True Tales of Clarion River

Contributed by Pete Smith

I am in possession of a copy of True Tales of the Clarion River (#127 of 1150) printed under the auspices of the Northwestern Pennsylvania Raftsmen Association in 1933( a 1971 reprint). It is a compelation of essays written by the last few generations of those involved in the rafting /lumber/ flatboating industry on the Clarion/Allegheny/ Ohio Rivers.My mothers family(Kerrs/ Watsons/Fitzgearlds/Harmons/Porters) were involved in said industry from the War of 1812 to the end of that way of life in the 1930's.

Pete Smith

by

James P. Kerr of Clarion Pa.

Having been born beside the Clarion river, played along it's shores as a boy, and worked on it as a man, I feel that I should write something for the book that is being published recounting the stories of those early days.   My father James Kerr built boats at State Road ripple and I was born there in 1873. My father died in 1874, and my mother moved to Scotch Hill where we lived until I was 16 years old.

I spent much of my time at the home of my uncle , Robert Porter, at Porter's Landing ,where I helped to turn  the spinning jenny, stick the oakum,stick and drive spikes and do other such jobs as are usually assigned to a youngster. I can remember how on rainy days we made the wooden pins that are used to fasten the gunwales together. Wooden pins were also used to fasten the streamers to the ties. I have heard the older men telling about pinning the  bottoms on, also,but that was before my time as a boat builder. Later cut spikes were used then steel spikes.

My work was more boatbuilding than rafting. I would work on the boat scaffold in the spring until the water was ready for running a raft. Then I would go down the river, and generally down the Allgheny to Pittsburg. My first trip to Pittsburg was made before I was old enough to pull a oar. I went with my step-father, Harmon Knight, and helped to wash dishes for my bed and board. The first trip I made as a hand was also with him. We were running for Barr's.The boats were almost all empty ones and we were on the shanty boat. Theodore Bowers was the cook and was of course on that boat.

I took the front end and when we came to a hard place he came out and helped me.I thought I was some man that day,but when we got to the mouth of the Clarion I found that Mr. Barr had expected Theodore to cook and take the place of a hand also that I was not supposed to be there at all. In fact it was like my first trip,Work for my bed and board , so I was given $2.00 and sent home much disappointed at not getting the chance to go down the river to Pittsburg.

In 1889 while I was working for Porter's at Porter's Landing, there came a June flood and they had one more empty boat than they had pilots. Blair Porter , a cousin of mine, said he would tie them together and run them out double.He chose his brother, Frank, and myself to go with him and I don't think that I ever had a nicer trip than that one. That was the first time that two boats ever went out of the Clarion river together from above Turkey City, as far as I know. They had been running them out together from there before that. During the winter months I usually taught school,while during the sunmmer I worked on the boat scaffold. If  there was a run to be made before school was done I would usually close down school long enough to make the trip down the river.

I remember one year I was teaching at Lathrop's in Elk county and one Saturday morning I was standing in front of our home and a large raft came along and the pilot called for a man to take the place of one of the crew who played out coming around Lathrop's bend.I called to Mrs. Kerr and told her I was going and would be back on Sunday  evening, but if I weren't back to call off school Monday. Someone took me out to the raft and took the other man off. I found that "Bennie" Thompson was the pilot and  that Jersey Carl was the other man on the front end with me. That was some monster raft and me just out of school. Pretty soft? I guess I was.And to make matters worse we knocked a stick out below Clarington and that excited 'Benny". We pulled "right"and "left" continously until we came around Cooks lower rocks and there Jersey read the "riot act" to him. After telling him what he thought, Jersey said " Now, Mr. Thompson, you can either cool down and run this raft with less pulling or 'here's a shiner for Bradford when we get to Gravel Lick.'" Well, from there on we had a nice trip and I was back home Sunday night.

At another time I was teaching at Scotch Hill and Daniel Stiner had broken a loaded boat on the dam at Mill- creek.He tied up the boat at the dam and came back to Gravel Lick for an empty boat on which to unload the broken one.When he came to scotch Hill he asked me to go along to help repair the broken boat. I replied" Mr. Stiener, I have a week of school yet and the school board will fire me if I go." He said, "I'll make it right with the school board," so I went along.We stoped at Millcreek and loaded some planks, oakum, spikes and tools and went on down to the broken boat. After repairing the damage , we ran out to the mouth of the river. I wanted to go home then and finish my school,but Mr. Stiener said,"I will take care of the school business. You just go Down the river with us," That was Saturday and that night we landed in below Indiana Rock at Hillville and crossed the river to "Sim" Rumbuagh's to stay all night.

It had been raining all day and at two o'clock that night Mr. Stiener awakened his two sons Jim, and John, and myself and said,"Boys, you will have to go over and bail those boats or they will sink." We went and got a skiff and found the river had risen several feet and that the drift wood was running thick.   It was still raining and was so dark we could see nothing. We started across , two of us rowing the other one in the front end of the skiff watching to avoid large pieces of drift. We were afraid to keep upstream too far for fear of going in behind the boats and being carried under them by the current. However we were lucky enough to land along the side and when we got there the water was just trickling over the gunwale of one of the boats. How did we bail for the next hour!!! We stayed there until the next morning before risking the trip back. The river was too high to run and stayed high for a week.I will say as many other rivermen have said, that "Sim"Rumbaugh's was a good place to stop, for we were well fed and entertained that week.

I was in the shanty boat with Jake Walters as pilot when John Barr made the "drive"from Piney in January 1909. The river was high and boats were smashing, but Jake was running through the brush on the points. When we came to Latchaws Eddy we saw there was trouble ahead. George Crispin and his crew was there and thier boat had a big hole in it.I said "Jake that's one of Barr's boats and it is too bad to let it sink." Jake said,"Let's tie up and help him." When our boat came near enough ,one if Crispin's men took a hitch for Jake and I jumped over to his boat with our scoop and told his men to go to bailing.They said "We only have one scoop." I replied," There are plenty of nail kegs,take them and bail." We worked hard and soon were gaining on the water. Along with a couple of others , I stayed up that night and  helped to repair the boat.The next morning George ran it out to the mouth of the Clarion. Jake ran his out safely, also, and to this day he contends that we would have made it out O.K.the day before, but when I saw the boats smashed between Turkey Run and the Allgheny that daY, I sometimes think that it was a  good thing that George Crispin broke a hole in his that day.I have often wondered why Jake went into the shanty so many times that trip.

The next year I built boats for Barr and Hindman at Piney and had the same luck as Barr had the summer  before - no June or fall floods. I had twenty-six boats ready for running when winter set in.,We unloaded many of  them and wintered them at Piney-all but two that had been run to Turnip Hole on a "toad flood "during the summer. John Sampson and Tom Taylor had taken them that far and tied up there.

A lot of men can remember that winter, how we shoveled snow during the day and played checkers at night.  Norman Grady began the winter as cook and later "Man" Myers served in the capacity.   Arrangements had been made in the spring that when the break-up came each man was to carry something out of  the shanty. One morning just as we were eating breakfast, one of Henery Heeter's men called that the ice was going, and everyone jumped and ran, forgetting all about taking anything along. I was not much better as all I got was half a ham that was hanging by the shanty door. Anyone who had never seen the ice go out of the river has no idea of it's power.We had twenty-four boats and Mr. Heeter had fourteen shingled on both sides of Piney Eddy. The ice crowded the boats as far as possible  and then ran over some of them.

Lines were so tight that a touch of the knife would have severed them.Some broke. We had several new ones that were like fiddle strings. At last a big tree, that had two boats tied to it ,broke loose and the boats started down the river, taking the tree with them. The oars on the front end were bridled down and I was told that those two boats went past Red Bank just as they left Piney.The ice kept them off shore, but how they missed the piers of the bridges is a mystery. After the ice had gone I loaded and ran sixteen of those boats to Pittsburg without springing a leaK. And how we did load them!We spiked 4x6 timbers to the gunwales, one on top of the other, then nailed the splash board to that. We loaded the boats until the gunwales were an inch or two underwater.

After running those sixteen boats I went to Panther Run on the Allgheny, about five miles above Oil City, and built boats for Mr. Doverspike.   I worked at Steel Trap for Bell's until they finished building boats there and then I stayed with the boats as caretaker until the flood came.Charlie Bittenbender stayed with me part of the time. The houses were all torn down and the telephone was up on a tree . I would often get lonesome and would go out  to the telephone to "rubber." Usually some woman would say,"Hear the whip-poor-wills,"then I would hang up for I felt sure they knew where the whip-poor-wills were. I dropped the last boat from Steel Trap to Millcreek, and, I think that George Crispin was the pilot on it from there out. I mean that he ran that particular boat the next day, but may have left Millcreek before some of the others. I went along to Pittsburg on that trip, which was the last large run of boats made out of the clarion River.

Well, the old river days have gone and most rivermen have gone likewise,but if any of you boys who are left wish to go up to Bell's sometime when there is a flood and help to build a float and ride to the Clarion dam on it, and go down to Piney and build another and go on to the mouth of the river, just say "when" and I'll be right there to go along.

A Sketch of Porters Landing

by

James P. Kerr of Clarion Pa.

Porter's Landing is located on the Clarion river in Farmington township,Clarion county,a few miles below Gravel Lick. It derived it's name from Joseph Porter Sr.,who with his wife Jeanette Porter, and a family of ten children, came from Richland township, Clarion county, in 1827and located on what is now the Fylock farm. On the north this farm borders the Daniel Stiener farm, which was settled in 1815 by James Mc Naughton,and now  belongs to James Seigworth. It is still known as the Joseph Porter homesteads. At the time of it's settlement it contained 716 acres of land but at present it is cut up into a number of small tracts. One of these tracs is the Porter mill on Toby creek, which became the property of Andrew J. Porter son of Joseph Porter ,when his father died.

Mr. Porter later purchased 410 acres of land on the Clarion riverand in 1831 built a boat scaffold at what is now called Porter's Landing.A man by the name of Jones,grandfather of Harry G. Slocum of Scotch Hill, lived on the Micheal Kemf, now the David Cook farm near Scotch Hill, and helped to build the scaffold and some of the boats that year.

At the death of Mr. Porter, his son Robert Porter,took over the boat scaffold and operated it. Andrew Porter  manufactured lumber at the mill on Toby creek and hauled it to the river where Robert Porter built boats. The Porter saw mill was the old " up and down" type and was run by water power.In sawing the lumber the saw would not quite cut through the log and as a consequence the plank had to be split off.This left a rough edge,  which it was necessary to saw off or adz smooth.

The gunwales were made by cutting the trees and hewing them flat on two sides. They were then hauled to the river by putting the front ends on the bolster of the front carriage of a wagon, while the hind part was swung up under the hind carriage . As the roads were very crooked in those days, a man was often placed at the gunwale back of the hind carriage to steer that end around the bends.

Andew J. Porter married Nancy Porter in 1847. Robert Porter married Sally Porter, a sister of Nancy Porter.They were daughters of Ross and Katherine Porter. Most of the men who worked at the Porter operation boarded with Mr. Porter. One can almost see the large trough yet below the spring where the men washed,and a cold plunge it was on frosty mornings, but men in those days were accostomed to heroic treatment.

Leeper, Arnold, and Company built a mill on what was known as the Blake tract in 1880, and in 1883 replaced this mill with one that had a cutting capacity of 30,000 feet per day. Thier boat warf was at Porter's Landing where Robert Porter built boats. The mill was on Toby creek , about one mile above the Porter mill, and the old cordroy road was replaced with a plank road.James Russell father of J.W. Russell and W.C. Russell of Clarion, had the job of stocking the mill and hauling the lumber for Leeper ,Arnold and Company. He had as high as 100 teams working at one time there and used an average load of 112 bushels of oats each day to feed the horses.

The last boats built at Porters Landing were made for Judge Brandon by Blair Porter, one of the sons of Robert Porter.James P. Kerr of Clarion, whose mother was Olive Porter Kerr, a sister of Nancy and Sally Porter,worked on the scaffold and helped to build those boats. That part of the Porter estate where the scaffold and buildings stood now belongs to the Thomas Arnold estate. The balance is owned by the Keatly estate.

Porter's Landing, like many others of the busy and thrifty places along the Clarion river, has disappeared. If you were to go there today you would not racognize the place as having once been the center of woodland industry where millions of feet of lumber had been built into boats and other millions of feet were loaded into those boats and taken down the river and sold. Still other millions of feet were hauled in as squared timber, rafted and run  down the river to market.

I wonder how many of the "Boys"remember how our boats used to get to the mouth of the Clarion just in time for us to get our money and then make a run for it to catch the train at Foxburg. If you folks who read these stories will look at your map you will see that the Clarion empties about midway between Foxburg and Parker, something less than  two miles from either place.Sometimes some of the boys would jump a frieght and ride up to Foxburg.

And I wonder how many remember what a time we had getting out of Foxburg. I remember one evening the train  pulled in and so many rivermen piled inside and crawled on the outside that the conductor would not try to start. The crew passed out the word that the train was not going through that night,but that did not bother the raftmen. They were having a good time.After about an hours delay two frieght engines were hitched to the train and we started for Clarion. We went the old switch-back--I guess they still use it--and then around the curves with those two frieght engines puffing and pulling as if they had a full strings of frieght cars. We were not long in getting  to Clarion Junction that night.

Space will not permit, nor time allow to tell of the good times and the thrilling experences of those days which are past and gone. Let us hope that the book now being published will create such a demand that a second one will be printed to finish the good work now begun by this one,

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