by Eric Rutkow
“I am once more seated”: Washington to James Anderson, April 7, 1797. George Washington Papers at the Library of Congress, 1741–1799: Series 2, Letterbooks.
“[T]hose trees which”: Washington to the Chevalier de Chastellux, June 2, 1784. In Jared Sparks, ed. The Writings of George Washington, vol. IX, part III. Boston: Ferdinand Andrews, 1839, 48.
“We were sadly disappointed”: Collinson to Bartram, February 1759. Darlington, 217.
“They have no apple”: Jefferson to Madison, October 28, 1785. In George Bancroft. History of the Formation of the Constitution of the United States of America, vol. I, 3rd edition. New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1883, 465.
“Learn, reader, to prize”: “In Honor of American Beer and Cyder.” Pennsylvania Mercury, July 15, 1788, 3.
“Cider is to be”: Henri L. Bourdin et al., eds. Sketches of Eighteenth Century America: More “Letters from an American Farmer” by St. John de Crèvecoeur. New York: Benjamin Blom, 1972, 49.
“a new apple orchard”: Ibid., 102.
“[W]ithin three years”: Peter Hatch. The Fruits and Fruit Trees of Monticello. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1998, 17.
“he would go off”: “The History of the Life of Johnny Appleseed [From (Hovey’s) Horticultural Magazine].” Boston Evening Transcript, April 18, 1846, 4.
“Refusing all offers”: “Johnny Appleseed: A Pioneer Hero.” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine 43, no. 258 (November 1871): 833.
“After talking about his nurseries”: Ohio Liberal, August 13, 20, 1873. In Robert Price. Johnny Appleseed: Man and Myth. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1954, 113.
“intended for the purpose”: Report of the Society for Printing, Publishing and Circulating the Writings of Emanuel Swedenborg. Manchester, England, January 14, 1817. In Price, 120.
“The gradual change”: L. H. Bailey. The Apple-Tree. New York: Macmillan, 1922, 62.
“Serene, not sullen”: Lord Byron. Eulogy on Colonel Boon, and Choice of Life. In Life and Adventures of Colonel Daniel Boon. Brooklyn, NY: C. Wilder, 1823, 42.
“The spit was”: Increase Mather. An Essay for the Recording of Illustrious Providences. Boston and London: George Calvert at the Sign of the Half-moon in Pauls Church-yard, 1684, 126.
“[S]ettling ye back”: Calendar of Virginia State Papers I, 1742, 235. In Frederick Jackson Turner. The Frontier in American History. New York: Henry Holt, 1950, 50, n. 31. See also Floy Perkinson Gates. “The Historical Dictionary of American English in the Making.” American Speech 6, no. 1 (October 1930): 38.
Crèvecoeur, for example: J. Hector St. John. Letters from an American Farmer. Dublin: John Exshaw, in Grafton Street, near Suffolk Street, 1782, 46.
“[They] cut his head off”: John Filson. The Discovery, Settlement and Present State of Kentucke. Wilmington: James Adams, 1784, 48.
“Many dark and sleepless”: Ibid.
“he might have accumulated”: “Miscellaneous Articles: Colonel Boone.” Niles’ Weekly Register, from March to September 1816—vol. x. Baltimore: Franklin Press, 1816, 261.
“[My] object was”: J. K. Paulding. The Backwoodsman. Philadelphia: M. Thomas, 1818, To The Reader.
“hardly admissible”: William I. Paulding. Literary Life of James K. Paulding. New York: Charles Scribner, 1867, 94.
“embraced a crude effort”: J. F. Cooper. Introduction to The Spy. London: Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley, 1831, ix.
“a state of society”: Ibid., x.
“early specimens will be”: J. K. Paulding. “National Literature,” 1820. In Launcelot Langstaff. Salmagundi, vol. II. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1835, 271.
“There was a peculiarity”: J. F. Cooper. The Pioneers, or The Sources of the Susquehanna. Boston: Houghton, Osgood and Company, 1880 (reprint), 9–10.
“I’ll turn my back”: Ibid., 229.
“was the universal material”: Lewis Mumford. Technics and Civilization. New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1934, 119.
“society pervasively”: Brooke Hindle, ed. America’s Wooden Age: Aspects of its Early Technology. Tarrytown, NY: Sleepy Hollow Restorations, 1975, 3.
“One year with another”: Bourdin, 144.
“will of course grow scarcer”: Benjamin Franklin. “An Account of the New-Invented Pennsylvania Fireplaces.” In Jared Sparks, ed. The Works of Benjamin Franklin, vol. VI. Boston: Charles Tappan, 1844, 36.
According to one historian: John Richards. “Woodworking Machinery.” Journal of the Franklin Institute (June 1870).
“It would be difficult”: Alexis de Toqueville. Democracy in America, vol. I. Translated by Henry Reeve. Cambridge: Sever and Francis, 1863, 376.
3: The Unrivaled Nature of America
In it, the narrator: Mark Twain. The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, and Other Sketches. New York: C. H. Webb, 1867, 7, 15.
“All thoughts of hunting”: “The Mammoth Trees of California.” Hutchings’ California Magazine 3, no. 9 (March 1859): 386.
“[N]ow, boys, do you”: Ibid.
“from 16 to 18 fathoms”: W. F. Wagner, ed. Leonard’s Narrative: Adventures of Zenas Leonard, Fur Trader and Trapper, 1831–1836. Cleveland: Burrows Brothers Company, 1904, 180.
“This tree employed”: “The Mammoth Trees of California,” 390–91.
“dreadfully shocked”: “The Big Tree at the World’s Fair.” Daily Placer Times and Transcript (San Francisco, California), June 27, 1853, 2.
“[I]n taking its proportions”: Ibid.
“Nobody who has”: “Wonder of the World at Big Tree Pavilion.” Broadside, New York: Powers & Macgowan, 1871.
“The average attendance”: J. Otis Williams. Mammoth Trees of California. Boston: Alfred Mudge & Son, 1871, 48.
“[I]t really seemed that”: “The Mighty Cedars of California.” Daily Picayune, August 3, 1856, 2.
“The stump has been”: “Our California Correspondence.” New York Herald, November 23, 1857, 2.
“[H]owever incredible it”: “The Mammoth Trees of California,” 390.
Horace Greeley, the editor: Horace Greeley. An Overland Journey, from New York to San Francisco, in the Summer of 1859. New York: C. M. Saxton, Barker & Co., 1860, 312, 315.
“vast beyond any thing”: William Cullen Bryant. Picturesque America or, The Land We Live In. New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1894 (revised edition; 1872), 304.
“it is only a country”: “The Mammoth Trees of California.” Hedderwick’s Miscellany, no. 2 (October 11, 1862), 29.
“[I]t must have been”: C. F. Winslow. “The Mammoth Trees of California.” Ohio State Journal, November 1, 1854, 1.
“[M]any a towering mountain”: E. Louise Peffer. “Memorial to Congress on an Agricultural College for California, 1853.” Agricultural History 40, no. 1 (January 1966): 56.
Hutchings considered any cuttings: “The Mammoth Trees of California,” 391.
“[I]t is the duty”: New York Herald, December 17, 1854. In Berthold Seemann. “On the Mammoth-tree of Upper California.” Annals and Magazine of Natural History (Third Series), no. 15 (March 1859): 172.
“for public use, resort”: An Act authorizing a Grant to the State of California of the “Yo-Semite Valley,” and of the Land embracing the “Mariposa Big Tree Grove,” June 30, 1864.
“At the present time the only [sequoia] grove”: Gifford Pinchot. A Short Account of the Big Trees of California. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1900.
“Probably there is no part”: A Lady (Susan Fenimore Cooper). Rural Hours. New York: George P. Putnam, 1850, 144, 190.
And while she: Ibid., 188, 206.
“He is as ugly as sin”: Julian Hawthorne. Nathaniel Hawthorne and His Wife, A Biography, vol. I. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1884, 291.
“essences unchanged by”: Ralph Waldo Emerson. Nature. Boston: James Munroe and Company, 1836, 7.
“In the presence of”: Ibid., 11–13.
“man of genius”: Ralph Waldo Emerson. “The Ameri
can Scholar: An Oration Delivered Before the Phi Beta Kappa Society, at Cambridge, August 31, 1837.” The Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Volume I: Miscellanies. London: Macmillan, 1884, 90.
While he rationalized: Bradford Torrey, ed. The Writings of Henry David Thoreau: Journal, 1850–September 15, 1851, vol. II. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1906, 23, 25.
“I went to the woods”: Henry D. Thoreau. Walden; or, Life in the Woods. Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1854, 98.
“a perfect forest mirror”: Ibid., 204.
“in the midst of a young forest”: Ibid., 124.
“Instead of calling on”: Ibid., 217–18.
“something savage”: Henry David Thoreau. The Maine Woods. Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1864, 70.
“The mass of men”: Thoreau, Walden, 10.
“the woodchoppers have”: Ibid., 208.
“Our village life would”: Ibid., 339.
“How many a man”: Ibid., 117.
“[Thoreau] loved Nature”: Ralph Waldo Emerson. “Biographical Sketch of Thoreau.” In Henry David Thoreau. The Succession of Forest Trees and Wild Apples. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1887, 29.
“I suppose that I have not”: Thoreau to Myron B. Benton, March 21, 1862. In F. B. Sanborn. The Writings of Henry David Thoreau, Vol. VI: Familiar Letters. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1906, 400.
“Among all the materials”: Andrew Jackson Downing. A Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening, Adapted to North America. New York: Wiley and Putnam, 1841, 44.
William Cullen Bryant, for example: “A New Park.” New York Evening Post, July 3, 1844.
“far more so, in many”: Andrew Jackson Downing. “A Talk About Public Parks and Gardens.” In Rural Essays. New York: Leavitt & Allen, 1860, 139.
“health, good spirits”: Ibid., 142.
Public parks, according to Downing: Ibid., 144–45.
“Five hundred acres is”: “The New-York Park.” In Rural Essays, 149–50.
“Never was a more desolate”: “A Ramble in Central Park.” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, vol. LIX, no. CCCLIII (October 1879): 691.
“what else can I do”: Frederick Law Olmsted to John Hull Olmsted, September 11, 1857. In Charles E. Beveridge and David Schuyler, eds. The Papers of Frederick Law Olmsted, Volume III: The Creation of Central Park, 1857–1861. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983, 79.
“a democratic development”: Olmsted to Parke Godwin, August 1, 1958. In The Papers of Frederick Law Olmsted, Volume III, 3.
“a mob of lazy”: Olmsted to the Board of Commissioners of the Central Park, January 22, 1861. In The Papers of Frederick Law Olmsted, Volume III, 314.
“I should have had nothing”: Olmsted to Mariana Griswold Van Rensselaer, May 22, 1893. In The Papers of Frederick Law Olmsted, Volume III, 67.
Their submission was: Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux. Description of a Plan for the Improvement of the Central Park: “Greensward.” New York: Aldine Press, 1858 (reprinted 1868).
“For the purpose”: Ibid., 14–15.
“The north-east section”: Ibid., 33–34.
“chiefly directed to”: Olmsted. “Park.” In George Ripley and Charles A. Dana, eds. The New American Cyclopedia: A Popular Dictionary of General Knowledge, Volume XII: Mozambique–Parr. New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1861, 773.
“It would have been difficult”: Olmsted. “Public Parks and the Enlargement of Towns.” Public Parks. Brookline, MA: n.p., 1902, 57.
“to select immediately”: Olmsted to the Board of Commissioners of the Central Park, October 16, 1857. In The Papers of Frederick Law Olmsted, Volume III, 108.
“No tree or shrub”: Olmsted. “Instructions to All Engaged in Moving or Planting Trees or Shrubs,” June 27, 1860. In The Papers of Frederick Law Olmsted, Vol. III, 255.
“specimens of every tree”: Third Annual Report of the Board of Commissioners of the Central Park. New York: William C. Bryant & Co., 1860, 42. See also Philip J. Pauly. Fruits and Plains: The Horticultural Transformation of America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007, 174.
“or nearly ten millions”: Olmsted. “Statistical Report of the Landscape Architect.” Third General Report of the Board of Commissioners of the Department of Public Parks for the Twenty Months, from May 1, 1872, to December 31, 1873. New York: William C. Bryant & Co., 1875, 350.
“[T]he Central Park in New York”: “Cities and Parks.” Atlantic Monthly VII, no. XLII (April 1861): 421.
“the finest work of art”: “Editor’s Easy Chair.” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, August 1863, 419.
“No one . . . can doubt”: “Public Parks and the Enlargement of Towns,” 71.
“slovenliness [as] a”: Ira Rutkow. Bleeding Blue and Gray: Civil War Surgery and the Evolution of American Medicine. New York: Random House, 2005, 35.
“In the first two years”: George Perkins Marsh. Man and Nature; or, Physical Geography as Modified by Human Action. New York: Charles Scribner, 1864, 296.
“the fountainhead of”: Lewis Mumford. The Brown Decades: A Study of the Arts in America, 1865–1895. New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1931, 78.
“it was the general opinion”: Charles Lanman. “George Perkins Marsh.” Literary World xiii, no. 21 (October 21, 1882): 353.
“I have had occasion both”: Marsh to Asa Gray, May 9, 1849. Quoted in George Perkins Marsh (David Lowenthal, ed.). Man and Nature. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1965, xviii.
“For instance my father”: Marsh to Spencer Fullerton Baird, May 21, 1860. In Caroline Crane Marsh, compiler. The Life and Letters of George Perkins Marsh, vol. 1. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1888, 422–23.
“It was well for me”: David Lowenthal. George Perkins Marsh: Prophet of Conservation. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2000, 37.
“The arts of the savage”: Marsh. “Address Delivered Before the Agricultural Society of Rutland County (September 30, 1847).” In Stephen C. Trombulak, ed. So Great a Vision: The Conservation Writings of George Perkins Marsh. Hanover, NH: Middlebury College Press, 2001, 5.
“[T]rees are no longer”: Ibid., 16–17.
Marsh went so far: Ibid., 16.
“that whereas [many]”: Marsh to Spencer Fullerton Baird, May 21, 1860. In Marsh, Life and Letters, 422.
“to show the evils”: Marsh to William Henry Seward, July 7, 1863. In Lowenthal, George Perkins Marsh, 267.
“Man alone”: Marsh, Man and Nature, 36, 39–40.
“Man has too long”: Ibid., 35.
“With the disappearance”: Ibid., 214, 216.
“[W]e have not yet bared”: Ibid., 228.
4: Forests of Commerce
“a part of the great”: Quoted in “The Age of Steam and Its Marvels—Movement of the Iron Horse ‘Across the Continent.’” Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers’ Monthly Journal 3 (1869): 294.
“We have the honor”: Ibid., 193.
The multiple speakers: Quoted in “The Celebration of the Completion of the Pacific Railroad, in Salt Lake City, May 11, 1869.” Latter-Day Saints’ Millennial Star, June 19, 1869, 397.
“the rails are of pine”: Philip Thomas et al. “Rail Road.” Niles’ Weekly Register, June 23, 1827.
“A twenty-foot bar”: “Wooden Railways.” Scientific American, April 15, 1871.
“To any engineer”: David Stevenson. A Sketch of the Civil Engineering of North America. London: John Weale, 1859 (second edition), 146.
“a whirlwind of bright sparks”: Charles Dickens. American Notes for General Circulation, vol. 1. London: Chapman and Hall, 186, Strand, 1842, 165.
“They used dry pitch-pine”: Judge J. L. Gillis to William H. Brown, June 24, 1870. Quoted in William H. Brown, The History of the First Locomotives in America. New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1871, 190–91.
“The moment of passing”: “Observations on some points relating to the Construction of Rail-roads.” Journal of the Franklin Institute 12 (1833): 155.
“among the ver
y best”: “Destruction of Our Forests.” New York Times, October 21, 1874.
“It is estimated that”: “Railroad Consumption of Timber.” Annapolis Gazette, July 15, 1873.
“That devilish Iron Horse”: Thoreau, Walden, 208.
“Even where railroads”: Andrew S. Fuller. The Forest Tree Culturist: A Treatise on the Cultivation of American Forest Trees. New York: Geo. E & F. W. Woodward, No. 37 Park Row, 1866, 12.
“saw how often brewers”: Frederick Weyerhaeuser. “Some Recollections of Grandfather’s Early Days.” In Louise L. Weyerhaeuser. Frederick Weyerhaeuser: Pioneer Lumberman. Minneapolis: McGill Lithograph Company, 1940, 23.
“the work didn’t suit”: Ibid., 25.
“expecting to learn”: Ibid., 26.
“The secret of this”: Ibid., 27.
“Upon the rivers which”: Congressional Globe, 32nd Congress, 1st Session, 1851–52, App. 25: 851. Quoted in Jenks Cameron. The Development of Governmental Forest Control in the United States. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1928, 135.
“the stalwart sons”: Congressional Globe, 32nd Congress, 1st Session, App., 389. Quoted in Cameron, 138, n. 25.
The local paper described it: Rock Island Daily Union, August 12, 1869. Quoted in Ralph W. Hidy, Frank Ernest Hill, and Allan Nevins. Timber and Men: The Weyerhaeuser Story. New York: Macmillan, 1963, 30.
“The Chippewa valley might”: Frederick E. Weyerhaeuser. A Record of the Life and Business Activities of Frederick Weyerhaeuser, 1834–1914. Unpublished manuscript, 127, 169. Quoted in Timber and Men, 43.
“For a mill man”: Matthew G. Norton. The Mississippi River Logging Company: An Historical Sketch, n.p. 1912, 13.
“Many members of the Mississippi”: Quoted in Timber and Men, 42.
“This was enough to”: Norton, 15–16.
“He could see from”: Ibid., 42.
“saw the importance”: Ibid., 56.
“to cover and govern”: Quoted in Timber and Men, 74.
“[H]is associates place him”: “A Pine Land King: Earning a Dollar a Day Thirty Years Ago, Now Controlling $100,000,000.” Times Picayune, quoting the Milwaukee Sentinel, November 9, 1887.
“can hardly be comprehended”: Norton, 82.
“[Weyerhaeuser] has at last”: “A Great Lumber ‘Combine.’” New York Times, May 28, 1888.