Historic tree felling

[Dan_Shade]

I was in Williamsburg this past weekend, and the carpenter exhibit rep was talking about an English method of chopping trees down that didn't leave a stump, whereas the colonies cut at waist height due to the abundance of timber.

Have any of you heard of this?

[rusticretreater]

Cutting at waist height was more due to the use of the axe than anything else.  Settlers wanted to clear the land quickly to plant crops.  Clearing stumps came later.  The only way to take the stump out with the tree was to dig it out, determine which roots to cut, give it a good pull and then hope it falls the way you hoped.  I have not found any documentation on this.

In early York streets, stumps were prevalent and hampered comfortable travel until the Stump Act was enforced. Any person found intoxicated might be sentenced to the task of extracting a prescribed number of stumps. The law so effectively reduced the number of problematic stumps and public drunkenness in York, that other localities imitated it.

[SawyerTed]

Were they cutting trees like the colonists found in North America?   I suspect the great size of trees here changed the felling technique.  Add that to cutting trees in the wilderness where a stump wasn't a problem, there wasn't need to cut trees stump and all.

[Dan_Shade]

I missed part of it, but it sounded like the roots were chopped out in England, but in the colonies it was chopped at waist height.

[SawyerTed]

Firewood was a high demand item in England so stumps and roots were valuable. 

[Tom King]

The mark of a good historian is that they can make it up on the fly.

[Dan_Shade]

I had a mental eyeroll when the interpretor said that, but the firewood comment does make sense.

[peakbagger]

Up in New England, many woodsman were farmers who worked the winter in the logging camps in the winter when there was a snow pack. My guess is 4 or 5 feet of snow on the ground might make a difference ;)