icon for Home page
icon for Kid's Home page
icon for Digital Collection
icon for Activities
icon for Turns Exhibit
icon for In the Classroom
icon for Chronologies
icon for My Collection

Things To Do
Dress Up | 1st Person | African American Map | Now Read This | Magic Lens | In the Round | Tool Videos | Architecture | e-Postcards | Chronologies | Turns Activities

Send an E-Postcard of:
Cutting Trees in Deerfield Lumber Co.'s Woods

front
(c) Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association, Deerfield MA. All rights reserved.
Contact us for information about using this image.

Cutting trees for lumber and firewood was traditionally done in the winter months. Slippery snow and frozen ground made snaking out logs easier than doing so on dry ground. Cut trees were sledded out on trails more easily than on wagons. Ideally, wood cut in the winter seasoned all year before it was used for fuel or building material. Much of southern New England was deforested by the 19th century, when an average family used as much as 20-30 cords of wood every year for heating and cooking. Most New England logging was done in northern New Hampshire and Maine. Cut logs were floated down rivers in "log drives" to lumber mills farther south. This postcard of men cutting wood for the Deerfield Lumber Company illustrates the cold and hazardous work of cutting trees.

 

top of page

Share this image with a friend.
Simply enter their e-mail address below and we'll send them this image in an e-mail greeting, along with a link to see the image on our site.

To E-Mail Address *
From E-Mail Address *
From Name
Message

* = Required


button for Side by Side Viewingbutton for Glossarybutton for Printing Helpbutton for How to Read Old Documents

 

Home | Online Collection | Things To Do | Turns Exhibit | Classroom | Chronologies | My Collection
About This Site | Site Index | Site Search | Feedback