More colorised fun!

[ThehosGendar]

Thought you all might enjoy this.

Once again, to keep my mind off of some recent drama, I've been playing with colorising some more cool LoC images. Took a little swipe at the image of Company G, 114th Pennsylvania at Petersburg, August 1864. (LC-DIG-cwpb-03857)

These things get addictive!

[high_private78]

Re: More colorised fun!

Besides the color (which looks great!) I noticed that a good number of these boys have ultra short hair. I wonder if there was a head shaving party (lice problems?)

Jason Reasor

[Wounded_Zouave]

Re: More colorised fun!

I have read that short hair was rather traditional for Zouave troops. That plus the fact that the 114th PA was Meade's HQ quard when that photo was taken. Well-dressed, well groomed soldiers were mandatory at HQ... lice or no lice. :wink_smil

[Ken Cornett]

Re: More colorised fun!

Jason,

That is really cool. Ted Turner would be proud!

[tomarch]

I just noticed the forest in spite of the trees!

A thought just struck me while viewing these fine photos: Every time I have seen a forest shot fron the Petersburg Campaign, all of the pines seem to be of pretty uniform heigth, diameter and spacing! I used to work for a reforestation company that did LOTS of work in the deep south, and their mature tree farms looked exactly like those in the photo! Now I know that reforestation in the South didn't realy get going untill around the 1940's, so how did those trees all get that way? They all look as if they were planted at the same time by somebody about 12-20 years earlier!

[Hank Trent]

Re: I just noticed the forest in spite of the trees!

Every time I have seen a forest shot fron the Petersburg Campaign, all of the pines seem to be of pretty uniform heigth, diameter and spacing! ...They all look as if they were planted at the same time by somebody about 12-20 years earlier!

For what it's worth, we purchased land that had been logged but not clearcut a few years earlier. In one portion, there was a small stand of native yellow pines mixed with the hardwoods, and where the pinecones would have fallen, young pine trees began to spring up, so that when we purchased the land, there were lots and lots of crowded pines all about 6-8 feet high. Apparently the new exposure to light or the disturbance set them growing, though I believe fire will do the same thing for some pine species.

That was about 12 years ago, and the pines are now thinning themselves out, but the ones that are left are, of course, about the same age and height, though they're in a mixed forest, not clearcut or overgrazed, so the look isn't that dramatic.

But if there had been a spate of clearcut timbering or land clearing in Virginia at the right time, so that all mature trees were removed, and then the timber was allowed to regrow or the land abandoned, I think the pines might naturally spring up together like that.

Hank Trent
hanktrent@voyager.net

[Matthew Semple]

Re: More colorised fun!

While at college in Vermont, I saw a few pine forrests with the same appearance. The owners had recently cut all of the underbrush, less mature pines, and hardwoods out of the forrest. Is it possible that the Army had done the same in the area that this picture was taken?

[Bivouac_of_the_Dead]

Re: More colorised fun!

Loblolly pine (actually this is Longleaf Pine) grow that way naturally. Clear out the underbrush and you've got an instant park-like setting. Perfect for an encampment. The woods in the period photo probably looked like this before the troops took out the undergrowth:

[Emmanuel Dabney]

Re: More colorised fun!

And if left to do its thing, much of Virginia's forests would be innundated with this pine. Behind my house is tall loblolly pine which concerned me during Hurricane Isabel in 2003 but no disaster came (thankfully).

The armies and residents of Petersburg would do much during the 9.5 month campaign to strip the woods. Not handy at my disposal but if it means that much to someone I'll work hard and attempt to locate it but some soldiers recall having to go up to 2 miles from camp to retrieve firewood during the winter of 64-65.

Another photograph showing the survival of trees inside a fort is a view of Ft. Stedman.

[Charles Heath]

Re: I just noticed the forest in spite of the trees!

Tom,

Clearcutting for the production of charcoal removed a great number of hardwoods throughout Virginia and Maryland. Conjecture at this point without specifics, but the documentation for square miles of forest removal is in the volumes written about pre-war iron production.

[Bivouac_of_the_Dead]

Re: More colorised fun!

I have been informed via PM that the picture above is not of loblolly, but rather Longleaf Pine Savannah. Thus endith my night job as a botanist.

[tomarch]

Re: I just noticed the forest in spite of the trees!

Tom,

Clearcutting for the production of charcoal removed a great number of hardwoods throughout Virginia and Maryland. Conjecture at this point without specifics, but the documentation for square miles of forest removal is in the volumes written about pre-war iron production.

While I agree that clearcutting for charcoal denuded large areas of forest, I don't think re-forestation was done at that time.Case in point: the Wilderness was logged over for charcoal making, but was allowed to naturaly grow back resulting in the tangle of trees, bushes, vined and thorns that made it SUCH a special treat for both sides during the battle of the Wilderness.

I'm not sure about how the trees in the picture got the way they were, I was just surprised that they so nearly resemble a modern day tree farm. I also wonder how that stand of trees remained standing when the area for so far around was denuded. I guess that stand was preserved because it was around Mead and Grant's H.Q.

How cool is it that the various sub-topics of the Civil War can range so far as to include silvaculture!

[Charles Heath]

Re: I just noticed the forest in spite of the trees!

Tom,

I'll readily agree Chespeake Corporation, Union-Camp, Continental Can, and other large landowners in that area weren't into tree farming in the 1840s-1860s along that long stretch of US 460 in Pine, Peanut, and Pork country -- for a variety of reasons. I can tell you first hand these folks were real proud of their tree farming in the 1960s-1980s, but that is a century after "our time."

We tend to forget the natural course of sucession after clear cutting, and some of the species that don't exist in large numbers today that were common back then. Eastern Hemlock and Chestnut are two that come to mind, the former doesn't exist in huge stands in central Virginia due to overharvesting (although it can be found along the shady south banks here and there), and the Chestnut went away due to blight, and the related logging programs. Red Spruce was also decimated, but that was also postwar, and at higher elevations. White Pine was native, but the 3'-4' diameter trees are more likely to be specimens in parks far to the north, rather than common in the NW counties.

Bloat, don't feel bad about the Longleaf Pine, as your assumptions were correct for Tidewater, Virginia. It is a slow growing pine, unlike the modern Loblolly bred for pulp or lumber. The classic pine tree hanging over salt water images on mid-20th century dishes and glassware are often this pine, and the observant will note their stumps in what is the ocean today.

Fuel. But fuel for what? The Appomattox Iron Works in Petersburg dates from the 1850s, and may be older than that. In more modern times they were known for producing excellent sawmills. In older ages, they cast the usual iron products, to include some for railway applications. A little digging may come up with some other users. To compound matters, coal becomes available with better transportation in the nearby Chesterfield and Henrico County areas. Why use charcoal when one can get coal? The movement west to and through the Piedmont at that time in search of iron ore may have played a role. Nice can of worms, here. :) Em could possibly insert some information about early Petersburg industries here. At one time, it was a heck of a place.

If the clearcutting ceased about 20-30 years before the war, and ceased uniformly, that could explain much about the pines in sucession. As an aside, similar uniform stands of pine are seen in the Brandy Station 1864 photographs. Given a soldier's proclivity to cut down the nearest tree, what is the story behind that? Granted, the period accounts mention Hemlock often as a construction material.

Catherine Furnace (a second furnace by a similar name is west of the one in The Wilderness) is in an area were that scrubby little Virginia Pine is common in oldfields. The soil is different there, as it doesn't have the amount of sand, nor the percentage of wetlands (although it does have a few good swamps). Virginia Pine is good for kindling, makes a nice smoky fire, and is improved greatly if hit by lightning. Same thing goes for Pitch Pine. Both of which can be used for charcoal, but it isn't a first class item. The clear cutting extended well past modern Eagle Rock, Clifton Forge, Covington, and the erosion was horrible. At least one good volume was written on the history of the early iron industry in Virginia...maybe 25 years ago, or older. Unfortunately, I don't own a copy.

Nearly all of these pines will grow in a pure stand, but what industry prized stands of pines from colonial times to the present? Naval stores. Was there a reason to have naval store production in the region around Petersburg? Perhaps the Turpentine Museum in NC would have a few clues to that mystery.

Good topic.

Tom, speaking of topics, have you talked to Landrum about Vicksburg?

[Vuhginyuh]

Re: More colorised fun!

One thing that has been overlooked is the lumber exports from Tidewater VA and Coastal NC. It was the Cape Fear regions chief export until the war. The board feet that left the place bound for Great Britain is astounding. I have emailed Harry Warren at the NC Museum of Forestry (The NC Turpentine Museum?) for the actual numbers on this.


I have also called for copies of this;

Manuscripts Department
Library of the University of North Carolina
at Chapel Hill

SOUTHERN HISTORICAL COLLECTION

#1422
FREDERICK'S HALL PLANTATION LEDGERS AND OTHER VOLUMES
Inventory

Folder 16 Enclosures

Series 2. Antebellum and Civil War Plantation Records
27 items. 1730, 1823, 1849-1862.

Chiefly ledger books of Frederick's Hall Plantation.

Subseries 2.2. Lumber Account Ledgers
3 items. 1850-1853.

Chiefly lumber accounts from the 1850s, presumably from
Frederick's Hall. There are also a few pages of merchandise
accounts.

Folder 20 Vol. S-20. Lumber account ledger, 1850
21 Vol. S-21. Lumber account ledger, 1851-1852
22 Vol. 22. Lumber account ledger, 1853

***
Unless Emmanuel already has a copy we will need to wait a few days.

[Charles Heath]

Re: More colorised fun!

Garrison,

Absolutely! Talk about millions of board feet going across the Atlantic, on top of the domestic use.

As an aside, every once in a while we'll stumble on to one of those abandoned houses with red heart pine flooring, and marvel at the wood that might as well be iron.