16 HISTORY OF LUMBER INDUSTRY IN NEW YORK. 



Nathan Ford, the pioneer of Ogdensburg, in a letter to Samuel Ogden, 

 December 27, 1799, wrote: 



There are several persons now cutting timber upon the two upper townships. Mr. 

 Wilkins took down the names of several who pretended to settle; their motive was 

 only stealing off the timber. If something is not done about this business, great 

 destruction will arise. An example ought to be made, and this can not be done with- 

 out sending an officer from Fort Stanwix. They have got the timber so boldly that 

 they say there is no law that can be executed upon them here. 



But if there were thieves, there were likewise foresters to look after 

 them. In 1770 Adolphus Benzel, son of Archbishop Eric Benzel, of 

 Sweden, was appointed inspector of His Majesty's woods and forests 

 in the vicinity of Lake Champlain. at a salary of £300 per annum. 

 His residence was at Crown Point. a As early as 1700. Lord Bello- 

 mont, governor of New York, recommended that each person who 

 removed a tree should pay for planting "four or five young trees ;" 

 that no tree should be cut "that is marked for the use of the Navy.*' 

 and that no tree or trees be cut "but when the sap is in the root." 



A DANGEROUS LIFE. 



The life of the pioneer woodsmen was always beset with dangers pecul- 

 iar to their work. Early town records make frequent mention of 

 fatal accidents which befell them. It is remarkable how often the first 

 death in a settlement was of some man killed by a falling tree, of one 

 who was crushed by a load of logs, or killed in his sawmill. Not only 

 the pioneers, but their successors, have contributed to the same death 

 roll every year. The causes are various: A heavy limb falls, broken 

 by the wind; a tree "lodges," and, springing back from the stump, 

 kills the axman; a load of logs " shoves" the team down some steep 

 grade in the road, and the driver is thrown underneath or dashed 

 against a roadside tree; a tier of logs starts suddenly; a jam on the log- 

 drive breaks without warning; a man while fighting a forest fire finds 

 his retreat cut off; another disappears in the current of the spring 

 flood, and in the mills men fall upon the saws. 



Accidents, painful but not fatal, also happened in the lumber woods. 

 It is written in tha records of the town of Middlebury. Wyoming 

 County, that — 



In May, 1817, Artemas Shattuck went into the woods to chop. While cutting off 

 a log that had been partially split open, his foot was caught in the crack, and he 

 hung for a long time suspended by his foot and partly supported by one hand. 

 Despairing of receiving aid, he finally unjointed his ankle with his pocketknife, 

 made a crutch of a crooked stick, and started for the house. 



Their privations had a pathetic side also, for we read in the history of 

 the town of Verona, Oneida County, that "the first death in the settle- 

 ment was that of a child who was buried in its cradle for want of a coffin." 



a History of the town of Queensbury. By A. W. Holden, M. D. 



b Colonial Documents, Vol. IV. 



c In the footnotes appended to the town histories in Hough's Gazetteer of New 

 York there are twenty -one. instances mentioned in which the first death among the 

 settlers was caused by the falling of a tree. 



