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Northern Pine Lumbermen: A Study in Origins and Migrations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 February 2011

Frederick W. Kohlmeyer
Frederick W. Kohlmeyer
Affiliation:
Columbia University
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Extract

The work of converting the undeveloped forest resources of the Lake States into usable forms absorbed the energies of thousands of individual entrepreneurs. Their combined activity was scarcely able to meet the insatiable demand from the growing number of settlements that dotted the Midwestern prairies and from villages throughout the nation that were growing into towns or mushrooming into major cities. A universal building material was indispensable during a time of rapid economic expansion. Moreover, in the prevailing Age of Wood, white pine lumber, of the finest quality and incredibly low in price, was fortuitously available in abundance.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 16 , Issue 4 , December 1956 , pp. 529 - 538
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1956

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References

1 The information and generalizations presented, including the statistical tables, where not specifically noted, have been compiled from the following sources: Hotchkiss, George W., History of the Lumber and Forest Industry of the Northwest (Chicago, 1898)Google Scholar; American Lumbermen (Chicago, 1905–1906)Google Scholar, 3 vols.; Fries, Robert F., Empire in Pine: the Story of Lumbering in Wisconsin, 1830–1900 (Madison: Wisconsin State Historical Society, 1951)Google Scholar; Larson, Agnes, History of the White Pine Industry in Minnesota (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1949)Google Scholar; W. H. C. Folsom, “History of Lumbering in the St. Croix Valley with Biographical Sketches,” and Stanchfield, Daniel, “History of Pioneer Lumbering on the Upper Mississippi and its Tributaries with Biographic Sketches,” Minnesota Historical Society, Collections, 9: 291–362 (1898–1900)Google Scholar; Leonard, J. W. and Marquis, A. N. (eds.), Who's Who in America, a Biographical Dictionary of the United States (Chicago: A. N. Marquis & Co., 1899–1912), 7 vols.Google Scholar; Johnson, Allen and Malone, Dumas (eds.), Dictionary of American Biography (New York: Chas. Scribner's Sons, 1928–1944)Google Scholar; Wickstrom, George W. and Ainsworth, Charles P., Always Lumber, the Story of Dimock., Gould & Co. 1852–1952 (Rock Island: Augustana Book Concern, 1952)Google Scholar; Edward Hines Lumber Company, Fifty Years Edward Hines Lumber (Chicago, 1942)Google Scholar; The Winona Daily News, Centennial Edition, November 19, 1955; numerous obituaries from the St. Paul Pioneer Press, Burlington Gazette, Rock Island Argus, Chippewa Herald Telegram, and other newspapers; biographies and privately printed Memorial Booklets. Extensive use was made of two lumber journals, the Mississippi Valley Lumberman, and American Lumberman; and liberal use was also made of material collected in Winona, St. Paul, Tacoma, and other locations for the history of the Weyerhaeuser Associated enterprises.

2 Of the other lumbermen three were of a Scandinavian parental line, three French, one Belgian, and one Swiss-German-American.

3 Twenty-seven lumbermen attended an academy, high school, normal school, seminary, commercial or business college, college, or university.

4 Current, Richard N., Pine Logs and Politics, a Life of Philetus Sawyer, 1816–1900 (Madison: Wisconsin State Historical Society, 1950), p. 13Google Scholar; Mississippi Valley Lumberman, XXXII (February 15, 1901), 15.Google Scholar

5 Fries, Empire in Pine, pp. 125–127.

6 Mississippi. Valley Lumberman, XXXIV (January 30, 1903), 37.Google Scholar

7 Memorial Booklet, James Edwin Lindsay (privately printed), copy in office of Lindsay & Phelps, Davenport, Iowa.

8 Richard G. Wood, A History of Lumbering in Maine, 1820–1861, The Maine, Bulletin, XXXVII (January 1935)Google Scholar, University of Maine Studies, Second Series, No. 33, Ch. 12, “The Emigration of Maine Lumbermen”; Stanchfield, “History of Pioneer Lumbering on the Upper Mississippi”; Atwater, Isaac, History of the City of Minneapolis (New York: Munsell & Co., 1893), p. 527Google Scholar; Folsom, W. H. C., Fifty Years in the Northwest (St. Paul: Pioneer Press Co., 1888)Google Scholar, passim.

9 Larson, History of the White Pine Industry in Minnesota, p. 229.

10 From various manuscripts in the St. Louis County Historical Society, Duluth, prepared under the direction of the W. P. A. Writers’ Project. See also Northwestern Lumberman (January 7, 1893), P. 9, and Mississippi Valley Lumberman, XXVIII (Oct. I, 1897), 20Google Scholar, for statements regarding the source of capital for the purchase of northern Minnesota pinelands. By 1899 it was estimated that $20,000,000 of capital accumulated in the Saginaw Valley had been invested in timber and lumbering properties elsewhere. American Lumberman (June 17, 1899), p. 40.

11 Mississippi Valley Lumberman, XXXI (March 16, 1900), I; American Lumbermen, I (1905), 319Google Scholar; II (1906) 21–24.

12 American Lumberman (August 23, 1902), p. 1. For an illustration of a medium-sized firm that maintained similar facilities see Reynolds, A. R., “Wisconsin Lumbering Frontier: Daniel Shaw Lumber Company, a Type Study,” unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Minnesota Library, 1949.Google Scholar

13 American Lumberman (April 12, 1902), p. 1.

14 American Lumberman (February 24, 1900), p. 1.

15 Hotchkiss, History of the Lumber and Forest Industry of the Northwest, p. 619.

16 Anecdote related by F. E. Weyerhaeuser, MSS. in Weyerhaeuser Papers, St. Paul.

17 See Stephenson, Isaac, Recollections of a Long Life, 1829–1915 (Chicago: R. R. Donnelley & Sons, 1915).Google Scholar