“Long before canals or railroads, lumber rafts transported cut timber, coal, pig iron, and farm produce through Pennsylvania. The abundance of streams and rivers throughout the state brought the lumber industry to all regions of the Commonwealth. In the early 1800s, 2,500 to 3,000 arks and rafts traveled from upstate Pennsylvania from April through October. The Susquehanna River powered the lumber industry from the colonial era to the industrial revolution.” – Susquehanna National Heritage Area

Here is a story contained in the 1922 book Rafting Days in Pennsylvania and a song composed in 1865 entitled “The Jolly Raftmen of the Susquehanna River” written by James D. Gay

Rivermen Were Carefree Lot, Happy in Their Work

By JOHN C. FRENCH

They were glad days and free, those days of rafting 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 descendants in song and story—we envisage some of the stirring 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.

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, Willis, developed from the singing pine trees on the river shores of Wyoming and Ontario, the early names for the upper Susquehanna forest in northern Pennsylvania. [Pages 45-46]

RAFTING DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA Compiled by John C. French, John H. Chatham, Mahlon J. Colcord, Albert D. Karstetter and Others

Edited by J. Herbert Walker (Secretary of Pennsylvania Alpine Club)

Published by Times-Tribune Co. 1922 Altoona, Pennsylvania

Song sheet: The Library Company of Philadelphia Digital Collections