Perhaps the most fascinating period in the history of the lumber industry in the Greenbrier Valley is the era of the white pine log drives on the river. Fascinating in the eyes of history and those of us far removed from the actual work, at least; the average woodsman, working in the icy cold water on a raw February day trying to keep the cumbersome logs off the riverbank probably had other words to describe his job. Yet, judging by the comments made in later years by men involved in the river drives, they, at least in hindsight, realized it was a special period and they were part of an exceptional group of men.
Until a local work force could be trained to handle the logs in the river, much of the work was done by men coming to the valley with experience on log drives elsewhere, particularly Pennsylvania and New York, with a few from Canada. To many of the farm and village boys of the valley, these men coming to work the log drives were the first hint that there was more to life than the farm. Many a young man quickly decided that his main ambition in life was to join these men and the local girls also took note of them. In a 1926 article, Andrew Price remembered the impact they had on him and other local youth.
They came here after the Civil War prepared to handle logs in bulk by means of the winter cutting and the spring drive on the water courses. A camp was made in the woods, an organization of some sixty or seventy men was effected and we began to learn about slides, skidways, landings, drives, peavies and canthooks and the like. The woodsmen were all imported. Powerful young men, experts in trees, and there was hardly a boy in the county who did not dream of the day when he could join that glorious company. And I think that many of our pretty girls concluded that about as good fortune as they would ask was to be a woodsman’s bride. They brought with them their own words and manner of talk, which was admired and adopted in a great measure by the boys here. It was a picked body of men and they could out-fight, out-work, and out-dance our local youths, though it may have afterwards appeared that all are not bold that bristle. I can remember that for some years I was laying plans to get elected to a woods job and live in a camp and have all the money and prestige and feasting that went with that position.
(Price, however, did not join the men working in the woods and on the river, but became a lawyer.)1
The new residents of the valley were also pleased with the people already living in the area. “Mr. Peters has only words of hearty praise for his West Virginia neighbors, – people equal in all good qualities to any on the the face of the globe, as he put it.”2
It is not known when the Greenbrier River was first used to transport logs. In 1825 a man named John Glen was supposed to have lost his life in the river while floating logs from Pocahontas County for the construction of the bridge at Caldwell. The accident occurred not far below the mouth of Davy Run.3
The date given for the accident might be incorrect, as 1822 is the date for the construction of the bridge. Also, the question has to be raised if the timbers for the bridge could have come from closer to the bridge site than Pocahontas County. However, as related in the previous chapter, one of the features in the river that was given names by the men rafting lumber to Ronceverte was named Glen’s Rocks.4
check the newspaper – Glen or Glen’s
The first sawmills known to have made use of the river to receive logs in Pocahontas County were at Marlin’s Bottom and at the mouth of Stamping Creek. The mill at Marlin’s Bottom was located on the west side of the river in the area now known as Riverside and was installed by James A. Price in the late 1840s. The mill on Stamping Creek was originally owned by John H. Ruckman and purchased by James E. A. Gibbs in 1860. Gibbs was also involved in the operation of the the Price mill. use plat in 58-219, “9.9 acre sawmill tract” to give more precise location of Price mill
Gibbs described the use of the river to transport logs to these two mills in a letter to Andrew Price in May 1897, printed in The Pocahontas Times, responding to a previous article in the paper:
In your issue of March 25th last you publish an article under the head of “The Weekly Letter,” presumably written by yourself, in which you make a great mistake as to who first conceived the idea of rafting on the Greenbrier River.
You say it was some time in the seventies that some daring projector conceived the idea of rafting on the Greenbrier. I want to tell you and your readers that the man who first conceived the idea and carried it to success, so far as rafting is concerned, was your grandfather, James A. Price. In 1849, he undertook to drift logs down river, which, I take it, is about the same as driving now. But having no boom to catch the logs, and depending upon one log canoe and two men with spike poles (or spuds as they then called them) to catch them, the larger part escaped them and went past – some of them to feed the mills in Ohio.
Abandoning the idea of drifting, your grandfather turned his attention to the idea of rafting, in which he was more successful, – thanks to the hardy pioneers who lived up Greenbrier River, – and I myself can testify to seeing large rafts which were landed at the mouth of Stony Creek, in 1850 and 1851, for your grandfather’s mill. I was out of the county for some years, but returned in the fall of 1859, and that fall I sent word up the river that I would take all logs delivered to me at the mouth of Stamping Creek (below Mill Point). Some time in the winter I received enough logs to keep my mill running all the year.
But now I am coming to a matter of record and not dependent upon memory. I find from my accounting book for 1861 that Montgomery Friel, Steven Barnet [sic], John Friel, and Ewing Johnson delivered to me a raft of logs containing 124 logs. How much better can your raftsmen do now? These logs did not belong to them all in common, but each one had so many logs belonging to them, and the partnership ceased as soon as the logs reached the wharf, which was the end of the eddy at the mouth of Stamping Creek. Don’t understand me to say there was a wharf there, but the mouth of Stamping Creek constituted my wharf as far as I was concerned, and if any logs went past I was not responsible for them. And I think if you could have seen those Friels and Barnetts [sic] steering a raft of 124 logs into the narrow limits allowed them with the precision of a ferry boat in New York you would not think rafting was new to them. No, they learned their trade under the teaching of your grandfather (grand in more senses than one), and he was the man who first conceived the idea of rafting on the Greenbrier River and first carried it to success.
I find in overlooking the above I have omitted the name of James Barnett, who had 21 logs in the raft of 1861. I also want to give honorable mention to Milton Hughes, who I think was with the great raft; if not he was one of the earlier rafters of Pocahontas County. The later rafters and drivers may have taken out much more lumber, but it is impossible that they could show more intrepid skill and heroic endurance than did the pioneers in the first rafting on the Greenbrier River.
It has come to my memory that John H. Ruckman also had logs rafted to the same mill at the mouth of Stamping Creek when he owned it in 1855 and 1856, if not other years. So that from 1850 until the war put an end to the lumber business for the time, there were few if any years in which there was not one or more rafts brought down the river to Marlinton and the mouth of Stamping Creek, from the neighborhood of Deer Creek and all from above the mouth of Clover Lick, making a distance of over thirty miles to the lower landing.
The system of rafting was the same as followed now with long oars at the front and rear, while others assisted with long poles to keep the raft off the banks.
There was one log that I got in the large raft of February 13, 1861, from which I sawed 3,000 feet of weather-boarding, and there was not a knot in the whole lot. I presume such timber is getting scarce in Pocahontas County now. I see the price I paid for those logs ranged from 60 to 90 cents each. This seems low for such lumber, but I believe sawed lumber only brought about 75 cents per hundred feet then.5
As noted in Chapter II, Gibbs purchased the John Ruckman mill at the mouth of Stamping Creek in 1860, selling back to Ruckman in 1863. Gibbs has a place in history but it does not come from his involvement in Greenbrier Valley logging but from development of the sewing machine. While living at Mill Point, Gibbs obtained two patents – – – – –
As Gibbs indicated in his letter, the work of these early sawmill operators to use the river as a means of transport ended with the Civil War. From those beginnings, however, came the use of the Greenbrier as a major transportation artery for over thirty years, starting in the early 1870s, both for raw material in the form of logs and, as related in the previous chapter, for a finished product in the form of lumber.
Footnotes
1 PT, 2/11/1926
2 The Virginias, July 1885, p 97
3 PT, 10/8/1903
4 The West Virginia Encyclopedia, p 378; PT, 4/9/1897
5 PT, 5/28/1897, letter from Gibbs dated 5/17/1897, and was written from Raphine, Virginia
SAINT LAWRENCE BOOM AND MANUFACTURING COMPANY
With the completion of the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad into the Greenbrier River Valley in 1869, an outlet to the markets of the rapidly expanding post-Civil War national economy was now available to the products of the Valley. This included the products of the long established agricultural industry in Greenbrier, Monroe and Pocahontas Counties, but of more economic importance, the vast timberlands of the upper portion of the Greenbrier River watershed were now within economic reach of those with the desire to turn the trees into lumber.
One of the first was Cecil C. Clay, of ——, who made an agreement in March 1870 with Isaac Moore and John A. Warwick for the sale of timber on Peters Mountain in Pocahontas County. Under the agreement, Clay could cut all the timber on the west side of the mountain and the pine timber on the mountain’s east side. Clay agreed to pay $5,000 for the timber. The agreement also gave Clay the right to use a stream on Moore’s land to float logs to Sitlington Creek and locate stables and cabins on the property containing the timber. Clay was given periods of five, ten, and twenty years to remove timber from various parts of the tract.6 check acres involved assume stream to be Moses Run
no acres in deed
This land was located far from the new C&O Railroad line then being constructed across West Virginia and there exists the question today about why Clay did not acquire his first timber from land much closer to the new rail line. Also, how did he make the contact with Moore and Warwick about their timber?
Clay’s next purchase was a site on the new railroad west of White Sulphur Springs known in 1870 as Edgar’s Mill. In May he acquired 600 acres of land and a half-interest in five acres containing a grist mill from Alfred M. Edgar, Thomas H. Edgar, Delia Edgar, and Elizabeth Edgar Creigh for $21,500.7
600 acres on both sides of river or all on north side?
On this location a new town (Ronceverte) and the first major lumbering operation in the Upper Greenbrier Valley would be developed.
The grantors were the children of Archer Edgar. The 600 acres were the major portion of the Edgar land, originally purchased by Thomas Edgar in —-, who moved from Lewisburg to the future site of Ronceverte about — 1795 –. He constructed a grist mill, which burned – he – Archer? – constructed a new mill — 8
Following Thomas’ death on July 15, 1822, the property was willed to his children Ann, Archer, and Thomas. Thomas transferred his share of their father’s property on the north side of the river to Archer in January 1824.9 need to find out about Ann’s share – she married Samuel L. Mathews – when did Archer die?
In April 1871 the ownership of the 600 acre tract and the half interest in the grist mill tract was divided between Clay, his wife Anna Kester Clay, and Robert L. Kester. Anna Clay received a one-sixth interest and Kester a one-half interest. Anna’s share was due to her having put some of her own money into the purchases and Kester paid $10,750. (The share to Anna was actually to Kester as trustee for her, “free from the control of said Cecil Clay . . .”)10
The other half of the grist mill property was owned by Lewis Creigh. He had acquired the interest from Archer Edgar in an agreement dated March 6, 1857. As the time of the sale to Clay, Creigh’s half of the grist mill tract was involved in a lawsuit, filed in March 1870 by Alfred Edgar, alleging that Creigh had never paid the $1,250 which he owed under the 1857 agreement. At a court ordered sale on June 17, 1870, Kester was the high bidder for the half interest at $4,165. It was not deeded to him until —- and he then transferred his share to Cecil and Anna Clay in November 1876.11 need to check date of sale. April 18? – or is that court order date? – need info on deed to Kester in 1876
What brought Clay to Greenbrier Valley is, unfortunately, not certain at this time. The most interesting possibility is that Clay was the “employer” in the following account:
It is said that the remote cause of the developing [of] the white pine timber of this county was that a Pennsylvanian, who was a soldier in Averill’s retreat, noticed the vast forests of white pine and afterwards spoke of it to his employer, who was in the lumber business. The employer came here in 1867 and soon after returned with other Northern lumbermen. In a short time a good deal of capital was invested here and since then large quantities has been floated out.12
Another account gave an actual regiment for our messenger of white pine news:
. . . some of the Union soldiers as they marched through the county under Col. Schoonmaker, in the Fourteenth Pennsylvania Cavalry, saw white pine trees and carried the word home.13
(Union General William W. Averill was in the Greenbrier Valley three times in the last half of 1863. “Averill’s retreat” probably refers to the return from his raid on the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad at Salem, Virginia, in December. To avoid Confederate forces on their way back to their base at Beverly, in Randolph County, Averill’s troops went to Covington, Virginia, and then used back roads through Rucker Gap, down either Spice Run or Laurel Run to the river, and on to Hillsboro and back to Beverly.)
Clay was only 28 at the time of his first Greenbrier Valley purchases. He was born on February 13, 1842, in Philadelphia and was a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania (at age 17). He enlisted in the U. S. Army in January 1862 and was elected a lieutenant in the 58th Pennsylvania Regiment and later commissioned Captain of Company K. Clay earned the Medal of Honor in the attack on Fort Harrison, Virginia, on September 29, 1864, where he was seriously wounded, with an arm shattered and a hand lost. Before the war ended he rose to the rank of colonel and in 1866 Congress brevetted him a Brigadier General in recognition of wartime service.14
When he made his original valley timber acquisitions, Clay was living in Botetourt County, Virginia.15
Even with his crippled arms, Clay was a successful hunter. After moving to the Greenbrier Valley, Clay became acquainted with Thomas Galford and Galford’s son-in-law, Francis McCoy. These two men and their families lived in tenant houses on land owned by Paul McNeel on Williams River known as the Meadows and this became one of his hunting locations. Clay is credited with killing a panther on the waters of Tea Creek in April 1873. The excursion that ended with the panther kill had not started as a hunting trip, but rather Clay was being taken to see a coal outcrop found by Galford. The finding of a deer killed by a panther added hunting to the trip. The animal was not successfully tracked the first day, so Galford, McCoy, Clay, and a pack of hounds set out the next day with the single purpose of finding the panther. The panther was treed on Tea Creek by the dogs and Clay was given the privilege of firing the fatal shot.16
(The Meadows are —
Like Clay, Alfred M. Edgar was a Civil War veteran, although of the Confederate Army. He enlisted in 1861 and saw action in a number of battles as a member of the “Stonewall Brigade.” He was captured at the Battle the Wilderness in May 1864 and remained a prisoner until the war was over. One has to wonder if these two veterans on opposite sides of the recently ended war spent time together discussing their experiences.
Clay’s purchases of timber land were made as part of a March 1, 1870, partnership agreement between him, Robert L. Kester, Grayson M. Prevost, Charles M. Prevost, and Joseph A. Clay (Cecil’s father), all of Philadelphia.17
A town site was laid off on the 600 acre tract and Clay gave it the name “Ronceverte” from “une ronce verte,” French for greenbrier. Using the French word for the new town was not its first use in the area. As related in Chapter I, a 1778 map gave “Renceverte or Green Brier” for the name of the river.
The first lots in the new community were sold in September 1871. Lot 1 went to Thomas A. Henning and Lot 2 to Thomas Mathews.18
Another step taken to harvest the timber being acquired by the partners was the formation of the Greenbrier Lumber Company in July 1870. In the certificate of corporation, Grayson Prevost was listed with 399 shares of stock, Clay with 359, Kester with forty, and C. M. Prevost and Joseph Clay with with one each.19
Since the timber Clay and his associates hoped to harvest was accessible only by water, a more important company was formed the next year. By an act passed by the West Virginia Legislature on February 27, 1871, the St. Lawrence Boom and Manufacturing Company came into existence. The incorporators were the same as for the Greenbrier Lumber Company. Although it would turn out that Clay and his fellow incorporators of SLB&M would remain in the lumber business in the Greenbrier Valley only for a few years, the company they created was to be the dominant company in the white pine harvest.20
The name for the new company came from an early name for the location of Ronceverte, St. Lawrence Ford. The origin of the name is not known at this writing; it does go back to the 1700s and perhaps it is evidence of French exploration of the Greenbrier Valley. In his diary relating his visit to the Greenbrier area in 1785, Albert Gallatin referred to “St. Lawrence Ford.” The records of the Greenbrier County Court for February 17, 1797, include “Thomas Edgar requests the County Surveyor to re-survey his lands wherein he now lives at St. Lawrence.”21
Although the act creating the SLB&M Company gave it the rights to acquire and sell real estate, engage in mining and manufactures, sell lumber, and construct tram railways, most of the act dealt with the company’s power to install booms in the Greenbrier River for the purpose of stopping and securing boats, rafts, logs, or other timber. The act gave SLB&M authority to install booms between the St. Lawrence Ford and the “old bridge” above the mouth of Anthonys Creek. The booms had to be constructed to admit passage of boats and rafts and not prevent the navigation of the river or its tributaries.
In providing the use of its booms to others, the act authorized SLB&M to charge toll or “boomage” at the rate of $1 per thousand board feet for saw logs, square timber, spars, clapboards, bolts, and other timber that floated, rafted, or drifted into its booms. The company was required to pass through its booms within a reasonable time, not exceeding ten days, free of boomage any logs, etc., distinctly marked for any boom below Ronceverte. However, should SLB&M prevent damage to uncontrolled spars, timber, or lumber by taking them into its boom, then a charge of $0.12 for every spar and stick of square timber and $0.06 for every log of round timber could be collected.
The act further gave SLB&M the power to dredge and remove obstructions from the river; set out the procedure for the adjustment of damages claimed against the company in exercising its powers; set penalties for damaging the company’s works or defacing the identifying marks on logs; and protected the company’s rights to the ownership of any properly marked timber that be washed ashore. The act also gave the company the right to sell any unclaimed timber in its booms.22
During the time these companies were being organized, Clay acquired an additional tract of timber, some distance from the Peters Mountain timber. In August 1871 he purchased timber on a 316 acre tract on Knapps Creek above Huntersville, paying $450. The deed included the right to use Knapps Creek to move logs through the property. Also in 1871, in January, a 248 acre tract on – at – near – Ronceverte – was purchased for $2,355.23 better location for 248 tract
Clay reached another agreement with Isaac Moore in February 1873. Moore agreed to sell his land on the west side of Peters Mountain and a part of the land on the east side (a portion of the property involved in the 1870 agreement for timber). Moore also sold Clay some additional pine timber not included in the first document. The cost to Clay under this agreement was an additional $1,800. A deed in June made the actual transfer of the land to Clay, a total of 2,185 acres. Also included in this agreement was timber on a tract of 100 acres and another tract. 24
only 1/2 interest in 2185 ac. check deed for clarification – 1/2 interest in 2185 ac referred to in 14-289, sale of 1/2 interest to Ben Hurxthal
Other purchases made by Clay in 1873 were a tract of 1,800 acres on – Dave’s Run tract – Little Creek and Greenbrier River – in Greenbrier County and timber on 450 acres on Cummings Creek, in Pocahontas County. He paid – – – – for these acquisitions.25
need 3/31/1873 agreement between Amos Barlow and CC for 169 ac tract on Cummins Creek, $550 (this is not in deeds to Greenbrier Lbr Co, however)
By deeds in March, May, and June 1873 Clay transferred all the land and timber rights he had purchased, except the 248 acre tract, to the Greenbrier Lumber Company. The deeds provided for Clay to be paid $15,600.26
A ten acre site for the sawmill was also deeded to the Greenbrier Lumber Company from the Clays and Kester in June of 1873. It was located between the river and the railroad with the tract containing the grist mill joining the sawmill land on the south.27
In March of 1874 the Greenbrier Lumber Company deeded all its property to the St. Lawrence Boom and Manufacturing Company for $50,000. In addition to land, timber, and the mill tract, the transfer included the right to use the mill pond in the river and the channel between the Big Island and the river bank for whatever was necessary for the lumber operation. “These rights, however, shall not impede the operation of the grist mill owned by Cecil Clay and Robert L. Kester.”28
The deed was signed by Clay as President and G. W. Prevost as Secretary of the Greenbrier Lumber Company.
Other than the mill tract, the land on which the new town was being developed was not transferred to either of the lumber companies. The C&O purchased fifty-two acres from the Clays and Kester in April 1872. Twenty-five acres were for the railroad company’s tracks and facilities and the balance was the “island” formed by the river and the channel that later became known as the “mill pond.”29
Clay acquired 800 acres on Cochrans Creek, in Pocahontas County, along with timber on an adjoining 780 acres, for $1,200 in June 1874.30 more on location
The actual date that Clay and his partners began logging is not certain; the first year for which references are found on logging activity is 1872. In Clay’s 1907 obituary there was a reference to a log drive in that year which was reported to have been unsuccessful due to the lack of a proper method of stopping the logs at the mill. Another indication of a lack of success in logging in 1872, for a different reason, is found in a letter Clay wrote in July to one of his creditors explaining why he had not been able to pay the debt. He wrote that he was “sorry that the — of some of my creditors at the time when dry weather had locked up any logs caused a temporary delay in paying your a/c.”31
The problem with stopping logs at the mill was part of the basis for a lawsuit against Clay filed in March 1873 by William H. Scott. In his bill of complaint, Scott alleged that he and Clay entered into an agreement on March 10, 1872, under which Scott would “cut and place in Greenbrier river as many saw logs as he might think proper, and float them down, at such times as the stage of water would permit and the plaintiff [Scott] might choose to do so, to a certain boom in said river commonly known as Clay’s boom, of the time of starting which said logs down said river the plaintiff was to give the defendant notice, and then the said defendant was to catch and secure the said logs, saw them up into lumber, at a certain mill near boom, commonly known as Clay’s mill, and deliver to the plaintiff two thirds of all the lumber into which said logs could be sawed.” Scott claimed that he had placed 196 logs in the river and gave Clay notice, but “the defendant failed and refused to catch and secure said logs and saw them up into lumber . . .” The number of board feet of lumber averaged 175 per log, giving a total of 34,300 feet, according to the bill of complaint. Valued at $1.50 per hundred feet, the total value of lumber would have been $514.50, with Scott’s two-thirds share coming to $343. (The bill of complaint does not indicate where the logs were put into the river.)
Scott claimed that Clay also owed him $124.80 for “certain saw logs, boom timber and other goods, wares and merchandise then and there bargained and sold by the plaintiff to the defendant, at his request; . . .”32
The case went to trial in October 1874 and the jury returned a verdict in favor of Scott in the amount of $216.80.33
No reports have been found for any log driving activity in 1873.
In March 1874 the Greenbrier Independent reported:
Col. Cecil Clay started from this place on Thursday last, with a corps of raftsmen, for the purpose of rafting logs down the Greenbrier to his mill at Ronceverte. We wish him abundant success and great good luck in his enterprise. He has thousand of logs now in the river awaiting a favorable opportunity for rafting and present indications favor the work he has now in hand. 34
No information has been located on where these logs were cut or the success of the 1874 drive.
No references have been found as to whether there was a log drive in 1875.
The drive for 1876 began the year before, in July 1875, when SLB&M gave a three year contract to Ferdinand P. Hurxthal, of Philadelphia, to cut and deliver logs from the company’s land in Pocahontas County between Sitlington and Deer Creeks. According an article in the Independent on this operation, the work began in September with the building of a “splash dam” in Sitlington Creek, about two and a half miles from the river. Next a half mile of wooden tramroad was constructed. Two cars were used on the tramroad, each was drawn by one horse and took five to eight logs to the creek on each trip. The cutting crews under the leadership of John F. Weaver averaged eighty to hundred logs a day. John F. Bowes was in charge of the job of floating the logs to the river.35
(A splash dam was a dam constructed in a stream above the cutting area. When time came to move the logs, water was released from the dam as needed to augment the natural flow in the stream. A common misconception is that logs were stored behind a splash dam and then suddenly released by the destruction of the dam.)
The Greenbrier Independent gave a summary of the 1876 drive in a September article:
In the early part of February, 1876, the work of floating on the river was commenced, to facilitate this 32 sticks of white pine, 30 and 40 feet long, were hewn out equal portions and rafted into a float 20×70 feet upon which a shanty or cabin (called by the boys the “Floaters’ Home”) 16×25 feet, and arranged to give sleeping quarters for twenty-five men, the one-half being reserved for cooking, eating and stoves; a good cooking-stove with a cook who deserves credit for the good cooking, order and cleanliness with which he performed his duties.
The Pilot, D. W. Weaver, who took upon himself the responsible task of controlling and giving direction of the raft, has won laurels for himself as being the first to navigate the Greenbrier with a craft of such dimensions, as it was predicted it would not go five miles without being wrecked, by his skill it has been safely moored in the safe and pleasant harbor of Ronceverte. The one having charge of the drive has fully proven himself equal to the task and the practicability of floating logs down the river, and deserves great credit for his uniform kindness to the men, and they for their prompt action and cheerful compliance in carrying out his orders. Their deportment throughout the whole drive is worthy of special notice. They were furnished with four meals daily–hot coffee with good nourishing food always relished by them, but never any liquor.36
Logging The Greenbrier Valley 