David Sumner, Hartland Lumber Baron

Rafting lumber down the Connecticut River was a common economic activity in the late 18^th century. The forests in Southern New England were becoming depleted, so increasing numbers of entrepreneurs in Northern New England took advantage of the burgeoning lumber market, cutting trees and shipping them down the river to be processed in sawmills downstream. The first real lumber baron on the Connecticut River was David Sumner of Hartland.

David Sumner was born into a fairly wealthy Claremont, New Hampshire family in 1776. His father was determined that he would graduate from college, but David was more interested in business than in academics. As a young adult, he trained in the mercantile business at Lyman's Store in White River Junction, then established his own store in Hartland.

In 1805, David married Martha Brandon Foxcroft, the daughter of a doctor in Brookfield, Masschusetts. He became an important person in Hartland. He was elected captain of the Hartland militia in the War of 1812, was a state legislator, justice of the peace, and Hartland's postmaster for 20 years. Often a storekeeper would be the postmaster, as the store was the logical place to have a post office. David became quite wealthy from these various ventures, and he also inherited an estate from his father.

In colonial New Hampshire, Governor Wentworth set aside 500 acres for himself in each township. These tracts of land were called “The Governor's Rights”. David's father, Benjamin Sumner, had purchased the Claremont tract from the Governor, and David inherited that land from him when he died. In 1816, David purchased several more “Governor's Rights” tracts from Governor Wentworth's widow. These tracts were in northern Vermont and New Hampshire, and contained huge quantities of lumber.

With these land acquisitions, David Sumner entered the lumber business. He employed crews of lumbermen to cut wood in the north country, then raft it down the Connecticut River. There were three canal and lock systems on the Connecticut River, at Wilder, Hartland, and Bellows Falls. Perez Gallup owned the canal and locks at Hartland, but when he died, Sumner bought the property from his estate, improved the canal and locks, and built a sawmill there. He built a second sawmill in Dalton, New Hampshire, which was run by his nephew. His fortune increasing by leaps and bounds, he built a mansion for himself and his wife, which is still standing in Hartland, and is now a Bed and Breakfast Inn.

In 1825, David Sumner's crews moved two million board feet of lumber from the Johns River in Dalton, New Hampshire to the mill at Hartland. That year, many of the logs were mast logs, which were still very valuable. Although they were more valuable, mast logs were so long and big that they often caused log jams. One of these log jams took 15 to 20 men a full day to pick apart, costing Sumner $8. That same year, thieves in Haverhill and Orford stole some of the logs.

Most of Sumner's logs were sent loose down the Connecticut River to Hartland, but often at Hartland, some were grouped into rafts and sent further South to be sawn into lumber under a contract. These rafts were piled high with shingles, potash and other wood products, destined for the Southern New England market. In 1832 a raft of three boxes of three boxes contained 26,614 board feet of lumber and shingles, headed down the Connecticut.

These huge boxes had to be dismantled to go through canals and over falls, and if the river was low it made things much harder for the crew. In 1824, the combination of low water and huge logs caused log jams at Millers Falls and Hadley Falls, Massachusetts, and the crew had to use crews of hired oxen working from the riverbank to break the jam. This was the heavy equipment available in that day. During this process, one man was drowned.

Driving logs downriver was dangerous work, especially in jams. The men actually “rode the logs”, even while trying to untangle a log jam. A sudden shift in logs could mean that a log driver would lose his footing and fall into the river. Many men who went for an impromptu swim simply made for the river's edge and emerged unharmed. Some, however, were overtaken by the current and swept downstream. Worse, a leg or arm could get pinned or crushed in a log jam, and a badly injured person can hardly swim to shore in fast current.

It was unusual for the drivers to make it all the way to Southern Massachusetts or Connecticut without encountering some type of difficulty. In 1824, they arrived at South Hadley Falls with 28 rafts loaded with wood products. It was Sunday, and neither the canal crews nor the Sumner crews would work. Finally, with enough extra money and persuasion, the crews went into action and the logs successfully went over the falls and the other products were safely transported through the locks.

Colonial Era Log Drives Down the Connecticut River

After leaving Cornish, I thought I would go across the river to Vermont. I already featured Windsor in my stories about Simeon Ide, so I googled Hartland, found the Hartland Historical Society website and clicked on “articles”. The first one that came up was a story about a logger, a 19 year old named Charles Barber.

Charles was 19 years old in 1895. He was from Cherryfield Maine, and was a riverman who worked for George Van Dyke, bringing logs down the Connecticut River from the Connecticut Lakes all the way to Mount Tom in Massachusetts. Where the river passes by Hartland, it gets rapid at Sumner Falls. Charles was riding a log when he fell off the log and drowned. His buddies retrieved his body from the water and brought it up onto the riverbank.

The boss was notified and the boss in turn notified Charles' father. Mr. Barber came all the way to Hartland from Cherryfield, Maine, collected the $300 of pay that Charles had coming to him, and whipped away before he could be pressured into taking his son's body home with him. Charles' friends, tough rivermen and loggers though they were, felt so horrified that the boy's father left his

son's body without the benefit of a decent burial, that they buried him along the riverbank with a tombstone. In recent years, the Hartland Historical Society has fenced off the grave and replaced the slab of stone with Charles' name on it with a nicer permanently engraved stone.

This story got me interested in the log drives down the Connecticut River. Connecticut River is the longest river in New England and was the primary mode of transportation for both goods and people for many years after the Upper Valley was first settled. The most important natural resource of Northern New England was its lumber. In the colonial era, the tall, straight pines were especially prized.

The first logs sent downriver in log drives were mast pines destined for the King's Navy. I wrote more about this earlier, but in a nutshell, the main masts of ships were built from one tall, strong tree. These trees no longer existed in England, but there were plenty in the New World, especially in New England. Colonists were not allowed to cut down these trees, either to get them out of the way, or to use them for themselves. Often a representative of the king would go through the forests and mark the biggest, straightest pines, thus reserving them for the king.

Ken Brauner, in his book “Log Drives on the Connecticut River” tells about a couple of Upper Valley settlers who ran afoul of the law when they cut down some of the king's mast pines. In 1769, a man named William Dean from Windsor cut down 16 mast trees. He claimed that he had cut them down to clear a meadow, which was illegal in any case, but the king's agents found some landed on the ice out in the river, in preparation for when the ice broke. Dean was arrested, along with his father and brother, sent to New York City, tried, convicted, and sentenced to four months in prison and fined 800 pounds.

Brauner also writes that, during the winter of 1772, a man named Wheelock from Hanover cut 1500 logs destined to be sold downriver, but before the ice broke, the felled trees were discovered by an agent of the king. In actuality, this was Eleazar Wheelock, the founder of Dartmouth College, and the full story is found in “A History of Dartmouth College and Hanover, New Hampshire”, by Frederick Chase. It seems that when the land was cleared to make what was to be the college green, some of the trees nearest the river were reserved for sale in Springfield (Massachusetts). Again, like in the Dean case, the logs were put out onto the ice of the river awaiting the spring thaw. Chase says, “The logs were marked 'D. C.' but through some oversight the 'broad arrow' was omitted” (In explanation – D.C. stood for Dartmouth College, and the broad arrow was the King's mark). Governor Benning Wentworth, who was usually a strong supporter of Wheelock and the college, was quick to write to Wheelock and advise him that, “I have had many complaints that your mark is used to cover logs in the Connecticut River which were illegally cut, and wish this circumstance would not circumscribe my power to render you services in the future.” Since the people in Springfield had already paid for the logs, Wheelock was in trouble both with the crown and the party in Springfield. Two years later, the case was still in court.

For almost two hundred years, the Connecticut River served as a highway transporting logs from the Canadian border and points South, to lumber yards in Massachusetts. Along the way, lumber barons got rich, and lumber jacks and rivermen earned wages cutting the logs, then making sure they reached their destination downriver. Many rivermen, like Charles Barber, lost their lives. Driving the logs down the river was a dangerous and physically demanding job.