Local History: Tillard Pen Pictures, 1911, Altoona, Blair Co., PA - Timber 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 Timber Wasted That Would be Valuable Now Less Than One Hundred Years Ago Timber Was Regarded as an Obstruction to Agriculture and Ruthlessly Destroyed A PROPOS the agitation of the forestry question and the great evils to which this young country is exposed by the denudation of the forests, causing droughts and short water supplies, to say nothing of the increased cost of lumber, some extracts from an essay on the clearing of lands in Bedford County, written in 1827, might be of interest. The author says: "When we wish to clear a piece of land, we in the first place stake it off, and provided with a grubbing hoe, take up by the roots every sapling which a stout man can shake in the root by grasping the stem and bending it backward and forwards. If the roots give to this action it is called a grub-dogwood; ironwood and witch hazel are always classed among grubs whether they shake at the roots or not. "After the land is grubbed, the brush is picked in heaps and the saplings chopped; that is, everything is cut down that does not measure above twelve inches across the stump. Such part of the saplings as are fit for ground poles are chopped into lengths of eleven feet and the top brush thrown into the heaps for burning. Then the trees are belted for deadening. The manner of doing the work is to chop entirely around the tree a curve three or four inches wide. The tree must be cut to the red except oak when it is sufficient to cut through the bark." The writer further says that "the advantages of deadening timber are immense; labor is saved in chopping down and burning them. Indeed, in this country it is next to impossible to cut down the timber except near to the town of Bedford because farmers are not rich enough to pay for it." But this method of getting away with the virgin forest had its drawbacks, for in a later paragraph, the writer says that "while the dead timber give firewood for years without resorting to the woods, on the other hand the falling branches incommode the farmer for years covering the grain in winter and causing great labor in picking up the branches in heaps, besides falling upon, killing and maining cattle, men and boys. In firing the brush heaps the fire sometimes gets away from the workmen and great havoc is committed on fences and woods. After the clearing is burnt the rail timber is chopped and mauled and the ground is scratched or roughly plowed and a bushel of wheat. sown broadcast to the acre. "In eight or ten years the timber begins to fall rapidly and when the ground is pretty well covered with logs, the farmer begins to 'nigger off.' Piles of brush are laid across the logs every twelve or fifteen feet and burned off, the women and children following along to chunk up the fires and sometimes the whole log is consumed. In any case they are burned into lengths that can be handled and then a big 'log rolling' is indulged in." This log rolling did not cost anything except a plentiful supply of whisky and the term afterward came to be applied to political performances wherein the smooth worker exploited his neighbors for his own purposes at no greater cost to himself than a keg of more or less indifferent booze. The old writer says, "that eighteen or twenty of the neighbors assemble who charge nothing for their services and the only thing exceptionable in these frolics is the inordinate use of whisky from which dreadful combats frequently arise." It would seem from this that our hardy progenitors were apt to get just as noisy at a "log rolling" as a revival meeting, though there was some essential difference in the spirit inspiring the enthusiasm. In an addition to the article written in 1845, the Chronicler says that "at this date there is not so much fighting, but these mountaineers are stout, athletic men, with bravery as a predominant feature of their character, and they value themselves in proportion to their strength, hence arise animosities that are seldom allayed except by battle and the participants are generally disabled for some days after the combat, but afterward meet without malice or resentment." So it will be seen that much less than one hundred years ago, it was thought impossible that timber should be regarded in any other light than an obstruction to agriculture and the problem of the hour was how to destroy it with the least expenditure of labor. Had the pioneer farmer of those days been able to look a little way into the future and allowed one-fourth of the fine trees that covered his land to stand, both his descendants and the country in general would have been vastly better off now. #