Local History: Tillard Pen Pictures, 1911, Altoona, Blair Co., PA - Forests

Contributed by Judy Banja jbanja@msn.com

USGENWEB ARCHIVES (tm) NOTICE 
All documents placed in the USGenWeb Archives remain the property of the 
contributors, who retain publication rights in accordance with US Copyright 
Laws and Regulations.
In keeping with our policy of providing free information on the Internet, 
these documents may be used by anyone for their personal research. They may 
be used by non-commercial entities so long as all notices and submitter 
information are included.
These electronic pages may NOT be reproduced in any format for profit.
Any other use, including copying files to other sites, requires permission 
from the contributors PRIOR to uploading to the other sites.
The submitter has given permission to the USGenWeb Archives to store the 
file permanently for free access.
___________________________________________________________

               Pen Pictures of Friends and Reminiscent Sketches
                               by J. N. Tillard

            Altoona, PA: William F. Gable & Co., Mirror Press, 1911 

                       Sketches of Early Local History

AUTHOR'S NOTE - The following articles were written for the Altoona Mirror at 
odd times, several years ago, the subject matter having been gleaned by the 
author partly from various publications; partly from the folk lore stories he 
beard told in the old Pottsgrove flour mill during his childhood, and partly 
from personal observation.

                                             J. N. TILLARD DECEMBER 1, 1911

             Clearing The Forests That Once Covered This Section

      Woodchoppers Laid Low The Forest Primeval and Mighty Men Were They

WHEN the Allegheny Furnace was built nearly one hundred years ago, the upper 
end of Tuckahoe Valley was pretty much primeval forest, a few farms having 
been cleared from the limestone hills and the mountain bases. The lowlands 
and most of the hills were still covered with giant trees that as late as 
1840 grew so thickly over most of the valley that they were only penetrated 
by bridle paths. A little more than a quarter of a century ago, all the 
territory now covered by the yards of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company 
between this city and Elizabeth Furnace was filled with the stumps of the 
forest giants that had fallen before the axes of the charcoal burners. The 
boy of thirty years ago, watched with interest the operations of the old 
tripod stump puller in this section and his brother ten years younger had the 
felicity of seeing the dynamite operator at work in the removal of parts of 
the same batch of stumps.
  When Elias Baker took charge of Allegheny Furnace about 1835, and the Bells 
got busy at Elizabeth, or "Sabbath Rest," the charcoal industry began in 
earnest. The boy of today who penetrates some of the thickets along the base 
of Brush Mountain that have not been disturbed for fifty years will still 
find what will look to him like the show ground of a single ring circus. A 
circular patch of green surrounded by a dense second growth of young chestnut 
saplings. If he will turn up a little of the luxuriant sod over which the 
cattle graze in one of these circles, he will find a black loam several 
inches deep with bits of charred wood that may still have resisted the 
processes of decay. Invariably, leading away from one of these circles of 
green, will be found evidences of a roughly constructed road now grass grown 
and almost obliterated by the growth of scrubby bushes. There was a time when 
all these long forsaken spots were busy places of vast importance to the iron 
industry of the country. They then bore the same relation to the trade that 
the coke ovens of the western counties do now and without them the old 
furnace stack would have been cold and the long lines of Conestoga wagons 
that hauled pig iron to Pittsburg would have been idle.
  The business gave employment to a hardy race of men and, indeed, in those 
times the phrase "hardy as a wood chopper" was a proverb. All winter long, 
amid storms and snows that were not easy to face, these men with the double 
bitted axes made the woods ring with the music of their strokes and when a 
party of them were working together, the forest continually resounded with 
the crash of falling trees. It was not a lumber camp and the business was 
essentially different. Instead of merely felling the trees that could be 
sawed into lumber, these slayers of the forest made a clean sweep of 
everything big enough to make a cordwood stick. The possibility of a lumber 
famine in this wealth of timber never occurred to them, and the making of 
iron and providing the fuel for smelting it was their sole aim and purpose. 
So they made a clean swath and the greater the variety in the thickness of 
the four foot cordwood stick and the crookeder it was, the greater the 
possibilities in the way of making it count when it come to "ranking," which 
was an art all by itself, for the woodchopper was paid by the cord, and the 
fellow who could rank so that a rabbit pursued by his dog could jump through 
the spaces between crooked sticks was that much ahead of the game, for the 
chopper was paid as much for the hole as for the wood provided the boss or 
furnace clerk was good natured enough not to "dock" him for his skill in 
making the holes.
  There were some mighty choppers in those days and the men who could sink 
the keen blade into the heft in a white oak tree at every stroke were plenty 
enough. When these knights of the ax foregathered at Pottsgrove's Mill to 
talk over the events of the winter's 'choppin", many were the tales of 
prowess that were told and they gleefully recited how they had "beat it" in 
ranking propositions. But there were other and sadder tales to tell, for it 
not unfrequently happened that the keen blade of the ax glancing from a 
frosty trunk or swaying bough found lodgment in the flesh of some member of 
the axman, sometimes crippling him for life and there were instances when a 
fall upon the tool meant instant death, to say nothing of the dangers of 
falling trees and huge boughs torn loose by the storm. There are still a few 
old men living along the mountain between Pottsgrove and Sandy Run who can 
recall such casualties, but most of these pioneers of the valley are sleeping 
somewhere beneath the sod from which they long ago cleared the timber.

                                      #