I’ve got a soft spot for pictures of lumbermen. I’ve written here before about my great-grandfather, Gilbert Perry, who was a pioneer in the Adirondack logging of the late 1800’s. It was in the days before chainsaws and gas-powered tractors when everything was done with axes, crosscut saws, teams of horses and the brute force of large crews of men. My aunt once had a photo of him alongside a huge stack of logs atop a horse-drawn sled but it was lost before I able to see it.
But besides Gilbert, early loggers from the Eastern forests are pretty numerous in my family and in my wife’s family. I am always surprised at how many turn up when I am doing research. Being a lumberjack was a rough and dangerous job, one that was romanticized in the late 1800’s in magazines such as Harper’s Weekly and the Atlantic as the Eastern equivalent of the Western cowboys of that time.
A number of those in our families lost their lives in the forests. Among them, Cheri’s great-grandfather was crushed beneath a large log and died before he could be extracted. I read an account of a great-uncle of mine in the Pennsylvania Black Forest whose leg was crushed between two logs in a sluice that was being used to move them. The article tells how they rushed him to a train and sped at breakneck speeds towards Williamsport trying to save him. Unfortunately, he passed away as they pulled into the city.
So whenever I run across a photo from of early lumberjacks I have to stop and take a look. I don’t know anything about the photo at the top, when or where it was taken. I suspect it’s from around the turn of the century but whether it is from the Eastern forests, the Northwest or the great forests of the upper Midwest is beyond me. Regardless, it’s just a great photo on so many levels and is one of my new favorites.
Redtree Times 
I’m certain I’ve seen this photo before: or, at least, one much like it. I follow a fellow who posts a historical photo each day. He often groups them: fishermen one week, Montana ranchers the next. I know he’s done lumbermen, so that’s probably where I saw it.
It seems to have been customary for railroaders, steel workers, lumbermen, etc. to have their photos taken together, with the raw materials of their work. There’s such pride there, and such a sense of community. I haven’t seen many photos of isolated workers in cubicles that convey that same sense.
That’s a funny thought, the image of a group of office-workers standing proudly in front of their cubicles, brandishing coffee cups.
Your post reminds me of a memorable story, included in a book of meditations entitled, Creative Brooding, by Robert Raines. In a chapter entitled “The Courage to Cut,” he quotes a novelist named Petru Dumitriu who writes of a lumberman who was riding down a sluice and got his foot caught in a hole in the shoot and couldn’t get it free. Just then he heard a shout of warning, which meant that a great trunk was on its way down the sluice. He took his axe and cut off his foot to save his life. I have no idea if this is a true story or an invention of the novelist, but I have never forgotten the gruesome image. Raines used it as a reminder that there are times when human beings must make a major sacrifice in order to survive.
What an interesting tale! I will have to look up “Creative Brooding” as well as Petru Dumitriu. Thanks, Gary.
Although I am often mesmerized by long ago photos like this, I am also always sad that the Great Forests are gone, as are most of the upstarts and even now it is a daily fight to keep what remain of the Redwoods and Sequoias alive.
People either don’t know or don’t care. I think both.Everything is a natural “resource”, something else for man to have and destroy.
Some days my heart can barely stand it. THAT is what I want to put paint to.
Thanks for an interesting comment. There is always that fine line to be walked between the necessary usage of resources versus their pure exploitation. One thing I didn’t get across is that there is an element of shame that I hold for my great-grandfather in that he was part of the wave of intense logging that swept through the Adirondacks in the late 1800’s. Fortunately, one of this nation’s first conservation efforts , the Adirondack League, sprung from the destruction of those forests and today they are once again great teeming forests, not simply a resource to be used for short term profit. I wish you well in putting your emotion in paint.
I wrote a nice long comment, then lost it when I was asked for a password I didn’t even know I needed, or had, or not as the case was…
Anyway, the upshot of it was that I found an emotion I want to paint, and that may make all the difference.