19th century logging — Full speed ahead

There was an ambitious crew at this Washington County sawmill.

“The new gang at Thomson Mills is a hummer. Notwithstanding the machinery is new, the gang sawed in eleven hours on Saturday 73,000 feet of lumber,” The Morning Star of Glens Falls reported on May 22, 1895. “The sawyers expect to reach the 75,000-mark when the gang gets settled down to full capacity. The machinery was built by J. L. Dix Foundry Company of Glens Falls.”

In other 19th century logging and lumber industry news collected from historic newspapers of the region:

• “The slabbing gang at the Morgan Lumber Company’s steam mill on Saturday slabbed three logs, thirteen feet each, in forty seconds. This beats all previous records. Throughout the day the gang maintained an average of three logs in one minute and forty-five seconds,” The Morning Star reported on June 17, 1895.
• “A forest fire raged all day Thursday on the timber lands of Finch, Pruyn in Nineteenth township,” The Morning Star reported on June 22, 1895. “John McGinn, agent of the firm, who was in Glens Falls on business, was summoned to Indian Lake by telegram. He went north with the intention of fighting the fire with a gang of lumbermen. It is supposed that yesterday’s rain extinguished the blaze.”
• “The lumbermen north of here hailed the rain of the 11th with joy, as it settled their roads and made good log drawing,” the Olmsteadville correspondent reported in the Ticonderoga Sentinel on Feb. 21, 1879.
• “Jeremiah Finch, one of the most extensive lumber men in this or any other state, came in from Warren County yesterday, and, stroking his idealized side whiskers, said, ‘We have not had any great amount of snow this year and not much lumber as yet,’” The Morning Star reported on Jan. 23, 1886. “’Yet, we expect to get all our logs in, and the lumber business is good and will be better next season. This I found to be the case all over the country. I hope to see business boom, and I have every reason to believe that it will.’”
• “The Sherman mills at the Feeder Dam will begin sawing Monday,” The Morning Star reported on June 13, 1895. “Besides a number of custom logs, the firm has contracted to saw for the Hudson River Pulp and Paper Company at Palmer Falls a large quantity of timber which was carried away from the pulp company’s boom during the spring freshet and caught in the Big Boom. The job will keep the Sherman mills busy for a few weeks.”
• “The sawyers at Finch, Pruyn & Company’s mill struck yesterday for an advance in wages,” The Morning Star reported on May 17, 1883.
• “The last raft of logs of the season was taken through the lake yesterday,” the Schroon Lake correspondent reported in The Morning Star on June 22, 1895. “It was thought at one time the large number of logs from North Hudson and vicinity would be left over until another year, but by the perseverance and skill of John Stone, an old river veteran of Warrensburg, the thing which seemed impossible on account of scarcity of water has been accomplished.”

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