Making the Grade: Women in the Lumber Mill Industry

New Milford, New Hampshire: Once a Jewel; Now a Ghost

white pine The

series of

architectural monographs volume xxx number three

Making the Grade Women in the Lumber Mill Industry

+ % Turkey Pond: How a Hurricane and a War Led to an All-Female Sawmill 5

% Recommended Reading: They Sawed Up A Storm: Discovering the Turkey Pond Sawmill 5 % Educator and Communicator: Sarah Shea Smith, Forest Industry Specialist 5 1 % Measuring up to NELMA Standards, and Exceeding Others 5 % The Lumber Queen of Maine 5 M % Woodell & Daughters: A Living Legacy in Lumber 5

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an architectural

monograph Making the Grade Women in the Lumber Mill Industry

Š NELMA 2014 Cumberland, Maine

Prepared for Publication by Northeastern Lumber Manufacturers Association 272 Tuttle Road Cumberland, ME 04021 Š 2014

Turkey Pond: How a Hurricane and a War Led to an All-Female Saw Mill

+ Letter from the Publisher: The most recent issue of the White Pine Monograph (Lumber and Sons, Volume XXX, Number Two) featured several lumber mill families within the broader NELMA family. We jokingly titled this issue “Lumber & Sons,” playing off the historic naming convention of multi-generational family businesses. And we did so knowing that it easily could have been called Lumber and Daughters. In researching that issue we were struck by many of the stories of women working, thriving and changing our typically male dominated industry.

So many in fact, that we produced this issue to shine the light on some of the amazing women who have helped shape our industry.

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nd, as with the last issue, we have produced a short video that captures some candid thoughts from three women who work at a lumber mill in Dixfield, Maine. This can be seen at www.nelma.org.

Read on to learn about the role women played in the industry from the late 1800s with the Lumber Queen of Maine, through World War II and the all female Turkey Pond Sawmill, and up to today where one Lumber Specialist at the University of New Hampshire Cooperative Extension is helping industry players understand market conditions, among other things.

I hope you have as much fun reading this issue as we did making it for you. If you would like to add your own voice to The Monograph (we’re always looking for projects to feature), don’t hesitate to email us at monograph@easternwhitepine.org.

The

white pine series of

architectural monographs A publication suggesting the architectural uses of eastern white pine and its availability today.

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Turkey Pond: How a Hurricane and a War Led to an All-Female Sawmill Old-timers may remember it is as “The Great Hurricane,” or perhaps “Yankee Clipper,” but whatever it’s called (storms weren’t named until 1950), it was one of the most destructive storms ever to hit New England.

It also set the stage for the first women-run sawmill in the country.

Enjoy,

Jeff Easterling Publisher of the White Pine Monographs President of the Northeastern Lumber Manufacturers Association (NELMA) The crew assemble for a picture on January 14, 1943. Left to right: Mary Plourde, Barbara Webber, Violet Story, Carmilla Wilson, Lucy DeGreenia, Ruth Deroche, Daisy Perkins, Laura Willey.

(Photo courtesy of John Willey) 1

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Turkey Pond: How a Hurricane and a War Led to an All-Female Saw Mill

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n September 21, 1938, the Category 3 hurricane blew a devastating course from eastern New York and Connecticut, all the way up through Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine. The storm killed more than 700 people, destroyed thousands of homes, and caused property losses exceeding $400 million. That’s more than $5 billion in today’s dollars. Fifteen million acres of forest— thirty-five percent of New England’s total land area— were destroyed.

Not three weeks after the hurricane, President Franklin Roosevelt called for the U.S. Forest Service to head up the Northeastern Timber Salvage Administration (NETSA), a program to help harvest, process, purchase, and store the usable timber. The plan helped keep landowners and the local economy afloat. Also afloat, millions of softwood logs kept viable in storage ponds and fields.

White Pine Trees snapped off in Rollins Park, Concord.

(Photo courtesy of New Hampshire Division of Forests and Lands)

The immediate aftermath of the Great Hurricane included extensive areas of downed trees, which significantly affected forest structure and forest density— and created dangerous fire hazards throughout the region. Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) and Works Progress Administration (WPA) crews began the hazard removal and clean up of approximately 2.6 billion board feet of downed timber.

The largest repository of hurricane-salvaged logs was in Concord, New Hampshire. Turkey Pond was filled with twelve million board feet of white pine, an amount so daunting that the U.S. Forest Service did not contract a mill to set up there until June 1941. H.S. Durant and his family migrated from Maine to set up a mill, but despite their hard work, they could not saw it all.

By June 1942 (two and a half years after the hurricane), millions of logs remained. But the U.S. had entered World War II six months earlier, and workers were in short supply.

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The crew gathers on a summer day. Standing, left to right: Elizabeth Esty, Dorothy DeGreenia, unidentified, Violet Story, Lucy DeGreenia, Barbara Webber, Daisy Perkins.

Kneeling: Norma Webber and Ruth DeRoche. Photo courtesy of David Story)

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“In the fall of 1942,the government built its own mill at Turkey Pond, one operated almost entirely by women.”

More than six million women joined the workforce during World War II. In 1943, Newsweek magazine reported: “They [women] are in the shipyards, lumber mills, steel mills, foundries. They are welders, electricians, mechanics, and even boilermakers. They operate streetcars, buses, cranes, and tractors.”

And they were at Turkey Pond.

Turkey Pond: How a Hurricane and a War Led to an All-Female Saw Mill After attaching a log to the winch Elizabeth Esty signals to the winch operator in the mill to pull the log into the sawmill for processing.(Photo by John Collier Jr., Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, FSA/OWI Collection LCUSW3034106-E)

About a dozen women were recruited to roll logs, cut boards and stack lumber. Laura Willey was the head saw-filer at the mill. The job of sawyer was still held by a man— Willey’s husband Marshall, as a matter of fact— but Laura would often spell him, debunking the government’s belief that a woman could not be trained as a sawyer.

Sisters Barbara and Norma Webber were just twenty-one and eighteen at the time, respectively. Barbara did many different jobs at the mill, including operating the winch and running the edger, which smoothed the rough sides off pine boards. In an interview in 2001 Barbara Webber said proudly, but with a dash of Yankee modesty, “I knew how to make a good board.”

Turkey Pond Sawmill #2 operated for just over a year and was heralded a success. According to a 1943 report by R.M. Evans, the assistant administrator of NETSA, Boston: Left: Dorothy DeGreenia spent much of her time shoveling old bark and debris out of the building. (Photo by John Collier Jr., Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, FSA/OWI Collection LCUSW3-034096-E and 034097-E) Right: Barbara Webber guides the board through the edger, which squares its side (Photo by John Collier Jr., Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, FSA/OWI Collection LCUSW3-034130)

Violet Story was another mill worker. She rolled logs and hefted boards all day long before returning home to cook supper for her husband and six children. Elizabeth Etsy would use a pike pole to guide logs in the pond on to a ramp, where she would drive a spike attached to a chain into the end of the log and, finally, hook it to a winch cable. Winch operator Dorothy DeGreenia would take it from there, handling the winch that lifted the logs out of the pond and into the sawmill.

“Non-absenteeism is one of the merits of the women’s crew.

Snow, rain or sub-zero weather never slowed them up.

They never missed a day. One woman fell in [the] pond and would not stay in the warming shack and dry off but went right on working.”

Evans summarized the women’s mill crew at Turkey Pond as “a very patriotic, loyal, high class, group of women. Too much praise cannot go down for that particular group.”

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Educator and Communicator: Sarah Shea Smith, Forest Industry Specialist

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Recommended Reading

They Sawed up a Storm: Discovering the Turkey Pond Sawmill

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uring World War II, stereotypes about what constituted women’s work were suspended as women entered the work force in droves.

The women’s sawmill at Turkey Pond was touted as the first of its kind in the country by Life magazine, the Associated Press and others, but somehow the story faded into history. That is, until Sarah Shea Smith learned about the “lady loggers.”

In 2000, Smith, the forest industry specialist at the University of New Hampshire Cooperative Extension, was visiting a sawmill in Andover, New Hampshire when mill owner John Willey handed her a scrapbook that had belonged to his mother Laura Willey, head saw-filer at the Turkey Pond Sawmill. Inside the front cover was a picture of all of them: Turkey Pond Crew, January 1943 Smith was intrigued and began to investigate, but no one seemed to know about the mill. Fortunately, the timber salvage effort was a federal program, so there were plenty of records and photos in the National Archives. Smith collected more valuable information during interviews with Barbara Webber and relatives of mill workers, including Violet Story’s son, David. And of course there was Laura Willey’s scrapbook.

Smith wrote a number of articles about the sawmill and began giving talks about it at historical societies, libraries and other civic groups. Invariably, someone would come up to her and give her another nugget. Smith decided to collect all of her research and “nuggets” into a book called They Sawed Up a Storm.

Since the book was published in 2010, Smith has continued to give talks and gather more personal accounts of Turkey Pond, the Great Hurricane and New England during the war. In fact, she recently found Florence Druin, another woman who worked at the sawmill. Smith jokes that she’ll “have to write a sequel” because of all the new information she’s uncovered. She says, “It’s like a living research project.”

John Dunbar, John Willey,and Sarah Shea Smith at the reveal of the historic marker during 65th year reunion of the 1938 Hurricane.

Educator and Communicator: Sarah Shea Smith, Forest Industry Specialist According to Sarah Shea Smith, women have been running mills— smaller logging operations, in particular— for years. “The men are out driving the skidders and everyone assumes they’re running the business,” she says. “Fact is, many of these businesses would not exist if it weren’t for the wives and mothers and daughters working behind the scenes.”

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mith should know. She’s been in the industry for more than thirty-five years and spent the last fourteen as the forest industry specialist at the University of New Hampshire Cooperative Extension.

So what exactly does a forest industry specialist do? In a nutshell: educate and communicate.

Smith provides information and educational programming to the loggers, sawmills, wood power industry, and other forest-based businesses in New Hampshire and, on occasion, the Northern New England region. She also updates the forestry community on the industry’s market conditions, as well as many other logs-to-lumber topics, such as safety, processing, procurement, grading, quality control, and even marketing.

“One of my roles is to act as an intermediary between buyers and sellers— or in some cases, a negotiator,” says Smith. She also describes her job as an interpreter, translating what a sawmill owner needs to the forester and to help lumber companies match the product coming off the land to what the market demands.

To use white pine as an example, landowners often think that bigger is better. There is frequently the misconception that a forty-two-inch tree is more valuable per board foot than an eighteeninch tree, when in fact, the eighteen-inch tree may be far more predictable in terms of the grade of lumber that can be sawn from it, according to Smith.

Smith has worked hard to improve communication throughout the industry, particularly as pine markets have become more challenging, unpredictable and global in recent years. “Who would have thought that white pine— industrial grade, no less— would be shipped around the world?”

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muses Smith. “What used to be a relatively local product requiring very little marketing is now competing with products from Chile, New Zealand, Eastern Europe. Amazing.”

Measuring up to NELMA Standards, and Exceeding Others

Of course these diverse market demands mean that mill managers and other players must be more savvy and knowledgeable than ever. That’s where Smith becomes indispensable.

As a woman working in a mostly male industry, Smith has had her share of obstacles, but by dint of hard work, she has handily overcome them. Her method of operation has always been to learn as much as possible about the subject matter and, more importantly, the people with which she works.

“The biggest compliment you can pay someone is to ask a question, because everyone from the lumber stacker to the owner of the company has something to offer,” she says. Showing interest in people’s work and respect for their opinions has helped Smith not only fit in, but to succeed for more than thirty years in the forestry trade.

Smith admits that because she’s a woman, new business acquaintances have had little or no expectations of her, although they’re often curious about who she is. Another possible advantage is that because she’s often the only female in the room, people tend to remember her name.

One disadvantage that Smith notes is true of many male-dominated professions, not just forestry: when business gets mixed with social activities, women are often excluded. It’s not yet the social norm to invite women colleagues fishing or camping for the weekend. Smith could “get cranked about those sorts of things,” but doesn’t. “The way I respond can affect my career, so what I pay attention to is doing my work well.”

Despite this drawback, Smith believes that there’s a lot of opportunity for women in forestry in general, but on the industry side, as well. And she doesn’t think there are many barriers for women, especially if they’re skilled, confident, and comfortable in different circles.

The earliest recorded use of lumber grading rules in the United States dates back to 1833. One hundred years later, the Northeastern Lumber Manufacturers Association (NELMA) was created and soon after, the group made size and quality standards for Northeastern softwoods a priority. Although NELMA began officially certifying graders in the 1970’s, there have been many graders with the skill and training to assure that lumber was measuring up to NELMA standards.

Sarah Shea Smith from the University of New Hampshire Cooperative Extension reviewing lumber standards.

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ake Mrs. Louise M. Chadbourne, for instance. Deep in the national archives there is a note dated December 23, 1942, and written by a “Chief Inspector Gowan.” The note refers to Mrs. Chadbourne as a NELMA grader at the Maine #11 Sawmill at Pickerel Pond, one of New England’s many timber salvage sawmills at the time.

Surely Mrs. Chadbourne— a possible, though unconfirmed, descendant of the well-known lumber family— must have cut an unusual figure in her day. But even now, only about six percent of NELMA certified graders are women. We recently had the opportunity to get to know some of them, and they all seemed to have one characteristic in common: a resolute drive to do the job right.

The women of Irving In Dixfield, a small town nestled in the Western Foothills of Maine, there is a trio of workers at the Irving Forest Products sawmill. Joni Dolloff, along with her sister Mary Richard and daughter April Dolloff, are all NELMA certified lumber graders.

Joni is a Tech Trainer and Team Leader in the specialty mill. Although Joni doesn’t grade every day, she’s always training others on the floor and on the pull line to spot good, accurate grades.

Employee motivation— or as Joni puts it, “lighting a fire under the crew”— is a big part of her job.

“I’m the mother of all them boys over there,” she laughs.

“I tell them what to do.”

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Mary Richard, like her sister Joni, has worked in lumber for more than thirty years. Currently, Mary works the night shift as a grader in the specialty mill. She enjoys the technical challenges involved in grading: “I like it when we’re busy and I’m looking at more than one grade— fourinch rough or six-inch rough, or more, there’s a lot more to think about,” she says.

Mary admits that she became a grader because the pay is better, an important factor for a single woman like Mary whose family depends on her income. At a mill with a skills-based pay scale like Irving, grading is one of the highest pay grades available.

April Dolloff also became a grader to support her family. The thirty year-old is the daytime certified grader at the specialty mill and grades for about six hours out of her ten-hour shifts. It’s hard, physical work, but she enjoys it.

Depending on the run, she will survey five to ten thousand board feet an hour, physically flipping every board as it comes down the line; that’s thirtythree boards a minute. Some boards are as long as fourteen feet. AccordJoni Dolloff, Grader, at J.D. Irving in Dixfield, Maine ing to April, grading can be tough on a person’s wrists and knees— and for this 5’10” grader, bending down to a short planer takes a toll on her neck too.

April has worked at Irving for three years, and though she’s only been a grader for nine months, she’s paid close attention to grades “as soon as [she] got there.”

“Maybe it’s because my mother is the head grader, but I’ve been interested in grading since I started,” April says. “I was never afraid to ask questions, and I may have annoyed a few people along the way, but whatever.”

Her initiative paid off. April studied for the NELMA certification test for two months and passed it on her second try. (She missed it the first time by one question.) Grader certification is made of a visual test and a written test, which is administered by NELMA’s Grading Inspection Services program. During the hands-on test, the grader must inspect and grade 200 boards as they come down the line while a NELMA inspector looks on. The written test made up of 10 questions. Most agree that the written test is the most difficult part, and some people take it multiple times before passing. To receive certification the candidate must accurately grade 180 out of 200 (90%) boards and correctly answer 9 of 10 (90%) questions.

April is now one of three main graders at the sawmill. She says her biggest challenge now is to sustain her concentration but not switch to “auto pilot mode” in the midst of a big run. “The worst thing is if you do it more than a few hours without taking a break,” April says. “There’s no music, no talking— just the sound of chains and flipping boards. You have to stay focused.”

Measuring up to NELMA Standards, and Exceeding Others

Irving also offers grader training for a half-hour every Tuesday, for both certified graders and graders-in-training. April likes the process because it keeps her knowledge “fresh.”

The only female inspector Laurie Hoisington of Newport, New Hampshire is rare, even among the scant number of female NELMA graders. In 1999-2000, Laurie was a NELMA inspector for almost a year, the only woman inspector in NELMA’s history, so far.

Laurie has worked in lumber her whole life, starting in the eighties as a stacker at Sherman Lumber Company in Sherman, Maine. She got into grading and then retail sales, eventually becoming a jill-ofall-trades, driving forklifts and running trims saws and edgers. But she had a special interest in grading. Every time the NELMA inspector would visit the sawmill, Laurie would ask for five minutes alone to ask specific questions about grading. One day Sherman Lumber hosted a NELMA grading school and encouraged Laurie to Mary Richards, Grader, at J.D. Irving in Dixfield, Maine attend. She was officially hooked.

“I just couldn’t get enough of it,” says Laurie. “I’m a detail-oriented person, and I like to know what makes things tick, so learning the difference between the lumber grades, the feel of it, the smell of it, why one grade works better for a certain job— I found it all fascinating.”

Laurie’s expertise and enthusiasm didn’t go unnoticed. In 1999, she was invited to work as an inspector for NELMA. Steve Card, the chief inspector at the time, was equal parts mentor and cheerleader. When Laurie first started, Steve would accompany her to mills, make introductions and supervise her work. Laurie remembers his “tremendous sense of humor,” as well as his ability to make everyone feel important, like what they did mattered. Steve passed away in 2006.

As an inspector for NELMA, Laurie’s job was to oversee the consistency of grades in NELMA facilities throughout the Northeastern US and Great Lakes region, to ensure that graders at each mill were staying within the windows of the grade, and to guide them according to NELMA stan-

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dards. Laurie makes a clear distinction, however, between what makes a good grader and what makes a good inspector.

According to Laurie, a good grader has endurance, “especially if you’re on a live line.” An effective grader pays attention to detail and knows all the parameters and NELMA standards, inside and out. An inspector, in comparison, needs to know all about grading, but must also be “eventempered and open-minded.” The best inspectors, Laurie says, are good teachers too, capable of presenting things in different ways to a wide variety of people.

Don Pendergast, a current NELMA inspector and Laurie’s former trainer, concurs. “Not every grader can be an inspector,” Don explains. “As an inspector, you’re dealing with many more people from different levels in a mill, so you have to be a bit diplomatic.”

Measuring up to NELMA Standards, and Exceeding Others

“Mary Bosch thinks it’s more like poetry: ‘There’s some poetic license on how you interpret the grades, and it’s that gray area of interpretation that can be the toughest part of getting certified.’ ” Mary has been the general manager of Seacoast Mills in Brentwood, New Hampshire for twenty years— and part owner and Vice President of the Seacoast Mills Building Supply Store since 1995. Like many small business owners, Mary wears a multitude of hats, including log scaler, shipper and bookkeeper. One of her roles is as the company’s grader. At least one third— and sometimes one-half— of her time is spent grading.

“I handle every piece of wood that comes out of the planer, plus I check grades after they’re sorted and leave the sawmill,” says Mary.

The feed on the Seacoast Mills planer is slower than most because, according to Mary, it gives a better finish. Generally, they will run 120 lineal feet a minute.

April Dollof, Grader, at J.D. Irving in Dixfield, Maine

Diplomacy was one of Laurie’s strong suits, particularly in her early weeks as an inspector. She recalls one dimension mill where two graders heckled her as the plant manager was giving her a tour. Laurie “let it slide at first,” but when they wouldn’t stop, she pointed to herself, pointed to the “Bible” (the NELMA grading book), and then pointed to herself again. “If you could have seen the look on his face when he realized who I was,” Laurie laughs. “He tightened up real fast.”

Although Laurie loved the inspector job, the constant travel was difficult on her family and she decided to work closer to home. In 2001 she suffered an injury while snowmobiling, which eventually forced her to leave the lumber industry entirely. She misses it tremendously, especially grading white pine, which she calls her “true love.”

Laurie knows that working in lumber she was in the minority, and she hopes more women will consider a career in the industry. When she first started thirty years ago, working at a sawmill was much more physical than it is today. Back then, says Laurie, you had to “manhandle everything,” but today there are many more machines to lighten the workload. Literally. “As long as you understand leverage, you can take the biggest piece of wood and stack it all by yourself and not get hurt,” observes Laurie. “People would say, ‘you’re so strong,’ but I’d say, ‘no, I’m smart!’”

You should want to get better When asked if he thinks women make better graders than men, Don Pendergast’s diplomatic answer is: “I think women are equally able to grade as men.” But, he adds, every grader has an “off day” when things just aren’t quite right. “Grading is not an exact science.”

There is a wide range of sizes and amounts of defects that are permissible with each grade, especially with white pine. In addition to keeping within standard NELMA grades, Mary is also challenged to keep specific end users in mind while grading, so that “each customer’s yield is better and they’re getting the best value.”

One customer, for example, uses 2-inch stock boards for silk screening, so they can’t have large knots in them; Mary ensures that they have clear cuttings. The same customer also takes 4-quarter boards and rips them into narrower pieces, so Mary makes sure that those boards are planed wider than the normal standard width; instead of having a wasted strip, the customer can get one more piece out of the board, a higher yield.

Mary became a certified grader because it was related to her job and made her a better employee.

In fact, Mary believes that everyone in the industry should learn how to grade, regardless of his or her job title.

“It shows that you know what you’re doing,” she says. “If you care about your work, whatever the industry, you should want to get better.”

Mary has a deep knowledge about lumber, but like many New Englanders, she’s modest about her abilities. Many of her (male) co-workers don’t even know that she built her own post and beam house. She used white pine, of course: “The clear wood is beautiful, and the selects are beautiful grains. Even the knotty grades have a nice, rustic feel.”

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The Lumber Queen of Maine Every little while the newspapers chronicle the story of some woman who is engaged in an occupation so foreign to any heretofore undertaken by her sex that one wonders how she came to undertake it.

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hus begins a chapter in Occupations for Women (A book of practical suggestions, for the material advancement, the mental and physical development, and the moral and spiritual uplift of women), published just before the turn of the twentieth century. The “some woman” to which the book refers is Miss Clara M. Stimson, millionaire mill owner and media darling.

Stimson was just 23 years old when her father passed away in 1892, leaving her with no property except a small shingle mill in Houlton, Maine, where the family lived. It was expected that Clara (the sole support of her widowed mother) would sell it and invest in millinery, the business of making and selling hats. She chose the mill over millinery, logging and lumber instead of hats and headpieces.

The family mill ran successfully for a time, but when the Bangor & Aroostook Railroad extended rail service further north, Stimson sold the Houlton business and built a larger mill in the town of Masardis. There she continued to build her reputation as one of the most knowledgeable and respected lumber manufacturers in the region.

A number of newspaper accounts from the time remark on her hands-on management of the business, buying the logs for the mill, overseeing the sawyers, and regularly visiting New York and Boston to sell the company’s boards, planks and shingles.

According to an article in the Lewiston Evening Journal in 1896, dealers at first seemed afraid of her or, at the very least, confused. But she had samples and knew how to talk “plainly, directly and eminently businesslike.” She said: “No, you don’t know me, and I don’t know you, either.

But you’re buying shingles and I’m selling them. I back my shingles. I live in Houlton, Maine, but I haven’t any references. I won’t ask anyone for references, and I don’t think they amount to much. But my shingles are just what I say they are, and I warrant them to be so on the word of a woman with a desire to develop a business and make an honest dollar. Do you want to purchase?”

The dealer from that particular anecdote believed that he did, and he became a regular customer, as did many others.

In the winter of 1895, Stimson took the first excursion train on the then new Ashland line, but typical of the hardworking businesswoman, it wasn’t a pleasure trip. She had heard of a mill

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privilege in Ashland and after looking it over during a stroll on the ice, she purchased it.

She also secured deeds to the three islands nearby and leased shore privileges back toward Masardis for three-quarters of a mile. At the time, the chief difficulty along the Aroostook River had been a scarcity of “holding places” for lumber. Stimson put up large piers and, with the aid of the islands, developed the most valuable holding place on the river.

Again, according to the Evening Journal article, parties offered Stimson a free privilege to the St. Croix River, but she opted to pay for the privilege situated below the junction of the St. Croix and Aroostook Rivers, where the timberlands on both streams would be accessible. The newspaper called the acquisition “farsighted” and the “envy of other manufacturers.”

In her own hands-on way, Stimson oversaw not just the deal but also the construction. She bought all the machinery and supplies, after careful selection. The Ashland mill was the first in town to be powered by steam, and it was the largest. More than one hundred men were in its employ.

Clipping from “RUNS HER OWN MILL.” from the Aurora Daily Express, July 22nd 1896.

And what was Stimson like as a manager? In her words: “I take a new man and give him a good talking to at the start. I tell him our rules and serve strict notice that if he isn’t prepared to stick to them, he may as well not hire with me.”

A man caught smoking anywhere on the mill’s premises would be instantly discharged— a solid business decision, as the abundance of dry wood and sawdust in mills meant frequent fires. Seventy-five years before OSHA compliance, Stimson posted no-smoking signs and distributed fire pails throughout the mills herself. If she found that a pail had been moved or “used for anything except fire purposes,” she promised to “make an example of someone.”

“Another ironclad rule: no drinking on the job. If a man were caught intoxicated, he would be fired on the spot. ‘I’ll not have a man cut up in my mill by a drunken man’s carelessness,” she said.

Stimson even handled payroll. She paid her employees— in person— on the fifteenth of every month. She designed the paychecks herself; they were non-transferable and whoever was paid signed away all recourse for damages or injuries he may have suffered or claimed to suffer in the mill.

“I was obliged to go into the lumber business first because of the death of my father, who was extensively interested in sawmills and timberlands,” Clara Stimson once told a reporter. “I soon became interested in it for its own sake and have accomplished all I could.”

It’s no wonder that after years of sharpening her business acumen and navigating the rivers of the industry, she came to be known as “lumber queen” of Maine.

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+ Woodell & Daughters: A Living Legacy in Lumber Tina Christie was just a kid when she started helping her dad George at his sawmill. Her mom, Betty Whipple, remembers looking for them in the woods one afternoon to see what they were getting into. She found them near an embankment, little Tina sitting on a dozer and George down over the bank hooking tongs to a log.

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ull ‘em up!” George hollered to Tina.

“What are you doing?” yelled Betty, fit to be tied.

“We’re doing fine, just go on home.” he called back.

Unconvinced, Betty kept watching, and sure enough, Tina yanked the winch handle and pulled up the log like a pro. She was four-years-old.

Fast-forward forty years. Tina is now co-owner of Woodell & Daughters Forest Products LLC in Langdon, New Hampshire, along with her husband and mother. Originally a wholesale business, the company began to move toward retail sales in the nineties. Now a fully retail concern, Woodell & Daughters produces pine, hemlock and hardwood lumber and timbers, manufacturing much of it on a handset Lane sawmill. A small dry kiln on site gives them the flexibility to custom-dry even the most unusual orders.

According to Betty, they also carry post and beam, flooring, counter tops, stair treads, bead boards, tongue-in-groove and more. “One of our contractors says, ‘if you can’t find it here, then you don’t really need it,’” she says with pride.

First-rate customer service and the ability to adapt have kept the business steady since Betty and George started it in 1975. But it’s impossible to tell the story of Woodell & Daughters without talking about family. George Woodell’s father, also named George, scaled logs for the U.S. Forest Service during the 1938 hurricane salvage efforts, and then sawed for other mills in the area, eventually becoming a foreman at one of them.

George and Betty were only sixteen when they married, and with a homemade “doodlebug” tractor, a truck rigged with dollies, and heaps of determination, they started a small logging operation. The young couple soon realized that there was no market for low-grade hardwood, so in

Woodell & Daughters: A Living Legacy in Lumber

1975, they opened their own lumber mill. It was supposed to be a part-time production but, says Betty, it became full-time fast.

George sawed and ran the mill, while Betty spent most of her time keeping the books— and going out and selling lumber. Betty met with some resistance from potential male customers, at first.

Skeptical, they would say, “We need to talk to your husband,” to which Betty would respond, “Well, he’s at the mill from 7:00am5:00pm, so unless you’re going down there, you’re going to have to talk to me.” The situation quickly resolved itself.

For the Woodells, family life and mill life were one and the same.

George used to joke that their marriage vows were “for better, for worse, and for lunch,” because despite their busy schedules, they’d always have lunch together, a tradition that stuck, even after their daughters Tina and Tammy were born. Although both girls grew up at the mill, Tammy, who is a few years younger than Tina, was more interested in farmyards than lumberyards. (Tammy now owns a dairy farm in upstate New York.) Tina, on the other hand, was always “in her dad’s hip pocket,” a pocket that, one assumes, was covered in sawA sign made from a large circular dust. saw blade above the door to the mill reads Woodell & Daughters Forest Products.

When Tina was in fifth grade, she and Tammy started a kindling wood business. They’d cut up leftover edging, put it in a box, and sell it as kindling for twenty-five cents a box. One day when their dad was away, a customer came in needing logs for a log cabin he was planning to build. Tina suggested he wait until her dad came back, but the customer kept insisting on a price. Finally Tina told him what she charged— something “ridiculously high,” she recalls— and he agreed to the sale! “Tina suspects that he felt sorry for the two little girls all by themselves at the sawmill, but whatever the reason, Tina sold her first log cabin package at the age of ten.”

Tina started officially working at the mill when she was about thirteen. Her first job was to shadow the edger, an older, semi-retired fellow. As she got older her responsibilities multiplied, and by the time she left high school, she was running the loader, tailing the board saw, stacking the lumber, maintaining the yard, and taking care of customers— basically doing whatever needed to be done, with the exception of sawing.

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The White Pine Monograph Series

List of Mills of The Northeastern Lumber Manufacturers Association

The Woodell & Daugters Mill.

Tina went to Keene State College to study business management, returning to the mill to help out on school breaks and holidays. When she graduated in 1992, she went right back to the mill.

George Woodell passed away just a few years later. “George used to say to me that when he left this world, he wanted to be pulling the handle of his sawmill,” recalls Betty. ”That’s exactly what he was doing too, him on one side and Tina on the other.”

After George died, Betty and Tina decided together to keep the business going. They agreed to give it a go for a year. It wasn’t easy, but by then, they had built a solid reputation and a loyal customer base. “We’re very, very lucky to have such incredible customers,”says Tina. Tina went back to work when Hayley was just five weeks old. Betty jokingly says that her office was a daycare for a while, but she is grateful for the time she spent with her grandchildren. And she believes that they’ve learned some important lessons about hard work and family.

“In 2000, Tina’s daughter Hayley was born. ‘It’s not easy being pregnant and running a lumber business,’says Tina, laughing.”

Now that Hayley is thirteen, she’d rather be tending to the livestock she owns, but she still works in the store on occasion. Tina’s ten-year-old nephew Clark, however, loves the lumber life and visits the mill whenever he can. “He’s usually in my back pocket when he comes down from New York,” adds Tina.

Whether the next generation will run Woodell & Daughters remains to be seen, but the imprints of the mill on the family is indelible. “Looking back, there wasn’t a better way to grow up,” Tina reflects. “Most people wouldn’t want this for an occupation, because it is a lot of hard work. It’s a hard way of life, but it’s a good way.”

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Manchester Lumber M.B. Heath & Sons Lumber Company, Inc. Mill River Lumber Ltd. Newman Lumber Company, Inc.

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