A Look Back In Time – The Fabulous Carnahans

October 2, 2023October 2, 2023 Lucinda

By Howard Thomas

Published in Northern Logger, Oct. 2023

Sol Carnahan’s name is part of logging fame along with names like Dan McCauley, Jim McBeth, Tim Dunn, Henry Kreizer, Jim Hill, George Abbott, and John B. Todd – all charter members, for they were the great men of the river drives. The raw-bone men were familiar with river driving terms such as the “raw right-angled jam,” the “wing jam,” and the “key log,” terms not used in today’s logging operations.

These popular bosses, wrote Howard Thomas in Folklore from the Adirondack Foothills (Prospect Books, 1958), “had a flair for handling not only logs but men, from the stolid ‘pig-yokers’ who worked near shore to the flashy, temperamental riverjacks who risked life and limb in order to break jams and get the logs down the amber streams to the mills.”

Carnahan was born in McKinleyville, New Brunswick, Canada on March 17, 1878. As a young man he went to Maine and worked as a lumberman, eventually moving to northern New York where he began lumbering for himself. He operated logging camps in Wells, Speculator, Lake Pleasant, Wilmurt, Hinckley, Poland, and in the Black and West Canada river areas.

Mr. Carnahan was a Republican in politics, and while in Herkimer county operated a hotel in Noblesboro in the Town of Wilmurt and was active as a public officer. From 1890 to 1892 he was road commissioner in the Town of Wilmurt and in 1902 was supervisor for one term.

In 1908 Sol moved to Cooperstown where he carried on various lumbering jobs as well as owned and operated a large dairy farm until moving to Morris and then Guilford, where he continued work as an active farmer in Chenango county for 30 years until his death at the age of 70 in 1947.

“The Fabulous Carnahans” offers a unique look at a legendary logging personality. The story is among many collected by upstate New York folklore enthusiast, Howard Thomas. It appears here with permission of Bob Igoe, president and owner of North Country Books, Utica, NY.

– William J. O’Hern

Log Jam — Working a log jam on the Moose River.

Sol Carnahan came down from New Brunswick in the early 1890s to take charge of a log drive on West
Canada Creek. He was so homesick at first that he refused to answer letters from his relatives for fear that they would write back to him. He felt more at home when his wife and his two younger brothers, Ab and Erv, joined him in Wilmurt.

Sol conducted drives down West Canada Creek and the Black and Moose Rivers for years. No river boss ever
gained more respect from his men. When Sol retired to finish out his years on a farm near Cooperstown, the riverjacks and pig-yokers sensed that they had lost their dearest friend.

Sol knew his job from A to Z. In his younger days, he was so good at driving logs that he was rewarded with the highest praise given to a man in his profession – the nickname of “bubble-walker.” Though Sol could not swim a stroke, he probably took more chances than any riverjack in the foothills. To celebrate one Fourth of July at Bellingertown, he rode through the white water of a flooded Black River with his peavey held straight up before
him, and sailed under the bridge to the applause of a group of rivermen who had gathered to see his performance.

Riverjacks and pig-yorkers respected Sol. “Pig-yorkers” were men who followed along the shoreline and pushed logs back into the river that became beached or jammed up in some way.

No foreman in the woods ever worked men harder than did Sol Carnahan, yet he won and held the admiration of them all. During the drive, he arose at three in the morning and rousted out his help. Sol’s men complained that they never saw daylight. One fellow claimed that when he went to bed he hung up his pants on the bedpost and they were still swinging when Sol woke him in the morning.

The men worked hard for Sol, for he paid better wages than did most jobbers, and food was plentiful. When the drive neared Northwood, Will Light used to come over from his hotel with steaming food which he served right on the shore of the creek. It is said that one hungry riverjack, smelling the food, forgot to ride the logs, but merely dove in and swam across the icy creek.

Sol also knew how to relax with his men. Trume Brown, who worked for Sol as a young lad and for years afterward, used to say that Carnahan was a bad actor when in the cups. Sol didn’t get disagreeable, but he let himself go with such wild abandon that he was the scourge of hotel keepers from Utica to Piseco, though they tolerated his shenanigans because he was such a good spender. On one occasion, when he and his jacks were drinking at the Bucket of Blood in Utica, Sol asked the proprietor casually, “What will you take for your damned bar, just for an hour?”

The canny proprietor set the price at five hundred dollars, whereupon Sol produced a roll of greenbacks that would have choked a cow, peeled off five hundred-dollar bills, and tossed them on the bar. Again, at the Mansion House, Sol spotted a piano and felt in the mood for singing shanties. Since neither he nor any of his men could play, he jumped up on the piano and pounded the keys with his boots, all the while roaring, “The Jam on Garry’s Rock.” When the hotel man protested that Sol had wrecked the piano, which was true, Sol sent his men to a music store and bought a new one. The proprietor tried to remove the old, battered instrument, but Sol cried, “That’s mine,” and continued to play with his feet and sing shanties until he almost dropped from exhaustion.

Sol’s most dramatic exploit occurred in Foote’s Hotel in Piseco, where lumberjacks were celebrating the culmination of a successful drive. Everyone seemed to be there but Sol, and the party was getting duller by the minute. Suddenly, without warning, the door burst open and Sol rode in on horseback, pranced up to the bar, and had his drinks while the bartender patted the horse’s nose.

Though Sol “palled around” with his men, he stood for no foolishness from them while on the job. If the creek was ready for the drive, he would send word to the Utica hotels that he would meet his men at Prospect station with buckboards at a certain time. The men always showed up so that Bill Hughes and Morey Platt could drive them from the station to the woods.

Tote-drivers were sent out frequently for supplies, and Jack Roberts, a burly fellow, usually got the assignment. Trume Brown used to tell how he and three other young fellows were delegated to go with Roberts to pick up a load of supplies which included a barrel of whiskey. On the way back, the men thought it would do no harm to tap the barrel and have a little drink. The pleasure proved so habit-forming that they lost all sense of time and direction. Three days later, they appeared at Sol’s camp, minus most of the whiskey. Sol resorted to quick justice.
Inasmuch as the barrel of whiskey had cost $125, he took $25 from the wages of each of the five men, amounts that constituted a whole month’s earnings.

Sol fitted in well with the locals around Wilmurt, where he ran a store. At a donation for the minister held in the Eureka House, he donned a white apron and served the guests. Folks up that way say no waiter at the Waldorf-Astoria could have done a better job than the river boss did on that occasion.
Sol’s younger brothers, Adam, commonly called Ab, then about twenty years old, and Erv, a year or so younger, joined Sol in Wilmurt, and their coming did much to settle his early discontent. They worked with Sol on drives and gave promise of developing into superior riverjacks. Ab, in particular, was becoming the best riverman who ever looked at the creek. Erv would have made better progress if he could have stayed away from the liquor. He kept a bottle under his bed and would start each day by taking a big swig of whiskey and eat his breakfast for a chaser.

To be continued.

Look for Part 2 in the next issue.

An Adirondack Lumber Man: Part 2

July 25, 2023July 25, 2023 Lucinda

BY TED ABER AND STELLA KING

The following is Part 2 of a story by Ted Aber and Stella King that first appeared in Tales From An Adirondack County (Prospect Books, 1981). Part 1 was featured in the June 2023 issue of The Northern Logger. The story appears here with permission of Rob Igoe, president and owner of North Country Books. Aber and King were devout local historians. It is to their effort that so much early Hamilton County, NY first-person history has been documented.
—William J. O’Hern

Allie O’Kane and Henry Brooks were once working at a skidway. They had successfully placed about 3,000 pieces of heavy timber on the skidway when a big tree twisted and became wedged. It was mighty irksome. Allie grumbled that he’d be darned if he would move the offensive tree. He wasn’t being paid for such work, he declared, and the two continued piling logs. Two days later, the observant Ernie confronted his two employees.

PHOTOS COURTESY INDIAN LAKE MUSEUM Winter work in the logging woods. Indian Lake has seen its share of loggers and city sportsmen and women.

“A couple of the men are sick,” he told them, no doubt smiling to himself. “I’ll have to ask you to unload.”

Embittered but helpless, Allie and Henry worked themselves to a frenzy moving each log by hand because the wedged tree had not earlier been removed.

The lumberjacks were loyal to Ernie. One thing they knew, as they performed the back-breaking labor hours on end: they would always be paid generously. You could always depend on Ernie to pull the job through. His innate fairness and human understanding further championed him among his men.

“Ernie once left me back in the woods to cut lumber for him,” Sandford Courtney said. “He left me twenty-five dollars’ worth of food. When he came to settle, he paid me for more work than I’d done and more than the marker estimated. That’s the way Ernie was.” The lumberman had a way with people that could not be denied.

Hi Craig of Wells, an accomplished wood-cutter, had always worked at lumbering, but he had decided to work at something else, at least for a time. Hi was working in a glove shop at Wells, when Ernie arrived to ask the woodsman and his wife to take charge of his lumber camp headquarters.

I’m not going to work in a lumber camp,” Hi told him with determination. At the same time, he realized he and his wife needed money to build a house. Ernie’s guarantee of $1,000 sounded good.

PHOTOS COURTESY INDIAN LAKE MUSEUM A proud sportsman leaves Indian Lake village.

“I’ll give you a week to make up your mind,” Ernie said. Wavering some, Hi agreed to leave the decision to his wife. Ernie knew he had won his case.

The Craigs took the job, but only with the agreement that Hi could have his old job of cutting wood.

One day, Ernie came to him, characteristically chewing tobacco.

“You’ll have to come to camp,” he instructed the woodcutter. “I just fired a choreboy.”

Hi fumed. “I told you I wouldn’t be choreboy,” he protested.

Ernie set to work on Hi’s better instincts. The choreboy had been lazy, making the work too hard for Mrs. Craig, he explained.

Reluctantly, Hi left his axe to go back to camp.

“At the end of the season, Ernie gave us a bonus and told us to stay and rest for a couple of days,” Hi tells. When the two protested, Ernie insisted that they had saved him a great deal of money by getting the men up and out on time.

Brooks’ sense of humor was well-recognized.

PHOTOS COURTESY INDIAN LAKE MUSEUM Ted Aber was a journalist, public relations director as well as researcher and writer of local history. His efforts saved stories that otherwise would have eventually faded from memory just as the various modes of transportation have come and gone.

Back at Newton’s Corners, now known by the new-fangled name of Speculator, he liked to leave his hotel of an evening to stop in at Robb Stuart’s general store. It was the typical country gathering place, where the men sat on a winter’s night, telling stories while they chewed tobacco and spat at the stove.

One night, the lumberman and a companion hit upon a well-laid plan. First one, then the other, would cough and sneeze, commenting on the bad colds they had acquired. Listening with apprehension, Robb finally concluded that he, too, was coming down with a severe cold. Robb sneezed a couple of times, went straight to bed and called the doctor.

One day, Ernie was walking down the road with a bag in his hand. Amelia Wilber wanted to know what the bag contained.

“Beechnuts,” replied the lumberman promptly. What’s more, they weren’t old beechnuts, he told her, but just freshly picked that winter’s day. He explained that the beechnuts had stayed on some of the trees and, when the wind blew, they were coming down and rolling into the hollow in the snow at the base of the trees.

A short time later, Ernie chuckled inwardly as he watched Amelia and some youngsters walking up the road. Amelia carried an empty bag in her hand.

A legend ended in 1935. Forest fires raged along the mountains surrounding the Sacandaga Reservoir and all forest rangers were called to assist. It was at that time that the mother of Halsey Page, the local forest ranger, died. Halsey asked Ernie to go in his place while he attended his mother’s funeral.

The firefighters were to be taken across the reservoir by boat. When they were ready to set out, it was obvious to Ernie that the craft was badly overloaded. Out on the water, the boat rocked precariously with each movement of its occupants. Suddenly, it overturned, dumping its human cargo into the deep waters of the lake. Five men were drowned.

Ernie Brooks had died in his sixty-third year. Neighbors at Speculator felt that somehow an age had ended.

An Adirondack Lumber Man: Part 1

June 9, 2023July 25, 2023 Lucinda

BY TED ABER AND STELLA KING

The following is Part 1 of a story by Ted Aber and Stella King that first appeared in Tales From an Adirondack County (Prospect Books, 1981). It appears here with permission of Rob Igoe, president and owner of North Country Books. Aber and King were devout local historians. It is to their effort that so much early Hamilton County first-person history has been documented. —William J. O’Hern

Spring log drives were once common sights throughout the Adirondack Mountains. Today they live on safely preserved in Indian Lake’s museum.

Into the small hotel in a village in St. Lawrence County walked a short, unprepossessing-looking man. Lifting his unshaven face to the desk clerk, he asked for a room for the night.

Quickly, the clerk surveyed the undesirable – his unbuckled overshoes, unkempt woodsmen’s clothing, and the characteristic chew of tobacco that wadded his cheek. The hotelman was sorry; there wasn’t a room in the house.

Wordlessly, the small man rocked back on his heels while reaching into his pocket and drawing out a roll of bills that obviously totaled into the thousands. Thoughtfully, he thumbed the hundred-dollar notes.

The desk clerk suddenly remembered any one of several accommodations that might be at this honored guest’s disposal. The newly arrived was hurriedly shown to his room. The experience was typical. The man was Lumberman Ernie Brooks from Newton’s Corners, on a horse-buying mission to the northern part of the state.

Ernie, who was born at Indian Lake of Joel and Helen Morehouse Brooks, was a woodsman from the start. In a period when local lumbering was in its heyday in the Adirondacks, Ernie helped to give it dignity and color. He and his brothers, Ed and Clarence, lumbered for years at Indian Lake, Ernie and Ed joining forces to form the Brooks Brothers Lumber Company there. Not content with lumbering alone, Ernie was a hotelman on the side.

Up at Indian Lake, Ernie was married to Myra O’Kane. When she died after bearing him four children, he moved his family down to Newton’s Corners in the Town of Lake Pleasant and later married Nathan and Mary Satterlee Page’s daughter, Nora. Together, they ran the old Brooks Hotel south of the four corners and raised a family of five.

age was once a booming community with numerous hotels.

Ernie’s reputation as a lumberman was a good one. None worked his men harder. None offered better pay. A man knew, when he signed with Brooks, that he was to maintain an active life throughout the long months in the mountains.

There was a reason. One winter, over on Sacandaga Lake, Ernie misjudged the weather and, before he could get his logs banked, the spring thaw set in. The logs lay on the ground throughout the following summer and the family lacked the income that was so badly needed. It was a bitter lesson that Ernie never forgot. After that, he worked himself and his men with fury to be sure always to make the drive on time.

Selah Page worked for Ernie in the winter of 1916 at Coon Creek near the third bridge on the road to Wells.
“We used to pull the horses out at 2:00 AM and wouldn’t see camp until dark. I’ll give Ernie credit, though. He was out with the head team and came back with the hind team each day. And he paid good money. But the work was just too hard. I said if I can’t make a living easier than that, I’m going to starve. After that, I did freighting for the camps but never lumbered again.”

One evening, a call came for Dr. Joseph Head to go to the Brooks camp to treat a sick lumberjack. By the time he had bounced over the rough woods roads to reach his destination, it was the middle of the night. To his amazement, the men were already at breakfast. Ernie himself had appeared at midnight for his morning chow.

“Dr. Head sat relaxing over a cup of strong hot coffee. Nearby sat Jerry Murphy, a rugged lumberjack known for the quality of his work.

“Yes sir, I’m going to quit,” Murphy told the physician. “Ernie promised me a full-time job and we’re sleeping a couple of hours every night. That’s no full-time job. I’m through.”

Each day, the clocks at camp were set a few minutes further ahead, so the men would not complain too bitterly about their early rising hour. One winter night, the men had just completed drawing logs and were wolfing down their evening meal. It was 9 o’clock in the evening but the clock read 12.

Allie O’Kane of Indian Lake sat eating with his boss. “Ernie,” he drawled, “if you don’t change that clock pretty soon, it’s going to be Fourth of July before the snow goes off.”

Ernie could laugh with the others, but his firm discipline never faltered.

Once, while lumbering at Cannon Brook, the lumberman came out of the woods and procured a rooster. It would start crowing daily at 4:00 AM. Ernie called it his alarm clock. Thoroughly annoyed after several days’ repetition of this newly-found reveille, the boys decided that something must be done. The next day, the lifeless rooster hung on the knob of the bunkhouse door. Ernie was silent, but soon returned with a second rooster.

“The one who kills that bird is fired,” he announced.

The rooster remained alive.

Sprinkler sleigh used to harden winter logging roads.

To be continued. Part 2 of this story will be featured in the next issue.

A Look Back In Time

April 13, 2023April 13, 2023 Lucinda

1903 Fish Creek Lumber Camp Murder

Published in “Northern Logger” magazine, April 2023

From Viewpoints, “Letters to the Editor,” Hamilton County News, July 1, 1987. From the time the first double-bitted axe bit into a tree to the final river log drive, the century-and-a-half period brought lumber camps to house lumberjacks scattered all over the Adirondack North Country and Tug Hill. Just how many camps there were and their exact locations would probably be only a guess, but the number would easily run in the hundreds.

PHOTO COURTESY EDWARD BLANKMAN (THE LLOYD BLANKMAN COLLECTION

Bert Conklin at the top of his game.

I have bushwhacked high into Cold River country’s Ouluska Pass in the northern Adirondacks hoping to find some remains of a lumber camp Dick Wood and EJ Dailey spoke about during their late 1910s and early 1920s fur-trapping days in Cold River country. The duo spoke about the remains of a small chopper’s shanty in the shadow of Seymour Mountain. A female cook had reportedly died of mysterious circumstances according to the reports learned from men at Lumber Camp 4, a site now occupied by a lean-to approximately a mile beyond Ward Brook lean-to.

At one time there had been a rough tote connection between Camp 4 and Ouluska Pass, but today the terrain between the two points makes for a challenging bushwhack.

Careful investigation today can still reveal leftovers from former lumber camps. Searches generally turn up old bottles – usually liniment, whiskey, and medicine – as well as all types of metal objects. A good many of the old camp clearings and sites I have found have been dug up by bottle collectors and those looking for interesting things from the old logging days.

Cold River lumber enthusiast and historian, Sharp Swan, has spent years combing the High Peaks between Seward, Donaldson, Emmons, and Couchsachraga mountains. His investigations have resulted in a considerable wealth of history of the old logging days in that far-off section. But his hobby, as with other searchers, more than likely has not turned up a majority of the locations of former camps. Evidence of early camps has become harder to find over the passage of time. Once grassy areas, the camp clearings first filled with brambles and pioneer tree species, then by an overgrowth of forest that has completely hidden the sites. Sometimes the bottoms of foundations are spotted where buildings were banked with earth, and the trenches where the banking was dug along the sides of the buildings are often the most evident signs that a camp was there. Even rarer are the remains of an old root cellar.

I find the best stories of old pulpwood camps come from the memories of old-timers. Folklorist and writer Helen Escha Tyler told of a fascinating 1918 pulp job on the slopes of Whiteface Mountain in her Mountain Memories (1974). She based the story in part on an interview with Asa Lawrence of Wilmington, NY. Former Hamilton County historian Ted Aber’s books are also good resources of collected stories and tales.
This memory of B. Harold Chartock of Wilmurt, NY, is an example of a true event that was never documented by Dr. Eliza Jane, the current Hamilton County historian. Like so many logging camps, this camp and everything Mr. Chartock describes exists solely in the following letter he wrote to the Hamilton County News, which published it July 1, 1987.

Photo courtesy DICK WOODS

Abandoned lumber camps made ideal ready-made shelter for sportsmen.

Dear Chris:
The Fish Lumber Camp was located on the northeast corner of Round Pond, which is west of King’s Flow about a mile.

One morning Mr. MacKenzie, a lumber-jack from this camp, after crossing the upper Round Pond Brook walking on the Pine Peak Brook-Tannery Bark Road, was entering an old logging field when another lumberjack from the same camp came up behind him and suddenly struck him with a heavy rusty iron wagon bolen in the back of the head, smashing a hole in MacKenzie’s skull.

The killer then dragged the dead body way out on a peninsula that protrudes out into the southern end of Round Pond. He hid dead MacKenzie in a dense spruce and hemlock thicket, surrounded by towering white pines.

This murder occurred in October 1903. About a month later in November, two more lumberjacks from the same camp, one of them George Hutchins of Indian Lake, found MacKenzie’s body. It was badly decayed.
With a shoulder pole, they carried him out to the end of the peninsula and dug a hole, buried him and gathered rocks scattered in the woods, and then heaped up a pile of rocks marking his grave.

Others in this camp noticed after these two lumberjacks came up missing that all of MacKenzie’s belongings remained untouched, but the other missing lumberjack’s things were gone, including a ragged old blanket that belonged to Lowell Fish. MacKenzie’s murderer gathered his belongings, his rifle, and Fish’s blanket then took the Kunjamuk road going around the west side of Round Pond, walked to Speculator, Lake Pleasant, Piseco Lake, Hoffmeister, Morehouse, and Nobleboro. Then he took the West Canada Creek wagon road up to Honnedaga Lake and a foot trail bearing west to a small settlement on North Lake, where he asked for a job.

He was told the Conklin Logging Camp up in the Town of Webb. He arrived there the next day and got hired by Burt as a log cutter to work in his chain of lumber clearings from October 1903 to May 1904.

Burton Conklin noticed that this new guy worked well, didn’t brawl, drink, or court women, and he hid, so none of the visitors to the camp ever saw him. It was in May 1904 that he got the rest of his pay from Burt, which was $5 per week plus food and lodging, but didn’t say he was quitting.

Burt watched him, and later spotted him removing a ragged old blanket from a hollow tree. He got his rifle out, cleaned grease off the metal parts, polished up the woodwork and left the blanket laying on the ground, took his rifle and bundle of stuff, then walked off into the woods never to be seen again by Burt.

It was sometime later that Burt realized this guy’s peculiar behavior was that of a murderer. He notified the sheriff and deputies, and they traced MacKenzie’s murderer to a train station in Utica, where he bought a ticket. State and federal detectives took over and the manhunt was on. They lost his trail after he got off a train out in the state of Colorado. Burt Conklin never heard of Fish’s Camp, nor the MacKenzie murder. He died in 1947, age 84. The MacKenzie murderer left the “Adirondack Rocks” for the “Big West.”

My great-grandfather worked in the Crotched Pond woods back in the early days before moving to Pennsylvania to work with his cousin in leather processing. This murder took place between the existence of New York State Troopers.

They were established in 1860, served just in the cities, got abolished in 1865, and re-established in 1917 to serve only in the countryside. So, 1987 is the 75th anniversary of the New York State Police. Pennsylvania State Troopers were established only once, and that was in 1905, so 1987 is their 82nd anniversary.

The police thought they were after the September 1903 murderer of Mr. Dexter of Franklin County. The two murders are unrelated. The MacKenzie murder of Hamilton County is not a story; it really took place.
—B. HAROLD CHARTOCK, WILMURT, NY

This old newspaper article is fascinating and seems to have all the elements of a good mystery novel set in a lumber camp at the turn of the 20th century. No other mention of this camp has surfaced during the research I’ve done. It’s strange to think of all the buildings and people who have basically vanished from the Adirondack landscape – just like the MacKenzie murderer did, only more slowly and with only Mother Nature to guide the changes.

A Look Back In Time – The Felling Season

December 7, 2022December 7, 2022 Lucinda

In the spring of 1917, about 60 camps operated in Reverend Frank A. Reed’s area.

The reverend (center) spending time with a camp’s superintendent and clerk. PHOTOS COURTESY TOWN OF WEBB HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION

Rev. Reed reported the total Adirondack region had about 150 camps with more than 7,000 men employed.

An article printed in “The Northern Logger “, December 2022

In the spring of 1917, about 60 camps operated in Reverend Frank A. Reed’s area. Spruce was the major wood used in the manufacturing of paper at the time. Some balsam fir and hemlock could be used in the process. The trees could be felled during the period of sap flow from about May 15 to August 15. With approximately 3,000 men employed, the felling was done by two men with a cross-cut saw. They trimmed and peeled the trees and left them on the ground for skidding later in the season.

What follows is one of Rev. Reed’s earliest memories of his long ministerial career.

I decided to start my camp visitation programs as soon as the felling season started in the camps. My first trip to the Gould Paper Company camps led up the south branch of the Moose River. The first stop was a camp operated by Henry Hoe of Moose River on the north side of the river and about 15 miles from McKeever. James Canan had two big camps a little farther up the south side of the river with Joe Gordon and a man named Gardiner as the foreman.

Mr. and Mrs. Louis Holland of Lowville and Ed Wheeler were the cooks in these camps. Clinton and Walter Thompson of Beaver River had a sub job for James Canan near Stink Lake Mountain, and their mother was the cook in their camp.

I went from their camp to visit two camps on North Lake run by Doug Purcell and Frank Murphy for the Gould Paper Company. There I also met Rev. Byron-Curtiss, who lived at North Lake and ran the supply boat with a partner. He was the author of the well-known book The Life and Adventures of Nat Foster: Trapper and Hunter of the Adirondacks.

From there, I hiked from North Lake to Rock Dam on the Moose River and cross the river to the camp of Lewis Joslin and Ward King; both of them lived in Boonville. I found the men hospitable and friendly on these visits and attentive at the worship service held in the bunkhouses. I found that my pack was not big enough for traveling items and a supply of New Testament gospels for the men. Magazines for the men could be sent in with the tote teams.

From Lewis Joslin’s camp on the Red River, I hiked on the dirt road to Limekiln Lake and then on the highway to Inlet. This trip had been a hike of about 100 miles through the woods from McKeever.

Barnes and McGuire of Boonville had a good-sized crew of lumberjacks, mostly from the Black River area housed in a house in Inlet. They were cutting spruce around Eagle Bay. Ezra Barnes was in charge of the operation on this job, Mrs. Barnes was the cook, and their daughter Harriett was her assistant.

The Clearwater (a steamer that ran from the head of Fourth Lake to Old Forge) hadn’t started running on the Fulton Chain lakes yet, so I hiked from Inlet to Fulton Chain (now Thendara) on the dirt road (now Route 28). A man overtook me by automobile and asked me if I wanted a ride. He turned out to be a wholesale grocery man from Corning, New York which was 12 miles from my old home. Reed’s remembrance of his first experience after joining the staff of the Adirondack Lumber Camp Parish in the fall of 1916 is a modest account of a journey by foot through the heavily forested central Adirondack region. Today’s loggers who are familiar with the young reverend’s route know the severe conditions he must have endured to bring the Gospel to the lumber camps.

In 1917, McKeever was a thriving village with a pulp mill operated by the Iroquois Paper Company and a hardwood sawmill. “Former (New York State) Governor John A. Dix was active in the leadership of both mills,” Reed remembered. He often said, “McKeever was an excellent place for on-the-spot training.”

William J. O’Hern is the author of several books on the history of logging in the Adirondacks and Rev. Frank A. Reed, including Adirondack Logging: Life and Times in the Early Years of Logging’s Mechanization.

*Rev. Reed was often seen walking to and from school, preparing him for covering miles and miles of Adirondack trails and roads.*

*Rev. Reed at Camp 7, Ice Cave Mountain, conducting a religious service.*

A Look Back In Time – Adirondack Logger Rescues an Iconic Hermit’s Cabin

November 4, 2022November 4, 2022 Lucinda

Logger Harvey Carr thought to save Adirondack hermit Noah John Rondeau’s cabin from the bulldozer.

An article printed in “The Northern Logger “, November 2022

Noah John Rondeau was a hermit who lived alone in the woods of the Cold River basin in New York’s Adirondack Mountains. There he built his own hermitage and lived for 30 years in two small cabins and some wigwams. He had decided to become a hermit, he said, to escape “the slavery of industrialism.” After a windstorm wrecked his camp in 1950, Rondeau moved out of the woods and spent the last 17 years of his life living as a boarder.

When the abandoned residence was about to be bulldozed in 1959 to complete a contract cutting, local logger Harvey Carr thought it was a shame that this piece of Rondeau’s life would be destroyed. With some help from Eleanor and Monty Webb, owners of The Cliff Hanger Resort in Blue Mountain Lake, along with renewed interest in the hermit’s life from the media, the curator of Adirondack Museum (now known as The Adirondack Experience), Dr. Bruce Inverarity, became convinced that a remaining cabin was worth saving. He granted Carr permission to transport it to the museum’s grounds.

The cabin was made of notched hemlock logs with a bark-covered roof and had a built-in log bunk and stove.

As Eleanor Webb recalls, as soon as permission from Inverarity was granted, Carr took on the arduous job of moving the cabin to the museum. “He painstakingly numbered each log, each board, and each item, carefully dismantled it all, and prepared it for travel the long way out over the rough logging road. He was almost defeated trying to get some help and some way of transportation out [to the museum]. I think one man [Paul Crofut] helped him after he had gotten the consent of the museum to send a truck. Then Harvey put it all carefully together again on the farthest-out perimeter of the grounds.” Later on, the cabin was moved to an indoor exhibit.

In March of 1991, Harvey Carr told me about how Rondeau’s cabin was brought out of the woods and became part of the Adirondack Museum’s collection:

We [the logging crew] went into Cold River in the fall of 1958. I was working for Paul Crofut, the logging contractor, who was working for the Northern Lumber Company. The US Bobbin and Shuttle Company owned the property – they’re the company that made wooden spools and such.

We stayed in there during the winter at the lumber camp. We cut the hardwood and brought it out and sometime during the late winter or going toward spring, somebody from the US Shuttle and Bobbin Company came into camp and told us, before we got down toward Rondeau’s camp, they wanted us to take the dozer down, smash it up, bury it and get rid of all the lumber and everything because they were afraid of hunters moving in and causing a forest fire. Of course, that wasn’t a bad idea, but you know, there was brush and weeds and a lot of slash… Anyway, they wanted us to destroy it completely.

I sat there in the logging camp that night and said to the boys, ‘I hate to see it go…Gee, it’s too bad. It should be in a museum or something.’ Then I hadn’t even thought about it for two, three, four days and then I got to talking about it again. You know, like it would be a shame to tear it all apart, bury it and everything. And about then, Jack Swancott, one of the truck drivers, gave me the idea. Real casual like he says, ‘Well you got a museum right there in Blue Mountain Lake.’

I said, ‘Oh yeah, but I don’t know if they’d be at all interested or not. Naw, I doubt they’d want it.’
Jacky said, ‘Well maybe they would.’

‘Course we stayed in there [at the lumber camp] all week and it would come and go on my mind. So…I stopped up there [at the museum]. Oh, it was late January or February ’59.

I mentioned how I felt to Monty and Eleanor [Webb]. They liked that sort of thing – old stuff, antiques and all. I also went up there [to the museum] and stopped to talk to Ralph Raymond. Ralph was the custodian up there. He lives up there year-round and takes care of the place. I explained all about Rondeau’s camp and so forth but he didn’t get too enthused about it. He didn’t know much about it, but I remember Ralph saying to me, ‘You ought to talk to Dr. Inverarity.’

Sometime soon afterward I told Eleanor and Monty about the old hermit camp, and later I took them into Cold River. We drove up in my truck. We stopped at the lumber camp, ate lunch…[and talked about Rondeau]. Monty said they’d talk to Dr. Inverarity. It wasn’t long after Monty, Eleanor, Mary [Carr’s wife] and I had returned home from Cold River that we were sitting eating supper, and right along I got a telephone call from the operator saying this was a person-to-person call from Dr. Inverarity in New York City. He had heard from Ralph and the Webbs. He said, ‘I hear there is a possibility that we could get Noah John Rondeau’s camp. By all means, we’d like it if you can get it out.’

He even talked of sending a helicopter crew up there with some carpenters who could build a framework around it and airlift it from there to the museum. Knowing the camp’s condition and the woods and so on, I knew what I wanted to do. You know they were even going to send a television crew and all that stuff and it was going to be getting late [in the season]…

I didn’t think Rondeau would care too much about that idea. Of course, he had no legal hold on anything back there anyway, but morally it was still his camp. I told Inverarity that if he wants it, we’ll bring it out. ‘What I’ll do is take it apart piece by piece. I’ll number every part and put it back together exactly the way it was and it will be about the same camp.’

I know when I mentioned it to Dr. Inverarity, he sounded excited, just like a kid after you offer ’em some candy. He was tickled to death.

I’d been a lumberjack, not a carpenter, but I knew I was going to do it my way. So, I brought it out, all by myself along with an old iron stove, some cookin’ kettles, a coffee pot, as well as a hollow stump Rondeau had used as a ‘wet sink’ and the only thing I replaced were the bottom logs.

Of course, it’s all inside [now] under temperature control, and its good I suppose for at least for 150 years.

As for Rondeau, nothing ever pleased him as completely or humbled him as sincerely as being honored by the Adirondack Museum’s Cold River hermit exhibit. That seems clear in this letter to Dr. C.V. Latimer Sr.: “Yes, my Cold River City, is a shrine at Adirondack Museum at Blue Mountain and I am more proud of it than I would be of all the shrines of Traitorous H.S.T. [President Harry S. Truman] and Dexter White on top of it.” Now, more than half a century after logger Carr’s effort to preserve what he felt needed protecting, Rondeau’s exhibit has continued to intrigue museum visitors. Thanks to an Adirondack logger, people can still learn about the Adirondack hermit.

*Paul Crofut and Harvey Carr loading salvaged timber near Cold River.*

*left to right: Eleanor Webb, Monty Webb, Mary Carr inside the cabin.*

*The original museum display was outside.*

A Look Back In Time – Mary Andreason, Pioneer, Lumberjill and Wolf Shooter

October 7, 2022October 7, 2022 Lucinda

The wolf-shooting logger-woman Mary Andreason’s story was one of safety, forestry, and the economic and social life of America.

*A typical day’s work. Mary’s family enjoyed good times and faced hardships. Photo COURTESY JOHN DONAHUE*

A Look Back In Time

Mary Andreason, Pioneer, Lumberjill and Wolf Shooter

An article printed in “The Northern Logger “, October 2022

Among the logging-related articles to appear in the March 1952 issue of The Lumber Camp News was “Pioneer Woman Shot Wolves, Worked at Logging.” Frank A. Reed, senior editor-publisher, wrote that the story first “appeared in the November 17, 1897, Potter County Journal.” The catchy title was sure to attract the attention of the magazine’s readers. Reed said, it “paints a picture of the early days along Kettle Creek” and tells about the pluck and courage it took for a woman to live on the frontier.

This old-time story, set in the woods of Pennsylvania, is characteristic of the breadth of material that appeared in Rev. Reed’s logging publication, along with articles about lumbering operations, used and new machinery and equipment for sale, and reprints from logging and farming periodicals such as Maine’s Portland Press Herald, Heard’s Dairyman, Pennsylvania Forests and Waters, and the Canadian Pulp and Paper Association. For example, “Old Timers’ Notes” profiled older logging jobbers, and there were informational columns by writers from Tennessee, Wisconsin, Michigan, California, and various forestry colleges around the country.

In addition to his recapturing the then 55-year-old event, the editor made an announcement that by the July 1952 edition, the magazine would appear under its new name, The Northeastern Logger. This was an exciting time for Reed, who almost single-handedly began The Lumber Camp News in 1939. He announced that there would be a staff of eight people from various parts of the Northeast who would carry on the program of publishing and that the editorial office would remain in Old Forge, NY. The magazine’s name change was made so it could more completely cover the broader scope of material and service. Retired editor Thomas C. O’Donnell offered changes to improve the appearance and layout.

The wolf-shooting logger-woman story was perhaps included because of a new thrust to include a wide range of news coverage such as safety, forestry, the economic and social life of America, fire control, logging operations, education, a Christian column call the “Sky Pilot Page” and what became a popular “Adventures of Uncle Hatchet” tall tale column, to name a few.

The woman is Mrs. Mary Andreason, and she is the widow of the former secretary to the famous Ole Bull, a Norwegian who formed the colony of Oleona in Potter County, Pennsylvania. Mrs. Andreason (then Mrs. French) was a widow when Andreason met her. But don’t picture a genteel and soft-spoken lass who stayed home cooking, sewing, and spinning when you think of Mary French Andreason.

She was first married to a settler and trapper named French when Potter County was pure wilderness. Today she says her bones ache with rheumatism, perhaps due to the physical demands of her early pioneer experiences. She hunted and trapped at her first husband’s side. It is said that during one winter, Mrs. French, unaided, trapped 65 gray wolves, knocking them in the head with a hatchet that she always carried on a belt around her waist.

Along with hunting and trapping, Mrs. French is notable because she went with her husband and a crew of men to drive logs on Kettle Creek. With pike pole or canthook, this powerful woman waded the streams with the men, whirling a derelict log into the stream or breaking a jam at the creek’s bend.

Driving logs is so dangerous a business that plenty of men won’t risk it, yet Mrs. French took on the job more than one spring, and earned from six to eight dollars a day. Even now, at 85, she mentions with considerable pride the time when she was young and strong enough to pitch logs in Kettle Creek. Mrs. French was widowed in 1850, and was still quite young when 74 Ole Bull, a Norwegian violinist, declared to several hundred hopeful immigrants, “We are to found a New Norway, consecrated to liberty, baptized with independence and protected by the Union’s mighty flag.” Ole Bull and his followers came to Potter County and took up a 12,000-acre tract.

The arrival of the Norwegians made life a bit easier for Mrs. French. She was soon employed as a cook at the Norwegian headquarters, where she met and married Henry Andreason, one of Ole Bull’s immigrants who had come along to manage the affairs of the Oleana colony.

Despite the easier life, Mrs. Andreason was not crazy about the colonists. She says they danced and carried on “too high” for her. Often the Norwegians would dance all night to the tune of a squeaky fiddle when they should have been resting for their next day’s work, clearing new ground for their little farms.

Mrs. Andreason says the best and most exciting time of her life was the first years she lived in Potter County. There were unimaginably large herds of deer and elk; panthers prowled and growled and wolves filled the night with their howls.

Mrs. Andreason was an expert rifle shot and had slain scores of black bears, wildcats and deer. She specialized in wolves, however, because the bounty was large enough to make it profitable to hunt them.

Mrs. Andreason was once delayed when she was heading home on a footpath along Kettle Creek. It grew dark. She heard wolves approaching. She says she figured they were on her trail, so she strapped her rifle to her back and climbed a hemlock tree, knowing that if she could get a dozen feet above ground she would be safe from the wolves’ sharp teeth and claws.

Later in life, Mary Andreason enjoyed sharing her hardscrabble life on the frontier. In less than ten minutes the pack of wolves surrounded the tree where she had taken refuge. She could see their eyes shimmering in the darkness; she shot them one by one as fast as she could reload.

She wasn’t far from home, and the sound of the repeated rifle shots soon brought her husband. He came bearing a rifle in one hand and a flaming torch in the other. The fire frightened away the few remaining wolves.

Mrs. Andreason gathered up the dead wolves at the foot of the tree – not as a souvenir of her experience, but as a reward for her night’s work.

After her husband died, Mrs. Andreason continued to live with her son on a small farm in Potter Colony.

Lumbermen and women were colorful characters, and they enjoyed remembering one another in the often exaggerated tales they recounted, but Mary Andreason’s tale needs no embroidering. These were the kind of memories Frank A. Reed kept alive during the years he ministered to the ‘jacks who lived in the lumber camps – camps he often walked many miles through deep, trackless forests to reach. It is to Reed’s credit that they live on to this day in The Northern Logger’s archives in Old Forge, NY.

Mary Andreason, Pioneer, Lumberjill and Wolf Shooter.
Photo COURTESY PAT PAYNE

Later in life, Mary Andreason enjoyed sharing her hardscrabble life on the frontier.
Photo COURTESY PAT PAYNE

A Look Back In Time – Eyewitness to Logging

August 24, 2022September 28, 2022 Lucinda

Dr. Silas Conrad Kimm lived his entire life in northern Herkimer County, New York. He enjoyed writing about people and times in his life.

A Look Back In Time

Eyewitness to Logging

An article printed in “The Northern Logger “, August 2022

The desire to tell what we have seen is as old as humanity. Dr. Silas Conrad Kimm (1863-1957) was born, raised and lived his entire life in northern Herkimer County, New York. He enjoyed writing about people and about the times in his life. Over the years he amassed hundreds of columns on all sorts of subjects, many of which had to do with his young life working in lumber camps. In 2014, his grandson, Gilbert H. Jordan II compiled the columns into a self-published book, which provides a lot of insight into the big timber days of New York. “The Lumberjack” (undated) is Kimm’s heartfelt tribute to those in the profession.

Above: Work horses skidded as many as 200 logs a day. It may be readily understood, therefore, that this was not an easy day’s work for man or beast.

COURTESY GEORGE SHAUGHNESSY

Kimm recounted one by one how the drop in lumber profits finished off small logging towns in Herkimer County. The blacksmith shop, the store, the post office, and finally the school all disappeared. Market conditions made it difficult to dispose of the lumber. Since the nearby forest was cut away, it became necessary to go farther and farther back into the woods to secure logs. The cost of transporting lumber was a big factor in reducing the profits. So many team loads of lumber, even though they were small, made the dirt roads almost impassible in the summer. In the winter, outside of the woods, huge snowbanks, blocked the highways.

The drop in lumber profits finished off numerous North Country logging towns that had come into being only because of logging operations. Hard times led to the timber theft of fiddle butts. Fiddle butts are the finest clear butt logs of Adirondack black spruce. They were once the principal supply for the manufacture of boards for pianos. Kimm writes, “When a man could get as much or more for a single log than for a team lead of ordinary lumber, the temptation to hunt for such logs was great, and he hunted for them without regard to ownership.” A January 10, 1889 Rome Daily Sentinel article, “Thieves Cut Down Forest Trees,” also tells how the state’s forest commission received almost daily reports that the best spruce trees were being cut down. In 1889 butts were “worth $25 a thousand feet in the log.” Fiddle butt timber has a fine straight grain, free from knots. “They are sawed into boards five-eighths of an inch thick. This is planed down to half an inch and made into sounding boards for pianos…the chief forest warden has been actively engaged in endeavoring to catch these depredators …”

A typical men-at-work-in-the-woods scene.

COURTESY ED FYNMORE

Reading about this history inspired me to reflect on the demand for wood throughout the history of America and the world. Forests have long supplied wood for a myriad of products. Wood has played an important role in the history of civilization. Humans have used it for fuel, building materials, furniture, paper, tools, weapons, and more. Demand for wood has not diminished, and, if anything, people have grown more appreciative of fine wood. Our relationship to this natural resource has remained comparatively unchanged over time, and methods of developing and managing woodlands have evolved into some of the best management practices to naturally renew and replenish millions of acres, while ensuring future generations will have the wood they need for products and the forests they need for recreation. Look around you. You’ll see wood everywhere. So perhaps this is why we take it for granted. Wood will always be a part of our lives despite the prevalence of plastic (which, unlike wood and wood products, takes forever to break down). We are dependent on forest products in so many ways, and we probably can’t imagine our lives without them.

If you’re looking for a good book that covers some of the interesting history, check out the work of Silas Conrad Kimm.

Heavy rains plagued the river drive and sapped ‘jacks’ energy levels, but through it all the whitewater, ice, rain and log jams, the logs eventually reached the mill pond.

COURTESY LYONS FALLS HISTORY ASSOCIATION

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Adirondack Weather: Noah John Rondeau, Ray Falconer and North Country Life

July 21, 2022September 28, 2022 Lucinda

Adirondack Weather

Noah John Rondeau, Ray Falconer and North Country Life

An article printed in “The Lake George Mirror “, July 1,2022

Puddles of water have ice sheets

Covered with frost and

Morgan Mountain is

Show of Snow

Br-rr-r-r it’s cold!

Noah John Rondeau

By the fall of 1956, when Noah John Rondeau wrote “Br-rr-r-r It’s Cold,” he was among the 573 people living in Wilmington, N.Y. Morgan Mountain is a small peak behind the amusement park, Santa’s Workshop. Rondeau frequently hunted south of Morgan Mountain and often commented on its beautiful woods – “nice grounds… Not much game. Predominantly trees.”

Rondeau’s observations foretold feeling the coming winter. He knew the cold weather would soon be locked in. His free verse poetic lines were an attempt to capture nature’s sights which he had so often described in his diaries during his fays living as a hermit in the Cold River country wilderness.

Perhaps his primitive lifestyle influenced his sensitivity or gave special meaning to the daily adventurous changes the weather brought.

Weather changes such as when he woke on September 10, 1956 to record “Coldest yet; Not a Honey Bee in sight; Lighting Board wet and froze.”

His unique wording gave rise to an identification with the land that went down deep into his primal well of awareness as evidenced in a later September diary entry: “I listened to just enough rain drops on the roof to play Yankee Doodle” as he thumbed through a large wicker basket that held a sizable amount of fabric scraps he planned to cut into quilt blocks as he “counted” his riches and took in the Autumn colors that were “climaxing on Morgan Mountain.”

Noah’s imaginative descriptions to describe an everyday happening such as “I shot a partridge with my cartridge,” and “I hear a woodpecker knock his Pipe on a dry limb in the forest,” or weather-related occurrences: “My cabins look like snow mounds – one with a smoking Stove Pipe; The Trees and Wigwams, well decked with Snow. The Mountains are accordingly – wintery. I shovel snow a bit and watch the effects of the snowstorm in the forest as when I was a boy.”

And “Over 3 feet of hard-packed snow prevail over this mountainous region and it’s a nice hardset, tough winter. Feeble sunshine through dense atmosphere. Mountains bluish, smoky as if insinuating a thaw.”

His phraseology was a unique characteristic of the man once known as the Mayor of Cold River.

Noah once claimed, “I believe that I have learned ninety-five percent of what I know by myself.” With a formal education, he could have easily become a scientist, since that field was his major interest. He read about various scientific theories including evolution, geology, biology, mathematics, metaphysics and astronomy and studied the skies with his home-made telescope. He often remarked on the “Adirondack clear”—an atmospheric condition that offered visibility for many miles. He probably never visited the Atmospheric Sciences Research Center at the summit of Whiteface Mountain, opened in 1961, but one can easily imagine how he would have soaked up every bit of information provided in a tour of the field station and observatory.

In 1977 Raymond E. Falconer was a research associate with the Atmospheric Sciences Research Center at the State University of New York at Albany and directed the field students at Whiteface Mountain, Lansing Manor in Schoharie Valley and at Lake George.

While Noah John Rondeau religiously began each daily diary entry with a weatherperson- like capsule description of the day’s meteorological conditions, Falconer’s “Weather in the Adirondacks” provides a science-based, yet understandable description of the climate of the Adirondack Mountains.

As interesting as the description is, what is most exciting is that this thorough article was never printed until now. A little history explains why.

In 1946, George Glyndon Cole founded, acted as editor, and privately printed a 5 ½ x 7 ½ inch quarterly North Country Life magazine. He published the popular little magazine for 28 years, until 1974. Sometime following the release of the last issue, Robert F. Hall became the new owner. Hall said of Cole and the now rare and sought-after magazine, “During those years Cole collected and through the pages of the magazine presented the history and historical memorabilia of an entire region, New York State from the Mohawk River to the St. Lawrence. When his passion for history and folklore made these boundaries feel cramping, he expanded his horizon to cover the state as a whole and changed the magazine’s name to York State Tradition.

“The fact is that Glyndon Cole is himself a tradition. As curator of the North County Historical collection of the State University library at Plattsburgh he was friend, guide and helper to everyone – writers, students and merely interested readers – who probed for sources of the region’s past.”

Hall planned to “continue to focus on the history and folklore,” but also planned “to add enough pages so that we may deal with the problems of those who now live and work or who vainly seek work in this region. As this parenthetical phrase suggests we are disturbed by the depressed state of the economy of the North Country, by the proportion of our families who exist on incomes below the poverty level, by off-season unemployment, and by the abandonment of small farms.”

Hall went further, listing what he saw as other pressing problems such as maintaining environmental excellence, preserving open space, protecting wildlife, and protecting air and water from pollution.

The new North Country Life, its original name restored, had lofty, worthwhile goals that went well beyond it being, Hall emphasized, “a magazine for history buffs.”

The Summer 1977, Volume 29, No. 1 was prepared for printing. Falconer’s article was going to lead the line-up. Unfortunately, according to Hall’s son, Anthony F. Hall, the revived NCL “didn’t go forward because of lack of funding – the fate of many good ideas.”

The prototype of Vol. 29 No. 1 is preserved in the New York State Museum archives along with other Robert Hall papers. Factually, Falconer’s science holds true today. Ray Falconer’s North Country Life essay, “Weather in the Adirondacks,” can be found on page 16 of this issue.

William J. O’Hern is the author of the forthcoming “Adirondack Seasonal Observations From a Hermit’s Perspective:Noah John Rondeau’s Wilderness Days,” from which this essay is excerpted.

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A Look Back In Time – Logging’s Connection with the Linn Tractor

July 7, 2022September 17, 2022 Lucinda

The Linn Tractor, with its mechanized track, played a huge part in ushering logging into a new and much more efficient era.

A Look Back In Time

Logging’s Connection with the Linn Tractor

An article printed in “The Northern Logger “, July 2022

The Linn tractor played a huge part in ushering logging into a new and much more efficient era. In this article, “Adirondack Logging,” Rev. Frank Reed meticulously explained the usefulness of the Linn tractors – the new-kid-on-the-block mechanized track machines that replaced old-style horse logging. Reed’s dissertation did not say how important the Linn tractor was to the growth of the paper industry in northern New York. Nor did he mention the far-sighted industrial statesman, G.H.P. Gould, who allowed his superintendent, John B. Todd, to purchase the experimental machinery that became so important to the Gould Paper Company’s success.

H.H. Linn (far right) by one of his early tractors. Circa. 1918-19

As a young boy working in his father’s logging business, an Upstate New York logger named Leigh Portner recognized the importance of sound performing machinery. As an adult he foresaw the benefit of restoring to working condition two Linn tractors his father once used. Today, at 87, Leigh continues to operate Portner Lumber Company and Sawmill. One of his pleasures is to show off his favorite Linn tractor. I asked Leigh to write about what he has learned and what he imparts to people who inquire about the line of now-antique Linn machinery.

Portner remembered this:

“The first Linn tractors used in the Adirondacks were sold to the Brooklyn Cooperage Co. and John E. Johnson of Port Leyden, N.Y. These early tractors came with a fifth-wheel trailer log sleigh, but the trailer did not work out well. One of the larger companies to use the Linns was the Gould Paper Company of Lyons Falls, N.Y.

Gould bought twelve tractors and a number of log sleighs to go with them. Each tractor cost about $5,000 and came with thirty sleighs each. The reason each tractor had three sets of ten sleighs, costing about $160.00 per set, was because of the high degree of breakdowns. Haul-back roads were rough. Between the sleigh’s vast weight, the steep grade, and uneven jarring terrain, the equipment took a beating. Broken runners and other parts were a continuous problem. The blacksmith was responsible for constant and necessary inspection and maintenance. They cycled the sleighs: while one set of ten was being loaded, another set was being checked by the blacksmith for breakage, and another set of ten was being unloaded at the landing.

Two early Linn tractors.

Gould bought some larger six-cylinder model Linns in 1926. Each sleigh, once loaded, averaged about ten tons. The haul roads were kept well-iced with sprinkler wagons. On a twelve-mile-long road they used four sprinklers. A sprinkler was built onto a Linn with a trailer sprinkler tank in tow.

Travel on the steep hills was controlled by the sand hill man. His job was to ensure the tractor driver hauling the loaded sleds had a safe descent. He’d shovel little piles of hot sand and scatter straw at regular distances along the sloping snow road to keep the loads from jackknifing on the downgrade. The stuff slowed the tracks on the descent so that the engine would have to pull hard to get the load to the bottom. The sand hill man kept a fire in the sand pit because only hot sand would stick to the sleigh runners to slow them down. Gould declared that with a properly iced road, the Linns could pull forty cords up a five-percent grade.

Along with the tractor driver was a whistle punk. He was there to warn the driver if the bull-bows broke and the log load began to buckle. If any of that happened, the driver would have the time of his life exhibiting a bit of fancy steering on a wild ride downhill, trying to get to the bottom with his life intact.

At a logging camp called “Camp 7” at Ice Cave Mountain, the tractors were kept in a steam-heated garage. Between this camp and a similar garage at Camp 9, on the river, they kept two mechanics and a greaser busy doing maintenance. All the tractors were greased every night. When the temperatures reached forty degrees below zero, they would have to disconnect the fan belts and cover the radiators to keep them from freezing.

A Linn tractor pulls into camp 7 on it way to the Moose River Landing.

The Linn tractors were started and out by 4:30 in the morning. They tried to make three loaded trips per day to the Moose River landing with each tractor. Each Linn had a driver and a whistle punk who checked the toggle chains on big loads. Most of the drivers would pit the tractor out of gear on the big hill that went down to the river, and let it rattle full bore. That way they wouldn’t pile up the loads on the way down. The tractor drivers of the 1920s and ’30s got $4.00 per day, while laborers got only $1.00 per day and board.

The riverbanks were about twenty feet high in this area. The drivers would dump the first loads from the bank into the river, and as more logs came in they would build up a log bridge across the river. They’d freeze the bridge with snow and then build another bridge about 100 feet beyond the first one. As the bridges were completed, the tractors would drive out on them and fill in between the two bridges with more logs. When the ice went out in the spring and the drive started, the logs would roll right along from the landing in the woods to the pulp mill at Lyons Falls.

My experience with Linns started when I was fourteen years old and my dad let me drive our Linn with a large load of hardwood logs on it. My dad, Ernest Portner, had purchased the timber rights on a large wood lot in 1938. It was the site of a Civilian Conservation Corps camp beyond Hanifin Corners in Empyville, New York. The camp was still active. Most of the men were African-Americans. He bought it from the State of New York with a successful bid. These woods had never been cut, and the yellow birch and hard maple trees were thirty and forty inches on the stump. All the supplies were hauled in to camp with the Linn, Dad had a camp built for the men and a horse barn for the team. We had about twelve men working on this job, and we used the Linn to haul out to the truck landing, which was about five miles. The snow was four feet deep that first winter, and sometimes the temperature was thirty below. But the Linn would always start with gas in the primer cups and a few good pulls on the crank.

My father worked in those woods three winters and four summers. Though the years Dad had six Linn tractors: three 4-cylinder and three 6–cylinder. All were either scrapped or sold, except the 126 4-cylinder. That was used in the winter of 1964 to haul some big pine out to the truck landing. Then it sat out back of our sawmill until 2009, when I decided to restore it. I also have the 1921 Emporium No. 3 I mentioned earlier, and a 1928 6- cylinder. Both need restoration. In 2018 I took my restored 1926 Linn to the New York State Woodsmen’s Field Days at Boonville, New York. It made a quite a hit with the crowd.

At one time, my father also had the county snow plowing contract for snow removal on about twenty miles of road. We had three F.W.D. trucks and a 6-cylinder Linn with a V-plow and double sixteen-foot wings. With the dump box full of fifteen tons of ballast, he could plow six and eight feet of hardpacked snow with no problem. Our Linns never needed much repair work, as we kept them in good mechanical condition. They did not go fast, but they’d go through any conditions.

After the1950s, the Linns went by the wayside as the new skidders and other machines came out. They were last used in the Adirondacks in the late1950s, and then scrapped.

Other loggers and sawmill men throughout the state and nation also used Linn tractors from the 1930s through the 1950s. Many of the jobbers working for such outfits as Gould Paper Company, Finch Pruyn, and International Paper used Linns, as well as many smaller companies. The Linn Tractors were popular and well-regarded machines amongst the loggers and lumbermen of New York State.”

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