Rafting Down the Connecticut

From the time of the first settlements along the Connecticut River, the river was used to transport logs downstream to be sold in southern colonial New England. Mast pines were sent downriver loose, but later, colonists learned to bundle logs together in rafts to make the logs easier to control and keep track of.

Early settlers fastened logs together to make cheap vehicles for transporting commercial goods down the river. Colonial farmers from Vermont and New Hampshire supplemented their income by making potash, shingles and clapboards, then shipped them downriver on rafts. When the rafts reached their destination, not only could the products be sold, but the rafts themselves were broken up and the logs sold as well. Soon northern lumbermen realized that building rafts was a more efficient way of getting their logs downriver than by floating them loose.

Landowners on the banks of the river agreed, since loose logs that got washed up on shore were a nuisance, and loose logs floating everywhere could cause significant damage to moorings, bridges and mills, especially during the unexpected high waters that followed heavy rains. In 1808 the New Hampshire legislation passed a law that stated that all loose logs that ended up in farmers' meadows could be kept by the farmers. Logs that had broken free from rafts could be retrieved by the lumberman for up to 90 days after their loss. At the end of ninety days they became the property of the farmer.

The many falls at the northern end of the Connecticut River made it tough for raftsmen to get their logs downriver. Loose logs could go right over the falls but the rafts had to be pulled out and portaged over land at every falls. Rafters were already doing this with the rafts that carried products downstream, but those were smaller than the log rafts. Townspeople that lived near falls made a lot of money using their wagons and teams of oxen to move these rafts and goods around the dams. Before long, canals were being built to allow vessels to circumnavigate the falls without leaving the water.

Nationwide, many canals, including the Bellows Falls canal, claim to be the first canal in the United States. The Bellows Falls canal was opened for ships in 1802. There was a canal at Sumners Falls in Hartland and Olcott Falls in Wilder. In Massachusetts, there were canals at Turners Falls, Millers Falls and South Hadley. A canal was built in Windsor Locks, Connecticut to facilitate the last part of the voyage to the sea.

Simply put, canals are artificial waterways, built to bypass falls, rapids, or shallow water. Ships leave the river, enter the canals, and reenter the river at the end of the canal. In the case of a waterfall, the change in elevation between the top of the fall and the bottom of the fall necessitates a series of locks. Locks are a series of gates that hold back water. A vessel enters the lock, and the lock fills up with water. The ship travels down the canal to the next lock, and the gate lets out enough water to lower the vessel to the next lock. The vessel travels down the canal to the next lock, and the same process happens again until the vessel is lowered to the level of the end of the waterfall, and the vessel leaves the canal and reenters the river. The same process happens in reverse for vessels coming up river. The log rafts never returned upriver, but were dismantled at lumber mills downriver.

Before the canals were built, log rafts were quite large, but later rafts had to be smaller to fit through the canals. The logs that comprised the rafts were usually 60 feet long. Sometimes the rafts were built in sections called boxes. The complete rafts were floated downriver, broken into individual boxes to get them through the canals, then reassembled in the river at the end of the canals. A lumber company often sent gangs of rafts downriver together, and hired a crew to accompany them down the river. The crews usually consisted of a pilot, several raftsmen and a cook. The cook plied his trade on a little shanty built on one of the rafts. That raft was often the size of one box, so that it didn't have to be disassembled when going through the locks. (I couldn't find exactly what I wanted for a photo online. This one shows how the logs were joined together in sections. Each of these sections was called a box).

C.W. Bliss, a merchant in West Fairlee in the late 1800's, was a cook on a gang of rafts when he was 18. He told his story to historian Lyman Hayes, and it has been quoted in multiple publications since. There were 18 rafts and 18 men bringing them down the river. Bliss said that it took two men to navigate the rafts, so they brought nine rafts down the river as far as possible, catch a train back to the other nine, and then bring them down the river. The shanty divided in half, with one half used for cooking, and one half used for sleeping quarters, which consisted of straw thrown on the floor of the raft. C.W. cooked on an iron stove with an elevated oven. He bought white bread and made brown bread, cooked potatoes and beans, and tea and coffee. He says, “these constituted the whole bill of fare”.

The lumberman C.W. worked for was a man named Richardson, from Orford. He followed the rafts by train, but came aboard the shanty raft often. Bliss was hired at the “Wilder locks” to travel with the rafts as far as Holyoke. He was paid $1.50 a day and says that the pilots were paid $3.00 a day. There were two spots in the river that were especially dangerous. For these spots, Richardson hired local pilots who knew the rocks and currents intimately, and paid them to guide the rafts safely through those danger zones.

When they got to Bellows Falls, C.W. says it took three days for the men to break the rafts into boxes for the trip through the canal. The men all tried to be extra fast so that their raft would be the first to enter the canal. He says that there were close to five hundred people gathered on the sides of the river watching them work. This would seem to indicate that it was an unusually large shipment of rafts.

At sundown, many of the crew went in to Bellows Falls to drink at the many taverns that catered to the river trade. C.W. describes a half breed Indian named Sam Flint, a crew member who was 6 ft 4 inches tall and was very strong. He was a popular man when it was time to go into the town, as he was an intimidating body guard in the event of a bar fight.

At Holyoke, C.W. left the crew and headed home. Richardson had decided to ship the logs further down the river, to Middletown, Connecticut. Richardson asked C.W. To stay on, but he was done. He had signed on to see some of the country, but was ready to get back to his comfortable bed and his mother's home cooking in Corinth, Vermont.

C.W. Bliss grew up to own a store in West Fairlee. He was also an undertaker. Although his real name was Charles Wesley, most people knew him as “C.W.” In fact, his marriage license lists him as C.W. I have heard the story of C.W.'s trip down the Connecticut River before, and I have always wondered where he learned to cook and how he convinced Richardson to hire him to cook for a raft crew, as an 18 year old from Corinth.