We’ve shared stories in previous posts about the work of both loggers and raftsmen in the upper regions of the Susquehanna Valley, and the adventurous and dangerous lives they encountered.

Hiram Cranmer of Hammersley Fork, Clinton County, was a veteran lumberman in the dense forests of Pennsylvania. During the 1940s, he shared his life experiences in the lumber camps with the Lock Haven Express newspaper. Words such as wood-hicks, jill pokes, hitting your feet, and calked shoes were part of the everyday terminology. Cranmer shares more of his “Life in the Woods.”   

“The law of the woods was that a man must not be fired hungry, so at the close of the next meal he was handed his pay.

“Evenings, Sundays, and rainy days there was always a poker game going in the lobby of the camp, generally a five or ten cent edge but ofttimes a quarter edge. Other card games were played for fun: 45, seven up, cinch, casino and kingpeed. In warm weather, a game of horseshoe pitching after supper was the rule.

“The work was hard, so the men had to be well fed. The food was well prepared and seasoned. Plenty was furnished, and if the cook did not put it on the table, he or she was quickly discharged. Every camp had a dining room where the men ate. It was not often that dinner was carried out in the woods. Tin cups, knives, forks and spoons, earthen plates and dishes were used.

“Men in the woods were sharply divided into classes, good and no-good. The no-good did not stay. A “wood-hick” (lumberjack) wore calked shoes (heavy work boots with spiked bottoms), overalls with the bottoms cut off so they would not catch in the calks, in the summertime a woolen undershirt, no outside shirt. Wool was a protection against sunburn and catching cold when caught in a shower. In the winter, a heavy outside woolen overshirt was worn. In the lobby of a camp, a huge box stove that took wood 36 inches long kept the lobby and sleeping quarters upstairs warm.

“Before 1916, there was no insurance for woodsmen. A man hurt or sick, a paper was passed around and the crew gave something, usually fifty to a hundred dollars to send him to a hospital. Some sawmills hired a doctor, each man paying a dollar a month for doctor services. Men carried accident insurance of their own.

“Traveling tailors came into the camps and took orders for custom-made suits. A woodsman| starting for town and a good time, generally wore a new tailor-made suit and calked shoes. In town he would get drunk and perhaps sleep in a muddy ditch and come back to camp a week later broke and his new suit ready for everyday wear. He would then order a new suit, earn fifty or sixty dollars and then go to town and repeat.

“The tools used were the double-bitted axe, crosscut saw, which varied in length from five to seven feet according to the size logs to be cut. Bark was removed from trees with a tool called a spud. The tree was first notched in the direction to be felled with an axe. Then it was sawed down, two men working as a crew. Then the man called the "fitter" chopped rings in the bark at four-foot intervals, then slit the bark with his axe so the spudder could remove it from the tree.

“The bark was run downhill by gravity in bark chutes. A bark-chute was two ten-inch boards 16 feet long nailed together, forming a trough down which the bark slid to the bottom of the hill. The height of a hill was gauged by the number of bark chutes it took to reach from bottom to top.

“On level ground, the bark was hauled in bark-drays, which were a bark-rack mounted on one sled at the forward end, the back end, dragged on the ground. Bark-drays were pulled by horses. A team of horses hauled 15 or 20 logs in a trail down the mountainside each trip. Oxen were not used after 1890 because they were too slow in gait. Heavy horses were used instead. By heavy horses, it meant that they weighed from 1,400 to 2,100 pounds each.

“I never used a go-devil but have often saw it used. It was a heavy iron wedge with a handle in it and used to split paper or chemical wood. Woodcutters were bo-hunks, as men from Austria-Hungary were called, and no self-respecting hick would cut wood. The word "hick" originated here in the Black Forest of Pennsylvania back in Civil War days. A. P. Roberts, a native of Maine, was jobbing here, cutting pine logs. Men were scarce because of the war, so he brought 100 men from Nova Scotia to work for him. Two-thirds of them, their last name was Hicks, (and) were called "Robert Hicks." Soon, a man working in the pine woods was called a "hick." When they began to cut the hemlock, all woodsmen were called "hicks" and a town with a sawmill (was called) a "hick-town." Nowadays, any town smaller than a second-class city is called a hick-town.

“Another word used in the woods was "jill-poke." The word jill-poke originated in Maine in 1828 when a log lodged behind a root in the riverbank, sticking out and upstream at a 45-degree angle, causing a jam. One of the log drivers called it a "jelly-poke." It was soon shortened to "jellpoke." When it got to Pennsylvania in the 1860s, it was changed to jill-poke. A tie placed against the lower end of a railroad car on a steep grade to keep it from running away was called a jill-poke. So, the word jill-poke came to mean safety. To say "the jill-poke slipped" meant danger.

“In the woods, to run or hurry was called "hitting your feet." In hauling logs on a steep side-hill the team was hitched to the head log with a jay-grab. If the logs began to run, the team was swung to one side which automatically unhooked the team from the logs. Places behind a stump or treetop were cleared where the team could be turned to let the logs run past. Such a place was called a "jay-hole," which came to mean a place of safety.

“Singing in the lumber camps belonged to an earlier period than when I wore calked-shoes. In the pine lumbering days, every large camp had its singer. One of the favorite songs Was "Breaking the Jam on Gerrys Rock." Another favorite was “Shanty Boy." It starts out with,

"You may talk about your farm,

But give the shanty man his charm.

In those woods so bleak and cold, Those rapids we do run,

But to us 'tis only fun,

As the lumber to market must be sold."

Another was the "West Branch Drive." I remember only a little.

"With the rocks and jams

Its hard enough to worry a log-drive through,

But to manage a woman is more than enough for a West Branch driving crew."

“Many of the songs sung in the camps 50 to 90 years ago were ballads and folk songs that the colonists brought from England. Those old songs can still be found in real old song books.” 

The stories and experiences in the pine and hemlock forests of the Susquehanna Valley live on, thanks to men such as lumberman and historian Hiram Cranmer.