Part 4 - Our Barn's a New Yorker?

A feature of the barn that perplexed me was that throughout the barn, timbers have seemingly random auger holes, generally paired 4"-6" apart, though occasionally tripled up. The orientation of these holes on the timbers indicates that they have no relation to the current structure. Although some are found on interior faces of columns, where they could conceivably be left over from a peg ladder, many are also found on the underside or top of beams, or on the outside of a column where they were covered by siding. On any given timber the holes will only be found on one face. Many of the boards in the mow floor as well as some of the sheathing on the lower walls also have these holes in them.

Photos by Tevis Stites-Robertson

Examples of raft holes found on sawn timbers in the hay mow in the Henry Phillips Barn.

These holes had been perplexing me from the start, though I had never spent much time worrying about them. In the beginning of December, their explanation came to me suddenly. I put them together with the knowledge that these timbers were all hemlock, a timber that does not grow locally and hasn't for quite a few thousand years, and a picture I found in Eric Sloane's Handbook of Early American Tools.

The theory had always been that the hemlock timbers in the barn had their source in the upper reaches of the Delaware and were floated down the river and milled locally. What Sloane's book did was give me an illustration of the method that was used to float timber down the river.

Method for lashing logs together to form rafts. Holes were bored in the logs either side of the lash poles. U-shaped bows were then fitted over the poles and anchored in the holes with pegs. The holes later appear in the beams, floor planks and other lumber sawed from the logs.

Timber was cut in the winter in the western Catskill Mountains, at the headwaters of the Delaware River. It was assembled on a level stretch of riverbank into a raft. The rafts typically measured from 16 to 36 feet wide and 100 to 200 feet long. The logs were held in place with lash poles laid across them. Holes were bored into the logs on either side of the lash poles, and into these holes bent ash or hickory bows were placed, and held in place with ash plugs or pins. These paired auger holes are what we see in many of the timbers in the Phillips Barn.

Photo courtesy of Bob and Carol Meszaros

Timber rafts built on the shores of the Delaware River await spring high water to carry them to mills farther south.

In the spring melt, the river would rise, and the rafts were built in a place where the flood would set them afloat. Once the rising water lifted them, they were floated down the river, mostly bound for Philadelphia for export up and down the East Coast as well as overseas. Two oarsmen guided the rafts, one fore and one aft, who steered the raft by means of oars mounted to thirty-foot poles fastened to the ends of the raft. Since the rafts could only navigate the rapids of the river in the spring flood they often reached great speeds, occasionally upwards of 100 miles per hour. It was unfortunately not terribly uncommon for the steersman to lose control of a raft and the raft to be destroyed upon rocks or the pier of one of the many bridges. However, the price that the lumber brought was worth the risk. Prior to the civil war, the forehands on a raft were paid $15 for a trip to Trenton and the steersmen, who manned the rear oar and were typically more experienced, received $25. They were not paid expenses for their return trip. The Delaware only permitted boat travel in one direction and to get home many raftsmen traveled across New Jersey to New York City, by boat up the Hudson to Newburgh or Kingston, and then by coach or foot across to the upper reaches of the Delaware.

Because of their size and the speed of the river, the rafts could only be stopped in certain places along the river. At such eddys and landings the river trade built the local economy. At a landing where the raftsmen could tie up for the night there would sometimes be over 200 men searching for lodging in a single night at the height of the rafting season. The raftsmen supported many taverns along the river.

Photo from collection of Bob and Carol Meszaros

Timber raft passing under the bridge at Washington's Crossing, 1907.

Not all of the rafts made it to Trenton or Philadelphia. Sawmills along the river bought rafts of lumber and sawed it for local use. There were two such sawmills in Lambertville. John Lequear, writing in the Hunterdon Democrat in 1870, stated that, "all of the Pine lumber that was used in this part of the state was rafted down the Delaware. Hundreds of thousands of feet of lumber were cut here at our mills [in Lambertville] and brought from this place to Plainfield and Somerville." There were also two mills in Titusville that supplied the local area with sawn timber from the river rafts. One or more of these mills may not have been in operation when the Phillips barn was built and there is no way of knowing from which of the mills Henry Phillips bought his hemlock timber.

The Delaware lumbering trade started in the late eighteenth century and was at its peak in the first half of the nineteenth during the period when the Henry Phillips barn was built. White pine was the main timber coming down the river in the early years but, as the easily accessible stands were cut, hemlock began to replace pine as the principle wood coming down the river.

While the barn is framed with hemlock, the sills are made out of a different material. The sill plates are the timbers laid on top of the foundation and upon which the wall is set. These timbers are in close proximity to the ground which makes them typically rot out more quickly than any other timbers in the barn. Hemlock rots fairly easily so Henry Phillips used more rot resistant woods for the sills of his barn, namely white oak and chestnut. Both of these species grew on nearby Baldpate Mountain, a portion of which Phillips owned. These sill pieces are hand hewn and raise the question of why Phillips did not bring his timber to one of the nearby sawmills to have them sawn. One possibility is that the cost of transport and milling was prohibitive. The other possibility is that the local sawmills could not easily saw hardwoods such as oak and chestnut. The saw marks on the hemlock timbers in the Phillips barn show that they were sawn using a water-powered, vertical, straight bladed, reciprocating saw. This type of sawmill was much slower and less powerful than the later circular saws. Circular saws had already been invented and introduced by the Shakers at the time the Phillips barn was built but had not been universally adopted. The barn is clear evidence that the local sawmills were still using the old style of saw in the 1840s. While some mills with a good water source were able to saw oak and chestnut in the vertical reciprocating mills, it was fairly common for oak and chestnut to be hand hewn until the time of the introduction of circular-bladed saws. A couple of good men could often hew out a timber more quickly than it could be sawn and, if it is done by the farmer himself, for significantly less cash outlay even though it would have taken more time.

Tevis Stites-Robertson came to Howell Farm as an intern in the Sustainable Farming Internship Program and stayed on as the farm's caretaker and assistant carpenter.

Part I - Intro | Part 2 - Unearthing the Past | Part 3 - Opening up Doors |
Homepage | List of Furrow Articles