John Hall Chatham was born in Lock Haven, or possibly Chatham’s Run in November of 1846. His life was one full of adventure, folklore, poetry, and love of nature. 

According to legend, Chatham was a playmate of Shawanna, the daughter of Wuliekasan, a Seneca warrior in the mid-nineteenth century.

But today we focus on his life as a raftsman, which began at the age of sixteen, a story he shared with a newspaper reporter in February of 1921, just two years before his death.

“Rafting was at one time a great business on all the large streams of Pennsylvania. It was a prosperous business for many years on the Delaware, Schuylkill, Susquehanna, Allegheny, and their larger tributary streams. But the rafting business on the Susquehanna surpassed that on all the other rivers and streams combined. A number of factories made this great, but in many cases, hazardous, prosperous business possible. The large volume of water and the condition of the riverbed were favorable to rafting.

“The rafts were made up in eddies 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 sixteen or eighteen feet long and placed alongside each other and then lashed together with lash poles (halliards), usually made from water birch or ironwood saplings. The lash-poles were fastened to the logs with wooden staples (bows) about sixteen inches long, one and one-fourth inches wide, and three-fourths of an inch thick. The staples were usually made of ash and steamed and bent before being used. The staples were usually made of ash and steamed and bent before being used. Holes were then bored into the logs with crude crank-handled augers, and the lash poles fastened by fitting and fastening the bows into the holes. The ordinary raft was from 250 to 300 feet long and up to 23 feet wide; the maximum width was 23 feet, this being the width of the 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 "colts." A span of "colts" and "tandem team" were nautical terms used.

“Those were great trading days when woodsmen 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. 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: One pilot, two steerers, and one helper. From Marietta to Tide Water, the crew usually consisted of nine men, five on the front end of the raft and four at the rear end. The large number being required because of the hazardous and rocky condition of the riverbed below Columbia. Timber was cheap in those days.

“The price of raft timber averaged about 14½ cents per cubic foot. The best white pine and white oak brought only 25 cents per cubic foot. Spars were then in great demand. They 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. Most of the rafts were made up of logs of white pine, hemlock, and other kinds which float easily. But occasionally, heavier timbers were brought down in rafts. Towards the end of the trip, the logs became water-soaked, and entire rafts were about completely submerged. One raft of cherry, ash, and basswood came into port like a submarine with the raftsmen almost web-footed from continuous wet feet.

“A box of cold food and a wigwam tent was often the only equipment upon the rafts. Whiskey was plentiful and cheap in those days. Every few miles, the floating rafts would be approached by whiskey distributors who operated in rowboats from their base of supply on the shore.” 

Shortly before he died in 1923, Chatham placed his papers in the hands of author, historian, and folklorist Henry Wharton Shoemaker. They contained natural history notes of and conversations with Chatham, who told Shoemaker, “I hope that you may be able to have some of them printed someday.” 

In Shoemaker’s book entitled, “The Wild Animals of Clinton County, Pennsylvania, the author “…admired Chatham’s wide narrative repertoire, drawing on a “Prodigious memory” and called him “the Bard of Pennsylvania” and the foremost storyteller of Pennsylvania.” He also boasted that Chatham would have entertained the members of the Story Telling League a thousand and one nights’ and never told the same story twice.” In addition, Chatham could recite many ballads for Shoemaker and “knew countless proverbs and sayings of the mountain people and was a storehouse of accurate information on the manners and customs of the Indians and the modes of life followed by the early pioneers.” 

Apprised of his death on April 30th, 1923, Governor Gifford Pinchot, in his first term as Pennsylvania governor, commented on Chatham’s passing: “Poet, Naturalist, Historian.” “I have learned with deepest regret of the death of Mr. Chatham. My sense of personal loss is real and deep. He was not only an outdoor man but an outdoor poet, whose feeling for the beauty in the wilderness was keenly felt and beautifully expressed. Many a nature lover throughout the Commonwealth will mourn his loss. Gifford Pinchot,” PA Seal on Stone.

Chatham is buried in Linwood Cemetery, McElhattan, Clinton County, Pennsylvania.