Author: Josh Fox

Image of “The King’s Mark” Chesterfield New Hampshire Historical Society

Today, April 19th, 2025 marks the 250th anniversary of the “shot heard round the world.” The Battle at Lexington and Concord marked the beginning of the American Revolution. One of the causes of the revolution was the resentment felt by colonists of a king and parliament across the ocean asserting their authority on commercial issues. The famous Boston Tea Party in 1773 was a riot against the tax on tea but less well know is the Pine Tree Riot of 1772, which was a push against royal control of pine trees.

As an island nation, Britain relied on the might of the Royal Navy for much of its power. Ships of the time needed a lot of wood and the American Colonies provided a new and abundant source of available lumber. The eastern white pine was quickly singled out for as ideal for ship masts. White pine grows tall and straight, its wood is light but strong. The British Government sought to claim all desirable white pine trees for the Royal Navy though a series of White Pine Acts, also known as the Broad Arrow Policy.

The first of these Acts was in 1691 and was written into the Massachusetts Charter, which established the Province of Massachusetts Bay as a colony. This claimed all trees of 24 inches diameter or greater for the Royal Navy.

“.. for better providing and furnishing of Masts for our Royal Navy we do hereby reserve to us … ALL trees of the diameter of 24 inches and upward at 12 inches from the ground, growing upon any soils or tracts of land within our said Province or Territory not heretofore granted to any private person. We…forbid all persons whatsoever from felling, cutting or destroying any such trees without the royal license from us.”

As part of the enforcement “Surveyors of the King’s Woods” were assigned by the Crown to identify suitable “mast pines”. These pines were to be marked with the “King’s Mark”, a broad arrow marking. The broad arrow mark, a stylized arrow head, had been used to mark English royal property since the 14th century. It also had the added benefit of being easy to apply to trees, taking just three ax strikes to make.

Several other white pines acts were passed with the last in 1729. By this time the act has been expanded to the Colonies of Nova-Scotia, New-Hampshire, Massachusetts- Bay, the Province of Maine, Rhode Island and Providence Plantation, the Narraganset Country, Connecticut New York, and New Jersey. It said that no person in those colonies “shall presume to cut, fell, or destroy any white pine trees… without his Majesty’s royal license…”

An excerpt of the 1729 White Pine Act, The New York Gazette, November 17th, 1729.

Despite having many white pines, Pennsylvania seems to have mostly escaped these acts. This was perhaps due to the type of charter the Pennsylvania Colony had which made it a colony controlled by the Penn family.

Enforcement of the white pine acts was spotty and many colonists simply ignored them, yet the resentment of their existence and enforcement started to built up. It was not unheard of for colonist to harass or run off the surveyors trying to enforce the law. One such incident was the “Mast Tree Riot” of 1734 in Fremont, NH. Perhaps the most famous was the “Pine Tree Riot” in 1772, also in New Hampshire. During this 1772 riot, a mob of about 20 townsmen beat and drove off a sheriff and deputy who had been sent to collect a fine owed by a local sawmill for cutting “Royal” pines. Though a seemingly small event, this act combined with others like the Tea Party and growing revolutionary sentiments helped lead to the events at Lexington and Concord and the Revolutionary War.

The Pine Tree became a symbol of the patriot movement, a symbolic reclaiming of what had been claimed by the King. The pine tree appeared on early flags including the famous “Appeal to Heaven” Flag, used by naval ships commissioned by George Washington in 1775 as well as the Massachusetts State Navy. A pine tree flag on the cross of St. George is said to have been flown at the battle of Bunker Hill.

“An Appeal To Heaven” flag, Chase and Sanborn Coffee illustration, 1898

When he attended the 50th reunion of the Battle of Gettysburg in 1913, Micajah Weiss was honored as the oldest veteran in attendance. When he died a year later in September 1914 he was the oldest pensioner from the Civil War, but no one seemed to know exactly how old he was. He is reported to have been born some time between 1800 to 1803, but is also listed as having been born in 1810, 1811 and 1818 in various census records. He was born in Delaware Water Gap, PA, at a location listed as ‘Dancing Creek’ or ‘Dancing Rift.’ His grave stone has the dates 1801-1914. What is known is that he made his living as a farmer and a lumberman. He was known as an experienced raftsman, having taken hundreds of rafts down the Delaware River in his during his 55 year career in lumbering.

The first timber raft traveled down the Delaware River in 1764, piloted by Daniel Skinner. The last raft was floated down the Delaware in 1922. As such, Micajah was alive for most of the rafting-era of the Delaware River. It was reported that he would make the 100-mile return trip from Trenton, NJ, where he sold his rafts back to his home in Beaver Brook, NY, located just north of the PA boarder, on foot. He was also know to have made trips to Easton, PA, and on down the river to Philadelphia.

One of his obituaries noted that Micajah had wanted to take one last raft down the Delaware a few years before his death, “just to show the boys that he had not forgotten how”… he was eventually talked out of the idea.

In August 1862, Micajah enlisted in the Union Army with the 141st Regiment of the Pennsylvania Volunteers, Company G. Further complicating the mater of his age, he is listed on the Muster Roll as 44 years old, but this might have been a lie so as to not seem “too old” for duty. Whatever his real age, he was well past the age of conscription for the Army. When asked about what battles he was in his reply was “Most all of ’em.” In addition to Gettysburg the 141st was at Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, the Battle of the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, Cold Harbor and was even present at Appomattox Court House.

Micajah Weiss was honored at the 50th reunion of the Battle of Gettysburg as the oldest veteran present. Newspapers across the country picked up an article about his attendance. He was reported to have had his picture taken with Col. John Clem, who at 61 was the Youngest Veteran present and was at the time still an active duty military officer. Col. John Clem was better known as “Johnny Shiloh”, famous for his exploits as a young drummer boy.

Michajah would make the newspapers again the next year when he passed away on September 22, 1914. The New York Times listed his age as 114. The Orange County Times listed his age as 112. The Gettysburg Star and Sentinel split the difference. They listed his age as 112 in the head line and 114 in the article.

May the 4th be with you! What do you do when the Galactic Empire is invading your forest planet and your only defense involves cutting down trees, yet you are part of a pre-industrial society that hasn’t developed metal working technology? Just rely on your trusty, time tested stone ax!

The Ewoks were able to use their dense forest home to their advantage against a mechanized foe.

The forest planet of Endor was in reality California’s redwood forests, where the filming took place. The stone axe was in reality a foam headed prop, not suitable for cutting logs at all!

The Lumber Museum has two stone axe heads on display in our main exhibit.

These stone axe heads represent a 3/4 groove head style of groundstone axe. Stone axes and other stone implements were common objects used by the Native Americans who lived on the land that would become known as Pennsylvania, from the end of the last Ice Age to contact with Europeans. The Pennsylvania Lumber Museum resides in the traditional homeland of the Seneca Nation, one of the Six Nations of the Iroquois (Haudenosaunee) Confederacy.

Are people always after your lucky charms? Well, with a bit o’ the “Luck of the Irish” and a trusty chainsaw you can easily recover your lost, wish-granting gold coins. At least that’s how the titular Leprechaun (played by Warwick Davis) goes about it in the 1995 straight-to-video movie: Leprechaun 3.

The Leprechaun is using a McCulloch Electramac EM300s electric chainsaw… perhaps ‘McCulloch’ is Scot-Irish? While it isn’t the most powerful choice, this electric chainsaw is a sensible option for use indoors, bisecting the magician Fazio. There will be no build-up of CO2 fumes from a gasoline-powered engine to worry about; the Leprechaun may be out to murder those who take his coins, but at least he isn’t going to subject the audience to carbon monoxide poisoning.

The first mass-produced electric chainsaw was invented by Andreas Stihl in 1926 and it predated the introduction of a gasoline-powered saw by a year. It was a large, two-man saw weighing over 100 pounds. It sold well despite this drawback, remaining in production until 1948. The applications this saw could undertake were limited because of the need for a cord to connect it to an electric power source.

An electric chainsaw like the McCulloch Electramac EM300s is best suited to homeowners doing yard work, just as far as your extension cord can take you. As small/electric chainsaws are not well-suited to the rigors of forestry work or timber harvest, there are currently no electric chainsaws in the Lumber Museum’s collection (However, if anyone has a Stihl STG model that they want to donate, please let me know). The Lumber Museum does have a Stihl Model 017 light-weight 2-cycle chainsaw that was used by the PA Department of Conservation and Natural Resources (DCNR) at Susquehannock State Forest in the early 2000s, on display as an example of tools used in modern forestry work.

If you are interested in more information on McCulloch chainsaws and want to see one of the museum’s McCulloch saws, check out the December 2020 edition of the “What chainsaw did that movie use?” blog post.

And remember: if you happen to find a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, it’s probably best just to leave it be.

North-central Pennsylvania had many short line logging railroads that were incorporated in the late 19th and early 20th century in service of the lumber industry. These railroads often only lasted a few years as production would move elsewhere after land was clear cut or a mill closed. One such railroad was the Oleona Railroad Company which transported lumber cut in the Kettle Creek Valley. Incorporated in 1901, the Oleona RR ran eight miles from Cross Fork, PA to Oleona, PA. The Goodyear Lumber Company financed and built the railroad but the only trains that operated on it belonged to the Lackawanna Lumber Company and the Pennsylvania Stave Company. Eventually, the Oleona RR was combined with the Oleona and Germania Railroad, an independent operator with five miles of track from Oleona to Germania Brook, resulting in a single 13 mile-long short line. After the last lands owned by the Lackawanna Lumber Company in the Kettle Creek Valley were cut the railroad was sold to the American Sugar Refining Company in 1908, the parent company of the Pennsylvania Stave Company. When their stave mill, located in Cross Fork, closed in 1912, the Oleona Railroad was dismantled. The two Shay locomotives that operated on the line were transferred to other logging railroads owned by the Brooklyn Cooperage Company, a subsidiary of the American Sugar Refining Company.

Today, in honor of his 212th birthday, we look at Abraham Lincoln’s vampire hunting weapon of choice. Having died about 80 years before chainsaws were widely available, Abraham Lincoln had to do his rail splitting and vampire hunting with an axe.

While the axe in the movie poster above appears to be a Yankee or Delaware pattern, it seems that during the movie the 16th President favors a Baltimore-Kentucky pattern axe, perhaps an homage to his birth-state of Kentucky.

So, happy birthday to a great vampire hunter and an even greater President!

November 30th, 1908 was a good day for the Emporium Lumber Company. That day their band saw mill at Austin, Pa sawed an estimated 11,704 board feet of lumber from just eleven logs. The logs were a mix of cherry and poplar tress. To commemorate this day, and to show off, the company had pictures taken of the big haul on log cars before it was cut at the mill. During the photo development process the tree type and estimated board feet for each log was labeled on the film. “Sawed at Emporium Lumber Co’s Mill Austin, PA” and “11-30-08” also appear on the images.

Emporium Lumber must have been very proud of these logs as the PA Lumber Museum has multiples copies of each image in our collection. The images, along with other papers and archival materials, were donated to the museum by the descendants of William Sykes, one of the co-founders of the Emporium Lumber Company. Someone commented on the back of one of the photo postcards (LM76.12.75)- “Wonderful size for a Cherry Tree”.

The volume of a log was estimated in board feet, with one board foot measuring 12 x 12 x 1 inches, or any combination equating to 144 cubic inches. Estimations of log volume were made with the assistance of a timber scale stick, used to measure the length and diameter of a sawed log. The log scaler (the person who’s job it was to take the measurements) could then work out a mathematical formula which could differ depending on the type of scale used. For the Doyle scale, one of the more popular scales at the turn of the 20th century, the equation was L((D-4)/4)squared. “L” was the length of the log and “D” was the small end diameter of the log. To simplify this process, “Ready Reckoner” books contained sets of tables to assist in the estimation.