GETTING THINGS DONE WITH HUMAN AND ANIMAL POWER

The photos in this section were chosen to convey how different work — and life — was in the days before electricity and gasoline made the world go 'round.

Cutting Boards with a Whipsaw, Kennebunkport
(Maine Historic Preservation Commission)

This photograph was taken about 1890, probably at Ward's Shipyard in Kennebunkport. This type of two-man saw was commonly known in Maine as a "whipsaw" or "pitsaw." It was used in Maine from the days of early settlement right into the twentieth century, mostly in shipyards and in the woods. Some shipyards had powered saws, but others did not. One explanation was that it was easier for a man to carry his tools to a timber than to move the big, heavy timber to a machine.
      The term "pit saw" refers to the practice of sawing a large log over a sawpit, where the lower sawyer, the "pitman," stood. The top-sawyer, standing on a tall sawhorse here, was required to pull the saw up and direct it carefully. The saw cut only on the downstroke, so the "pitman" pulled the saw back down — and no doubt got quite a bit of sawdust in his eyes. How long do you think it would take to saw a timber that was thirty feet long?
      Today the excitement of trying out such a tool would certainly wear off after a few minutes, but the old-time sawyers stayed with it. Some worked from dawn to dark, six days a week, for years and years. In a modern sawmill, these boards would be sawed in seconds with high-speed machinery.

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Study the picture carefully. From the way the men are dressed, can you guess what their jobs might be? Did people dress differently for work in those days?
      The photo shows muscle power. These men, the sawyers as well as the planer, cut and plane wood, all day long, without any mechanical help. The whipsaw or pitsaw took strength to operate as did the bucksaw, which you can see one man has slung over his shoulder. Trees were often sawed in the woods using a two-man crosscut saw with handles at both ends.

Discussion:
1. What labor-saving devices have replaced man-powered saws and planes?
2. Why was it easier for a man to carry his tools to the wood, rather than to bring the wood to the tool?
3. Today, most industries must follow safety regulations. Which activities pictured in the photo would require additional equipment or safety measures?

Activity:
1. To test the manpower needed to saw a piece of wood, mark a piece of pine board with a straight line and allow students to try to follow the line, cutting with a standard hand saw. For safety reasons, this activity should be carefully monitored! Discuss or write about the sawing experience. How have labor-saving devices impacted the building trades? Do you think anyone would use these old methods today? If so, who and why?

Maine Learning Results Key:
ELA: B-C-D-H
SS/H: A-B-C
SS/G: A-B
SS/E: A-B-C-D-
M: B-C-G
S&G: B-D-F-H-I-M

Stone Wall Device, Dover-Foxcroft (Leon Hall)

Taken in the 1870s, this photo shows a device used for lifting and positioning stones for stone-wall building. The man standing in the middle of the picture might possibly be the proud inventor of this device.
      Big boulders often had to broken into smaller pieces, and this was done by splitting the rock with a wedge and sledgehammer, or by blasting it apart with black powder poured into a drilled hole and then ignited. There is a boy sitting on a boulder holding a drill, while another boy lifts a hammer, but these children were probably only posing for the photo.
      Can you figure out how this stone-lifting device worked? A block and tackle hooked to a windlass (a crank) was used to hoist the rock, while a trolley mechanism moved it back and forth.
      The farm in this photograph is a rocky one. Although stones cleared from the fields could be used to build walls, it was a lot of extra work for the farmer. Nowadays there's a big market for new stone walls to go around fancy homes, but these oldtime farmers would have considered it madness to pay someone to bring stones onto their property.

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Maine deserves its rocky reputation. Anyone who farms or gardens in Maine removes fist-sized rocks from their gardens come spring-some people call them New England potatoes!
      Farmers clearing land years ago often had to remove lots of big rocks and boulders, as well as trees, before they could plant crops. The stone walls they built from these rocks helped "fence" in livestock, and sometimes served as boundary lines between properties.
      This ingenious wall-building contraption attempted to make the back-breaking chore of lifting rocks and building a wall easier.

Discussion:
1. What kind of rock is common in your area? What does that tell you about your local geology?
2. What brings rocks to the surface of a field year after year?
3. Look around your town. Are there many stone walls? Are the walls old or new? How do old and new walls differ?
4. Have you ever found a stone wall deep in the woods? What does that tell you?
5. What labor-saving device would be used to lift rocks today?
6. Are stone walls still constructed by hand one rock at a time? If so, who builds them? Where to they find the rocks?
7. There are other photos in this exhibit that show a block and tackle or windlass device. Can you find them?
8. How are rocks broken today?
9. What purpose do you think the horses in the photo served?

Activities:
1. Study how mechanical devices such as a block and tackle or a windlass work. Design a device to lift a large load.
2. Research how stone walls are built. Build a small stone wall, planning it so that it will survive frost heaves.

Maine Learning Results Key:
ELA: B-C-D-H
SS/J: A-B-C
SS/G: A-B
SS/E: A
S&T: B-D-F-H-I-M  

Teamster with a Jigger Wagon, Brewer
(Mildred Thayer)

The jigger, or drop-axle wagon was invented in Bangor, Maine around 1850 to make it easier to load and unload heavy goods in the days before forklifts.

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Discussion:
1. Why would a jigger wagon make loading easier?
2. What invention(s) replaced this type of wagon?
3. What modern innovations are in use today to load and unload heavy goods?

Activity:
1. Research how heavy objects used to be moved in the past, before there were cranes and heavy equipment.

Maine Learning Results Key:
ELA: B-C-D--H
SS/H: C
SS/G: A-B
SS/E: A
M: B-C-G
S&T: B-D-F-H-I-M

Digging a Cellar, Rumford Falls
(Maine Historic Preservation Commission)

Long before the days of backhoes and excavators, these men are digging a cellar on Congress Street in Rumford Falls in 1892. There was a building boom going on. Rumford Falls was a planned industrial city, like Lewiston and Millinocket, built around new paper or textile mills. In Rumford Falls 150 new buildings went up that year, in addition to pulp and paper mills, the chemical mills, the power station, saw and planing mills, canals, dams, and freight and passenger depots. The next year, about 200 more buildings were scheduled to be put up!
      There are lots of boulders in this photograph, and while they were used to build foundations or embankments, they also made excavation difficult. It was tough work that only strong men could do.
      This cellar wall is being built with the rubble stone that is being dug up. The derrick in the photograph is used to lift big boulders. Look at the boulder at the bottom of the cellar hole. Holes have been hand-drilled in it for wedges, and soon it will be split by hitting the wedges with a sledge.
      One of the building contractors in Rumford Falls was the firm of White and Parlin, which employed about fifteen men. Between the spring of 1892 and winter of 1893, they completed thirty buildings, with six more under construction--all without circular saws, nail guns, or a single sheet of plywood.

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Digging a cellar today is a much simpler operation.

Discussion:
1. How are today's cellars dug?
2. What labor-saving devices are in use in the photo?
3. How does the device for moving cellar stone seem the same or different from the stone moving device used to build stone walls?
4. Why do you think they were breaking the large boulder with chisel-like "drills" and wedges rather than using black powder?
5. What is the most common cellar wall material used today?
6. How does this differ from the materials in the photo?
7. When you go home today, notice what type of cellar your house has. Can you guess whether it was hand built or machine built?

Activities:
1. Have each student check the materials used to construct the foundation of his/her home. Create a graph reporting the results.
2. Take a walk around one of the older neighborhoods near your school. Check the foundations there. Graph the results. How does this graph compare to the one created earlier?

Maine Learning Results Key:
ELA: B-C-D-H
SS/H: A-B-C
SS/G: A-B
SS/E: A
M: B-C-G
S&T: B-D-F-H-I-M

Moving "Bee," Waldoboro
(Maine Historic Preservation Commission)

We trust that the Knox and Lincoln Railroad has been consulted and no freight trains are approaching. This photograph was taken in the 1890s, just across from where Moody's Diner now stands.
      Moving "bees" were performed without pay other than hay and refreshments. (There were also quilting bees, husking bees, and other such gatherings to get work done.) If a house was being moved, the stove might be lit, and hot drinks and donuts handed out the window.
      In Maine, using oxen to move heavy objects dates back to colonial days, when tall white pine masts were hauled out of the Maine woods for the British Royal Navy. Long teams of oxen would also sometimes haul a small ship many miles to its launching site. In the wintertime, oxen wearing sharp-edged shoes were used to pull ships or buildings across the ice.
      Well into the 1900s long ox teams were used to break out snow-drifted roads, with cattle from each district teamed up to pull a plow. Steady, strong, hard-working oxen did this work well. When horses started to become more popular than oxen, people worried that back-country towns would be abandoned because they wouldn't be able to keep their roads open in the winter.
      Oxen were the truck engines, tractors, bulldozers, and plow trucks of the past. Did you know that the term "ox" means a steer (a castrated bull) that is at least four years old? Usually steers are eaten before they are four, unless they have been trained to work.

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It is rare today to see buildings moved. In 1964 when Freeport Station was moved to the Railway Village in Boothbay Harbor it was cut into nine pieces and loaded onto trucks. It took three days to move it. The pieces had to be small enough to pass over bridges and under power lines. Then the station was reassembled after it reached its destination.

Discussion:
1. Why was it easier to move buildings in the winter?
2. Why did people have bees to accomplish difficult or large tasks?
3. Why were hay and refreshments necessary?
4. What often happens today when someone no longer wants a building? Why do you suppose this happens?
5. How have labor-saving devices caused people to tear down and build new?
6. Are there buildings in your area that have been moved to a new location? How was it done?

Maine Learning Results Key:
ELA: B-C-D-H
SS/H: A-B-C
SS/G: A-B
SS/E: A-B-C
SS/C&G: A
M: B-C-G
S&T: B-D-H-I-M

Moving a Barn in Waldo County
(Maine Historic Preservation Commission)

"The barn had been braced to prevent its warping. Finally all was ready. The master carter climbed up...and called out, 'Every man to his team and every ox to his bow. Are you ready? Go ahead!' I could hardly believe that we could move the great building, but with a little heave it slid and we were walking away with it." (R.E. Gould in Yankee Boyhood)

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Notice the variety of animals involved in moving this old barn. The barn was probably of post and beam construction, usually pegged with wooden dowels, rather than nails. This type of construction was very sturdy. This barn was probably recycled from one of the many abandoned farms in Waldo County.

Discussion:
1. How does moving this barn seem to differ from the Waldoboro moving bee?
2. There's an excellent website with information on animal power, draft horses, and oxen. It's: www.ruralheritage.com

Maine Learning Results Key:
ELA: B-C-D-H
SS/H: A-B-C
SS/G: A-B
SS/E: A-B-C
SS/C&G: A
M: B-C-G
S&T: B-D-H-I-M

Cutting Ice, Rockport/Rockland
(Ida Shepherd Crie, courtesy of Alice Crie Knight)

We take refrigerators for granted these days, but not so long ago people relied on ice to keep food cold, using big blocks of ice in "iceboxes." Even this practice didn't start until after the Civil War in the 1860s. Before that, people kept food cold by lowering it down a well.
      Ice was cut on many of Maine's lakes and rivers, then it was stacked and packed in sawdust in icehouses or barns, where it lasted for months and months.
      The men in this photo are cutting ice in Chickawaukie Pond, which lies half in Rockport and half in Rockland, around 1900. The wooden frame and pulleys help the horse and men lift the heavy blocks into the sled, then the horse will pull the sled to their barns or icehouses. The ice on Chickawaukie was so clear that it was said you could read a newspaper headline through a block nearly three feet thick! Chickawaukie could produce a lot of ice--as much as 25,000 tons in one year, which would have filled eleven school gymnasiums up to the ceiling. In 1891, Maine exported 3 million tons of ice (that's 1,320 gyms' worth). The last time ice was cut commercially on Chickawaukie was in 1950.
      These men are probably neighboring farmers, cutting ice together for their dairy farms, to keep milk and cream cool. Can you think of ways that neighbors work together today?
      The horse in this picture wears a special "choker" collar around his neck. Why do you think this would have been useful in an emergency? The blanket over his back is easier to explain, since it was certainly cold outside and the blanket kept him warm. Choker collars were used in case a horse fell through the ice. The men would react quickly by pulling the choker tight. This kept air in the horse's lungs and kept him afloat while they worked to pull him out of the freezing water, back to safety!

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Can you imagine living without a refrigerator? Or buying a cake of ice about the size of an orange crate for twenty-five cents to keep your food cold? Wooden boxes lined with galvanized tin were built to hold large blocks of ice. As the ice melted it collected into a large pan beneath the ice box. During the summer, the pan would need frequent emptying.

Does the block and tackle used to harvest ice resemble the devices in rock moving photos?

How do you suppose ice was cut? Were saws used? Why was good, clear ice in demand? Ice was cut from the rivers such as the Kennebec, but many little ponds and lakes also contributed to ice harvests.

Discussion:
1. How does the horse help to harvest ice?
2. What has replaced this trade today?
3. Do some of the same industries require ice today as in ice cutting days? List some industries or businesses that might use ice.

Maine Learning Results Key:
ELA: B-C-D-H
SS/H: A-B-C
SS/G: A-B
SS/E: A
SS/C&G: A
M: B-C
S&T: B-D-F-H-I-M  

Icemen, Ice Horses, and Ice Wagons, Portland
(Clark Bennett)

Icemen had to spend long, hot days lugging dripping blocks of ice up narrow back stairs. Ice horses also had to be in good shape to withstand hauling heavy loads during hot, humid weather.

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Ice wagons were still in evidence in some rural areas until the 1950s, however, trucks had replace the horse drawn ice wagons.

Discussion:
1. Why was the ice trade hard on horses?
2. Why did many southern companies use mules to pull ice?
3. How has refrigeration changed?
4. How has mechanical refrigeration changes the face of the food industry?
5. Make a list of what you've eaten in the past two days. Which foods would have been unavailable without refrigeration?
6. Before refrigeration, how did people keep meat and other perishables from spoiling?
7. How have grocery stores changed?

Activity:
1. Research the many ways people used to keep food fresh. Explore some of the labor involved. What devices make keeping food fresh easier today?

Maine Learning Results Key:
ELA: B-C-D-H
SS/H: A-B-C
SS/G: A-B
SS/E: A
SS/C&G: A
M: B-C
S&T: B-D-F-H-I-M