Lumbering in the Grand Haven Area

LUMBER TRADE IN THE GRAND HAVEN AREA

LUMBERING

Fur trading was Northwest Ottawa County’s first important industry. Lumbering was the second. In 1836, less than a year after Rev. Ferry and the first permanent white settlers arrived in Grand Haven, the first sawmill was erected. This marked the beginning of a wild, lucrative, and colorful era in the history of West Michigan. At that time the broad valleys of the Grand and other Michigan rivers, embracing an area of several thousand square miles, were an almost unbroken forest. Grand Haven then had pine trees 100 to 150 feet tall. They were three to five feet in diameter and had been standing 250 to 300 years.

Generally the forest was pine. The choicest was white pine, which grew in greater abundance in this locality than anywhere else in the country. The seemingly endless forest, a storehouse of untapped wealth, did not begin to develop fully until about 1840, when the tide of immigration sweeping across the country from the east rolled beyond the boundaries of the well forested states of Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana to the treeless prairies of Illinois and Iowa. The settlers of these prairie states were obliged to look elsewhere for their timber, and their search stimulated the lumbering industry of the Muskegon and Grand River valleys. The demand was especially strong after the Civil War and after the Chicago fire of 1871. Lumberjacks, log marks, buzzing sawmills, lumber shipped on square-rigged schooners were all a part of the way of life in and around the mouth of the Grand River, especially between 1860 and 1891. At one time there were as many as 26 saw mills up and down the river, mainly concentrated around Mill Point [Spring Lake], producing and shipping millions of board feet of lumber annually to Chicago and other ports.

Every sawmill, and anyone with a few acres of land who wanted to cut trees and sell them as lumber, had to have a ‘log mark.’ The log marks were registered with Ottawa County. When the cut log got to the sawmill, payment was made for the recorded number of board feet and the log mark told the mill whom to pay. For instance, timber marked “D.B.” belonged to Derk Baker, the founder of D. Baker & Son Lumberyard in Grand Haven. One man in the crew would be in charge of hitting the end of a freshly cut tree with the marker. The identification would stay there. The tools that were used in logging were very heavy and strong. Axes were used by one man, while the saw was operated by two men. A round saw was used in the sawmill for cutting logs into planks. Sometimes logs were hollowed for use in the water systems of Grand Haven and Spring Lake. Larger ones were wrapped with strap steel to make them stronger.

Beside felling axes, loggers had the peavey, a device for pushing and pulling logs that was invented in the 1870s by a blacksmith in Maine named John Peavey. They also had the giant raft auger, five feet long and designed for drilling holes from a standing position. Loggers employed many different kinds of chisels and the bucksaw.

The last log drive to come down the Grand River occurred on May 14, 1889, only six years after the big log jam. Within a year, except for isolated timbering, the industry had reached its end in Northwest Ottawa County.

Camps and Supplies

In his book History of the Lumber and Forest Industry of the Northwest [1898], George W. Hotchkiss cited the supplies needed for one year of operation at a Cutler & Savidge logging camp. At its height, the company used one hundred horses and four hundred men for the season, which ran between August 1 and June 1. Basic supplies included: 23,000 bushels of oats; 500 tons of hay; 600 barrels of flour; 170 barrels of pork; 155 barrels of corned beef; 110 barrels of sugar; 36 barrels of dried apples; 39 barrels of currants; 50 boxes of prunes; 50 barrels of crackers; 29 half-barrels of syrup; 82 chests of tea; 55 barrels of beans; 119 barrels of peas; 2,024 pounds of rice; 75 boxes of soap; 10 barrels of salt; 22 barrels of pickles; 33 barrels of sauerkraut; 17 barrels of vinegar; 14,491 pounds of butter; 68 cases of baking powder; 16 cases of soda; 300 pounds of mustard; 310 pounds of pepper; 11 pounds of allspice; 1800 pounds of chewing tobacco; 1500 pounds of smoking tobacco; 250 pairs of blankets; 66 boxes of axes; 71 dozen axe handles; 93 head of cattle; 10,752 pounds of fresh beef and pork; and large quantity of miscellaneous items, all of which had to be transported over rough roads and up steep hills.

Logging Tools and Terms

Big wheel was sometimes called a Katy-did, but it was not the same as the Katy-did of the south. The two wheels were immense. The axle was a timber six inches by 12 inches, with a skein at both ends. As the axle was turned up edgewise it raised the logs. The tongue was about 18 feet long and the weight of logs balanced under the axle was fastened by chain to the tongue. The tongue gradually lowered until about it was about three feet from the ground, where the horses were hitched. These were usually loaded to the front since this made the tongue catch in the ground as the load was being drawn down the incline. One picture of a Katy-did showed the tongue up in the air above the horses. However, that picture may not be correct since it would be impossible for the horses to hold the load back. As the load was being drawn down the incline one of the horses stumbled and the wheel ran over him and killed him. The heavy load at the back had forced the tongue up and there was nothing holding the load back.

	Board foot was a standard measurement of wood production. Each board foot represented a slab of wood 12” by 12” and one inch thick.
	Cant hook referred to a wooden lever with a movable iron hook near the end. It was used for canting, or turning over logs.
	Cook shanty oil lamp looked like a tin funnel, with the little end up. It had a wick in it and a handle on the side.
	Crosscut saw looked very similar to the ones used today.
	Dogging hammers were used for driving dogs into the logs. They were larger and heavier than an ordinary hammer. The head was flat at one end and very pointed at the other.
	Dog puller was a piece of iron with a curved handle and used to pull the dogs from the boom.
	Draw boy was used for the same purpose as the logging toad, but more practical and so more widely used. It looked like a big single bobsled, so it didn’t turn over easily.
	Hammers, very thin, small, and made of iron, were usually hung in the hames by teamsters in logging camps and were used to remove balls of snow from the horses’ hooves.
	Ice-spud had a wooden handle about as long as an axe handle. At one end was a flat piece of iron about four inches wide. It was used to clear trains of ice in the winter.
	Iron dogs were rings with spikes on them that were driven into the boom-sticks and logs to hold the chains that held the booms together.
	Logging toad was made from the crotch of a tree, usually a white oak. Some of these were made by carpenters in the logging camps and were used to haul logs over uneven and soft ground. They were practical only with very large logs, since they tipped over very easily.
	Logging truck was a wagon whose front wheels were the same size as the rear wheels. The logging bunk was the same height as the wheels. These were used in the summer in place of sleighs.
	Log-mark was adopted by each man or company to identify the logs when they arrived at the mill. John Fisher had four markers. Two of them were his father’s and contained the initials J.L.F. and another one had a star on it. “The Richard Freye Collection of Log Marks” at the Tri-Cities Historical Museum revealed a wide array of marks.
	Log-scalar was used to estimate the amount of lumber in the log. The scalar was graduated in such a way that the diameter of the log of known length indicated the number of board feet of lumber that could be sawed from the log. It looked something like a yardstick, but the numbers were different and the scalar had a square of iron at one end so it could hook under the log when it was measured.
	Marking hammers had handles about as long as the handle of an axe. The head was made of iron, about six or seven inches in length, and had the imprint of a log mark in it, so that when it was struck with force on the end of a log it would leave a mark.
	Peavey was a wooden lever with a movable iron hook and fitted at the end with a strong and sharp iron spike. Lumbermen used it in a variety of ways, especially in the log-drive down rivers. Joseph Peavey, a blacksmith, at Stillwater Village, Maine invented it, in 1858.
	Pike-poles were tipped with iron points and used by lumbermen to direct floating logs.
	Skidding-tongs looked similar to ice tongs, but they were much larger and heavier, being made of iron. These were used to drag individual logs by clamping the tongs onto one end.
	Steel-bar was used for prying loose sleigh runners when they were frozen fast.
	Swamp-hook was just like a cant hook, but with a ring and grabhook to hook on the chains instead of a handle. It was used before skidding tongs and for the same purpose.
	Tan-bark peeler was about two and a half feet long with a wooden handle on one end and on the other end a flat piece of iron made with a flat hook. The tool was used for peeling the bark from hemlock trees. The tool also was called a bark spud and double-bit [two-edged axe]. This type of axe was used for cutting down timber.
	Timber cruiser ‘s surveying compass looked somewhat like compasses of today. It was about three and a half inches in diameter, and had a cover and two pieces of metal sticking straight up and directly opposite each other.
	Wood dogs filled the same function as the iron dogs.
	Woodsman ‘s dinner basket looked something like a knapsack, but was made of tin, with a tin cover and a flat side that went next to the wearer.

Sawmills

Not long after the arrival of the first permanent White settlers, numerous sawmills were up and humming in the Grand River Valley. With a loan from David Carver of $2,000, William Butts and William Hathaway, both Canadians, were able to complete in 1836 the area’s first functioning sawmill on Lots 14 and 15, at the foot of Columbus Street in Grand Haven. Thomas W. White was a blacksmith for the mill. Nathan Throop purchased the steam sawmill built by William Butts and William Hathaway in Grand Haven in 1836, which he subsequently sold to Francis and Thomas Gilbert. Zenas Winsor, who arrived in Grand Haven in 1834 a few months before Rev. Ferry and his family, reminisced about the early days in a paper delivered in observance of the 50th anniversary of Grand Haven’s founding. Among his observations, Winsor said that William and Nehemiah Hathaway worked for the Grand Haven Lumber Company.

Colonel Amos Norton constructed the first sawmill north of the Grand River at Nortonville in 1837, near 144^th Avenue and Boom Road in Spring Lake Township. It burned down in 1854, and was rebuilt. The Nortonville Boarding House, which provided housing and a dining room for the mill workers, was adjacent to the mill. Around 1860 Frederick T. Ranney bought the mill and sold his interest to Robert Haire and George Cole of Blendon Township in 1867. The new owners operated it as Haire & Cole.

The four sons of Benjamin Hopkins, who settled north of the Grand River, also entered the lumbering business about the same time as Colonel Norton. In 1837 they built a sawmill at the north end of School Street [Block 2] in Spring Lake [the “Old” Mill], and built a later one [the “New” Mill] a block east of the first one in 1845. The Old Mill was torn down in the winter of 1895, and it became the site of the Spring Lake Yacht Club in that organization’s early days.

In 1841 John Newcomb constructed Barber’s Mill on the Reserve in Barber’s Addition on Spring Lake, near the north end of Park Street, for Jabez Barber and Richard Mason. Both Barber and Mason, among others who came to Spring Lake about this time, were Canadians who fled to the United States after McKenzie’s rebellion was quashed in 1837. The two men had been foundry owners in Toronto, and some of their machinery was sold to Amos Norton for his sawmill. The year following the mill’s opening, Barber and Mason launched their first ship, the Enterprise. The original mill burned down, and a second and larger one was constructed at the same site in 1853 [1854]. After Jabez Barber died at sea in 1854, his sister Eliza inherited the real estate and the Barber & Mason business. Eliza’s husband, Charles Y. Bell, ran the firm for almost ten years. Then, in 1863, their son, William H. Bell, bought the business at auction, and according to Lillie gave the sawmill his name, W. H. Bell & Co. When the second mill was destroyed by fire in 1870, Bell’s Mill was constructed and operated until 1882.

Thomas White built a mill on the north bank of the Grand River near the foot of Division Street in about 1851. It became Haire & Cole Company in 1867, under the ownership of Robert Haire and George Cole of Blendon. Four years later its name changed to Haire & Tolford, and Cutler & Savidge bought the company in 1874. It was here that the fire of 1871 started, which destroyed much of Spring Lake Village and left 70 families homeless. Cole owned the Blendon Lumber Company, which was formed about 1854 and had headquarters in Allendale Township at Blendon’s Landing on the Grand River. The company had extensive holdings of timber throughout the area. In 1857 Cole laid several miles of private railroad track for the lumbering operation. The track, which ran through Blendon and Allendale Townships, was abandoned around 1864, presumably marking the end of the company.

In 1856 Hamilton Jones erected a steam-powered sawmill, featuring one large circular saw and a siding mill. The mill was located on the banks of the Grand River near the foot of Fulton Street in Grand Haven. By 1859 Hamilton Jones’s had another sawmill at the west end of the dock.

In 1857 Hunter Savidge joined Montague & Young as part owner of the Hopkins Mill. The financial depression of 1857 left Savidge as the sole owner of the mill. The next year Savidge formed a partnership with Dwight Cutler of Grand Haven, although formal letters of agreement were not drawn until August 31, 1863. With Cutler’s capital the two men first bought the Old Hopkins Mill, located on Spring Lake north of the west end of Liberty, and then built a new mill close by on land later known as the Savidge Estate. The Cutler & Savidge Lumber Company prospered. In 1870 the two men bought a controlling interest in the Haire & Tolford Mill, located near Lloyd’s Bayou, leading to the formation of Haire, Savidge & Cutler. In 1874 Haire sold out his remaining interest in the sawmill. At that time the officers of the company were Hunter Savidge, President; Dwight Cutler, Treasurer; Hiram W. Pearson, Secretary; and John B. Hancock, Director. In 1871 the Hopkins Mill property was sold to the Spring Lake Company to become the site of the Spring Lake Hotel. The mill was converted to the bathhouse for the Magnetic Mineral Spring Company [Spring Lake House], and burned down on the morning of January 4, 1904.

By 1874 the business had grown enough that a stock company was organized. The owners had another mill in Ferrysburg, near the location of the later Johnston Bros. Boiler Company, and the company had lumbering interests in other counties, such as Six Lakes in Montcalm where, in 1882, they laid approximately nine miles of private logging railway. In addition to milling lumber, the firm also manufactured ships, such as the three-masted schooners Macv. Hunter Savidge, and Kate Lyons, which were used as lumber vessels. When Savidge died in 1881, Cutler became President. In 1896 officers of the corporation were Dwight Cutler, President; William Savidge, First Vice President; James A. Wilson, Second Vice President; Dwight Cutler II, Treasurer; and Herman F. Harbeck, Secretary. At that time the mill was at Cutler, Ontario, and produced about 25 million feet of lumber annually. Cutler had been a resident of Grand Haven since 1850. He was the owner of the Cutler House, President of the National Bank of Grand Haven, director and principal stockholder of the Challenge Corn Planter Co., director of the Grand Rapids Fire Insurance Co., and a trustee of the Akeley Institute. William Savidge, a native of Spring Lake and son of Hunter Savidge, graduated from the University of Michigan in 1884, studied law at Harvard Law School, and was elected State Senator in 1896. The company went out of business in 1904.

In 1864 Charles F. Wyman and Henry W. Buswell entered into a partnership and formed the Wyman, Buswell & Co. Sawmill. [Lillie cites both 1864 and 1866 as the starting date of the partnership. However, 1864 is the more likely date since the 1864 Map of Ottawa & Muskegon Counties shows the mill.] It burned down in 1868, and Buswell and Wyman built a new mill farther up river. That same year they bought the Ferry & Sons Mill at the foot of Columbus Street. The new mill had one circular saw, a gang edger, trimmer, and lathe. It employed about 35 men. The company also had timber interests in Montcalm and Newaygo counties, where the owners maintained railroad track for their logging enterprise. By 1878 Averill T. Cairns was a part of the company, which by then was called Wyman & Cairns. After the mill burned down in 1884, Buswell retired and the business came to an end.

The Ottawa County Boom Company was founded in 1865, with Dwight Cutler and Hunter Savidge as principals. Officers were William M. Ferry II, President; Henry T. Bell, Secretary; and Dwight Cutler, Treasurer. Thomas Friant joined the company in 1869 when he was 25 years old. The Boom Company was hired by the various lumber companies to run the cut logs down the Grand River to the mills to be converted to lumber. Friant ran the business for the next 20 years. The company was located on the Grand River near its confluence with Deremo Bayou. It was out of business by 1890.

Carlton L. Storrs built a sawmill on the banks of the river near downtown Grand Haven in 1866. Sometimes referred to as the Red Mill, it was destroyed by fire nine years later.

Andrew J. Emlaw built a sawmill on the north bank of the South Channel in Grand Haven. Later Emlaw was joined by Boyce and Storrs, whose names then appeared with the business title. In 1881 the Grand Haven Lumber Company bought this mill, along with three others.

Munroe, Thompson & Company was formed in 1868 and owned a sawmill near the north end of Jackson Street in Spring Lake [Block 2, Bryant’s Addition], built by Dr. Stephen Munroe the year before. Warner Vos also had a financial interest in the business. After the mill burned down in 1872 Sherman H. Boyce bought out John Thompson’s interest, and the name of the company was changed to Munroe, Boyce & Co.

Thomas White and Thomas Friant started a lumber business under the name of White & Friant [White, Friant & Co.] in 1869. They bought the Norton Mill on the Grand River at Nortonville from Fredrick T. Ranney, who had purchased it from Colonel Norton two years earlier. The White & Friant mills extended to Manistee and Menominee, with land holdings in Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, California, and Florida. In 1881 the Grand Haven Lumber Company bought this mill, along with three others.

William M. Ferry, S. C. Glover, and John White, of Ontario, Canada, started construction of a sawmill in October, 1871, at the east end of Fifth Street in Ferrysburg [ Lot 22], and named it Ferry & White. The mill burned down on July 4, 1877, the same year it was bought by White, Glover & Co.

Derk Bakker started the Bakker Sawmill in 1871 on the south shore of the South Channel at the foot of Third Street, just south of the Boyden & Akeley Shingle Mill. With one 66-inch circular saw and a “gang” edger, it employed 24 men and had a capacity of 40,000 board feet a day. Eventually Derk’s son John took over the lumber business his grandfather had begun. John moved the business to its site at 720-722 Pennoyer Street in 1912. He died in 1920, and his Derk resumed leadership of the business until his death in 1925, when John II took over the business. Doug Baker assumed control in 1946 and operated it until his sons, Bruce and Dick, took over in 1978, making the fourth generation of Bakers to head up the business.

In October, 1871, the Chicago firm of Batchellor, Slaght, & Shippey bought the Ferry and Hopkins Steam Sawmill for $32,000. Located in Ferrysburg, at the confluence of Spring Lake and the Grand River, the mill was sold to the Grand Haven Lumber Company ten years later. Webster Batchellor was reported to have built a home in the area.

In 1872 Sherman Boyce bought out John Thompson’s interest in the Munroe, Thompson & Company Sawmill, formed in 1868, and began Munroe, Boyce, & Company. Located on Spring Lake at the foot of Jackson Street [Block 2, Bryant’s Addition], the sawmill was in operation until 1885 [1887], when it relocated to the Upper Peninsula.

Francis Lilley, who came to Spring Lake from England in 1865, in 1874 formed a partnership with George D. Sisson, who had arrived in the area in 1871. Beginning in 1872 Sisson had been a partner with Thomas Seymour in joint ownership of a mill on the Grand River near the entrance to Lloyd’s Bayou. The mill was destroyed by fire in 1883, restocked, and burnt out again the next year. Two years later Seymour sold his interest to Lilley. Lilley saw the need of erecting sawmills near railroads, so the lumber could easily be loaded and transported. His foresightedness helped make Lilley eminently successful.

The Brower & Vos Sawmill was built in 1879 on the site of the Rysdorp sawmill, which burned down in 1877. J. D. Vos, formerly an employee of the Rysdorp Company, joined with a Mr Brower in establishing this business.

The exact starting date of the Grand Haven Lumber Company isn’t clear, but may have been before 1880. Andrew Emlaw was an officer of the new organization, and Henry Rysdorp joined the company in 1880 as manager of the Beech Tree Mill. Lillie wrote that the company “was a very extensive concern,” and in 1881 it acquired the Boyden & Akeley Mill, the Emlaw Mill, the Batchellor, Slaght & Shippey Mill, and the White & Friant Mill. The next year the company built 10 miles of private logging railroad, which was abandoned about 1886.

Geert Vyn, a native of the Netherlands and later from Zeeland, Michigan, opened the Vyn Sawmill on the northwest side of Harbor Island to cut hardwood into lumber. The five Vyn brothers, who owned the Vyn Trucking business in Grand Haven, bought large tracts of wooded duneland for lumbering purposes, 600 to 700 acres north of the Grand River and another 160 acres near Rosy Mound to offset the winter business slump.

Lumber Yards

By 1891 the timber supply had been depleted and the industry died as a major force in Northwest Ottawa County. Before long, however, retail lumberyards, similar to D. Bakker & Son, were doing business. The Christman Lumber Company was next, started by George Christman in 1895, and stayed in business until the building was destroyed by a windstorm on June 29, 1968. The building originally had been the Cutler & Savidge planing mill, and Christman had worked for that company until its operations were moved to Canada. Three generations of Christmans had managed the business before it was destroyed.

There is no precise year that marks the beginning of the Rycenga enterprises. As early as 1932 Chuck Rycenga, Senior, and his sons Chuck, Junior, and Louis were cutting cordwood for re-sale. Chuck [and, much earlier, his grandfather, Jacob] had worked for Van Zylen Lumber, and Louis had had five years’ experience with rough-cut timber. However, after World War II they began selling building supplies from the barn on the family farm at 720 South Griffin Street in Grand Haven, and were among the first to offer Andersen Window Walls. Within a few years, the Company was selling garage kits and pre-cut homes. Rycenga Lumber Company moved their warehouse and office to 1051 Jackson Street in Grand Haven in 1949. The company moved east into a new building at 1053 Jackson about 1955, and sold Ottawa Electric the old property. In 1979 Rycenga Homes split away from the parent company and opened its own facility at 17127 Hickory Street in Spring Lake Township. Their housing developments included Dermshire Forest, North and South Holiday Hills, and Country Club Woods in Spring Lake. Not long after the Homes division started, Rycenga Real Estate opened with offices adjacent to the lumberyard.

Planing Mills

Allied with the lumbering industry and not far removed from manufacturing were the planing mills. One of the first was the Cilley & Creager Planing Mill started in 1868 by James M. Cilley and Marvin H. McCreagor. Their business was located near the later Pere Marquette depot [Block 3 of Akeley’s Addition]. Not long afterward, Cornelius De Vlieger started a planing mill, which was sold in 1873 to the Wait Manufacturing Company. Wait, a forerunner of the Challenge Corn Planter Company, manufactured corn planters and refrigerators. In the early I 890s the Bryce, Barnes & Green Planing Mill was located at the southwest corner of Jackson and Seventh Streets. Started in March, 1907 as a manufacturer of doors, windows, frames, and other interior finishing, Milliman Manufacturing Company was incorporated at $50,000 with Herbert G. Milliman, President, I. A. Boand, Vice President, C. F. Rush, Secretary-Manager, F. M. Carter, Treasurer. The firm was located on Harbor Drive. It was out of business by 1916. Oxford Varnish, located at 19 North First Street in Grand Haven between 1946 and 1949, appears to have been the last planing mill in the area.