by Thomas C. O’Donnell, edited and with commentary by William J. O’Hern
The Forager Press, LLC
Thomas O’Donnell’s reminiscences of his boyhood in a remote lumbering settlement provide an amusing and entertaining description of family life in a nineteenth-century logging camp. The account is not a history of logging the old-growth pine in the Lake States – not primarily. Rather, the reader is given an interesting portrayal of an active boy growing up in a distant North Woods location in the central part of Lower Michigan. His father had obtained a large cut of timber, and in the mid-1880s moved his young family into a log home that he built for them. A log bunk house held the logging crew, and occasionally another family took up residence nearby. Family life and lumber camp life were two lifestyles that were rarely found together anywhere in the big timber country.
You will chuckle as Tom O’Donnell describes how he and his older brother Fred found plenty to keep themselves busy as only young boys could in the remote woods, as well as the trouble they encountered. Emulating one of his father’s loggers, six-year old Tom started smoking a dried elm root and soon tried tobacco. But when young Nora Jones, from a nearby resident family, stated that she would never marry a man who smoked, Tom quickly threw away a beautiful pipe that a logger had made for him from an elm burl. Tom was intrigued by the Saturday night dances in their home and how the loggers’ caulked boots would throw up splinters and leave the floor pock-marked. Singing camp songs was a part of a logger’s life in the 1800s; the songs in Michigan were quite similar to those sung by the woodsmen in the camps of northern New England.
The settlement established by Tom’s father was not in complete isolation. Peddlers traveling among the remote lumber camps would bring news from the outside world. You will meet a local character named Old Man Wright, who once became lost because he did not trust his compass. He kept firing off a gun to let the loggers know he was lost, but would wander off before he could be found. After he was finally safe at camp, Tom’s father kindly told the weary men that they needed a rest and could sleep until 6:00 the next morning before heading for the logging job.
You will smile as Tom relates his introduction to school. There were a few other children in the logging settlement, but Tom was still surprised to learn that he had to attend school whether he wanted to or not. Tom’s father eventually built a one room log structure for use as a school house, but first a teacher was needed, and a young lady answered the job inquiry, accepting a wage of $30/month plus room and board. Upon arrival, she was dismayed to learn that there was as yet no school house; classes were held in the home. But it wasn’t long before the young gal was romanced by one of the men in a nearby settlement, and the marriage was conducted by Tom’s father in his own home. The reader will be amused by Tom’s description of the “shivaree” the new couple were subjected to on their wedding night.
Tom’s young life was an adventuresome one in that era before boys felt that they had to be entertained by television and electronic devices. He had his own peavey at age six and used it when he and his brother, plus a couple other boys, decided to copy the big guys and have their own logging job. There weren’t enough boys to make up the crew; thus a neighbor girl named Rosie was used as the scaler. The two-foot-long longs were rolled into the brook at high-water, never to be seen again. Many interesting photos are included, most of suitable clarity. I found it disappointing, however, that the captions seldom included the location and identification of people pictured.
Thomas C. O’Donnell became “aged in wood,” as his grandson put it, and found that his schooling sparked a “calling” to write professionally. He soon achieved a career as an author and magazine editor in the United States and England. During his retirement in the Adirondacks, he began to compose this book, but never was able to complete it. Author William O’Hern, with the permission of grandson Thomas A. O’Donnell, has posthumously reshaped Thomas C. O’Donnell’s unfinished manuscript to provide this interesting picture of life in the North Woods.