persistence pays off: I found a picture of a stup puller in this document: http://www.mcmillanlibrary.org/rosholt/photo-album-of-the-past/pionscen1/images/00000005.pdf
How did the pioneers clear the land?
- Thread starter Yoga Face
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yes they took stumps out so they could build that house on the hill but
I suspect they took only a small fraction of all the stumps out
those stumps in your bush were not taken out by the settlers
waaaaaaayy too much work
they waited until they had chain saws and tractors and backhoes and bulldozers
It may be that we are both right
The stumps were removed but only a few by the first settlers
It says in http://www.mcmillanlibrary.org/rosho...s/00000005.pdf
where the lumber was valuable the lumber companies took the trees out then the farmers got the land (did this happen in Southern Ontario?)
then the farmers had to clear the brush
Pulling the stumps was the last thing they did as they let them rot for years
Then they pulled them out with oxen and tree pullers
Also the final stumps were removed after WW1 because the government had excess supplies of dynamite that blew them up
The original settlers took only a few stumps out as they had to let the roots rot
and it took 200 years before they got them all out
Why was my method of smoldering the stumps not used ????? I still say it was one method that was used just not mentioned in this article
Only if you can precisely predict when it's gonna fall.
In fact you are right there, as often and along as possible, because you've got crops to tend and don't have time to traipse back into the woods to make a tree fall in a couple of years. You're felling trees to make room for more growing space to feed your growing family. That's the reason you put safety aside and attempt two-man jobs alone, climb heights you might fall from with the nearest help miles away, work with improvised or worn-out and dangerous tools, because you're under huge pressure to survive, and there's simply not the time, resources or room to do things as you'd like or as later generations might imagine.
Girdling is a labour-efficient way to deal with trees you can wait for, and don't care what tangled mess their randomly-timed falling makes, or that the tree may be rotting on the ground by the time you next see it. The others you cut. Notching to control fall is an imprecise business, and practised woodmen start by clearing the ground where the tree hopefully will land, which is wasted effort unless you log-out the fall. If you postponed planting to drop a tree on it, you move as fast as you can to get that growing space back, and you use whatever methods max your always too few hours and too little cleared land.It's not a spare moment deal. Those folks only had spare moments in winter when the farm was dormant. That's when they turned to cash-cropping what woods were around, as transport was easier. But cash soon meant dad and the older boys going north to hire on in the camps operated by profit-making entrepreneurs, as as individual pioneers trading a couple of logs to the local mill in exchange for cut planks to build with became relics of the past. They evolved as quick as they could just like we do. If you don't have a rotary dial phone (they still work on the system), or a tube TV after a decade, there's no reason to imagine they girdled trees any longer than it took to get cash for a long saw. We do what we can as fast as we can the best we can to cope.
All this stuff is extremely well documented, as it pretty much all happened after 1800 in this neck of the woods and the folks who first took up the land grants were well-to-do and educated. By the middle of the century they were being photographed doing it. The Public Library has all sorts of books if digging in the Provincial Archives up at York or the City Archives on Spadina aren't your taste. The folks out at Black Creek Village are not only bustin' to talk about such stuff, they have everything they need to do hands on demos.
Surmise and speculation are fun, although unnecessary, but utterly pointless in a disagreement.
Just a note on portages: Of course the native paths pre-existed any pioneer roads, and of course the more traffic, the more effort making a road pays off. But individuals don't make roads, organized, disciplined group enterprises with resources do, so it takes another sort of pioneering that comes somewhat after homesteading uncleared land to put a portage road around rapids. Rapids don't exist where the land is flat. Flat land makes swamps, and a portage around them on higher ground can take miles. Rapids are when water gushes over a rocky, precipitous slope, so roadbuilding up the slope, over and around the rocks is arduous and difficult. Of course there would be a way around, but in no way could you assume an easy, or cheap one.
Which is why, back in pioneer days, their thought was to build canals, with locks around the rapids, rather than roads. Then the Steam Age and the Industrial Revolution came along, so before us late-starting Canucks got more than a couple of wee canals built, the rail roads took over. But in 1817 the more prosperous Americans started the Erie Canal all the way across New York to float cargoes thru Buffalo to New York City. It was still a paying proposition well into the last Century and it's a marvel to this day.
That's one reason surmise about history is treacherous. European immigrants had been used to canals as the ordinary way to do transport for a century. To them even the average city street was dirty, foul unpaved sloppy thing, and a country road uncertain, unsafe, and definitely un-improved and un-maintained. But we imagine only roads, occasionally rail roads, and never consider canals at all. But the next time you cross the Don at Gerrard or Queen, ask yourself howcum that stretch is ruler straight.
Yes I am speculating but I have discovered the stumps were left to rot before being pulled out
Then there was THIS INGENIOUS METHOD of removing trees :
“Take a long shanked auger, bore two holes, one above the other, at an angle so they will meet some distance inside; after which some pitch fagots are lit and introduced into the upper hole, the flame causing a suction of air from the lower hole, acting something like a blow pipe. The portion of the tree inside of the sap being more or less of a pitchy nature, burns with great rapidity and in a short time appears and roars like a huge furnace.“
Any thoughts as to why my method of smoldering the stumps to the depth underground required would not work???
While it might take years to smolder the stump it seems the easiest, safest, cheapest and fastest
As far as the Lachine rapids my understanding is it is not the steepness of the land that causes the rapids but the shape of the river and the rush of water creating standing waves
Building a road around the rapids to portage seems vital to me as that is the only way to get European goods to Toronto in the 1700's and would be a small job for an organized work force
We have the brilliantly built Rideau Canal in Ottawa that was built to carry troops and never used
And the Trent -Severn that was used to transport lumber to the ports of Lake Ontario
These canals were built by slave labor IE the Irish who were lied to and treated deplorably
A dark past of British Canada
The Lachine rapids were not the only set of formidable rapids on the St Lawrence. The Long Sault rapids, now long since buried under the Seaway near Cornwall, was not travellable by river boats until the early 1830's helped by the 34 mile Cornwall canal. Special equipped passenger boats dit it until the mid 1940's.
The only way available until the mid 19th century was by trade canoes that would not be able to carry lumber or timber,not because of it's weight, the large one could carry 3 tonnes, but more because of lumber hard angular characteristics. The last thing a voyageur/canoeist wants to do is portage, let alone have 12 guys hump a few tonnes of cargo across country.
The only way available until the mid 19th century was by trade canoes that would not be able to carry lumber or timber,not because of it's weight, the large one could carry 3 tonnes, but more because of lumber hard angular characteristics. The last thing a voyageur/canoeist wants to do is portage, let alone have 12 guys hump a few tonnes of cargo across country.
The text says that after 1900 the stump pullers used winches. That is the configuration I believe was used most.
As pointed out before, the risk of an underground fire that you can't fight and that may burn for years. Why would you destroy/waste perfectly good fire wood?
As said it is a primitive method typically used in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries when first settling otherwise virgin forest.
It as you mention elsewhere depends upon how early one is talking - in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in England there were only 29 river navigation improvement projects most of those in the eighteenth century. So if you are talking about a family of seventeenth century immigrants to the English Atlantic Colonies they didn't have all that much personal experience with canals. Of course the golden age of canal building was the late 1700's in Great Britain and the early 1800's in the U.S. and Canada. As you mention the Erie Canal opened in 1825, the Lehigh Navigation in 1829, the Rideau Canal in 1832, the Delaware Canal also in 1832. However canals in North America were very rapidly supplanted by Railroads. By 1841 what would become the New York Central's Water Level Route from Albany to Buffalo was in operation and by the early 1850's what would become the Pennsylvania Railroad's Main Line from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh.
Very good comments Oldjones!
what underground fire? the stump is going to burn for years? coal fires burn for years but one stump? the stump is good firewood?
Although the timber could have been floated down the St Lawrence, I have changed my mind about local farmers selling wood to Europe but their would have been a local market for wood
It makes more sense Europe got their wood from the coast until the canals were built
So it was the voyageur canoeists that brought the European goods to Toronto through the St Lawrence ??? They paddled upstream with a load of cargo?? and portaged around the rapids until they transferred the freight onto a great lakes ship once they got past all the rapids ???
Actually, it makes sense to build a road around all the rapids with a port at both ends
A simple dirt road 50 miles or so long should not be that difficult to do with a organized work force then horse and wagon could do the carrying
They got European goods here before the canals somehow
been there
they make beer from that period but i do not recall anyone there that could answer questions that have been posed in this thread
I'll let the engineers on TERB give you the detail of building 'a simple dirt road', let alone through the wilderness by hand, let alone maintaining it for heavy transport. The most famous dirt road in Canada is the Dempster Highway and it's construction and care was/is anything but simple, even with modern equipment.
Yes, there were European goods arriving in York, but they were packable, very durable, and able to be carried on the back of a voyageur. Try and think how fragile a birchbark canoe is. They are relatively light, can be easily repaired on the trail turn on a dime, but you can put you foot through them quite easily. You can't even let them touch the shoreline because you will damage them. You are not going to entrust lumber large volumes of other heavy goods to a beautify but fragile watercraft like that.
I believe that at the height of Napoleonic Wars something like about 80% of the lumber used to build the British navy was coming from Upper and Lower Canada, but it was the Ottawa River Valley and the East Coast that was the source.
are you guessing (like I am) or are you stating fact ??
Did I say they built a modern dirt road??? I DID NOT MEAN TO IMPLY THAT THEy DID
more like a wagon trail
A simple trail for wagons is easy to build
Look at the pioneers who went westward in their wagons
there was NO Road THEY JUST FOLLOWED EACH OTHER
amazingly, the tracks from these wagons are still visible
Unsure of what the St Lawrence banks were like back then but the St Lawrence flows close to ground level from what I have seen and banks are grass with a few trees and rocks
I do not see the problem in travelling this with wagons
there is also the tide to consider even as far inland as Montreal
you are thinking of a modern dirt road for modern traffic. A completely different animal
you are correct about the timber
I would think it first was harvested at the coast then along the Ottawa river then here once canals were built
The trent - severn canal was use to float timber to Lake Ontario then transported to Europe in the 1830s and was not completed for another 100 years
I said a lot so what facts are you referring to?
The wagons heading west didn't have many tree to deal with on route past Winnipeg/Kenora and something tells me they were built near Kenora/Rat Portage near the now border of Manitoba and Ontario, There were no roads to get them through the forests around the Lakehead and through now Northwestern Ontario It's real rocky Canadian shield, really dense and where it wasn't rocky, it was swampy. Any road way that did exist through the 19th century was for local use and not meant to connect and be a continuous travel way.
Read up on the history of the Northwest Company and the Hudson Bay Company and try not to repeatedly make these kinds of pure guesses.
Unless they were large trees of the right species, they would be of next to no value to the navy.
