By PAUL LOCHER
WOOSTER -- David Stanley wrote at length about the preparation of building material on the Wayne County frontier, noting the following:
"Big snows stopped all farm work except logging. If any building is planned for the year, the snow is very welcome, for on its slippery surface it is easy to slide great logs with only one end raised on the bob-sled."
He wrote, "In after days as the country developed, sawmills run by water power sprang up, and it was always hailed as lucky to be able to haul saw logs to the mill over the snow. But my memory goes back to a date before any saw mills existed in Wayne County, and I remember the old whipsaw, which few now living have seen operated.
"A pit is dug -- a passage into a bank -- over this (is) a platform to bear the saw log; over this log is a place for the sawyer who guides the saw, which is fixed to a vertical sapling so as to pull the saw vertically. The saw has two handles below, and a sawyer pulls the saw downward, bending the springlike sapling. The upward stroke of the saw cuts with the united strength of the bent sapling and the sawyer on top. The lower man is called the pit sawyer; he gets all the sawdust, which runs down upon him. The man above has the hardest work, but gets no sawdust, hence the saying, 'happy as the top sawyer.'
"Now by this laborious and slow process," Stanley wrote, "was cut out the lumber for doors and, if time and muscle afforded, the flooring of the best houses were sawed out the same way. Floors were, however, generally such as were called puncheon, which consisted of straight slabs, four to five inches thick, split the whole length of the log from straight and clear timber of the oak or chestnut and then hewn smooth and even."
Stanley remembered the schoolhouse he attended being "of hewed logs and measured 30 by 20 feet. On each side a log was cut out almost the entire length of the building and the opening thus made framed as a long, narrow window in which was oiled paper instead of glass.
The doors were two in number and placed opposite each other in the front and rear. The chimney was what was called a hanging chimney. At least 15 feet of the end of the house under this huge hanging chimney was backed up with stone and mortar constituting the back wall of the fireplace.
The wood for this huge fireplace was in logs 10 or 15 feet long, and once in two or three days, one of the farmer boys came in the morning with a stout horse, hitched onto the end of a log and, opening both doors, drove through the school house, snaking the log in; whence it was rolled into the fireplace. Enough logs were piled in so that a fire once started would last for three days at least.
Long benches and long writing desks were hewed out of solid timber, and there were a great many wooden pegs to hang our clothes upon."
Source: "Personal Memoirs of Major-General David S. Stanley"
Next: Making clothing at home
Sunday: Tanning hides and processing wool
Reporter Paul Locher can be reached at 330-682-2055 or email@example.com.