History of local lumbering days released in anniversary edition
Just in time for its 50th anniversary, a popular book about. Michigan’s white pine lumbering days is being reissued. “Lumberjack: Inside an Era in the Upper Peninsula” by William S. Crowe is being released in a golden anniversary edition this month. It will be officially unveiled at a pair of book-signings in Manistique.
Ann McGlothlin Weller of downstate Holland and Lynn McGlothlin Emerick of Skandia in Marquette County served as editor and consultant for the special edition. The book expands on their gi·andfather’s original book and the 1977 edition that was overseen by Crowe’s daughter, Helen Crowe McGlothlin. Both of the earlier editions have been long out-of-print.
Weller’ and Emerick are former Manistique residents and graduates of Manistique High School.
Their new edition of “Lumberjack” contains more than 75 historical photographs and illustrations, an expanded glossary of logging terms, editors’ notes detailing new information, references, and a biography of Crowe. a
~ At age 17, the recently-. orphaned Crowe arrived in Manistique by boat, at midnight on May 29, 1893.
“I had never seen a sawmill. or even a big tree,” he wrote.
“The screaming saws in five big mills running 24 hours-aday; the scent of new lumber and the pine woods; the hoarse whistles of lake steamers; the tall· masts of lumber schooners in the harbor; and the flickering flames and red glow from the open burners reflected across the water and in the sky against the dark and somber background of the immense forest – all gave me a feeling early pioneers must have experienced when they discovered a new and unexplored area. r could hardly wait for morning to dawn.”
Crowe began as a “time boy” and later became a bookkeeper for the Chicago Lumbering Company of Manistique. In 1912, he and others bought the firm and its sister company, Weston Lumber, for over $1 million.
Crowe was also involved with real estate, insurance and banking, and wrote columns for the Pioneer-Tribune and the Escanaba Daily Press. Those columns and his other The front cover of the new edition, which is being released this month.
written memories from the white pine days were released as a limited edition book in 1952.
Crowe died in 1965 at the age of 90.
His book describes lumberjacks and their camps, the tools and equipment used to log the mammoth trees, river driving, also~ting gaps, sawmills and lumber schooners on the Great Lakes. Readers will also learn about log marks and log jams, gospel ships and stump mushrooms, pike poles and peavies, and Michigan’s exhibit at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair: 50 enormous white pine logs from the U.P., each one 18 feet Weller and Emerick will
I h Id • I launch the book with their [long, the pile held in place on a “:
handcrafted bird’s eye maple stops in Schoolcraft County on sled by chains that weighed Friday, Aug. 23.
2,000 pounds. From noon to 2 p.m. that
Also in “Lumberjack” are day, they will be signing copstories of everyday life in the ies at the Schoolcraft County U.P., representative, Crowe Historical Society in Pioneer noted, of all logging towns of Park, adjacent to the M-94 the era. From Fourth of July Siphon Bridge celebrations to local political From 3-5 p.m., they will be rallies, ·from bicycle races to at Tamarack Books, located in community picnics, skating the Upper Crust at Traders’ competitions and the business Point.
practices of the time, Crowe For more information about describes things as a firsthand the volume, you can write to
observer and participant. North Country Publishing, 355
He also tells of conflicts Heidtman Road, Skandia, MI
over how a. lumber company should be run and takes issue with “lurid tales” told about lumberjacks by other writers of his day.
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The golden anniversary edition of “Lumberjack” will be available at bookstores, gift shops, historical societies and museums around the Upper Peninsula. The cover price is $19.95.
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