 | A history of Caroline county, Virginia |  |
LUMBER MANUFACTURING
The first sawed lumber in Caroline was manufactured by the
pit and whipsaw method. It took two men to operate those
primitive machines. A hole was dug in the ground, over which
a crude scaffold was built. The log was then put on the scaffold
and one man stood in the pit below the log while the other stood
and then "lined" on the upper and lower sides at every place
where it was to be sawed. This was sometimes done with pokeberry
juice. The men then drew the saw up and down through
the log, sawing off a board about every hour. Two able-bodied
men could hardly saw more than two hundred feet per day in
this way. This method was assisted later by water power mills,
using an up-and-down sliding frame with straight saw in the
center with the log fed to the saw on rollers, later by the log fed
to the saw on a carriage and using headblocks to set the log out
to cut off each board, the carriage being gigged back by hand.
Later the circular saw was introduced. Captain Henry H.
George built "Thornberry" in Caroline County, making the bricks
for his house on the premises and sawing the timbers and the
lumber for his house with a whipsaw, using one man in the pit
below the saw-log and one or two men on the scaffold above the
pit, sawing all of the lumber for his home and the various buildings
on his farm of Thornberry by man power.
Sometimes in the later fifties Captain H. H. George purchased
a steam engine and boiler and a circular sawmill and planted this
mill on his farm "Thornberry"—sawed lumber for himself and
for his neighbors, which business was carried on until the beginning
of the Civil War. During the latter part of the War, Captain
George was detailed to saw timbers and lumber for the Confederate
Government to use in building the fortifications around Richmond
and other Government uses. He went back to his regiment after
this was done and returned to his home after Lee's surrender at
Appomattox.
On reaching "Thornberry" he found it stripped of everything
movable, by the Union troops who had visited that section
many times during the return of the Northern Army to Washington,
but found the troops had not destroyed the saw mill. He
got to work as soon as possible and began sawing lumber and
continued in this business of manufacturing and selling lumber
until within a few years of his death, which occurred at his home
on June 26, 1902, in his seventy-ninth year.
Archie S. George went into the saw mill and lumber business
with his father, Captain H. H. George, in the year 1882 and they
continued the business for several years and finally sold their
mill to Joseph and Cecil L. Baker and Captain H. H. George
forty years.
Lewis D. George engaged in the lumber business in June,
1879, with his father, Henry H. George, and Mr. John George
Coleman and this firm continued actively in the business of
manufacturing lumber until October 1, 1881, at which time H. H.
George, Jr., second son of Captain H. H. George, bought out the
interest of John G. Coleman, in the same business and then
L. D. George and H. H. George, Jr., traded their father H. H.
George, Sr., two farms for the saw mill and logging outfit and they
ran the business as George Brothers from October 1, 1881, to
April, 1887, at which time L. D. George bought his brother's
interest in the business.
L. D. George has been in the business continuously from June
1879, at which time he bought an interest in the business with
his father and John G. Coleman, until the present time. Having
no children and being desirous of perpetuating the business that
he had been years in building up, he incorporated the L. D.
George Lumber Company, in 1911 and later in 1915 he incorporated
the Rose Hill Lumber Co., Inc., a close corporation, all of the
stock being held by L. D. George, his wife, Carrie L. George,
and John W. Clarke, who is secretary of the company. They
have an up-to-date planing mill, a large woodworking shop,
well equipped machine shop and do all of their machinery and
other repairing, except casting. They make anything in woodwork
that is used in building, besides many specialties for the
Northern markets. They manufacture every specie of lumber
from native Virginia hardwoods and Virginia pine in every shape,
from framing lumber to the smallest moulding or turning.
When the George family began in the lumber business there
was no other in Caroline, or, so far as is known, in any adjoining
county. There has not been a time since 1850 that there has
not been one or more of this family in the business. When the
present head of the firm began sawing in 1879 there were only a
few mills in Caroline county, but within ten years after he began
in the business there were over forty mills sawing lumber in
Caroline and there are many mills in the county cutting lumber
today. Some of the men who have been in the business longest
have cut over the same tracts three to five times and there is
still timber to cut. During the past fifty years there has been
shipped from this county; possibly as much or more than from
any county in this section of the country.
There has, in former years, been great waste of material by
the crude manner of harvesting the timber and fitting it for
market. Millions of dollars of wealth have year after year gone
up in smoke from the slabs, edgings and trimmings made at the
saw mills, as well as tops of trees and large branches that have
been left to rot and go to waste, after the logs have been taken
from the trees.
| A history of Caroline county, Virginia | |