While  the  first  "Baron  Renfrew"  contained 
a  million  feet  board  measure  of  pine  timber  for  lumber, 
the  modern  log  rafts  on  the  Pacific  ocean  often  have 
about  eight  million  feet  board  measure  in  each  raft. 


PENNSYLVANIA  RAFTING  DAYS  43 

For  the  light  it  gives  on  older  methods  along  the 
Delaware,  the  following  from  a  New  York  paper  of 
March  22,  1885,  is  of  peculiar  interest,  viz : 

"Dingman^s  Ferry,  Pike  County,  Pennsylvania : 
Moses  C.  V.  Shoemaker,  of  this  village,  has  one  of  the 
newest  houses  in  Pike  County,  but  its  floors  are  laid 
with  what  is,  doubtless,  the  oldest  manufactured  lumber 
in  the  Union,  in  actual  use  for  the  purpose.  These 
boards  were  made  from  yellow  pine  timber.  They  are 
an  inch  and  a  half  thick  and  almost  two  feet  wide.  The 
trees  from  which  they  were  cut  were  felled  along  the 
Delaware  River  at  Dingman's  in  1723,  whip-sawed  by 
two  men,  one  in  the  pit  below,  one  above,  ancestors  of 
Mr.  Shoemaker,  and  were  used  in  a  stone  house  which 
they  built  in  IT 24,  chiefly  for  the  floors. 

"The  building  served  also  as  a  fort,  those  early  set- 
tlers being  constantly  exposed  to  Indian  raids.  The 
ancient  structure  was  demolished  in  1884  to  make  room 
for  the  new  Shoemaker  residence.  It  was  in  as  good 
condition  as  when  first  built.  There  was  not  an  un- 
sound stick  of  timber  in  it,  and  not  one  which  had  not 
been  in  it  for  160  years.  No  lumber  like  the  floor 
boards  could  be  found  in  any  lumber  yard  of  the  State 
today,  for  native  yellow  pine  is  now  entirely  extinct; 
and  yellow  pine  boards,  two  feet  wide  and  %"  thick, 
would  almost  be  worth  'its  weight  in  coin.' 

*'When  the  floors  were  taken  out  of  the  old  stone 
building,  a  wealthy  Philadelphian,  who  was  spending 
the  summer  at  Dingman's,  offered  Shoemaker  a  price 
for  the  boards  which  would  almost  have  paid  for  the 


44 


PENNSYLVANIA  RAFTING  DAYS 


new  residence;  but  Mr.  Shoemaker  refused  to  part 
with  them  at  any  price,  and  used  them  in  his  new 
house.  To  all  appearances  they  are  good  for  another 
century  and  a  half. 

"From  the  timbers  of  the  old  stone  house  more  than 
100  pounds  of  wrought  iron  nails  were  taken.  They 
were  four  inches  in  length,  and  had  evidently  been 
made  with  rude  implements.  The  work  of  forging 
them  must  have  been  done  on  the  spot,  as  there  was  no 
place  then  nearer  than  the  Minisink  settlement,  near 
the  present  site  of  Port  Jervis,  in  Orange  County,  New 
York,  where  the  nails  could  have  been  obtained,  and 
that  was  across  the  river,  twenty  miles  away." 


Rlvermen  Were  Carefree 
Lot,  Happy  in  Their  Work 


By  JOHN   C.   FRENCH 

THEY  were  glad  days  and  free,  those  days  of  raft- 
ing on  the  streams  of  Pennsylvania.  Hardy  were 
the  men  who  manned  the  sweep-oars  and  worked 
the  rafts  safely  to  their  destinations  at  points  on  the 
lower  waters  of  the  stream. 

All  in  all,  the  raftmen  were  a  jolly  bunch.  They 
bantered  with  the  people  residing  along  the  stream, 
played  jokes  on  themselves,  and  when  evening  came 
the  strumming  of  a  banjo  or  the  weird  notes  of  the 
violin  in  the  hands  of  some  backwoods  virtuoso  could 
be  heard  over  the  waters,  as  well  as  many  backwoods 
songs  now  almost  forgotten. 

From  such  scraps  of  news,  gathered  far  and  near, 
and  from  the  chants  of  the  men— of  rafting  men  and 
the  "hicks"  of  the  woods,  rehearsed  by  their  descend- 
ants in  song  and  story — we  envisage  some  of  the  stir- 
ring drama  of  the  past. 

On  the  Delaware,  a  large  boat,  was  a  ''galley,"  and  a 
smaller  boat  was  a  ''hoy."  No  doubt  a  raft  of  lumber 
or  timber  was  a  "hick,"  and  the  crews  were  "hickies ;" 
hence  many  terms  of  the  old  rafting  crews  linger  in 
slang  or  in  poetry. 

45 


46  PENNSYLVANIA  RAFTING  DAYS 

On  a  raft  of  pine  lumber  the  poet  N.  P.  Willis  made 
a  voyage  down  the  Susquehanna,  absorbing  inspiration. 

No  doubt,  Oliver  Wendel  Holmes  inhaled  elixir 
from  emanations  of  the  pen  of  Nathaniel  P,  WilHs, 
developed  from  the  singing  pine  trees  on  the  river 
shores  of  Wyoming  and  Ontario,  the  early  names  for 
the  upper  Susquehanna  forest  in  northern  Pennsyl- 
vania. 

It  is  a  far  cry  from  Tamenund,  the  Delaware  Chief- 
tain, hunting  the  wild  game  in  the  great  forest  of 
Tawasentha,  to  Tammany,  his  namesake,  hunting  polit- 
ical game  on  the  other  Tawasentha,  near  Albany,  New 
York ;  but  the  Delaware  redmen,  adopted  by  the  Mo- 
hawks, took  along  the  beautiful  name. 

The  Hon.  Gifford  Pinchot  has  told  us  in  "The  Satur- 
day Evening  Post"  of  June  4,  1921,  why  we  must  re- 
new the  forests  of  Pennsylvania.  Boys,  let's  go !  For- 
ests are  needed  in  the  whole  United  States,  and  six  per 
cent,  of  them  should  crown  the  highlands  of  Pennsyl- 
vania Beautiful. 

Now,  boys,  let  us  think !  With  ice  on  our  heads,  our 
feet  on  the  table,  calumets  burning  and  pukwana  in 
wreaths  above  us,  let  us  read  again  what  Mr.  Pinchot 
has  said,  and  let's  learn  it.  It  is  all  true,  even  though 
he  has  soft-pedaled  it ! 

We  need  forests — now !  'Twill  require  a  hundred 
years  for  our  patches  of  brush  to  become  forests  of  real 
trees,  suitable  for  lumber.  Let's  go !  Pennsylvanians 
have  been  admired  for  being  a  hard-headed  people. 
Verily,  they  are  that !     So  are  we  all ! 


PENNSYLVANIA  RAFTING  DAYS  47 


In  1873,  Governor  John  F.  Hartranft  told  us  to  get 
for  ourselves  new  forests.  In  1899,  Governor  Stone 
said  the  same,  and  did  get  our  forest  legislation,  to 
begin  getting  public  brush  lands,  vi^herever  cheap 
enough.    Verily,  we  have  hard  domes ! 

Governor  Sproul  said,  "Let  us  plant  trees  on  the 
hills  and  along  the  streams."  Mr.  Pinchot  tells  us  how, 
and  why,  and  everything!  It  is  all  true.  Four  good 
and  reliable  witnesses  have  testified  during  forty-eight 
years.    They  are  agreed  as  to  facts.    Boys,  let's  go ! 

The  redmen,  whether  they  be  called  "Indians"  or 
"Amerinds,"  have  been  the  best  foresters  on  earth. 
Let  us  get  the  land  and  ask  our  young  men  to  make 
a  new  forest  grow. 


Allegheny  River  Rafting 
Days  and  Rafting  Tales 


By  JOHN   C.   FRENCH 

"In  distant  days  of  wild  romance,   of  magic,  myth  and  fable, 
When  trees  could  argue,  stones  advance,  and  beasts  to  speak  were 

able — 
'Twas   then,   no   doubt,   if   'twas   at   all;    but   doubts   we   need    not 

mention." 

The  recorded  facts  of  history  shall  tell  the  tale : 

WILLIAM  PENN  inherited  from  his  father,  the 
Admiral,  a  claim  of  sixteen  thousand  pounds 
against  a  crown.  No  doubt  the  Admiral  was  a 
more  expert  pinochle  player  than  was  the  old  King; 
hence  this  I  O  U  from  His  Majesty,  Charles  I. 

In  1680  William  Penn  requested  King  Charles  II 
to  make  payment  of  this  claim  in  lands  in  America, 
which  request  was  readily  granted.  Charles  II  was  a 
good  sport.  Turning  to  the  wall  map  of  America  with 
degrees  of  latitude  laid  out  in  zones  from  the  Atlantic 
indefinitely  westward  to  the  southern  ocean,  and  with 
a  torn  and  tattered  eastern  edge,  he  exclaimed,  ''Odd's 
blood,"  and  tore  off  a  chunk  of  the  map,  thirty-ninth 
and  forty-second  zones  inclusive,  and  five  degrees  of 
longitude  westward  from  the  Delaware  River,  saying: 
"Take  it,  and  be  good  to  my  Indians." 

The  redmen  owned   Pennsylvania  until  a  hundred 

48 


JOHN   CHURCHILL  FRENCH 


PENNSYLVANIA  RAFTING  DAYS  49 

and  ten  years  had  ceded  away  all  their  claims.  Chester 
County  extended  to  the  west  bounds  until  Westmore- 
land County  was  erected  at  the  southwest,  and  North- 
umberland County  was  erected  in  1772,  covering  the 
north  forest,  until  Allegheny  County  was  set  off  in 
1788,  the  northwest  section  from  the  Conewago  down 
which  flows  the  water  of  Chautauqua  Lake  and  Casa- 
daga  Creek  to  the  Allegheny. 

Of  the  forest  on  the  Allegheny  River,  white  pine 
(pinus  strobus)  was  king,  and  his  dusky  queen  was  a 
beautiful  cherry,  fair  as  a  Queen  Alliquippa,  of  the 
redmen. 

Rafting  lumber  from  Warren  County  began  about 
1800,  and  it  reached  its  maximum  in  the  decade,  1830 
to  1840.  The  early  history  of  Warren  County  abounds 
in  very  interesting  incidents  along  the  larger  Allegheny 
River. 

After  the  purchase  of  Louisiana  in  1804,  the  hardy 
lumbermen  decided  to  extend  their  markets  for  pine, 
beyond  Pittsburg,  Wheeling,  Cincinnati  and  Louisville 
— to  go,  in  fact,  to  New  Orleans  with  pine  and  cherry 
lumber.  So  large  boats  were  built  in  the  winter  of  1805 
and  1806  at  many  mills.  Seasoned  lumber,  of  the  best 
quality  was  loaded  into  the  flat  boats  and  they  untied 
on  April  1,  1806,  for  the  run  of  2,000  miles,  bordered 
by  forests  to  the  river's  edge. 

It  was  in  defiance  of  "All  Fools'  Day,"  but  they  went 
through  and  sold  both  lumber  and  boats.  For  clear 
pine  lumber,  $40.00  was  the  price  per  1,000  feet  received 
at  New  Orleans — just  double  the  Pittsburg  price  at 


50  PENNSYLVANIA  RAFTING  DAYS 

that  date.  For  three  years  thereafter  the  mills  of 
Warren  County  sent  boats  to  New  Orleans  loaded  with 
lumber,  and  the  men  returned  on  foot.  Joseph  Mead, 
Abraham  Davis  and  John  Watt  took  boats  through  in 
1807,  coming  back  via  Philadelphia  on  coastal  sailing 
ships. 

The  pilots  and  men  returned  by  river  boats  or  on 
foot,  as  best  they  could.  The  markets  along  the  Ohio 
from  Pittsburg  to  St.  Louis  soon  took  all  the  lumber 
from  the  Allegheny  mills,  and  the  longer  trips  were 
gladly  discontinued.  It  was  in  1850  that  there  came 
the  first  lumber  famine  at  Pittsburg.  Owing  to  the 
low  price  of  lumber  and  an  unfavorable  winter  for  the 
forest  work,  few  rafts  of  lumber  and  board  timber 
went  down  the  Allegheny  on  the  spring  freshets,  but 
the  November  floods  brought  one  hundred  rafts  that 
sold  for  more  favorable  prices  than  had  previously  pre- 
vailed. Clear  pine  lumber  sold  readily  for  $18.00,  and 
common  pine  lumber  for  $9.00  per  1,000  feet. 

The  renown  of  these  prices  stimulated  lumbering  on 
the  Allegheny  headwaters  and  the  larger  creeks.  So 
the  demand  for  lumber  was  supplied,  and  the  railroads 
soon  began  to  bring  lumber  from  many  saw  mills.  The 
board  timber  was  hued  on  four  sides,  so  there  was  only 
five  inches  of  wane  on  each  of  the  four  corners.  These 
rafts  of  round-square  timber  were  sold  by  square  feet 
to  Pittsburg  saw  mills. 

Rafts  of  pine  boards  at  headwater  mills  were  made 
up  of  platforms,  16  feet  square  and  from  18  to  25 
courses  thick,  9  pins  or  "grubs"  holding  boards  in  place 


PENNSYLVANIA  RAFTING  DAYS  51 


as  rafted.  Four  or  five  platforms  were  coupled  in 
tandem  with  3-feet  ''cribs"  at  each  joint,  making  an 
elastic  piece  73  feet  or  92  feet  long  for  a  4  or  5-plat- 
form  piece,  as  the  case  might  be,  16  feet  wide. 

At  Larrabee,  or  at  Millgrove,  four  of  these  pieces 
were  coupled  into  a  Warren  fleet,  33  feet  wide,  149  feet 
or  187  feet  long. 

Four  Warren  pieces  or  fleets  were  put  together  at 
Warren  to  make  up  a  Pittsburg  fleet.  At  Pittsburg 
four  or  more  Pittsburg  fleets  were  coupled  to  make  an 
Ohio  River  fleet.  These  became  very  large,  often  cov- 
ering nearly  two  acres  of  surface  containing  about 
1,500,000  feet  of  lumber  at  Cincinnati  or  at  Louisville. 
They  each  had  a  hut  for  sheltering  the  men  and  for 
cooking  their  food,  often  running  all  night  on  the  Ohio. 
To  find  where  the  shore  was  on  a  very  dark  night,  the 
men  would  throw  potatoes,  judging  from  the  sound 
how  far  away  the  river  bank  was  and  of  their  safe  or 
dangerous  position.  These  men  were  of  rugged  bodies 
and  of  daring  minds. 

A  small  piece,  in  headwaters  and  creeks,  had  an  oar 
or  sweep  at  each  end  of  the  piece  to  steer  the  raft  with. 
Each  oar  usually  had  two  men  to  pull  it.  An  oar-stem 
was  from  28  to  35  feet  long,  8  by  8  inches,  and  tapered 
to  4  by  4  inches,  shaved  to  round  handhold  near  the  end 
toward  centre  of  raft.  The  oar  blade  was  12,  14  or  16 
feet  long,  and  18  to  20  inches  wide — a  pine  plank,  4 
inches  thick  at  the  oar-stem  socket,  and  1  inch  thick  at 
out-end,  tapered  its  whole  length. 

There  were  other  sizes  of  stem  and  blade,  but  the 


52  PENNSYLVANIA  RAFTING  DAYS 

above  indicates  the  power  that  guided  a  raft  of  lumber 
along  the  flood-tides,  crooked  streams,  and  over  a 
dozen  mill  dams  to  the  broader  river  belov^. 

From  the  Allegheny  boats  of  scows,  30  feet  long  and 
11  feet  wide,  carried  loads  of  baled  hay,  butter,  eggs 
and  other  farm  produce  to  the  oil  fields  of  Venango 
County  in  the  60's,  sold  there  and  took  oil  in  barrels  to 
the  refinery  at  Pittsburg;  then  sold  the  scows  to  carry 
coal  or  goods  down  the  Ohio.  Mr.  Westerman  built 
five  boats  at  Roulette  about  1870,  40  feet  long  and  12 
feet  wide,  loaded  them  with  lumber  and  shingles  and 
started  for  Pittsburg,  but  the  boats  were  too  long  for 
the  dams  and  broke  up  at  Burtville,  the  first  dam. 

Much  of  the  pine  timber  of  the  west  half  of  Potter 
County  was  cut  in  saw-logs  and  sent  to  mills  at  Mill- 
grove  and  Weston's  in  log  drives  down  the  river  and 
Oswayo  Creek  into  the  State  of  New  York.  The  lum- 
ber was  shipped  via  the  Genessee  Valley  Canal  to  Al- 
bany and  New  York  City  and  other  points  on  the  Hud- 
son River. 

The  first  steamboat  to  steam  up  the  river  from  War- 
ren was  in  1830.  It  was  built  by  Archibald  Tanner, 
Warren's  first  merchant,  and  David  Dick  and  others  of 
Meadville.  It  was  built  in  Pittsburg.  The  steamer  was 
called  Allegheny.  It  went  to  Olean,  returned  and  went 
out  of  commission. 

The  late  Major  D.  W.  C.  James  furnished  the  inci- 
dent of  the  Allegheny  voyage  A  story  was  told  by 
James  Follett  regarding  the  trip  of  the  Allegheny  from 
Warren,  which  illustrates  the  lack  of  speed  of  steam- 


JOHN    HALT.   CHATHAM 


PENNSYLVANIA  RAFTING  DAYS  53 

boats  on  the  river  at  that  early  day.  While  the  steamer 
was  passing  the  Indian  reservation,  some  twenty-odd 
miles  above  Warren,  the  famous  chief,  Cornplanter, 
paddled  his  canoe  out  to  the  vessel,  and  actually  paddled 
his  small  craft  up' stream  and  around  the  Allegheny, 
the  old  chief  giving  a  vigorous  war  whoop  as  he  ac- 
complished the  proud  feat. 

Chief  Cornplanter,  alias  John  O'Bail,  first  took  his 
young  men  to  Clarion  County,  about  1795  to  learn  the 
method  of  lumbering,  and  in  1796  he  built  a  saw  mill 
on  Jenneseedaga  Creek,  later  named  Cornplanter  Run, 
in  Warren  County,  and  rafted  lumber  down  the  Alle- 
gheny to  Pittsburg  for  many  years.  Many  tributary 
streams,  such  as  Clarion,  Tionesta,  and  Oswago,  con- 
tributed rafts  each  year  to  make  up  the  fleets  that 
descended  the  Allegheny  River  from  1796  to  1874,  our 
rafting  days. 

We  must  mention  the  Hotel  Boyer,  on  the  Duquesne 
Way,  on  the  Allegheny  River  bank,  near  the  "Point"  at 
Pittsburg,  where  the  raftmen  and  the  lumbermen  fore- 
gathered, traded,  ate  and  drank  together,  after  each 
trip. 

Indians  were  good  pilots,  but  had  to  be  kept  sober  on 
the  rafts.  ''Bootleggers"  along  the  river  often  ran 
boats  out  to  the  rafts  and  relieved  the  drouthy  crews 
by  dispensing  bottles  of  "red-eye"  from  the  long  tops 
of  the  boots  they  wore. 


Forest  Lore  of  Rafting 
Days  on  the  Delaware 


By  JOHN   C.   FRENCH 

"XVIII :  That  in  clearing  said  land,  care  be  taken  to  leave  one 
acre  of  trees  for  every  five  acres  cleared;  especially  to  preserve 
mulberries  and  oak  for  silk  and  shipping." 

THE  above  has  a  modern  look,  but  it  was  written 
July  11,  1681,  in  England,  by  William  Penn,  before 
he  had  set  foot  in  his  new  province  of  Pennsylva- 
nia, acquired  by  the  King's  charter  of  March  4,  1681, 
in  ^'Conditions  of  Concessions"  by  him  in  Pennsylvania 
to  the  ''adventurers  and  purchasers" — a  sort  of  com- 
pact between  them. 

On  September  1,  1682,  the  proprietor  and  governor 
of  the  province  sailed  on  the  ship  "Welcome"  and 
reached  New  -Castle  (now  Delaware)  on  October  27, 
1682,  where  his  cousin,  Captain  Wilham  Markham, 
had  been  sent  the  previous  year  to  explore  the  Delaware 
Hiver  and  select  the  best  site  for  a  city.  On  July  30, 
1685,  the  Indians  deeded  to  William  Penn  the  land 
^'between  Pennepack  and  Chester  Creek,  and  back  as 
far  as  a  man  can  go  in  two  days  from  a  point  on  Con- 
shohocken  Hill,"  and  the  same  year  another  deed  for 
land  backward  from  the  Delaware,  "as  far  as  a  man 

54 


PENNSYLVANIA  RAFTING  DAYS  55 


can  ride  in  two  days  with  a  horse."    Later  many  deeds 
for  other  lands  were  made. 

The  whole  province  was  forested  then  with  white 
pine  and  other  evergreens;  with  oak  and  other  hard- 
wood trees. 

Michaux,  the  great  French  botanist,  who  traveled  ex- 
tensively here  during  the  last  decade  of  the  eighteenth 
and  the  first  decade  of  the  nineteenth  centuries,  found 
our  forests  still  extensive,  listing  a  very  great  variety  of 
trees  in  his  "North  American  Sylva,"  most  of  which  he 
found  in  Pennsylvania  of  superior  size  and  quality. 
The  successors  of  William  Penn  were  conservative  of 
our  forests  for  many  years,  but  finally  became  destruc- 
tive. 

As  treaties  were  concluded  with  the  Indian  tribes 
along  the  Delaware  River,  and  deeds  signed  for  addi- 
tional tracts  of  forest  land,  saw  mills  and  grist  mills 
were  established  on  the  tributary  streams,  where  dams 
for  water  power,  or  towers  for  wind  power,  could  be 
cheaply  constructed,  and  lumber  or  rafts  of  timber 
were  sent  down  the  Delaware  to  Philadelphia  by  boats 
and  barges.  So  each  tract  sold  by  the  redmen  was  taken 
possession  of  by  the  white  man,  and  depots  were  estab- 
lished for  supplies  the  Indians  were  learning  to  use  and 
need  in  exchange  for  the  furs  and  baskets  they  were 
anxious  to  sell  to  the  white  men. 

The  Swedes  and  the  Dutch  had  built  mills  on  the 
South  River,  as  the  Delaware  was  then  called,  in  1662 
and  later,  and  carried  on  trading  with  the  Indians  for  a 
score  of  years  before  Penn  acquired  the  province  on 


56  PENNSYLVANIA  RAFTING  DAYS 

west  side  of  the  Delaware  River;  so  the  Indians  had 
learned  to  use  imported  goods  when  Penn  came. 

In  1678,  Captain  Hans  Moonson  had  agreed  to  build 
a  mill  at  Moonson's  Falls,  on  the  Schuylkill,  or  to  per- 
mit another  to  build  the  much-needed  mill  there.  In 
1735,  Jean  Bartolet  erected  a  mill  in  Berks  County, 
near  Reading.  The  ancestors  of  Daniel  Boone  lived 
near  the  Bartolet  mill. 

Slowly  the  operations  in  the  forest  extended  up  the 
Delaware  for  a  century  after  Penn  came,  to  supply  the 
local  demand  for  lumber  and  a  large  export  trade.  At 
Great  Bend,  in  the  County  of  Susquehanna,  Josiah 
Stewart  had  a  saw  mill  in  1787;  Samuel  Preston  at 
Cascade  Creek,  Wayne  County,  in  1789  ;  Daniel  Foster, 
in  1800,  in  Jessop  Township,  paid  twice  for  his  land, 
as  the  man  he  bought  of  had  a  Connecticut  title  only. 
There  were  a  hundred  saw  mills  near  the  Delaware, 
and  the  aggregate  lumber  output  was  large  for  many 
years  and  was  sent  down  in  boats  and  rafts. 

Jesse  Dickinson  sent  the  first  raft  down  the  West 
Branch  of  the  Delaware  in  1788 ;  but  boats  and  rafts  of 
lumber,  from  both  sides  of  the  main  river,  had  then 
been  sent  down  for  about  a  century.  The  mills  were 
then  located  on  the  small  streams,  in  the  midst  of  the 
timber,  and  circles  cut  ofif  around  them.  Then  the 
mills  were  moved  to  another  location.  They  were  small 
affairs,  but  soon  became  numerous  along  the  whole  river 
system.  Lumber  was  cut  chiefly  in  16- foot  lengths 
and  rafted  in  squares,  joined  together  for  rafts  about 
148  feet  wide,  160  long,  and  25  courses  of  boards  deep, 


MAHLON  J.  C01.C0RI> 
Editor- Author-Raftnian 


PENNSYLVANIA  RAFTING  DAYS 


57 


containing  about  180,000   feet  of  lumber,  and  loaded 
with  shingles  or  produce. 

The  rafting  crews  of  twelve  to  eighteen  men  on  each 
raft  lived  in  rough  shanties  on  the  rafts,  which  ran 
about  fifty  miles  a  day  and  tied  up  to  the  shore  at  night. 
Three  oars  on  each  side  of  the  raft  enabled  the  men  to 
handle  their  heavy  craft.  The  raftsmen  soon  developed 
great  skill  in  the  manoeuvering  to  avoid  collisions  with 
rocks  and  bridge  piers.  On  the  lower  Delaware  great 
raft-ships,  with  masts,  booms,  yard  arms  and  rudder, 
were  constructed  and  sent  across  the  Atlantic  under 
canvas — mainsail,  staysail,  foresail,  topsails,  jib  and 
spanker — to  England  and  France,  chiefly.  The  last  of 
them  was  launched,  1775,  at  Kensington  by  Captain 
Newman, 

Gifford  Pinchot  ran  rafts  on  the  Delaware  as  a 
lad,  and  his  father  and  grandfather  were  pioneer 
raftmen  of  the  Delaware. 


Clarion  River  Was 
Famous  Rafting 
Stream  of  Keystone 


By  JOHN   C.   FRENCH 

ONE  of  the  famous  rafting  streams  of  Pennsyl- 
vania was  the  Clarion  River,  for  which  the 
county  was  named.  Flowing  westward, 
through  a  deep  canyon  that  may  yet  be  a  source  of 
great  electric  energy,  the  river  drains  portions  of  the 
counties  of  Forest,  Jefferson  and  Elk  besides  Clarion 
county  which  has  the  famous  Red  Bank  Creek  as 
southern  boundary  and  the  i\llegheny  for  part  of  its 
western  boundary. 

Lumbering  began  in  1805,  when  James  Laughlin  and 
Frederick  Miles  built  a  sawmill  at  the  mouth  of  Piney 
Creek.  In  1815,  Henry  Myers  built  a  mill  in  Beaver 
Township,  and  in  1820,  one  of  the  first  lumber  women 
on  record,  Mrs.  Black,  erected  a  sawmill  in  Elk  Town- 
ship. Henry  and  John  Neely,  also  built  a  mill  that 
year  on  Alum  Rock  Run,  and  Alexander  McNaugh- 
ton  began  on  Little  Toby  Creek.  There  were  mills 
at  Reidsburg,  on  Piney  Creek,  and  in  Mill  Creek 
Township. 

58 


PENNSYLVANIA  RAFTING  DAYS  59 

In  1822,  Thos.  Peters,  under  a  special  act  of  the 
Legislature,  erected  a  dam  for  lumbering  purposes 
across  the  Clarion  at  the  mouth  of  Turkey  Run.  This 
act  provided  for  the  maintenance  of  the  Clarion  River 
as  a  navigable  stream.  While  the  grant  was  in  per- 
petuity it  was  especially  provided,  viz ; 

"Said  Thos.  R.  Peters,  his  heirs  and  assigns,  shall,  at  all  times, 
keep,  support  and  maintain  a  race  or  canal  at  least  sixteen  feet 
wide,  with  a  lock,  or  locks,  if  necessary,  the  gates  of  which  shall 
not  be  less  than  eighty  feet  apart;  which  lock  or  locks  shall  be 
effectually    supplied    with    water   for   boat   and   canoe    navigation. 

And    provided    further.    That    the    said    Thos.    R. 

Peters,  his  heirs  and  assigns,  shall  construct  and  maintain  a 
slope  of  at  least  forty  feet  wide  and  two  feet  below  the  summit 
level  of  the  dam,  over  a  convenient  part  of  the  said  dam,  for  the 
passage  of  rafts  descending  the  river,  and  the  slope  shall  have 
an  apron  or  incline  four  or  six  feet  for  every  foot  of  said  dam 
above  the  ordinary  level  of  the  water." 

In  1821  John  J.  Ridgway  of  Philadelphia,  a  Quak- 
er, secured  a  grant  of  100,000  acres  of  land  near  the 
Clarion  River,  in  the  counties  of  Elk  and  McKean, 
and  soon  attempted  to  establish  the  town  of  Mont- 
morency, six  miles  north  of  Ridgway.  Colonizing 
began  strictly  as  an  agricultural  proposition;  the  tim- 
ber was  regarded  as  an  incumbrance  to  the  ground. 
The  agricultural  possibilities  were  limited  and  the 
dream  of  Montmorency  became  a  memory  of  unsuc- 
cessful endeavor. 

In  1827-8  logging  operations  began  in  the  vicinity 
of  Ridgway,  when  settlements  were  inaugurated  there. 
It  was  the  beginning  of  rafting  squared  or  board  tim- 
ber down  the  Clarion  and  the  Allegheny  from  Elk 
County,  to  supply  the  growing  city  of  Pittsburg  and 
markets  on  the  Ohio.  The  logs  were  hewn  on  four 
sides,    bound  into    rafts  and  floated  to    the  markets. 


60  PENNSYLVANIA  RAFTING  DAYS 

some  going  as  far  as  Louisville,  Ky.  It  was  alleged 
that  the  first  Ridgway  raft  of  cork  pine  logs  sold  at 
Pittsburg  for  $5.00  a  thousand  feet,  board  measure, 
and  that  half  the  sum  realized  was  taken  in  trade,  for 
window  glass,  at  that.  A  log-rule,  with  a  5-inch  hook 
to  cover  the  wane  of  corners  was  used.  Later,  rafts 
were  sold  by  cubic  feet  content. 

Rafts  were  made  up  of  from  3,500  to  5,000  cubic  feet 
each,  from  20  to  24  feet  wide  and  130  to  150  feet  long. 
There  are  records  that  pine  log  rafts  of  this  sort  sold 
in  1862,  at  Pittsburg,  for  from  five  to  six  cents  a  cubic 
foot.  Immediately  after  the  Civil  War  ended  prices 
rose  as  high  as  twenty-eight  cents  a  cubic  foot  for  the 
same. 

In  1836  Dickinson,  Wilmarth  and  Gillis  erected  the 
first  sawmill  at  Ridgway,  and  of  course,  it  was  of  the 
sash-saw  variety  of  small  capacity  and  uncertain 
working,  due  to  transitory  water  power.  But  it  was 
the  beginning  of  an  industry  there  which  has  resulted 
in  many  fortunes  and  much  lumber  history  in  western 
Pennsylvania. 

The  original  growth  of  White  Pine  timber  showed 
a  stand  of  20,000  to  40,000  feet,  board  measure,  to  an 
acre,  with  occasional  acres,  here  and  there  showing 
more — 100,000  feet  in  certain  places.  Much  fine 
cherry  lumber,  oak  and  poplar,  augmented  the  output 
of  pine  lumber  on  the  Clarion  River.     Rafts  of  pine 


PENNSYLVANIA  RAFTING  DAYS 


61 


often  carried  loads  of  fine  finishing  stock,  clierry,  oak, 
ash  and  poplar.  For  fifty  years  hemlock  bark  for 
tanning  and  hemlock  lumber  for  building  have  made 
up  much  tonnage  for  the  railroad  traffic;  and  rafting 
on  the  Allegheny  is  over,  though  the  Tionesta  and  the 
Clarion  sent  rafts  for  nearly  a  century. 


Recently  the  Pennsylvania  State  Forest  Commission- 
ers v^ere  banqueted  by  the  Community  Club  of 
Clarion.  Among  the  after-dinner  speakers  was  W. 
Piatt,  an  old-time  raftman,  who  gave  some  splendid 
reminiscences  of  the  old  days  on  the  river. 


(5     O      0-    Q   ~Q     ®      0      «S     0  ■  0      ®      ®      ©     S 


0      0      0  ..  Q      g>      Q    .  G)      a      CO      W      fO      H      K      0 


Believe  Last  Raft 
Floats  Down 
The  Clarion  River 


P 


ROBABLY  the  last  raft  to  float  down  the  Clarion 
river  made  the  trip  in  December  1921,  carrying 
3000  feet  of  lumber  and  a  number  of  doors.  It 
left  Clarington  at  8.30  in  the  morning  and  was  moored 
up  at  a  bridge  in  Clarion  at  3  o'clock  in  the  afternoon, 
thus  making  the  thirty-five  miles  in  six  and  a  half 
hour,  or, at  the  rate  of  more  than  five  miles  an  hour. 

The  raft  was  in  charge  of  James  V.  Cassatt,  one  of 
the  oldest  living  pilots  on  the  Clarion  river.  This 
stream  was  used  extensively  for  rafting  in  the  palmy 
days  of  the  lumber  industry  in  Clarion  County,  but 
with  the  disappearance  of  the  timber  rafting  has  vir- 
tually ceased.  Probably  within  a  year  that  part  of  the 
river  traversed  by  the  raft  the  other  day  will  have  be- 
come part  of  the  proposed  hydro-electric  dam,  hence 
the  statement  that  this  raft  was  likely  the  last  ever  to 
make  the  trip  down  the  river. 

Other  famous  Clarion  River  'pilots"  who  are  still  liv- 
ing are  Morris  Kuhn,  of  Clarington,  and  Lee  Carson, 
of  Clarion.  Mr.  Kuhn,  according  to  District  Forester 
C.  E.  Zerbv,  took  the  last  laree  barge  of  lumber  to 
Pittsburg  from  Clarington. 

62 


Bubbles  on  Water  Good 
Sign  of  Rafting  Time 


"B 


By  M.  J.  COLC  OKD,  Coudersport,  Pa. 

OYS  look  at  the  bubbles  on  the  water.  We're 
going  to  have  a  flood !"  It  was  raining  hard 
that  April  day  and  the  old  man  Burfield  was 
watching  the  water  with  eyes  that  held  the  experience 
of  fifty  years,  while  the  timber  rafts  of  his  stalwart 
sons  lay  in  the  low  water  along  the  shore  all  ready 
for  the  freshet  that  seldom  failed  to  furnish  the  high- 
way to  market  when  the  heavy  snows  of  the  Sinne- 
mahoning  watershed  melted  in  April. 

The  writer  was  a  lad  of  sixteen  and  had  come  with 
his  parents  the  previous  year  to  live  in  that  wonderful 
house  of  the  lumberman,  the  First  Fork  of  the  Sinne- 
mahoning.  It  was  to  him  a  revelation  of  thriUing  ac- 
tivities, especially  in  rafting  time.  Then  the  hard 
work  of  the  winter  was  over.  At  the  mouth  of  nearly 
every  "run"  along  the  Sinnemahoning  was  a  landing 
piled  high  with  white  slippery  pine  logs,  arranged  in 
skidded  tiers,  ready  to  be  rolled  into  the  flood  as  soon 
as  the  stage  of  water  justified  "breaking  the  landings." 
When  the  water  rose,  angry  and  discolored,  the  drive 
started    and  logs    ran  thick    and  fast    on    its  surging 

63 


64  PENNSYLVANIA  RAFTING  DAYS 

bosom,  bumping  and  thumping  those  piled  on  the  heads 
of  islands  or  caught  by  huge  trees,  partly  uprooted 
along  the  shore.  This  was  exciting  to  the  boy,  and 
the  memory  of  those  batteaux,  filled  with  hardy  log- 
drivers,  their  boots  bristling  with  sharp  spikes  and 
armed  with  peveys,  carrying  the  "jam-crackers"  point 
to  point,  is  fresh  and  vivid  in  his  mind  after  the  lapse 
of  fifty  years.  It  was  a  scene  that  fascinated  him  and 
a  few  years  later  he  took  a  hand  in  the  dangerous  work 
becoming  an  expert  in  poling  a  boat  along  the  turbu- 
lent stream  and  cracking  jams  with  the  best  of  them. 

But  I  started  to  write  of  rafting,  a  lost  art  now,  but 
once  the  chief  mode  of  getting  timber,  shingles  and 
lumber  to  market  on  the  Susquehanna  River,  an  im- 
portant tributary  to  the  West  Branch  of  that  noble 
river  being  the  Sinnemahoning. 

This  swift,  and  at  flood  time,  turbulent  feeder  of 
the  West  Branch  rises  to  the  south  of  Coudersport  in 
Potter  County  and  empties  into  the  West  Branch  at 
Keating  Station  on  the  B.  &  E.  Railroad,  a  distance  of 
some  fifty  miles  down  a  valley  narrowed  by  moun- 
tains of  rugged  grandeur  and  once  covered  with  stately 
white  pine,  the  like  of  which  will  never  again  be  seen 
in  this  section,  with  hemlock,  oak.  chestnut,  and  maple 
interspersed  among  the  loftier  and  more  highly  prized 
virgin  pine. 

While  the  logging  was  done  mostly  by  jobbers  for 
owners  of  large  tracts,  chief  of  which  was  the  firm  of 
Phelps  and  Dodge,  of  New  York,  square  timber, 
shingles  and  sawed  lumber  were  gotten  out  and  run 


JONAS   J.   BARNET 
Born   in   1838 


PENNSYLVANIA  RAFTING  DAYS  65 

down  the  river  by  settlers  along  the  valley  who  found 
their  small  farms  insufficient  to  supply  them  with  the 
necessities  of  life. 

Even  pine  timber  was  v/orth  but  little  on  the  stump 
and  the  early  settlers  ''helped  themselves"  to  trees  for 
shingles  and  square  timber,  or  lumbered  on  small  lots 
contracted  at  a  nominal  price  so  that  the  "raw  ma- 
terial" counted  but  little  in  the  cost  of  the  out-put. 

Mills  were  built  at  various  points  along  the  stream, 
large  overshot  water-wheels  furnishing  the  power  and 
the  handiest  trees  along  the  banks  or  a  neighboring 
hill  furnished  the  logs  for  sawing.  Timber  was  too 
cheap  to  demand  any  economy  in  sawing  and  the  waste 
apparent  along  the  shores  below  the  mills,  would  be 
appalling  today.  Thick  slabs,  edgings  and  cull  lumber 
floated  from  the  mill  piling  high  on  every  headland, 
affording  abundant  material  for  footrafts  to  carry  the 
venturesome  boy  or  the  lazy  traveler  down  the  stream. 
These  abundant  drift-piles  also  provided  farmers  with 
much  of  their  fuel  and  fencing. 

But  again  I  have  digressed  imd  return  to  my  theme 
of  rafting. 

The  construction  of  the  board  rafts  was  much  the 
same  as  on  the  Allegheny  and  other  rivers,  and  while 
quite  primitive  is  somewhat  difficult  to  describe.  Three 
narrow  planks  ''runners"  chamfered  at  the  ends  with 
white  oak  "grubs,"  inserted  at  the  ends  and  middle 
of  each,  were  laid  for  the  bottom  of  each  .platform. 
A  layer  of  boards  across  these  w^as  followed  by  an- 
other layer  lengthwise,  and  so  on  until  the  platform 


66  PENNSYLVANIA  RAFTING  DAYS 

was  of  the  proper  thickness.  Three  hinge-boards  ex- 
tended half  their  length  on  to  the  next  platform, 
through  which  hinges  the  "grub  stakes"  passed  and 
thus  the  long  string  of  platforms  made  up  the  raft, 
flexible,  but  strong.  On  top  of  the  platform  binders 
were  winched  down  and  fastened  on  the  ''grubs," 
which  extended  up  through  all  the  layers  of  boards. 
At  each  end  a  head  block  supported  a  huge  oar,  with 
a  tapering  stem  hewed  from  a  small  pine  tree.  Into 
which  a  sawed  oar  blade  was  mortised  at  the  larger 
end.  A  mortise  at  just  the  right  place  to  make  it  bal- 
ance was  slipped  over  the  oar  pin,  hanging  the  oars 
being  the  last  work  to  be  done  before  "tying  loose" 
for  the  trip  down  the  river.  These  rafts  were  gener- 
ally run  to  Mariena  or  Havre  de  Grace,  near  the 
mouth  of  the  Susquehanna,  in  fleets  of  four  such 
**pieces"  or  half-rafts  such  as  could  be  run  out  of  the 
crooked,  and  narrow  Sinnemahoning. 

Sometimes  the  lumber  was  loaded  into  ''arks"  as 
were  also  the  shaved  shingles.  The  ark  was  about 
90  feet  long  and  made  water  tight  by  planking  the 
bottom  while  the  sills  were  laid  bottom  side  up  over 
timbers  so  as  to  bow  up  the  middle^  then  calked  and 
turned  over  flat  before  the  sides  were  built.  That 
closed  the  calked  seams  of  the  bottom.  They  were 
steered  with  oars  at  the  ends,  the  same  as  rafts,  but 
were  clumsy  crafts  to  handle. 

The  shingles  referred  to  were  rived  and  shaved  by 
hand,  26  inches  long,  that  length  being  preferred  by 
the  Pennsylvania  Dutch  down  the  river.     They  were 


PENNSYLVANIA  RAFTING  DAYS  67 

loaded  loose  in  the  ark  and  sold  by  count,  regardless 
of  width. 

But  the  king  of  the  river  craft  was  the  square  timber 
raft.  The  manner  of  its  construction  was  crude,  but 
effective.  The  platforms  of  square  timber  consisted 
of  some  sixteen  sticks,  hewed  straight  on  their  sides 
so  they  would  lit  closely,  but  on  top  and  bottom  the 
sticks  conformed  to  the  shape  of  the  tree  from  which 
they  were  made.  The  sticks  of  timber  were  put  in 
the  water  belly  down,  so  that  the  ends  of  the  platform 
were  somewhat  higher  than  its  middle.  The  platforms 
were  generally  32,  40  or  50  feet  long  and  three  of  these 
platforms,  end  to  end,  constituted  a  "half-raft"  or 
''piece,"  suitable  for  running  out  of  the  First  Fork. 
At  the  mouth  of  that  stream  two  of  these  "pieces" 
were  coupled  end  to  end  and  below  Lock  Haven  two 
of  these  rafts  were  joined  side  by  side  for  a  "fleet." 

In  the  construction  of  a  timber  raft,  lash-poles, 
bows,  pins,  augers  and  pole-axes  were  all  the  imple- 
ments needed,  until  it  came  to  making  the  oars.  The 
lash-poles,  generally  of  yellow  birch,  ironwood  or  other 
tough  saplings,  from  two  to  four  inches  in  diameter, 
were  fastened  across  each  end  of  the  platforms,  with 
white  oak  bows  inserted  into  holes  bored  on  each  side 
of  the  poles  and  drawn  down  tight  with  square  pins 
driven  alongside  the  ends  into  the  holes.  These  holes 
were  bored  with  an  inch  and  a  quarter  auger,  about 
four  feet  long,  with  a,  crank-shaft  near  the  top,  so  that 
the  raftman  could  operate  it  standing.  Each  end  of  a 
timber  stick  was  held  by  two  bows  and  an  extra  short 


68  PENNSYLVANIA  RAFTING  DAYS 

pole  was  used  to  hold  the  ends  of  the  "hinge  sticks," 
three  of  which  extended  some  seven  or  eight  feet  into 
the  next  platform. 

Oars  at  each  end  of  a  raft  were  hung,  similar  to 
those  described  for  a  board  raft,  and  to  handle  these 
oars,  as  pilot  or  steersman  and  to  skillfully  know  the 
"lead  of  water"  and  the  safe  channel,  became  the  dear- 
est ambition  of  the  old  settler  on  the  "Sinnemahone." 
To  run  out  of  the  First  Fork,  three  or  four  men  (ac- 
cording to  the  "heft"  of  the  "piece")  were  required 
to  man  each  oar,  the  pilot  on  the  front- end  and  the 
steersman  on  the  rear  handling  or  "carrying"  the  oar, 
while  his  helpers  made  the  sweep  across  the  raft  by 
pushing  with  their  hands  above  their  heads.  Som.e- 
times  they  would  lift  the  pilot  off  his  feet,  but  it  was 
his  job  to  dip  the  oar  and  then  with  his  handhold  on 
the  tip  of  the  stem,  to  hold  it' down  to  the  proper  level. 

From  the  moment  the  raft  was  "tied  loose"  at  its 
mooring  far  up  the  Fork  utitil  it  was  landed  by  snub- 
birig  in  Shaffer's  Eddy,  there  was  plenty  of  excitement, 
very  few  moments  to  rest  and  no  little  danger.  Often 
the' pilot  would  fail  to  run  close  enough  to  the  bank 
in  rounding  a  sharp  bend  in  the  stream,  or  the  steers- 
man would  hold  the  rear  end  too  close  to  the  point, 
the  result  being  a  "stove"  raft,  the  crew  being  unable 
to  turn  the  heavy,  swift  running  leviathan  in  time  to 
clear  the  rocklined  shore,  against  which  the  rough 
waters  plunged  the  raft  to  its  destruction.  The  crew 
was  lucky  then  to  save  themselves  by  swimming  or 
riding   loose   timber    sticks    to    some    quieter    landing 


JOHX   K.   BIRD 
A  Famous  Raftman  of  tli©  Loyalsock 


PENNSYLVANIA  RAFTING  DAYS  69 

place  below.     Not  a  few  laftsmen  lost  their  lives  in 
those  perilous  days. 

Sometimes  a  pilot  would  dip  his  oar  into  the  edge 
of  an  eddy,  when  one  or  more  of  the  crew  would  be 
swept  off  into  the  water.  I  remember  hearing  John 
\^anatta  relate  how  he  pulled  \lctor  Jackson  back  on 
the  raft,  after  the  latter  had  been  knocked  into  the 
water  by  a  backward  sweep  of  the  oar. 

Ayers  was  drowned  at  almost  exactly  the  same  place 
(mouth  of  Norcross  Run)  in  the  same  manner  that 
nearly  cost  Jackson  his  life. 

An  added  danger  on  a  board  raft  was  the  buckling 
of  the  short  platforms  (generally  sixteen  feet  long) 
when  the  raft  "stove."  James  Ouimby,  of  Homer 
Township,  was  caught  in  that  way  near  Elk  Lick 
bridge  in  Wharton,  carried  under  water,  and  lost  his 
life. 

Of  the  particularly  dangerous  places  along  the  First 
Fork,  might  be  mentioned:  Rattlesnake,  Rocky  Riffle, 
Short  Bend,  Mollie's  Slide,  and  Pepper  Hill.  At  each 
of  these  perilous  points  the  stream  met  the  rocky  shore 
of  the  steep  mountainside,  with  a  sharp  turn,  where 
but  for  the  fact  that  a  timber  raft  runs  'headway," 
(that  is,  runs  faster  than  the  current)  and  can  be 
headed  across  the  current  at  the  upper  end  of  the  bend 
nothing  could  save  the  raft  from  being  thrown  against 
the  rocks  and  "stove."  Floyd's  Rocks  was  also  a  dan- 
gerous proposition,  where  boulders  left  but  one  nar- 
row, swift  channel  that  demanded  cjuick  work  and 
unerring  judgment. 


70  PENNSYLVANIA  RAFTING  DAYS 

Every  season  some  changes  in  the  channel  would 
appear  in  the  Fork,  as  well  as  in  the  great  river  below, 
and  woe  betide  the  pilot  who  started  out  of  the  creek 
ignorant  of  these  changes,  the  problems  presented 
anew  each  year  being  as  complex  and  as  perplexing  as 
those  encountered  by  Mark  Twain  on  the  Mississippi. 

Among  the  pioneer  watermen  of  the  Sinnemahon- 
ing,  may  be  mentioned :  John  and  Bill  Jordan,  John 
and  Tom  Mahon,  Columbus  Rees,  Adam  Logue,  Cyr- 
enus  Wykoff,  John  Lorshbaugh,  and  John  Mason. 

Pioneer  John  Burfield  and  all  his  dozen  stalwart 
sons  were  safe  and  skillful  watermen,  while  the  Wy- 
kofi*  boys  were  dare-devils  with  a  raft. 

Most  of  these,  even  the  younger  ones,  have  now 
passed  to  the  great  Beyond,  leaving  few  to  tell  the  tale 
of  those  thrilling  adventures  or  leave  a  record  of  the 
lost  art  of  running  rafts.  Wherefore,  if  these  imper- 
fect glimpses  of  life  on  the  Sinnamahoning  shall  serve 
to  entertain  or  enlighten  the  generations  to  come,  who 
can  never  know  from  actual  experience,  I  am  content. 


^ 


Running  Arks  on  the 
Famous  Karoondinha 


By  A.  D.  KAKSTETTEK,  Loganton,   I'a. 

IN  the  early  days  of  Penn's  Valley  Daniel  Karstet- 
ter,  the  pioneer  blacksmith  of  Sugar  Valley,  re- 
lated to  his  grandsons  how  the  farm  work 
in  those  days  was  done.  The  ploughing  was  done 
with  oxen  and  horses;  the  better  class  had  horses. 
The  harvesting  was  done  by  means  of  sickles.  The 
farmers  would  go  together  and  help  each  other. 
They  would  commence  at  one  farm.  Usually  there 
were  from  25  to  30  men  and  women.  The  women 
were  as  proficient  with  the  sickle  as  the  men.  Two 
sicklers  cut  together,  one  on  each  side,  the  one  on  the 
right  side  laid  the  grain  with  the  butts  toward  his 
partner,  and  the  one  on  the  left  laid  the  head  toward 
the  left,  thus  forming  a  sheaf  that  required  four 
handsful  of  grain  for  one  sheaf.  It  was  the  custom 
in  those  days  to  go  to  work  with  the  rising  of  the  sun 
without  breakfast.  They  would  work  until  7  A.  M. 
when  they  would  retire  for  breakfast.  The  company 
would  make  their  toilet  usually  at  a  large  watering 
trough  where  it  often  happened  that  one  or  more  re- 
ceived an  immersion  at  the  hands  of  the  sturdy  farm 

71 


72  PENNSYLVANIA  RAFTING  DAYS 

lads  and  lassies  after  which  the  good  women  of  the 
house  would  announce  the  time  for  partaking  of  the 
meal. 

The  custom  in  those  days  was  for  the  farmer  for 
whom  they  Avorked  to  bring  out  the  "shnops"  which 
was  pure  rye  whiskey.  It  usually  was  a  large  round 
bellied  quart  bottle  of  which  all  partook  before  eating 
their  breakfast.  After  they  resumed  their  work  at 
harvesting,  they  worked  until  10  o'clock  when  a  fair 
lassie  would  come  out  into  the  field  with  a  lunch  which 
consisted  of  dried  venison  that  had  been  smoked  and 
cured,  and  had  been  provided  for  during  the  preced- 
ing winter. 

These  sturdy  hunters  procured  the  venison  for  just 
such  occasions.  The  lunch  consisted  also  of  pies  and 
cakes  and  rye  bread  baked  on  the  hearth  of  the  old- 
time  bake  oven.  The  pies  were  baked  on  a  cabbage 
leaf  to  give  them  added  flavor  which  process  was  also 
used  in  the  bread  baking.  In  those  clays  the  wild 
pigeons  were  very  plentiful,  and  during  the  fall  they 
either  shot  or  trapped  large  numbers  of  these  birds, 
took  the  breasts  and  salted  them  and  afterward 
smoked  them.  They  were  eaten  with  the  forenoon 
lunch  and  were  considered  much  better  than  our  dried 
beef.  These  breasts  of  the  pigeons  were  packed  in 
home-made  stave  and  wooden  hoop  barrels.  It  was 
the  custom  in  those  days  to  have  the  cooper  come  to 
the  house  in  the  winter  months  and  make  what  barrels 
the  farmer  needed.  The  shoemaker  would  also  come 
to  the  house  and  make  the  shoes  and  boots  for    the 


PHILIP  MOYKK 


PENNSYLVANIA  RAFTING  DAYS  73 

farmer  and  family  out  of  the  hides  of  deer  and  steers 
that  had  been  tanned  by  some  man  of  the  settlement. 
In  the  good  old-fashioned  way  each  member  of  the 
family  received  but  one  pair  of  shoes  or  boots  a  year 
and  the  buck  skin  was  also  used  for  making  trousers 
for  the  man  of  the  house  to  be  used  during  the  harvest 
season.  These  trousers  were  worn  when  the  wheat 
was  moved  into  the  barn.  Tlie  man  who  moved  the 
grain  had  on  a  pair  of  these  trousers.  Each  sheaf  of 
wheat  was  placed  and  the  mower  would  get  on  liis 
right  knee  and  press  it  into  position.  That  was  a 
trade  in  itself.  In  those  days  the  men  usually  did  the 
mowing  for  the  whole  settlement.  Flax  was  raised 
and  went  through  the  various  processes  of  manufac- 
ture until  it  was  ready  for  the  spinning  wheel. 

The  women  folks  would  spin  the  flax  during  the 
winter  months  and  weave  it  into  cloth  that  was  used 
for  towels,  chaff  ticks,  and  clothing.  Here  likewise 
the  tailor  would  come  to  the  home  and  make  what 
clothing  the  men  folks  would  need  for  the  year.  He 
would  go  from  one  settler  to  the  other  and  make  the 
clothing  for  the  men.  The  women  folks  made  their 
own  clothing.  Sheep  were  also  raised  for  wool  from 
which  yarn  was  spun  by  tiie  women,  ii  was  a  hard 
matter  in  those  days  to  raise  sheep  on  account  of  the 
mountain  prowling  wolves,  who  were  a  menace  to  the 
early  settlers.  After  the  sheep  were  sheared  the  wool 
was  washed,  dried,  and  rinsed,  then  dried  until  the 
sun  had  thoroughly  bleached  it  and  it  was  clean.  It 
was  then  picked  by  hand  after  which  it  was  spun  into 


74  PENNSYLVANIA  RAFTING  DAYS 

yarn  and  then  woven  into  cloth  for  shirts  for  the  men 
and  petticoats  for  the  women  and  also  for  dresses. 

The  yarn  was  used  for  stockings  which  were  knit 
by  the  women  folks  during  the  winter  months,  while 
the  men  were  engaged  in  threshing  the  summer  crops 
of  grain,  a  very  slow  process.  There  was  no  threshing 
machine  in  those  days.  The  grain  was  placed  on  the 
threshing  floor  and  tramped  out  with  horses.  The 
boys  had  to  ride  the  horses  and  made  them  move 
around  in  a  circle  until  the  grain  was  tramped  out  of 
the  heads  that  had  been  placed  on  the  floor.  It  usually 
took  from  one  and  one-half  to  two  hours  after  which 
the  old-fashioned  shaking  fork  was  used  to  shake  the 
grain  out  of  the  straw  and  this  was  run  over  a  home- 
made fanning  mill  to  clean  the  wheat,  after  which  the 
year's  supply  of  wdieat  flour  was  made  at  the  grist 
mill  above  the  Blue  Rock,  now  called  Meyer's  Mill,  on 
Pine  Creek. 

The  surplus  wheat  was  also  ground  into  flour  and 
barreled  in  home-made  wooden  barrels  ready  for  ship- 
ment. 

Leonard  Karstetter,  father  of  Daniel  Karstetter 
and  Johnny  Strahan,  residents  of  "The  Forks"  now 
Coburn,  built  large  arks  towards  spring  in  which  to 
transport  the  flour  to  Selinsgrove  by  w^ay  of  Karocn- 
dinha,  now  called  Penn's  Creek.  These  arks  were 
made  of  flrst-class  timber.  Air.  Karstetter  was  the 
owner  of  the  first  saw  mill  on  Penn's  Creek. 

The  floor  of  the  ark  was  made  of  hewed  timber  and 
was  packed  with  tar  and  pitch  so  that  it  was  perfectly 


PENNSYLVANIA  RAFTING  DAYS  75 


water-tight.  The  sides  were  made  in  the  same  man- 
ner and  were  roofed  with  boards,  and  in  the  spring 
when  the  freshet  came,  these  arks  were  manned  by  a 
pilot,  a  steersman,  and  a  bowsman,  and  were  put  afloat 
and  proceeded  on  their  way  to  Selinsgrove.  When 
the  arks  came  through  the  Seven  Mountains  an  old 
lady  kept  a  restaurant  where  she  sold  the  arksmen 
old-fashioned  ginger  bread  and  small  beer.  That  was 
their  first  stopping  place  on  their  way,  being  the  noon 
hour. 

The  trip  to  Selinsgrove  from  ''The  Forks"  was 
made  in  one  day.  The  arks  were  sold  there  and  the 
flour  and  the  arks  were  then  manned  by  other  crews 
and  proceeded  to  [Philadelphia.  The  arksmen  who  had 
taken  the  arks  from  Coburn  to  Selinsgrove  then  re- 
turned by  night  through  the  Seven  Mountains,  ready 
for  another  trip  so  that  these  fleets  of  arks  might  be 
dispatched  while  the  freshet  lasted.  That  was  their 
only  outlet  to  the  market  with  their  grain.  These  men 
often  encountered  wolves  and  panthers  on  the  return 
trip,  but  they  were  of  a  sturdy  character  and  were 
ready  for  any  attack. 

Rye  was  also  raised  and  threshed  by  the  crude  pro- 
cess. A  quantity,  about  ten  bushels,  was  sent  to  the 
aforesaid  mill  to  be  ground  into  chafl^  and  that  was 
taken  to  the  Stover  Distillery  above  Coburn  on  Penn's 
Creek  where  the  year's  supply  of  old  rye  (32  gallons) 
was  distilled  and  rolled  into  the  cellar  where  it  was 
on  tap  for  all  the  family  and  the  guests.  It  was  con- 
sidered an  outrage  when  a  man  got  drunk.     It  was 


PENNSYLVANIA  RAFTING  DAYS 


not  the  intention  of  the  settlers  to  spree  but  was  used 
moderately.  Thus  were  the  days  spent  by  the  old 
settlers.  Their  time  was  occupied  in  good,  useful, 
employment.  The  land  was  cleared  and  gotten  under 
cidtivation  and  made  to  yield  a  livelihood  for  these 
sturdy  pioneer  settlers  of  "The  Forks,"  now  Coburn, 
Centre  County.  As  handed  down  by  Daniel  Karstet- 
ter,  the  Pioneer  Blacksmitli  of  Sugar  Valley,  whiskey 
in  those  days  was  three  cents  a  glass. 


JACOB  S.   QIIGGLE 
Famous  West  Branch  Pilot   (1821-1911) 


Tionesta  Rafting 
Days  and  Later 
Forest  Conditions 


By  JOHN    C.    FRENCH 

PREVIOUS  to  1S50,  the  Tionesta  Creek  or  river 
became  an  important  tributary  to  the  Allegheny 
River  fleets  of  pine,  cherry,  ash  and  oak  lumber 
that  supplied  Pittsburg,  Cincinnati,  Louisville  and  many 
other  points  on  the  Ohio  River.  The  saw  mills  were 
then  located  on  the  main  stream,  of  which  our  data  is 
ver\'  meagre  previous  to  IS 82.  The  Tionesta  and  its 
many  tributaries  were  the  chief  highways  for  the  Forest 
County  lumber  products — the  most  important  of  the 
creeks  that  flow  into  the  Allegheny  River.  It  is  a  swift 
stream  that  cuts  its  way  through  the  hills,  which  might 
properly  be  styled  mountains,  along  its  entire  course. 

The  chief  small  streams  tributary  to  the  Tionesta 
from  both  sides  are :  Blue  jay  Creek,  Upper  Sheriff 
River.  Low  Sheriff*  River,  Fool's  Creek,  Logan  Run, 
Phelps  Run,  Bobbs  Creek,  Salmon  Creek.  Lamentation 
Creek.  Bear  Creek,  Ross  Run,  Jug  Handle  Creek.  Little 
Coon  Creek.  Big  Coon  Creek,  and  John's  Rim.  There 
are  many  other  creeks  of  prime  importance  flowing  into 


78  PENNSYLVANIA  RAFTING  DAYS 

the  great  Tionesta  Creek.  In  1882  the  conditions  are 
noted  as  follows :  Twenty  miles  up  the  Tionesta,  near 
Balltown  the  large  saw  mill  of  F.  Henry  &  Co.;  the 
Buck  Mill,  three  miles  below  at  the  mouth  of  Salmon 
Creek;  the  hemlock  bark  extract  factory  of  Major 
W.  W.  Kellett  &  Co.,  of  Boston,  Massachusetts;  the 
Salmon  Creek  Lumber  Company,  up  Salmon  Creek 
about  a  mile,  noted  for  hemlock,  ash  and  cherry  lumber, 
owning  eighty  thousand  acres  of  heavily  timbered  land. 

Below  are  the  Newton  mills  cutting  white  pine  lum- 
ber, chiefly  owned  and  operated  by  Wheeler,  Dusenbury 
&  Co.,  which  have  been  operating  there  since  about 
1842.  They  have  extensive  tracts— 110,000  to  120,000 
acres — of  pine,  hemlock  and  hardwood  timber  along  the 
Tionesta  and  tributary  streams.  The  Nebraska  mills, 
owned  by  T.  D.  Collins,  six  miles  from  the  mouth  of 
the  Tionesta,  where  Mr.  Collins  builds  many  commo- 
dious and  staunch  barges  for  the  coal  trade  along  the 
Ohio  and  Mississippi  Rivers,  a  new  and  important  in- 
dustry which  steadily  increases  in  extent  and  profit. 

At  Oldtown  and  other  points  on  the  Tionesta,  flat- 
boats  and  barges  are  built  each  year  for  river  transpor- 
tation. Besides,  many  operators  are  engaged  in  getting 
out  square  timber  which  is  bound  into  rafts  which  float 
to  markets  farther  down  or  to  saw  mills  at  Pittsburg, 
being  suitable  for  large  buildings,  bridges  and  railroad 
requirements.  Numerous  people  along  the  various 
streams  are  engaged  in  this  industry  now  (1882),  and 
they  will  continue  to  be. 

Among  the  other  mills  are  those  of  Gibson  &  Grove  at 


PENNSYLVANIA  RAFTING  DAYS  79 

Low  Sheriff  River;  of  Dr.  Fowler,  on  Salmon  Creek, 
who  does  a  heavy  business  in  ash  and  cherry  luml)er ; 
Hunt  and  Red  Brush  Mills  of  Root  &  Watson,  which 
cut  and  raft  pine  lumber  down  the  Tionesta  annually ; 
the  Shipe  mill  on  Salmon  Creek ;  the  Russell  mill ;  the 
Lawrence  and  Dale  mill  on  Lamentation  Creek ;  the 
mill  of  John  Sheasly  on  little  Coon  Creek;  Ford  & 
Lacey  on  Coon  Creek,  and  many  other  mills  cut  all 
classes  of  lumber  the  year  round  for  many  markets. 

The  Tionesta  and  its  tributaries  in  1882  were  lined 
with  heavy  timber,  extending  far  back  into  the  high- 
lands, the  evergreen  trees  all  the  way  to  the  Sinnema- 
honing,  100  miles  east  of  the  Tionesta.  This  ''Eastern 
Forest  in  the  counties  of  Forest,  Clarion,  Warren,  Elk, 
McKean  and  Potter  contains  a  body  of  hemlock  timber 
of  gigantic  growth,  the  very  largest  of  the  kind  in  the 
world.  There  is  nothing  to  compare  with  it  in  Russia, 
British  America  or  the  islands  of  the  seas." 

That  statement  was  literally  and  actually  true  in  1880. 
There  was  no  such  continuous  body  of  giant  hemlocks 
on  the  face  of  the  earth.  The  finest  of  all  hemlock  then 
lay  in  the  Tionesta  valley  and  through  the  channel  found 
its  way  to  the  markets  for  tanbark  and  lumber.  The 
writer  saw  it  in  1882,  and  again  in  1904,  when  only  a 
small  part  of  it  was  left.  Forest  County  contains  430 
square  miles,  275,840  acres,  half  of  which  was  in  the 
Tionesta  Valley.  The  lumber  went  down  the  valley  in 
the  rafts  and  barges,  or  later  via  railroad. 

There  was  a  billion  feet  of  hemlock;  300,000,000  feet 
feet  of  pine  and  200,000,000  feet  of  oak,  ash  and  cherry 


80  PENNSYLVANIA  RAFTING  DAYS 

lumber  measured  in  board  feet,  to  say  nothing  of  the 
600,000  tons  of  hemlock  bark  that  supplied  the  tanneries 
and  the  extract  factories  the  necessary  bark  that  made 
sole  leather. 

Two  billion  feet,  board  measure,  of  lumber,  when  we 
add  the  maple,  birch  and  beech  lumber  cut  in  later  years. 
And  from  approximately  only  138,000  acres  of  rocky 
and  hilly  land,  on  a  turbulent  creek !  Truly  the  forests 
of  Pennsylvania  were  of  great  value,  even  when  the 
whole  east  of  this  continent  had  timber  to  sell.  And 
now,  with  our  population  of  more  than  a  hundred  mil- 
lion people,  expansion  of  trade  and  half  the  forests  of 
this  continent  destroyed,  it  behooves  us  to  look  toward 
to  the  future  and  restore  some  of  the  forest  wealth  to 
Pennsylvania  that  .300  years  of  lumbering  and  exploita- 
tion have  depleted  for  the  use  of  mankind,  the  whole 
world  over. 

The  last  generation  of  forest  exploitation,  in  the 
great  forest  of  the  counties  of  McKean  and  Potter,  saw 
many  changes  in  the  methods  of  carrying  on  the  busi- 
ness by  the  progressive  operators  and  their  allies,  the 
tanners.  It  became  a  fight  against  Time  and  the  in- 
creasing fire  risk,  as  the  forests  became  more  exposed 
to  the  fiends  of  destruction  that  thrived  upon  the  debris 
of  all  the  wastelands  that  increased  each  year.  The 
water  power  of  earlier  times  was  replaced  by  steam 
engines,  and  roads  of  iron  rails  threaded  the  forest 
lands.  Locomotives  hauled  the  timber  to  mills  of  en- 
larged capacity  that  were  lighted  up  for  ilight  sawing. 

In  McKean  County  were  many  great  firms  and  cor- 


KOBKKT   C.   <il KKil.K 

Famed    Pilot    (1830-1910) 


PENNSYLVANIA  RAFTING  DAYS  81 

porations  at  work,  of  which  the  following  were  typical : 
Elisha  Kent  Kane,  at  the  head  of  the  Kinzua  Creek, 
with  a  mill  and  twenty  miles  of  railroad;  Spencer  S. 
Bullis,  with  a  dozen  mills  along  fifty  miles  of  railroad 
that  wound  through  vales  and  along  many  hillsides,  to 
gather  in  the  logs  cut  from  50,000  acres  of  land ;  Arnold 
Dolley  and  Rowley,  with  two  saw  mills  and  streams  im- 
proved for  great  log  drives,  and  a  hundred  other  firms. 
In  Potter  County  there  were  a  dozen  smaller  firms,  and 
the  Lackawanna  Lumber  Company  at  Mina  and  Cross 
Forks ;  the  great  Goodyear  Lumber  Company  at  /\ustin 
and  Galeton,  with  railroad  between. 

Frank  Henry  Goodyear  originated  and  organized 
a  great  lumber  business  in  Pennsylvania.  Charles 
W.  Goodyear,  his  brother,  was  formerly  a  lawyer  of 
Bufifalo,  New  York,  a  member  of  a  firm  known  as  Fol- 
som,  Cleveland  and  Goodyear.  It  was  in  1*88^  that  the 
Goodyears  went  down  into  Austin-Galeton  section  of 
Potter  County  and  bought  miles  upon  miles  of  hemlock 
and  hardwood  timber  land  along  the  Sinnemahoning, 
Pine  and  Kettle  Creeks.  They  bought  right  and  left 
tracts  which  lay  miles  from  the  larger  streams,  and  built 
railroads  over  the  mountains  and  along  the  valleys  to 
operate  with. 

They  built  saw  mills  at  the  threshold  of  the  forest, 
electrically  lighted  them  and  kept  them  running,  both 
day  and  night,  the  year  around.     The  hum  of  their  in- 


82 


PENNSYLVANIA  RAFTING  DAYS 


dustry  re-echoed  along  the  corridors  of  the  forest  for 
twenty-seven  years,  until  the  flood  from  a  broken  dam 
swept  Austin  and  the  mills  away,  although  Frank  Henry 
Goodyear  died  on  May  13,  1907,  and  his  brother  fol- 
lowed him  about  six  years  later.  Their  sons  finished 
their  work. 


Two  Hundred  Billion 
Board  Feet  of  Fine 
Lumber  in  Heydey 


15.y   JOHN   C.    FRENCH 

THE  historian  must  approach  in  trepidation  the 
sokition  of  the  query  of  "How  much  white  pine 
lumber  was  made  from  the  Pennsylvania  forest 
during  the  two  centuries  of  the  great  exploitation  of  the 
product  of  that  unsurpassed  protege  of  Mother  Na- 
ture ?" 

Reliable  statistics  are  few  for  that  romantic  period. 
None  are  complete,  yet  the  human  mind  seeks  to  ap- 
proximate, in  some  manner,  the  stupendous  aggregate 
from  the  four  great  river  highways,  the  Delaware, 
North  Branch  and  West  Branch  of  the  Susquehanna 
and  tributaries,  and  the  Allegheny  River  system,  com- 
prehending the  four  chief  divisions  of  the  Pennsylvania 
pine  forest. 

From, records  of  the  Susquehanna  Boom  Company 
at  Williamsport  we  learn  that  during  the  active  years, 
1868  and  1906,  inclusive,  the  pine  sawlogs  from  the 
West  Branch,  which  the  Company  passed  and  stored, 
exceeded  eight  billion  feet  board  measure.    So  if  we  con- 

83 


84  PENNSYLVANIA  RAFTING  DAYS 

elude  that  to  have  been  sixteen  per  cent,  of  the  whole, 
we  attain  a  total  of  fifty  billion  feet  of  white  pine  lum- 
ber from  the  State,  by  river,  canal  and  railroad  trans- 
portation routes. 

However  unsatisfying  that  may  be,  we  feel  certain 
that  it  is  conservative.  All  of  the  men  who  ventured 
opinions  on  the  quantities  of  hemlock  timber  during  the 
earlier  periods  in  the  various  sections  of  the  State,  con- 
cluded that  it  equalled  at  least  the  original  quantity  of 
pine  timber  in  the  same  sections,  however  far  below  the 
above  figure  their  approximates  then  were.  We  now 
feel  assured  that  at  least  fifty  billion  feet  board  measure 
of  hemlock  lumber  have  been  manufactured  from  our 
State  forest,  so  the  two  varieties  of  lumber,  hemlock 
and  pine,  check  and  balance  harmoniously  with  those 
early  opinions,  whatever  value  we  may  grant  to  them. 
If  we  now  concede  that  the  products  from  the  deciduous 
trees  of  the  commonwealth  have  been  equal  to  those 
from  the  conifers,  we  shall  have  a  gross  product  from 
our  forests  of  two  hundred  billion  board  feet  of  lumber, 
which  is  an  astounding  quantity  to  think  of  or  to  write 
of. 

One  needs  a  peavey  lever  or  an  axe  to  manipulate  the 
thought  of  it. 

Feeling  funereal  for  the  slaughtered  trees,  one  may 
yet  pray  for  a  glorious  resurrection  in  the  New  Forest 
that  our  Forestry  Department  shall  create  to  recompense 
Great  Mother  Nature ! 

It  has  been  objected  that  the  logs  of  hemlock  timber 
were  boomed  at  Williamsport  and  the  other  saw  mill 


HENRY  MYERS 

(1841-1921) 


PENNSYLVANIA  RAFTING  DAYS  85 

points  along  the  West  Branch  of  the  Susquehanna  River, 
during  the  latter  twenty-five  years  of  the  Boom  Com- 
pany's records,  which  are  included  in  the  total  amount 
of  eight  billion  board  feet.  That  is  very  true,  but  a  large 
quantity  of  white  pine  timber,  during  the  same  years, 
passed  down  the  West  Branch,  not  included  in  the 
record  of  sawlogs,  and  great  shipments  of  white  pine 
lumber  went  forward  from  the  numberless  saw  mills 
located  on  tributary  streams  beyond  the  operations  of 
the  Susquehanna  Boom  Company,  also  not  embraced  in 
the  amount  recorded,  and  quite  sufficient  to  offset  the 
hemlock  logs  included  in  the  records. 

W' hether  more  or  less  than  the  estimated  quantity  of 
white  pine  timber  was  the  yield  from  the  lands  of  the 
State,  it  was  a  princely  endowment,  and  much  appre- 
ciated by  the  struggling  pioneers  who  wrested  a  rich 
Commonwealth  from  a  wilderness  of  trees,  aided  by 
sales  of  white  pine  lumber. 

The  "desert  of  five  million  acres"  remains  a  mute 
witness  of  the  former  great  forest.  Suppression  of  the 
forest  fires  and  the  planting  of  many  trees  may  yet 
reclaim  the  waste  places  and  so  restore  to  our  posterity 
the  heritage  that  we  received  from  the  Source  of  earth- 
ly prosperity  and  eternal  beauty. 

As  Minerva  sprang  full-fledged  from  the  brow  of 
Jove,  so  Rome  sprang  upon  the  banks  of  the  Tiber,  a 
few  miles  from  its  junction  with  the  Anio,  full  grown 
on  the  plains  of  Etruria  and  Latium,  where  they  meet 
beneath  the  Sabine  Mountains;  and  so  the  lumber  in- 
dustry of  Pennsylvania  sprang  upon  the  banks  of  the 


86  PENNSYLVANIA  RAFTING  DAYS 

Delaware  River,  in  the  States  of  Pennsylvania,  New- 
Jersey  and  Delaware,  in  the  seventeenth  century.  It 
was  begun  by  the  Swedes,  1635,  continued  by  the  Dutch 
a  few  years,  and  by  the  English,  under  William  Penn 
and  his  successors,  until  1775,  at  the  beginning  of  the 
Revolutionary  War.  Most  of  the  product  was  exported 
to  European  markets. 

After  the  war  ended,  the  Commonwealth  made  fur- 
ther exploitation  of  the  great  pine  forest.  As  the 
Roman  legions  went  forth  to  light  their  neighbors, 
Sabine,  Latin  and  Etruscan,  returning  with  great 
droves  of  slaves  to  sell  in  the  Roman  market,  so  our 
young  men  went  into  the  forest  each  autumn,  along  the 
Delaware,  Susquehanna  and  West  Branch,  crusading 
for  white  pine  timber,  returning  in  the  spring  on  rafts 
of  timber  for  Philadelphia  and  other  markets.  They 
were  soldiers  of  commerce,  but  no  laurel  wreaths  gar- 
landed their  brows  for  their  heroic  services,  as  the  citi- 
zens of  Rome  decorated  their  returned  heroes  after 
each  foray. 

In  1779,  General  Sulivan  proceeded  up  the  North 
Branch  of  the  Susquehanna  with  his  army  to  chastise 
the  Indians  and  their  Tory  allies,  then  gathered  around 
Newtown  (Elmira,  N.  Y.),  on  the  Chemung  River. 
Near  the  State  line  he  built  Fort  Sullivan  and  awaited 
the  arrival  of  General  James  Clinton,  who  marched 
from  Albany,  N.  Y.,  via  Lake  Otsego,  with  an  army  in 
support  of  General  Sullivan's  expedition.  In  the  au- 
tumn they  destroyed  Newtown,  after  a  battle  that 
scattered  the  people,  and  then  marched  to  the  Genessee 


PENNSYLVANIA  RAFTING  DAYS  87 

River,  destroyed  the  Long  House  of  the  Seneca  Nation 
and  drove  all  the  Indians  southward  into  Pennsylvania. 

In  support  of  this  latter  expedition,  Colonel  Daniel 
Brodhead,  with  a  regiment  of  soldiers,  had  marched  up 
the  Allegheny  from  Pittsburg  to  the  confluence  of 
Kinzua  Creek.  There  a  battalion  went  via  Kane  and 
Johnsonburg  to  the  West  Branch,  and  Colonel  Brod- 
head went  up  the  Allegheny  and  Oswayo  to  the  present 
site  of  Ceres  at  the  state  line;  thence  southeasterly 
through  Potter  County  to  Jersey  Shore,  on  the  West 
Branch,  opposite  the  site  of  Fort  Antes,  to  mark,  by 
roads  through  the  forest,  an  asylum  for  the  starving 
Indian  refugees  who  had  been  driven  from  their  homes 
in  the  State  of  New  York.  So  the  great  pine  forests 
were  seen  by  white  men,  and  soon  after  they  were  sold 
for  exploitation. 

As  ancient  Rome  had  no  glorious  infancy,  with  its 
brooding  calm  and  orderly  progress  to  a  thoughtful  ma- 
turity, so  when  she  became  decadent  and  was  sinking 
to  the  final  chapter  of  her  former  greatness  and  glo- 
rious positions  in  the  world,  she  had  no  loving  friend  to 
bow  down  by  her  couch,  whisper  words  of  consolation 
and  the  hope  of  a  glorious  future,  and  to  close  her 
dying  eyes  with  gentle  fingers.  With  no  hope  of  a 
resurrection  her  greatness  was  despoiled  by  barbarian 
and  vandal.  She  had  ruled  by  the  sword,  and  by  the 
sword  she  was  overwhelmed  and  cast  down.  Ancient 
Byzantium,  as  Constantinople,  now  ruled  in  her 
place  and  received  the  world's -homage. 

Like  Rome,  our  forest  faded  away,  unwept  and  un- 


PENNSYLVANIA  RAFTING  DAYS 


sung  by  us  who  were  the  despoilers ;  but  a  foreign 
voice  chanted  a  requiem  for  her  and  prepared  for  a 
glorious  rebirth  from  his  own  meagre  estate.  He  was 
the  Frenchman,  F.  Andre  Michaux,  who  had  beheld 
our  great  forest  in  its  pristine  beauty  and  glory.  The 
writer,  too,  has  explored  much  of  it,  learning  the  lan- 
guage of  the  trees,  as  well  as  their  utility,  and  heartily 
commends  the  Frenchman's  idealism  and  his  practical 
philanthropy.  May  we  restore  our  forest  to  please  a 
generous  soul ! 

There  was  renaissance  of  ancient  Rome  and  a  re- 
vitalized Italy  was  built  upon  the  ruins  of  the  older 
Western  Empire  that  fell  in  486,  and  the  Turks  cap- 
tured Constantinople  and  the  Eastern  Empire,  1453, 
the  end  of  the  Middle  Ages.  The  Saracens  were  ex- 
pelled from  Spain  in  1492,  and  Columbus  had  sailed  to 
discover  a  new  world,  then  hardly  dreamed  of,  ushering 
in  modern  times  and  a  more  hopeful  era. 

So  the  forests  of  Pennsylvania  may  be  renewed 
during  this  twentieth  century  of  the  Christian  era  on 
earth.  Let  us  believe  so  and  strive  mightily  for  it. 
Our  freight  bills  on  lumber  average  now  about  $12.00 
a  thousand  feet  of  boards,  coming,  as  they  do,  from 
north  and  south  and  from  the  far  west. 

At  first  our  citizens  were  dominated  by  the  gloomy 
forest  that  surrounded  them.  Then  for  two  centuries 
we  exploited  the  forest  for  livelihood  and  profit.  In 
this  century  we  dominate  the  forest  and  must  plant 
trees,  protect  them  from  fire  and  the  blight  of  insect 
destroyers.    The  birds  and  the  wild  animals  should  be- 


THOMAS  JEFFERSON   STEPHENSON 


PENNSYLVANIA  RAFTING  DAYS  89 

come  our  cherished  alhes  for  the  latter  danger  and  tor 
its  mitigation.  An  open  season  each  year  for  hunting 
the  game  hirds  and  animals  brings  health  and  happiness 
to  many  people,  and  it  creates  love  and  appreciation  of 
the  tree-covered  areas. 


Attention!     Forward,  March!     Hep!     Hep! — Tres 
Bien,  Monsieur  Michaux  et  Messieurs  du  Bois 

Sitting  under  the  glittering  stars  on  a  mild  mid- 
summer night,  when  they  are  so  clear  and  large  and 
the  horizon  extends  so  far,  listening,  alone,  to  the  soft 
murmur  of  the  great  trees  in  the  night  breeze,  the  in- 
sect chorus,  the  rustle  in  the  foliage  and  the  purl  of 
sap  flov^ing  under  the  bark,  v^e  are  conscious  of  that 
sympathetic  c'lan  or  magical  ray  w^hich  gilds  and  trans- 
forms every  emotion  of  our  heart,  until  the  ancient 
forest  is  restored  all  around  us  and  the  phantom  trees 
chant  tales  of  v^hat  has  been  and  of  v^hat  shall  be. 

Yes,  Mars,  wq  are  caught  in  that  draught  from  the 
Infinite  w^hich  makes  a  sane  mind  nothing  more  than  a 
reservoir  of  emotion  that  unfolds  the  past,  and  un- 
folds the  pictures  of  a  glorious  future  w^hen  renev^ed 
forests  shall  materialize  in  place  of  the  phantom  trees 
that  are  conjured  before  us,  stimulating  the  mind  as 
"Tom  and  Jerry" — gin  and  rum — did  the  drenched 
bodies  of  shivering  lumberjacks  and  raftmen  in  the 
freshets  of  early  spring  log-driving  and  rafting  days. 

The  glorious  scroll  is  unrolled  before  us,  and  the 
hills  conjured  and  clothed  w^ith  pine  trees,  reincarnated 


90  PENNSYLVANIA  RAFTING  DAYS 

by  the  phantom  touch  of  the  mind,  intoxicated  by  emo- 
tion and  faith  in  the  future  achievements  of  men, 
aroused  to  action  by  Hon.  Gififord  Pinchot  and  a  de- 
voted band  of  foresters — a  sort  of  metempsychosis 
brought  up  to  date  by  practical  appHcation,  to  reclothe 
our  naked  hills  and  cause  our  desert  to  bloom  and  pro- 
duce the  lumber  we  shall  appreciate  more  and  more 
as  the  decades  flow  past  and  trickle  along  to  the  great 
ocean  of  time  that  shall  be  recorded.  The  new  forest 
must  first  develop  as  pictures  in  the  minds  of  many 
people,  then  upon  the  ground  awaiting  to  receive  the 
trees. 

Dreams !  Fatuous  dreams !  many  will  say.  But 
dreams  are  full  cousins  of  visions;  and  vision  is  what 
is  required  to  have  our  forests  renewed.  It  is  a  pro- 
duct of  growth  or  expansion. 

In  1873,  Governor  Hartranft  called  for  forestry 
preservation,  and  groves  of  trees  have  been  saved  on 
two  hundred  thousand  farms  of  Pennsylvania,  an 
aggregate  of  two  million  acres  of  trees,  and  tracts  in 
private  ownership  aggregate  as  much  more  timber. 
State  and  nation  have  reserved  two  million  acres  more 
for  forest  renewals.     Verily  our  vision  expands ! 

In  1899,  Governor  Stone  succeeded  in  having  the 
vision  take  form  in  legislation  providing  for  a  bureau 
of  forestry  that  soon  expanded  into  a  department  of 
forestry.  The  mental  pictures  were  transferred  to 
the  drafting  board.  The  foundations  have  been  laid 
far  and  broad.  We  shall  have  forests  again.  Tree- 
covered  lands  are  not  all   forests,   but  they  may  be- 


PENNSYLVANIA  RAFTING  DAYS  91 


come  so  in  time.     The  lay  mind  does  not  fully  com- 
prehend the  difference  yet,  but  development  will  come 
— it  is  now  on  the  way.     It  is  a  matter  of  centuries  to 
grow  a  commercial  forest.     But  returns  on  the  invest- 
ment begin  early,  in  the  beautiful  landscape,  in  con- 
serving the   water  supply,   in  retarding  land   erosion, 
saving  the  fertile  soil,  and  many  other  valuable  by- 
products of  a  forest,  including  fish  birds  and  animals. 
Many  beautiful  insects  adorn  the  forest,  some  use- 
ful and  some  harmful,  as  Tsuga  Caja,  moth-mother  of 
the  hemlock  worm  of   1889  and  1890,  that  did  great 
damage  to  the  hemlock   forest,  and  the  recent  blight 
upon  our  chestnut  groves.    Animals  and  birds  destroy 
the  insects  and  so  save  the  trees   from  the  invading 
armies  of  destroyers.     To  have  forests  we  must  have 
birds  and  animals  to  live  among  the  trees  and  protect 
them  from  the  insects.     In  pursuit  of  wild  game  men 
learn  to  love  the   forest  and   overcome  their  childish 
fear   of   bears   and   terrors   that   haunt   and  ennervate 
them. 


Some  Notable  Floods 
Of  The  Bounding  West 
Branch  of  Susquehanna 


By  J.  HERBERT   WALKER 

WITH  every  flood  stage  of  the  Susquehanna 
river  the  minds  of  the  old-time  nvermen  go 
back  to  the  golden  days  of  the  past  when 
the  stream  was  the  means  of  transportation  of  the 
many  thousands  of  feet — yes  billions  of  feet — of  logs 
that  were  cut  in  the  virgin  forests  all  along  the  stream, 
especially  along  the  headwaters,  and  which  were  float- 
ed over  the  broad  bosom  of  the  river  to  the  markets 
in  the  southern  part  of  the  state.  Each  year  we  hear 
of  the  "last  raft,"  and  each  year  one  and  at  times 
several  of  these  rafts  pass  down  the  stream,  a  grim 
reminder  of  the  once  busy  traffic  that  predominated 
and  made  the  years  boom  along  the  mighty  body  of 
water  famed  in  song  and  story  because  of  the  early 
history  connected  with  it  and  because  of  the  fertile 
valleys  and  snug  villages  nestled  among  the  sequest- 
ered spots  along  it. 

The  days  of   the  ''last  raft"  may  never  become  a 
possibility  since  Pennsylvania,  under  that  wise  leader 

92 


JOHN    Q.   DICE 
Poet  and  Raftman   (1830-1904) 


PENNSYLVANIA  RAFTING  DAYS  93 

of  conservation,  Gifford  Pinchot,  is  learning  its  lesson 
well  and  the  preservation  and  conservation  of  the  for- 
ests is  being  followed  out  in  the  proper  manner.  A 
fine  start  to  preserve  and  protect  the  lumber  supply 
has  been  made,  yet  we  must  continue  in  the  work. 
Just  how  near  we  were  to  the  border  line  between  days 
of  many  rafts  and  the  "last  raft"  remains  to  be  seen 
but  all  of  us  know  that  it  was  dangerously  too  near. 

Along  the  banks  of  the  stream  from  the  headquart- 
ers to  the  mouth  the  finest  kind  of  lumber  grew.  The 
river  was  usually  a  shallow  stream  but  there  were 
times  v/hen  the  river  grew  wild,  losing  its  placidity 
and  it  became  a  raging,  toiling,  boiling,  churning 
waterway,  moving  along  until  its  waters  were  lost  in 
the  Chesapeake  Bay.  When  the  river  went  on  such 
a  rampage  the  water  swept  everything  in  its  path. 

There  was  a  tradition  among  the  early  Indians  who 
resided  along  the  banks  of  the  stream  that  a  great 
flood  occurred  every  fourteen  years  at  regular  inter- 
vals. In  these  floods,  which  were  classed  as  more  than 
ordinary  freshets,  the  water  attained  a  height  not 
equalled  on  previous  occasions.  Early  settlers  found 
this  tradition  to  be  verified  in  many  instances. 

There  were  many  floods  in  the  Susqeuhanna  river. 
One  of  the  most  notable  occurred  on  St.  Patrick's 
Day,  March,  1865,  when  the  old  covered  bridge  that 
stood  at  the  foot  of  Market  Street,  Lewisburg,  vras 
swept  away  with  the  exception  of  but  one  span  wdiich 
remained  at  the  Lewisburg  end  of  the  structure. 
Other  bridges  all  along  the  stream  were  swept  away 


94  PENNSYLVANIA  RAFTING  DAYS 

from  the  headwaters  of  the  stream  to   Northumber- 
land. 

The  first  flood,  of  which  there  is  any  record,  oc- 
curred in  1774,  the  second  in  1758,  the  third  in  1772 
and  the  fourth  in  1786.  The  fifth  flood  of  any  account 
occurred  in  1800.  Another  big  flood  w^as  recorded  in 
1814. 

These  floods  were  in  the  spring  of  the  year  and  the 
waters,  increased  by  the  rains  and  the  melting  snows 
on  the  mountains,  raged  down  the  stream  carrying 
everything  movable  in  the  path.  The  country  being 
sparsely  settled  at  that  time,  there  were  but  few  build- 
ings along  the  banks  of  the  stream,  but  the  loss  v/as 
great  nevertheless  in  those  days  before  the  soldiers 
of  England  had  begun  to  trouble  the  colonists  and 
when  the  idea  of  free  and  independent  states  was  just 
being  advanced  with  energy  and  determiation. 

In  the  closing  years  of  the  Eighteenth  centurv  and 
the  beginning  of  the  Nineteeth  the  destruction  wrought 
by  the  high  waters  was  also  great  and  the  suffering  of 
the  settlers  along  the  banks  of  the  stream,  equalled 
the  sufferings  of  those  along  its  banks  in  later  years 
when  houses  were  swept  away  and  bridges  were  torn 
from  their  piers  and  sent  down  in  the  muddy  and 
murky  current  of  the  river  that  was  so  dear  to  every 
Red  Man's  heart. 

In  a  memorandum  on  file  at  Harrisburg,  signed  by 
Robert  Alartin  and  John  Franklin  they  state  that  "on 
the  15th  of  March  1784,  the  Susc^uehanna  rose  into  a 
flood,  exceeding  all  degrees  known  before,  so  sudden 


PENNSYLVANIA  RAFTING  DAYS  95 

as  to  give  no  time  to  guard  against  the  mischief,  that 
it  swept  away  150  houses  with  all  provisions,  furni- 
ture and  farming  tools  and  cattle  of  the  owners  and 
gave  but  little  opportunity  for  the  inhabitants  to  flee 
for  their  lives.  One  thousand  persons  left  destitute 
of  provisions,  clothing  and  every  means  of  life." 

In  almost  every  instance  the  floods  had  a  name,  usu- 
ally characterized  by  some  particular  incident  in  con- 
nection with  them.  The  flood  of  17'84  was  called  "The 
Ice  Flood,"  because  of  the  enormous  amovmt  of  ice 
that  floated  down  the  stream.  The  winter  had  been 
unusually  severe  and  the  ice  was  of  exceptional  thick- 
ness, doing  great  damage  to  the  trees  along  the  banks 
of  the  stream  as  it  rushed  down  with  the  sweeping 
current. 

In  1 THT)  the  pumpkin  crop  on  the  farms  along  the 
river  and  its  tributaries  was  an  enormous  one.  The 
yield  was  so  great  that  the  farmers  had  more  pump- 
kins than  they  could  find  use  for  and  consequently 
many  were  left  in  the  fields.  Along  in  October  the 
rains  descended  and  the  river  arose  to  a  great  height. 
All  the  tributary  streams  were  overflowed  and  the 
lowlands  were  inundated.  This  year  the  flood  w^as 
characterized  as  the  "Pumpkin  Flood,"  from  the  great 
number  of  yellow  pumpkins  that  were  carried  down 
on  the  surface  of  the  flood. 

The  winter  of  1828-29  was  particularly  unpleasant. 
Rain  fell  during  the  early  winter  almost  daily  for  sev- 
enty days.  Then  came  a  sudden  freeze-up  with  the 
o"reat  amount  of  moisture  in  the  around.     The  snows 


96  PENNSYLVANIA  RAFTING  DAYS 

of  the  winter  were  exceptionally  deep  and  spring  was 
a  month  later  than  usual.  Along  about  the  fifth  of 
June  in  this  year  the  weatlier  became  warm  and  about 
the  middle  of  the  month  became  warmer  than  usual 
for  the  season  of  the  year.  This  exceptional  warm 
spell  was  followed  by  a  heavy,  warm  rain.  June  28, 
1821),  occurred  another  of  the  great  floods  along  the 
river  and  the  water  at  this  time  arose  to  a  height  not 
attained  previously,  according  to  all  records  kept  at 
that  time. 

March  13,  1846,  the  river  again  was  at  a  flood  stage. 
Many  bridges  were  carried  away.  All  along  the  river 
the  residents  took  extra  precautions  against  possible 
damage  by  the  flood  which  they  had  been  expecting 
for  some  time  and  concerning  which  they  were  greatly 
alarmed.  Nevertheless  the  water  arose  so  quickly  that 
some  of  the  houses  were  washed  away  and  several 
bridges  were  either  washed  down  the  stream  or  badly 
damaged.  On  the  evening  of  October  13,  1846, 
Thomas  Follmer  and  son  Henry  and  William  Gundy, 
son  of  Major  John  Gundy,  who  were  managing  the 
Farmers'  Store  Company  at  the  mouth  of  Turtle 
Creek,  about  two  miles  south  of  Lewisburg,  where 
Turtle  Creek  enters  the  Susquehanna  River,  were 
drowned  at  the  mouth  of  the  creek.  They  had  gone  in 
a  boat  at  10  o'clock  that  night  to  the  store  house  on 
the  opposite  side  of  the  creek  and  were  returning  when 
a  dam  gave  way  and  their  boat  struck  a  timber  raft  at 
the  mouth  of  the  creek.  William  Gundy's  body  was 
found  in  the  boat  under  the  raft  next  day.     The  bodies 


THOMAS  GALLAIHKK   SIMCOX 

(1840-1914) 


PENNSYLVANIA  RAFTING  DAYS  97 

of  the  other  two  unfortunate  men  were  carried  down 
the  stream  and  were  not  found  for  three  weeks.  The 
crumbling  walls  of  the  store  house  can  be  seen  today, 
several  hundred  feet  from  the  mouth  of  the  creek. 
The  water  at  this  time  reached  a  higher  point  at  the 
mouth  of  Turtle  Creek  than  it  had  ever  reached  be- 
fore, according  to  measurements  made  on  the  walls  of 
Kremer's  warehouse  at  the  time.  The  canal  was  broken 
by  the  high  water,  the  mails  were  stopped,  the  Milton 
bridge  was  badly  damaged  and  the  bridge  over  the 
West  Branch  of  the  river  at  Northumberland  was 
carried  away,  as  was  also  the  one  at  Duncan's  Island 
and  part  of  the  structure  at  Harrisburg.  From  Milton 
down  more  damage  was  suffered  in  this  flood  than  any 
other  on  the  headwaters  of  the  stream. 

The  great  flood  which  occurred  in  1847  was  three 
or  four  feet  higher  than  any  previous  rise.  A  number 
of  bridges  were  destroyed  and  much  damage  was  done. 
Corn  which  was  in  shocks  in  the  fields  was  washed 
down  the  stream,  and  the  flood  was,  in  some  sections, 
called  the  ''Corn  Flood,"  although  the  name  was  not 
as  common  or  general  as  some  of  the  names  given  to 
other  floods  of  the  stream. 

In  April,  the  old  covered  bridge  at  the  mouth  of 
Buffalo  Creek,  which  flows  into  Susquehanna  River 
at  Lewisburg,  was  removed  and  a  new  one  was  com- 
menced. July  18  and  19  of  the  same  year  a  severe 
storm  raged  for  over  thirty-two  hours,  and  the  flood 
that  followed  was  still  greater  than  any  previous  one. 
Work   on  the   new   bridge   at   the   mouth   of   Buffalo 


98  PENNSYLVANIA  RAFTING  DAYS 

Creek  had  to  be  stopped,  and  the  structural  framework 
was  badly  damaged,  as  was  also  a  part  of  the  bridge 
that  had  been  built.  Bridges  all  along  the  river  suf- 
fered, and  logs  and  board  timber  went  floating  down 
the  river,  as  did  a  number  of  houses. 

The  next  memorable  flood  in  the  Susquehanna  River 
occurred  on  St.  Patrick's  Day,  March,  1865,  This 
freshet  was  caused  by  the  warm  southwest  wind  and 
rain  rapidly  melting  the  body  of  snow  and  ice,  and  the 
river  became  rampant.  History  shows  that  for  a  period 
of  one  hundred  years  there  was  a  successive  increase 
in  the  heights  of  the  floods  of  between  three  and  four 
feet,  and  some  people  attribute  this  to  the  great  amount 
of  timber  which  was  being  cut.  The  increases  in  the 
heights  of  the  various  floods  came  also  over  the  periods 
of  between  fourteen  and  eighteen  years.  One  reason 
for  the  rapid  rise  in  the  waters  in  this  St.  Patrick's 
Day  flood  was  because  of  the  fact  that  the  winter 
had  seen  an  unusually  large  number  of  snows,  and  the 
snow  lay  in  the  mountains  to  the  depth  of  as  much  as 
ten  feet  in  some  sections.  Unusually  warm  rains  and 
unusually  warm  weather  started  this  mass  to  melting, 
and  the  river  filled  up  rapidly  as  every  little  stream 
sent  its  flood  waters  down  into  it.  The  water  rose  to  a 
great  height  and  did  great  damage  all  along  the  river. 

At  Williamsport  the  water  attained  a  height  of  twen- 
ty-eight feet,  and  at  Lewisburg  the  water  was  nearly 
twenty-five  feet  above  the  regular  level.  In  this  water 
all  the  bridges  between  Farrandsville  and  Northum- 
berland were  either  carried  away  or  badly  damaged  by 


PENNSYLVANIA  RAFTING  DAYS  99 


the  flood.  The  old  covered  bridge  that  stood  at  the 
foot  .of  Market  Street,  Lewisburg,  was  swept  away 
with  the  exception  of  but  one  pier.  The  bridge  was 
built  in  ISIG.  One  pier  was  left  standing  at  the 
Lewisburg  end  of  the  bridge.  The  first  teams  to  cross 
this  bridge  went  over  the  structure  in  1817.  After  this 
bridge  was  washed  away  on  the  greatest  flood  the  river 
had  experienced  up  to  this  time,  a  new  subscription 
was  taken  and  of  the  original  members  to  the  new 
bridge,  Ellis  F.  Gundy,  J.  Foster  VanValzah  and 
Weidler  Roland,  all  of  Lewisburg,  have  died  within 
the  i^ast  three  years. 

The  new  bridge  to  which  these  gentlemen,  along  with 
many  others,  had  subscribed,  was  built  several  hun- 
dred yards  north  of  the  old  structure.  x\t  this  time 
the  Pennsylvania  Railroad  was  extending  its  lines 
from  Montandon  to  Bellefonte  and  the  new  bridge  was 
built  as  a  combination  wagon  and  railroad  bridge. 
Travel  over  the  bridge  grew  as  the  years  went  by, 
and  the  population  increased.  The  house,  which  until 
a  few  years  ago  stood  at  the  foot  of  Market  Street, 
Lewisburg,  was  the  original  structure,  remodeled,  that 
stood  at  the  entrance  of  the  old  covered  bridge  wasued 
out  in  1865,  and  it  was  here  that  the  toll-keeper  lived 
when  the  bridge  was  operated.  In  later  years,  after  a 
bridge  had  been  built  further  up  the  river,  the  struc- 
ture was  turned  into  a  dwelling  house.  On  the  front 
of  the  old  building  could  be  seen  the  lines  of  the  old 
bridge  gateway  through  which  travelers  and  their 
teams  passed  before  the  structure  was  washed  away. 


100  PENNSYLVANIA  RAFTING  DAYS 

Across  this  bridge  marched  the  brave  soldier  boys 
from  Union  County  on  their  way  to  Montandon,  then 
called  Cameronia,  after  a  well-known  resident  of  Lew- 
isburg,  where  they  boarded  the  trains  for  Harrisburg 
and  were  sworn  into  the  service  of  their  country. 
Many  of  the  brave  fellows  never  returned.  The  bones 
of  some  were  left  to  bleach  on  southern  battlefields 
where  the  only  marker  to  their  graves  is  the  green 
grass  which  nature  gives  in  the  springtime,  and  where 
the  only  funeral  dirge  they  hear  on  each  recurring 
Memorial  Day  is  the  song  of  birds  carrolling  sweetly  in 
the  nearby  tree  tops.  Others  of  these  brave  soldier  boys 
returned  to  take  up  the  vocations  and  occupations  they 
left  when  they  responded  to  their  country's  call.  Those 
who  returned  have  lived  to  enjoy  the  full  fruition  of 
all  they  did,  all  they  suffered  and  all  they  sacrificed, 
and  an  appreciative  public  reveres  them  for  their  gal- 
lant deeds  on  many  a  bullet-riddled  and  shot-torn  bat- 
tlefield. 

But  the  greatest  flood  of  all — a  flood  that  is  remem- 
bered by  many  of  the  residents  all  along  the  river — was 
the  memorable  flood  of  June  1,  1889.  This  flood  will 
pass  into  history  as  the  greatest  on  the  West  Branch 
of  the  Susquehanna  River.  Rain  fell  incessantly  for 
more  than  forty-eight  hours,  and  the  wind,  blowing 
from  the  southwest,  presaged  trouble  to  those  who 
resided  along  the  banks  of  the  stream,  a  stream  which 
was  a  terror  when  angered  by  swollen  waters.  The 
river  rose  rapidly,  and  at  Williamsport  a  height  of 
thirty-three   feet,  a  number  of    feet  higher   than  had 


PENNSYLVANIA  RAFTING  DAYS  101 

been  reached  in  the  flood  of  18G5,  was  attained.  The 
height  of  the  water  in  the  river  at  Lewisburg,  when  the 
Susquehanna  is  at  flood  stage,  is  from  two  to  four  feet 
lower  than  at  Wilhamsport,  because  the  river  is  wider 
at  Lewisburg  than  at  Wilhamsport. 

The  water  in  the  river  at  Lewisburg  at  the  time  of 
the  flood  of  1889  was  nearly  twenty-eight  feet,  much 
higher  than  in  the  previous  flood  that  had  swept  away 
the  old  covered  wooden  bridge  at  the  foot  of  Market 
Street  there.  Three-fourths  of  Lock  Haven,  Williams- 
port,  Jersey  Shore,  Milton  and  Sunbury,  and  a  goodly 
portion  of  Lewisburg,  as  well  as  many  other  towns 
along  the  stream,  were  inundated,  the  water  reaching 
from  three  to  ten  feet  in  some  of  the  houses  in  these 
towns.  The  bridges  along  the  river  from  Keating  to 
Northumberland  were  either  carried  away  or  damaged 
so  badly  that  it  recjuired  several  months  of  hard  labor 
to  right  things. 

The  old  covered  bridge  that  stood  at  the  present  site 
of  the  railroad  bridge  at  Lewisburg  was  one  of  the 
bridges  badly  damaged  Ijy  the  flood  when  five  spans  of 
it  were  washed  away.  A  train  of  cars  loaded  with 
pig  iron  and  coal  was  run  into  the  bridge  with  the  hope 
that  it  would  weight  it  down,  but  the  waters  proved 
too  strong,  and  part  of  the  bridge  was  carried  away, 
and  the  pig  iron  and  coal  train  fell  into  the  river. 

The  Wilhamsport  boom  broke  and  150,000,000  feet 
of  logs  were  carried  away,  besides  great  quantities  of 
manufactured  lumber.  The  logs  floated  down  the  river 
before  the  five  spans  of  the  bridge  at  Lewisburg  were 


102  PENNSYLVANIA  RAFTING  DAYS 

washed  away,  and  the  logs,  impelled  by  a  force  that 
only  a  maddened  river  can  give,  crashed  through  the 
wooden  sides  of  the  bridge  as  though  the  walls  were 
nothing  more  than  paper.  A  number  of  residents  of 
Lewisburg,  as  well  as  other  towns  along  the  river, 
busied  themselves  in  capturing  this  "runaway"  lumber, 
and  several  of  these  men  made  a  considerable  sum  when 
the  lumber  was  gathered  in  again  by  the  owners  from 
whom  it  had  escaped. 

The  losses  to  the  people  of  the  West  Branch  were 
enormous,  being  roughly  estimated  at  from  $25,000,000 
to  $30,000,000.  Great  suffering  was  caused  and  a  large 
relief  fund  had  to  be  raised  to  alleviate  the  suffering  of 
the  destitute  residents  along  the  banks  of  the  river. 
Upwards  of  fifty  lives  were  lost  in  the  valley,  and  the 
farms  and  crops  in  many  instances  were  ruined. 

Horses,  houses,  saw  mills,  lumber,  crops  and  all 
manner  of  material  were  carried  away  down  the  stream. 
Following  the  flood  the  scene  along  the  river  was  one 
of  desolation  and  beggared  description  after  the  mighty 
torrent  had  gotten  in  its  work.  The  five  spans  of  the 
Lewisburg  bridge  which  were  washed  out  in  1889  were 
rebuilt  the  same  year. 

In  the  spring  of  1894  the  heavy  rains  caused  the  deep 
snows  in  the  mountains  to  melt,  and  the  waters  of  the 
Susquehanna  River  were  again  changed  to  a  color 
resembling  that  of  mud.  From  the  headwaters  of  the 
stream  damage  was  done  to  bridges  and  to  the  farms 
along  the  banks.  The  river  became  high — so  high,  in 
fact,  that  three  spans  of  the  river  bridge  at  Lewisburg 


PENNSYLVANIA  RAFTING  DAYS  103 

were  washed  out,  and  the  bridge  was  later  rebuilt.  It 
stood  until  July,  1912,  when  it  was  razed  and  a  modern 
steel  structure  erected,  which  was  for  railroad  traffic 
alone.  Some  years  previous  the  Commissioners  of 
Northumberland  and  Union  Counties  had  erected  a 
handsome  driving  bridge  at  the  foot  of  Market  Street, 
Lewisburg,  almost  on  the  exact  spot  where  the  first 
bridge  to  span  the  river  had  been  erected.  The  piers 
for  the  new  structure  were  built  on  nearly  the  same  site ' 
as  the  old  piers,  and  the  bridge  is  now  one  of  the  most 
handsome  and  substantial  on  the  river,  used  entirely 
for  vehicle  and  foot  traffic. 

Sometimes  the  floods  in  the  river  were  in  the  spring 
or  early  summer,  and  at  other  times  they  were  in  the 
fall,  x^t  these  times  the  residents  along  the  banks 
usually  looked  after  their  boats  or  other  belongings, 
and  took  every  precaution  they  deemed  necessary  to 
guard  against  the  destruction  which  would  have  been 
caused  by  the  rising  waters.  In  some  instances,  how- 
ever, greater  precautionary  measures  should  have  been 
taken,  for  the  people  at  times  did  not  anticipate  fully 
the  exact  extent  of  the  flood  impending. 

One  of  the  peculiar  things  about  the  floods  of  the 
West  Branch  of  the  Susquehanna  River  is  that  they 
occurred  at  almost  regular  intervals.  This  is  true  of 
the  first  six  floods;  that  is,  the  first  six  large  floods, 
when  they  occurred  fourteen  years  apart.  In  later 
years  there  were  periods  of  fourteen  years  between 
other  floods  in  the  river. 


104 


PENNSYLVANIA  RAFTING  DAYS 


Tradition  tells  us  that  the  Indians  knew  of  these 
floods  occurring  every  fourteen  years. 

Who  knows  but  that  they  had  learned  this  interval 
between  the  great  floods  long  before  the  axe  of  the 
white  man  blazed  its  way  for  civilization  along  the  river 
which  the  Indians  called  Otzinachson,  the  place  of  the 
demons  ? 


JAMES    WYLIE  MILLER 

A   Surviving    Sinnemahoning   Raftsman 

Born    in   1838 


Glossary  of  Rafting 
Terms,    by  Former 
Active  Raftmen 


I.     By    JOHN    H.    CHATHAM 

RAFTSMEN  was  not  the  term  used  by  the  men 
engaged  in  the  business  of  rafting.  We  were 
raftmen,  and  one  of  us  was  a  raftman,  the  same 
as  a  boatman  was  a  boatman,  not  a  boatsman.  In  the 
earher  days,  back  from  the  river,  where  they  traveled 
on  foot  to  their  respective  homes,  they  were  called 
''watermen." 

They  were  all  up-river  men  above  Lock  Haven, 
whether  they  came  ofif  the  river  at  Clearfield  or  the 
Sinnemahoning,  Moshannon  or  any  of  the  creeks  that 
emptied  into  the  river  or  even  its  branches. 

Lock  Haven  was  the  first  lumber  town  on  the  river 
as  the  rafts  came  down,  hence  everything  in  the  shape 
of  a  raft  stopped  to  sell  at  that  point.  Failing  to  sell 
their  rafts  there,  they  were  started  again  on  the  run  to 
Marietta.  As  soon  as  a  raft  was  sold,  it  went  into  the 
hands  of  some  jobber's  pilot,  who  was  following  the 
merchant  for  whom  he  "ran"  rafts. 

One  hundred,  one  hundred  and  ten,  one  hundred  and 

105 


106  PENNSYLVANIA  RAFTING  DAYS 

fifteen,  and,  in  some  instances,  one  hundred  and  twenty- 
five  dollars,  was  the  jobber's  price  from  Lock  Haven  to 
Marietta,  so  a  pair  of  rafts,  or  a  fleet,  as  it  was  called 
when  hauled  side  by  side,  gave  the  jobber  anywhere 
from  two  hundred  and  thirty  to  two  hundred  and  fifty 
dollars  for  his  trip. 

He  hired  three  men  for  about  twenty  dollars  per 
trip  to  Marietta,  and  if  he  had  moonlight  to  see  out  of 
the  ''Branch" — that  is,  as  far  as  Northumberland, 
where  the  North  and  West  Branches  meet — he  would 
be  in  Marietta  on  the  evening  of  the  third  day  or  the 
morning  of  the  fourth.  There  was  no  extra  pay  for 
all-night  running.  It  was  to  the  interest  of  the  men 
who  ran  the  rafts  to  get  their  twenty  dollars  as  quickly 
as  possible. 

Sometimes  two  pilots  would  start  for  a  buyer  at  the 
same  time,  and  one  crew  would  be  back  home  before 
the  other  got  to  Marietta. 

It  must  be  remembered  that  any  and  all  rafts  ran 
faster  than  the  water.  If  you  throw  a  chip  off  a  raft 
thirty  or  forty  feet  from  it,  you  will  be  surprised  to 
see  the  chip  losing  ground  and  finally  be  far  in  the  rear 
of  the  raft.  The  same  condition  exists  with  all  rafts. 
A  pine  raft  having  five  or  six  sticks  of  oak  rafted  into 
each  platform  will  be  one-half  deeper  in  the  water 
than  if  it  is  made  entirely  of  all  pine.  Hence,  a  raft 
of  that  build  will  run  ten  to  twenty  times  faster  a  day 
than  an  other  one.  This  would  often  give  the  crew  a 
chance  to  get  through  the  chute  in  the  evening  when  a 
slower  raft  would  have  to  wait  until  daylight. 


PENNSYLVANIA  RAFTING  DAYS  107 

There  were  many  peculiar  terms  in  rafting  parlance 
that  are  not  known  to  the  generation  of  today  and 
nearly  forgotten  by  those  of  us  who  followed  the  river 
in  the  heyday  of  lumbering  and  rafting.  I  have  tried 
to  give  a  number  of  these  rafting  terms  and  explain 
them  to  the  lay  mind. 

A  small  glossary  of  rafting  terms  here  follows : 

Headhlock — The  headblock  consisted  of  a  pine  stick 
of  timber  hewn  on  the  bottom  side  and  the  other  two 
sides,  with  the  top  side  round.  This  block  was  eight  or 
ten  feet  in  length  and  the  top  side  to  the  right  and  left 
of  the  oar  were  chipped  down  to  about  the  enter  of 
the  stick,  leaving  about  two  feet  on  each  side  of  the 
thole  pin  full  height  of  the  stick.  This  was  bored 
through  and  down  into  the  timber  four  or  five  inches 
with  a  two-inch  auger  bit  and  the  thole-pin  usually 
dressed  out  of  white  oak  to  two  inches  and  inserted 
into  the  headblock,  driven  through  it  and  down  into 
the  hole  in  the  timber  stick.  The  halved  part  of  the 
headblock  to  the  right  and  left  of  the  pin  were  also 
bored  through  and  down  into  the  timber  and  securely 
pinned.  The  oar  stem  was  bored  with  a  two-inch  auger 
and  mortised  back  from  the  pin  to  allow  it  to  be  moved 
upward  and  downward  with  ease. 

Snubbing  Posts — Snubbing  posts  were  of  two  kinds, 
those  along  the  landing  places,  put  in  by  the  landlords 
and  anchored  with  a  pin  through  an  auger  hole  at  the 
bottom  to  prevent  them  from  being  pulled  out.  They 
were  anchored  posts.  The  other  was  a  post  with  a 
square  bottom  fitted  into  a  mortised  timber  stick  on  the 


108  PENNSYLVANIA  RAFTING  DAYS 

raft  and  were  much  in  use  after  raftmen  began  to  use 
two  hundred  feet  of  rope  or  "hne."  The  old  ropes 
were  only  from  seventy-five  to  eighty  feet  in  length, 
and  could  not  be  used  to  as  great  an  advantage  as  the 
longer  ropes. 

Grouser  Hole — The  grouser  hole  was  made  by 
putting  in  a  shorter  stick  than  the  others  in  the  plat- 
form by  dropping  the  stick  that  butted  against  it  and 
leaving  it  project  at  the  other  end.  The  hole  generally 
was  from  eighteen  inches  to  two  feet  upward.  The 
grouser  was  a  large  skid  ten  or  twelve  feet  in  length 
and  all  one  man  could  handle  alone  and  placed  in  the 
hole  and  shoved  to  the  bottom,  where  it  bit  on  the  grav- 
elly bottom  and  helped  to  retard  the  progress  of  the 
raft. 

Hearth — On  all  rafts  that  came  down  the  river — 
that  did  not  have  shanties  built  on  them  and  a  place  for 
a  sheet  iron  stove — there  was  no  place  to  cook  on  unless 
the  raftmen  built  a  hearth.  This  was  used  by  all  job- 
bers who  did  not  have  a  sheet  iron  stove,  which  was 
carried  liack  on  the  train  along  with  extra  snubbing 
rope,  which  all  jobbers  of  any  account  owned  and  used 
in  connection  with  the  one  on  the  raft.  Every  raft 
was  equipped  with  a  line.  The  hearth  consisted  of  five 
or  six  boards  or  slabs  laid  at  on  the  timber  on  the  most 
level  spot  and  about  eight  or  ten  inches  of  mud  and 
sand  was  placed  over  them.  When  completed  the  fire- 
place was  about  five  feet  square.  On  this  the  fire  was 
built,  .the  tea  made,  the  ham  and  eggs  fried — which 
usuallv  constituted   the  menu.      Coffee  was  not  used. 


PENNSYLVANIA  RAFTING  DAYS  109 

perhaps  on  account  of  it  not  being  roasted  and  ground 
at  the  stores,  as  we  find  it  today.  Plenty  of  sugar  was 
in  use  for  the  tea.  No  spreads  or  jelhes  of  any  kind 
were  used.  The  "shanty  rafts"  had  a  better  supply  of 
provisions,  and  the  men  Hved  better. 

Top  Loading — When  a  raft  was  completed,  whatever 
number  of  sticks  were  left  over  were  rolled  onto  the 
raft  or  floated  alongside  of  it  and  a  rope  tied  to  the 
lashpole,  the  other  end  slipped  under  the  timber  stick 
and  a  skid  rammed  under  the  stick  and  the  stick  held 
in  place  by  the  rope  with  two  or  three  men  holding  it. 
The  man  with  the  skid  pried  it  with  his  "purchase"  on 
the  edge  of  the  raft,  lifted  it  out  of  the  water  enough 
that  the  man  on  the  rope  could  roll  it  in  the  rope  and 
thus  place  it  on  the  raft.  Skids  reaching  nearly  across 
the  raft  were  laid  and  the  timber  on  the  skids  appor- 
tioned, thus  making  the  weight  on  the  raft  uniform  on 
the  entire  platform.  If  it  was  a  board  raft  or  scantling 
raft,  the  lumber  was  simply  piled  on  top.  with  skid 
bottoms  sometimes. 

J/a/yart/^— Halyards  were  large  hickory  withes 
twisted  out  of  poles,  and  were  in  use  in  stopping  rafts 
which  were  made  smaller  than  in  the  days  of  ropes. 
They  would  be  thrown  out  on  the  shores  where  the 
ends  were  grabbed,  stood  upon  and  dragged  along. 
With  the  aid  of  the  grouser  the  rafts  were  stopped. 

Bozvs — Bows  were  made  out  of  white  oak,  split  after 
quartering  and  splitting  the  heart  out  of  the  blocks. 
After  being  hearted,  they  were  split  open  from  the  cen- 
tre until  the  last  split  could  be  done  with  the  hands, 


110  PENNSYLVANIA  RAFTING  DAYS 

after  starting  it  at  the  end  with  an  axe.  The  last  spht 
T.as  manipulatea  by  the  hand  so  that  it  did  not  spht  off 
at  the  side,  and  was  done  by  pressing  on  the  stronger 
piece  in  a  bowed  manner,  letting  the  weaker  one  run  in, 
and,  if  too  much,  then  the  other  side  was  bent,  thus 
making  it  come  out  at  the  other  end  of  uniform  thick- 
ness, which  was  about  one- fourth  of  an  inch. 

Platform — A  platform  was  one  length  of  timber  or 
boards.  In  timber  it  ran  from  twenty-five  feet  in 
length  to  eighty  or  ninety,  according  tc  the  lengths  of 
the  trees  cut.  These  lengths  were  looked  after  in  the 
woods  by  the  hewer,  who  saw  to  it  that  he  did  not 
make  more  than  a  platform,  or  enough  for  three  or 
four  platforms,  all  of  the  same  length. 

Pup — A  pup  was  a  creek  raft.  These  rafts  were 
constructed  in  the  creeks  where  there  were  too  many 
turns  for  a  large  raft,  or  where  the  obstructions  were 
too  great  for  large  timbers.  They  were  run  out  to  the 
larger  streams,  butted  together  at  the  end  and  lashed, 
thus  making  a  full-length  raft,  with  two  useless  oars  in 
the  centre,  hanging  over  and  riding  each  other's  raft. 
These  sometimes  were  rigged  up  on  the  side  of  the  raft 
and  used  to  pull  "headway"  in  the  wind.  This  was 
resorted  to  only  on  special  occasions. 

A  Pair  of  Pups — A  "pair  of  pups"  made  up  a  full- 
raft.  A  raft  was  one  lot  of  timber  put  into  the  usual 
form  of  rafting  and  equipped  with  oars,  fore  and  aft. 

Fleet — A  fleet  consisted  of  two  rafts  lashed  side  by 
side,  and  had  therefore  four  oars  on  the  fleet.  Rafts 
were  run  double  after  coming  through  the  Lock  Haven 


PENNSYLVANIA  RAFTING  DAYS 


111 


chute,  and  were  not  necessarily  separated  until  they  got 
to  Shamokin,  which  was  a  single  chute,  the  same  as  at 
Lock  Haven.  From  there  on  they  were  run  double  to 
Marietta.  From  Marietta  to  tidewater  they  were  all 
run  single. 

Whiskey  Boats — Whiskey  boats  were  simply  skiffs 
used  through  the  entire  length  of  the  river  by  what  we 
might  call  "whiskey  runners."  Operatives  of  these 
skififs  found  a  good  eddy  where  they  could  sit  in  their 
boats  without  mooring  them,  and  each  boat  was  pro- 
vided with  whiskey,  bread,  pies,  cakes  and  eggs.  If  the 
operative  was  onto  his  job,  he  carried  these  provisions; 
if  he  wasn't,  he  only  carried  the  whiskey.  Sober  men 
would  buy  a  tiny  cup  of  whiskey,  place  it  on  the  rafts 
and  drink  at  leisure ;  drunks  bought  their  whiskey  by 
the  coffee  pot  full.     There  was  much  hilarity  at  times. 


Rafting  Terms 


II.     By   M.  J.  COLCORD 


In  addition  to  the  terms  of  rafting  days,  of  which 
Mr.  Chatham  has  written  before,  M.  J.  Colcord,  of 
Coudersport,  editor  and  a  former  pilot,  has  given  the 
following,  which  without  doubt  means  very  little  in 
the  language  of  today,  but  which  is  recalled  by  those 
daring  men  of  the  river  who  are  still  with  us. 

Grub — A  white  oak  sapling  cut  with  the  bulge  of  the 
roots  on.  Used  in  rafting  lumber.  (Grubs  were  often 
made  from  ironwood  saplings,  when  the  white  oak  was 
not  available,  shaved  down  to  fit  auger  holes,  two  inches, 
two  and  one-half  inches  or  three  inches,  in  the  binding 
boards  of  a  platform.) 

Lashpole — A  pole  placed  cross-wise  of  a  timber  raft 
near  the  ends  of  the  platforms,  fastened  with  bows  and 
pins. 

Rope — One  and  a  fourth  inch  rope,  fifty  to  seventy- 
five  feet  long,  used  to  tie  up  rafts. 

Halyard — A  long  hickory  withe,  used  to  tie  up  rafts 
before  the  days  when  ropes  were  used. 

Oar  Blade — A  plank  about  sixteen  feet  long  and 
twenty  inches  wide,  sawed  thin  at  one  end. 

Oar  Stem — Body  of  a  small  tree,  about  forty-five 
feet  long,  tapering  from  two  inches  at  the  round  hand- 

112 


PENNSYLVANIA  RAFTING  DAYS  113 

hold  to  six  inches  at  the  outer  end,  which  was  mortised 
to  hold  the  thick  end  of  the  blade. 

Tic  Loose — Unfasten  the  rope  or  halyard  that  holds 
the  raft. 

Pilot — Manages  the  head  oar  and  directs  the  work 
of  the  steersman. 

Steersman — Manages  the  rear  oar. 

Stove — Used  in  either  tense  to  designate  disaster  by 
hitting  obstructions  of  the  shore. 

Grouser — A  stout  skid  inserted  between  the  ends  of 
timber  sticks,  to  help  stop  the  raft  by  grousing  on  the 
bottom  of  the  stream. 

Snub — A  turn  with  the  rope  (tied  to  a  lashpole) 
around  a  tree,  stump  or  post  on  shore,  one  turn  or  two 
thrown  around  the  rope,  with  all  the  slack  possible 
taken  up,  then  "Hold  like  hell,"  "Let  her  render,"  "Let 
go ;  you'll  break  the  rope,"  were  heard. 

Wane — Round  of  a  timber  stick.  In  measuring  the 
wane  on  one  side  of  upper  surface  not  counted.  The 
portion  that  lacks  filling  the  square  of  the  stick. 

Paying  the  Coat-Tail — Treating.  The  first  trip  a  lad 
goes  down  the  river  and  through  Conewago  Falls,  to 
treat  all  hands.  If  not,  some  one  would  cut  one  of  his 
coat-tails.    Raftmen  wore  frock  coats. - 

Thumbing — Placing  the  bottle  alongside  something 
on  the  raft,  so  that  the  contents  were  just  one  drink 
above  the  top  of  the  object  measured  by.  Some  raft- 
men were  quite  expert  in  finding  the  proper  height  to 
leave  a  good,  liberal  supply  above  the  thumb.  Lower 
levels  were  continually  needed  as  the  game  progressed. 


Appearance  and  Customs 
Of  The  Early  Raftmen 


By  JOHN  H.   CHATHAM 

OF  THE  time  I  write  fully  half  of  the  men  engaged 
in  rafting  were  bearded  men,  and  all  wore  mus- 
taches. In  fact,  you  had  to  grow  a  mustache  as 
soon  as  you  could,  for  it  was  a  fixed  fact  among  the 
girls  that  unless  you  wore  one  of  these  hirsute  adorn- 
ments you  were  "not  in  it"  at  all,  to  use  a  common  ex- 
pression, and  were  considered  weak  and  unmanly. 

The  roughest-looking  men  came  from  the  woods  far 
up  the  river.  Some  wore  bearskin  caps,  some  'coonskin, 
others  foxskin  headgear,  and  those  who  did  not  have 
these  warm  caps  wore  slouch  hats  that  had  been  worn 
so  long  that  you  could  not  tell  where  the  crown  ended 
or  where  the  brim  began,  and  over  the  whole  grim 
goblins  of  red-hue  paint  covered  the  entire  lid. 

There  was  a  class  of  woodsmen  who  delighted  in 
having  observers  take  a  second  look  at  them,  but  withal 
they  were  a  good,  warm-hearted  lot  of  men,  whose 
charities  among  their  kind  were  prevalent  as  well  as 
proverbial. 

The  landlords  who  seemed  to  "stand  in"  with  the 
raftmen  were  Mr.  Hanna,  at  Lock  Port ;  the  Clearfield 

1X4 


PENNSYLVANIA  RAFTING  DAYS  115 


House,  at  Lock  Haven;  the  Fallon  House,  at  Lock 
Haven,  (for  the  timber  buyers)  ;  Ellis,  at  Williamsport ; 
Graham,  at  Muncy;  Speece,  at  Shamokin,  above  the 
dam,  and  Hummell  below  it;  Keiser,  at  Selinsgrove; 
the  Shriner  House,  at  Cox's  Town;  Newhring  at  the 
White  House,  also  Housel,  or  Housickel,  as  he  was 
called  by  most  of  the  raftmen. 

WALKING  FROM  MARIETTA  (ANDERSON'S  FERRY) 

Walking  back  home  in  the  thirties  and  forties  was  the 
only  way  to  return  after  raftmen  had  taken  the  tmi- 
bers  down  the  river  to  Marietta  and  other  points.  1 
have  heard  my  father  say  he  put  seventeen  rafts  into 
Marietta  in  one  spring,  and  made  the  last  trip  in  June 
with  a  single  raft.  He  was  not  able  to  get  another  with 
it.  When  they  walked  back  there  was  a  tavern  about 
every  four  miles  on  the  "Big  River,"  as  they  called  the 
main  stream  of  the  Susquehanna.  The  returning  raft- 
men got  up  at  four  o'clock  in  the  morning,  walked  to 
the  next  hotel  before  breakfast,  having  first  taken  a 
drink  at  the  place  they  started  from.  But,  all  in  all, 
they  were  a  good  lot,  and  they  got  as  much  fun  as  possi- 
ble out  of  their  hard  work  and  their  hardships.  They 
played  tricks  on  the  people  along  the  way,  and  often 
their  mischief  cost  them  time  and  money. 

I  remember  hearing  my  grandfather  tell  of  two  men 
named  Walter  and  Proctor,  from  Liberty,  and  of  an 
incident  into  which  they  mixed  themselves.  They  saw 
an  old  sow  with  suckling  pigs  by  the  side  of  the  road. 
They  each  stopped,  picked  up  a  pig  and  carried  them 


116  PENNSYLVANIA  RAFTING  DAYS 

to  the  next  hotel,  sold  them  for  drinks  and  went  on. 
That  afternoon  they  saw  three  men  coming  behind 
them.  The  oncomers  had  warrants  for  their  arrest, 
captured  the  two  men  who  stole  the  pigs,  took  them 
back  to  the  'squire's  office,  gave  them  a  hearing,  forced 
the  men  to  pay  a  fine,  and  they  proceeded  on  their  jour- 
ney. But  this  was  not  enough.  Above  Liverpool  a 
man  was  building  a  post-and-rail  fence.  Proctor,  when 
he  got  within  two  or  three  hundred  feet  of  the  fence, 
left  the  road  and  began  to  sight  along  the  posts.  He 
called  to  the  builder  to  come  down  to  the  fence,  as  he 
wanted  to  talk  to  him.  The  builder  had  watched  the 
antics  of  Proctor  with  considerable  interest.  When  he 
finally  did  come  down  to  meet  the  raftmen,  Proctor  told 
him  the  fence  was  one  of  the  most  beautiful  he  had  ever 
seen,  the  panels  were  perfect,  the  posts  set  in  a  beauti- 
fully straight  line.  He  asked  the  fence-maker  how 
much  he  got  for  building  each  panel,  and  he  was  told. 
Proctor  then  said  to  him:  *Tf  you  will  come  up  to 
where  I  live  and  build  me  a  fence  like  that,  I  will  give 
you  three  cents  more  per  panel  than  you  are  getting 
here." 

The  builder  asked  how  far  up  the  river  Proctor  lived, 
and  told  him  he  would  come  up  to  build  the  fence. 
Some  time  afterward  Proctor  was  surprised  to  see  his 
fence-maker  friend  appear  at  his  home  in  Liberty. 
Proctor  pointed  out  a  bare  place  on  the  mountain  at  the 
mouth  of  Bald  Eagle  Creek  and  told  the  builder  that 
was  the  farm  he  wanted  fenced  in.  Unto  this  day  the 
bare  spot  is  called  Proctor's  Farm. 


Cut  of  11,233  Board 
Feet,  Probably  One 
Man's  Lumber  Record 


Mr.  John  Zimmerman,  of  Cumberland,  who  sawed 
11,233  board  feet  of  lumber  in  one  working  day  at 
Heckton  Mills,  in  Dauphin  County,  prol^ably  carries 
off  the  honors  for  one  day's  cutting  along  the  Susque- 
hanna River.  Mr.  •  Zimmerman,  who  was  working 
against  time,  performed  this  feat  in  order  to  get  out  a 
certain  supply  of  lumber  on  time — and  he  did  it  in 
eleven  hours,  too.  Mr.  Zimmerman  worked  for  many 
years  "on  the  saw  mill,"  and  the  following  account  of 
his  lumbering  days  will  prove  interesting  to  the  readers 
of  this  booklet  on  the  rafting  days  of  Pennsylvania. 


JOHN  ZIMMERMAN,  one  of  the  old  Susquehanna 
raftmen,  celebrated  his  seventy-first  birthday, 
February  19,  1922.  He  lives  with  his  son  on 
Market  Street,  in  New  Cumberland.  He  began  rafting 
in  ISn,  and  continued  until  1884.  For  thirteen  years 
he  brought  rafts  down  the  Susquehanna  from  Lock 
Haven  to  Heckton  Mills,  near  Dauphin,  where  a  large 
saw  mill   was  operated   for   years.      He  also   made  a 

117 


118  PENNSYLVANIA  RAFTING  DAYS 

number  of  trips  with  rafts  down  the  Susquehanna  to 
Wrightsville  and  Columbia. 

For  about  ten  years  Mr.  Zimmerman  was  the  head 
sawyer  at  Heckton  Mills.  He  operated  a  saw  that 
was  called  a  "muley  saw."  This  was  the  local  name 
for  the  old-fashioned  ''up-and-down"  saw.  Bill  Fisher, 
who  is  still  living  at  Heckton,  was  his  helper.  It  was 
customary  for  the  entire  saw  mill  crew  to  make  the 
trip  with  the  rafts  in  the  early  part  of  spring.  Until 
the  first  rafts  arrived,  the  saw  mill  couldn't  be  operated, 
for  all  the  logs  that  had  been  brought  in  the  year  before 
were  used  up  and  a  new  supply  had  to  be  rafted  in. 

Mr.  Zimmerman  reports  that  some  big  stuff  was 
sawed  at  Heckton  Mills.  He  remembers  one  piece  of 
white  pine  timber  that  was  102  feet  long  and  measured 
eleven  by  fourteen  inches  at  the  small  end.  It  contained 
over  1,300  board  feet  of  the  finest  lumber  that  was  ever 
placed  on  the  market  in  Pennsylvania. 

When  one  compares  the  daily  capacity  of  the  old 
**up-and-down"  saw  mill  with  the  modern  saw  mill, 
one  is  inclined  to  think  that  the  "up-and-down"  saw 
turned  out  little  lumber,  but  Mr.  Zimmerman  remem- 
bers well  and  relates  with  interest  the  big  day  at  Heck- 
ton. He  operated  the  saw  for  eleven  hours  without  any 
let-up,  and  when  the  day  was  finished  he  measured  up 
his  cut  and  found  that  he  had  turned  out  11,233  board 
feet  of  choice  lumber.  All  the  material  that  he  sawed 
that  day  was  made  up  into  timber  sixty  feet  long  and 
ten  by  twelve  to  twelve  by  sixteen  inches  in  width.  Mr. 
Zimmerman  believes  that  this  cut  of  over  11,000  board 


PENNSYLVANIA  RAFTING  DAYS  119 


feet  was  the  largest  output  of  any  "up-and-down"  saw 
mill  in  Pennsylvania. 

In  those  days  large  lumber  contracts  were  common. 
The  Reading  Railroad  at  one  time  placed  a  contract 
with  the  owner  of  the  mill  for  1,000,000  board  feet  of 
bridge  lumber.  For  six  months  the  mill  operated  from 
6  o'clock  in  the  morning  until  midnight.  The  contract 
had  to  be  put  out  in  record  time,  for,  if  it  was  turned 
out  by  a  specific  day,  another  contract  for  500,000  board 
feet  would  be  placed.  Head  Sawyer  Zimmerman  re- 
ports that  on  the  day  set  for  the  completion  of  the 
contract,  the  work  was  done,  and  they  succeeded  in 
landing  the  second  contract. 

In  order  to  supply  the  mill  at  Heckton  it  was  neces- 
sary to  bring  down  each  spring  from  100  to  150  rafts. 
Mr.  Zimmerman  says  that  rafting  was  rough  work,  for 
often  the  rafts  struck  rocks  and  were  broken  to  pieces. 
It  was  not  unusual  for  rafts  to  be  damaged  so  badly 
that  they  had  to  be  pulled  to  the  shore  for  repairs  and 
hundreds  of  logs  broke  loose  when  they  struck  rocks, 
and  many  of  them  were  never  recovered. 

Mr.  Zimmerman  recalls  distinctly  the  Johnstown 
flood.  He  relates  that  all  the  islands  in  the  Susque- 
hanna were  huge  piles  of  logs.  For  two  months  he 
and  his  three  sons  worked  continuously,  taking  logs  off 
of  one  small  island  of  the  Susquheanna.  Logs  were 
piled  up  so  high  that  portable  saw  mills  were  built  upon 
them  in  order  to  cut  the  logs  into  timber.  He  also  re- 
calls the  flood  of  1865,  for  he  was  then  a  boy  living 
near  Fort  Hunter,  and  reports  that  the  logs  and  debris 


120  PENNSYLVANIA  RAFTING  DAYS 

were  so  thick  on  the  Susquehanna  that  one  was  unable 
to  see  the  water,  and  the  material  crushed  against  the 
Rockville  bridge  that  the  sound  was  heard  for  miles. 
During  the  flood  the  water  entered  the  first  floor  of  the 
house  in  which  he  and  his  parents  lived.  It  rose  so 
rapidly  that  no  means  of  escape  was  available  for  them 
excepting  to  place  a  large  plank  out  of  the  second-story 
window,  over  which  the  family  made  their  escape  to  a 
nearby  embankment.  When  the  water  was  at  its  high- 
est, it  reached  within  ten  inches  of  the  ceiling  of  the 
first  floor,  and  when  it  receded  it  left  a  deposit  of  mud 
twelve  inches  thick  on  the  kitchen  floor. 

Mr.  Zimmerman  reports  that  the  floods  in  those  days 
days  always  carried  with  them  thousands  and  some- 
times millions  of  choice  logs,  many  of  which  were  never 
recovered.  He  regrets  that  all  the  fine  lumber  is  gone 
from  the  hills  of  Pennsylvania,  and  feels  sure  that  if  we 
still  had  some  of  the  choice  white  pine  lumber  that  he 
sawed  fifty  years  ago,  it  would  bring  at  least  $200.00 
per  1,000  board  feet. 

Mr.  Zimmerman  is  now  employed  at  the  Susque- 
hanna Woolen  Mills,  in  New  Cumberland.  He  is  now 
seventy-one  years  old,  and  delights  to  tell  stories  to  his 
children,  grandchildren  and  friends  about  the  log  raft- 
ing days  and  the  wonderful  lumber  that  was  brought 
down  the  Susquehanna  and  the  great  forests  that  for- 
merly covered  the  hills  of  Northern  Pennsylvania. 


River  Items 


SOMETIIMES  natural  forces  will  demonstrate  to 
mere  man  how  they  can  handle  certain  situations. 
For  years  rivermen  have  had  their  own  troubles 
getting  steamboats  and  even  rowboats  through  the  rocks 
and  bars  that  line  the  river  shore  above  Kelker  Street, 
and  running  around  is  nothing  unusual.  But  the  other 
day  a  flat,  partly  loaded  with  coal,  broke  its  ties  with 
McCormick's  Island  and  started  out  to  see  the  Susque- 
hanna River  Front  on  its  own  hook.  The  boat  came 
down  the  river  broadside  on  and  throughout  the  rough- 
est parts  of  the  ''riffles,"  jolted  now  and  then  and  swung 
around,  but  nevertheless  getting  through  and  brought 
up  on  a  bar  away  below  the  part  which  makes  the  most 
experienced  navigators  of  the  river  get  busy. 


Speaking  of  the  river,  it  has  been  remarked  that 
nothing  has  been  done  in  view  of  the  constantly  in- 
creasing business  to  make  channels  along  the  shore,  not 
the  great  projects  discussed  every  half  dozen  years  since 
lT9-t,  but  a  small  channel  which  could  care  for  river 
coal  and  sand  l^oats.  It  is  also  remarkable  that  snags 
and  large  trees  are  also  allowed  to  remain  and  obstruct 
every  kind  of  craft.  There  are  a  couple  of  trees  in  the 
Susquehanna    about    opposite    Division    Street    which 

121 


122  PENNSYLVANIA   RAFTING    DAYS 

duck  hunters  cuss  and  river  coal  men  stay  away  from, 
but  they  have  been  there  a  long  time. — Harrisburg 
Tclcgrapli. 


B.  F.  Burfield,  of  Coudersport,  who  "rode  rafts"  in 
the  days  when  timber  was  brought  down  the  Susque- 
hanna in  that  manner,  has  sent  to  the  State  Department 
of  Forestry  an  interesting  miniature  raft,  complete 
even  to  the  "deck  house"  and  the  place  where  the 
"yankees,"  as  we  used  to  call  them,  did  their  cooking. 
Mr.  Burfield  is  83  years  of  age  and  has  many  an  inter- 
esting story  of  the  times  when  he  helped  l)ring  huge 
rafts  down  the  wide  branching  river.  He  recalls  Har- 
risburg in  earlier  days  and  the  places  here  and  not  far 
away  where  the  rafts  were  tied  up  or  1)roken  up.  The 
raft  has  attraced  much  attention  at  the  Forestry  offices. 
— Harrisburg  Telegraph,  1921,