RECOLLECTIONS FROM A WOODSMAN IN NORTHERN PENNSYLVANIA

Throughout history, people have had the foresight to record events, and readers have had the opportunity to relive both world-changing events, as well as the everyday experiences of those who simply provided for themselves and their families. In January of 1948, Hiram Cranmer sat down with a newspaper reporter from the Lock Haven Express, to share his stories of life in the lumber regions of northern Pennsylvania. Below is one of his recollections.

My Life in The Woods

by Hiram M. Cramner, Hammersley Fork, Clinton County

These recollections by Mr. Cranmer, veteran of the lumber era, and historian of the western end of the county, are published by The Express for their historical and legendary interest, and their lively picture of what life was like in the lumber camps which once filled the woods of this section.

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“As a child, I lived on a farm, I learned to ride a floating log at the age of seven. On April 9, 1902, I watched a man drown on a log drive. While breaking a "center" jam, a man fell in and while the bateau was rescuing him, four men were forced to ride the logs. Frank Lynch, who led the men, lost his nerve in trying to get on another center jam and fell in. He came up a hundred feet below the jam. Instead of wading to his left shore he waded down the stream for 150 yards to his shoulders in water, shouted several times, waded among the logs, and went under them.

His body was found six miles down the stream below where he drowned May 11, 1902. In his pockets was seven cents, a piece of chewing tobacco, and a hellgrammite. * Twenty minutes after he went to work, he was under the logs. Tom Smith was the contractor, driving the logs for Brown, Clark and. Howe, who bought the stumpage in Potter County from the Sile Billings estate and drove the logs down Kettle Creek and the West Branch of the Susquehanna to Williamsport. *(The hellgrammites (sometimes called “toe-biters”) are top invertebrate predators in their ecosystems, preying on a wide variety of other soft-bodied insects and capable of inflicting a painful bite to humans with their large mandibles.)

In 1906 and 1907 I sold papers in lumber camps, a 31-mile route Saturday afternoons and Sunday, to the camps of three lumber companies, the Lackawanna Lumber Company, the Goodyear Lumber Company and the Emporium Lumber Company, who cut hardwood.

In January 1908 I helped cut the last logs to be sawed in the Lackawanna Lumber Company's mill at Cross Fork. In the Spring of 1909, I worked on the last log drive down Kettle Creek for Tom Smith, in Clinton County. In 1910 and 1911 I worked some on a portable sawmill for Frank Summerson in Clinton County. In 1912 I worked in Potter County for the Emporium Lumber Company first for Guncheon Brothers and when they finished, for Tate Brothers until they finished in December.

In June 1913 I drayed (hauled) chemical wood to load railroad cars in McKean County. Betula was where the chemical plant was located. In July 1913 I peeled hemlock bark for "Clothespin" Tom Fitzsimmons who jobbed for the Norwich Lumber Company with a sawmill at Norwich, McKean County. After bark-peeling was over, I worked for George Guncheon, another jobber for the same company. In 1914 I peeled bark first for George Guncheon, later for Charles Tate. (On) The last of July 1914 I went to North Dakota and worked through harvest and threshing. In October I went to Seattle, Washington, with the intention of working in the lumber woods. Seeing a crowd down the street aways, I walked down to see what was going on. A speaker was holding forth on a soapbox in front of the I.W.W. hall. A strike was on at the time among shingle workers. The speaker was intelligently stating the workers’ wrongs.

In 1915 the woods work was shut down on account of the war. In 1916 it opened up and I peeled bark for Edwin Guncheon on Potato Creek in McKean County, on the Norwich line. After bark-peeling was over for that year, I drove grabs, rolled logs on the skidway(and) drayed bark. In 1917 I worked for John Coggins on the Norwich line, peeling bark and cutting logs.

In 1920 I peeled bark and drove grabs for Olaf Larson who jobbed for the Central Pennsylvania Lumber Company along the Kinzua Creek in McKean County, Pa. This was my last work in the woods. I had to quit because of poison gas I got in the Argonne drive. I have worked on lumber all the way from planting trees for the Pennsylvania Forestry Department, to building a house as a carpenter. Where I worked at lumbering it was independent work, every day a payday, if you wanted it that way.

Few men were killed or crippled. It is a hazardous occupation, but any man caught endangering himself or others was fired. I have been on the wet side of a logjam, (the underside), have lain beside a log while a tree ran over me on a steep side hill, been on a skidway of logs when they squashed out, crouched behind a stump while a log rolled over me, all without being hurt or injured in any way. In seven years about 900 million feet of logs were cut and taken out of Hammersley Fork by three lumber companies with the record of one man killed in the woods. His death was caused by a dead tree uprooting and falling on him with no warning sound.

 In the same period of time, the Lackawanna Lumber Company's engine No. 8 killed an engineer and two conductors. Goodyear Lumber Company’s Clymax 20 killed a fireman and two conductors. The Emporium Lumber Company's Clymax 5 killed its number—five. Four other men were also killed on the railroad, total killed 15.

In the same place at a much earlier date when they were floating the pine logs out, three men were drowned at different times. The reason few men were killed in the hemlock woods was the unwritten law that a careless man who endangered himself and others must be fired.”

Cranmer added that before 1916, there was no insurance for woodsmen. (If) A man (was) 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.

The Express (Lock Haven, Pennsylvania) January 05, 1948, Page 07. And January 07, 1848, Page 05

Photo Credit: Park Peelers in the Black Forest, Black Forest Souvenirs Collected in Northern Pennsylvania, Henry W. Shoemaker, 1914