Hay-wards were, as the name indicates, men to keep watchful care over the growing hay. For instance, in Hadley, Massachusetts, in 1661, Goodman Montague was chosen hay-ward by the town. He was to have twelvepence for each cow or hog, two shillings for each horse, and twenty pence for each twenty sheep that he found loose in any field or meadow, and successfully turned out. The owner of the animal was to pay the fine. At a later date these hay-wards were called field-drivers. They are still appointed in many towns and cities, among them Boston.
Hog-reeves were men appointed by the citizens to look after their hogs that roamed the roads and streets, to see that all those swine had rings in their noses, were properly marked, and did not do damage to crops. Many towns had hog-reeves till this century; for until seventy years ago hogs ran freely everywhere, even in the streets of our great cities. It was a favorite jest to appoint a newly married man hog-reeve. When Ralph Waldo Emerson was married and became a householder in Concord, the young philosopher was appointed to that office. Sometimes a single swineherd was hired to take care of the roving swine. The two Salem swineherds or swine-keepers in 1640 were to have sixpence for each hog they drove daily to pasture from April to November. These and many other public offices were simply a form of legalized coöperation; a joining together of neighbors for public good.
The neighborly assistance given to new settlers began with the clearing of the ground for occupancy. The girdling of trees was easy and speedy, but it was discountenanced as dangerous and hideous, and was not frequently practised. A chopping-bee was a universal method among pioneers of clearing ground in newly settled districts, or even in older townships in Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine, where great tracts of land were left for many years in the original growth. Sometimes this bee was held to clear land for a newly married man, or a new neighbor, or one who had had bad luck; but it was just as freely given to a prosperous farmer, though plentiful thanks and plentiful rum were the only rewards of the willing workers.
All the strong men of the township repaired at an early hour to the tract to be cleared, and with powerful blows attacked the great trees. A favorite way of bringing the day's work and the day's excitement to a climax was by a "drive." This was made by chopping half-way into the trunks of a great group or circle of trees—under-cutting it was called—so that by a few powerful and well-driven blows at the monarch of the group, and perhaps a few well-concerted pulls on a rope, the entire group could be felled together, the leader bringing down with his spreading branches in his mighty fall his fellows in front of him, and they in turn their neighbors, with a crash that shook the earth and made the mountains ring. It was dangerous work; accidents were frequent; the records of death at log-rollings are pathetic to read and to think of, in a country where the loss of a sturdy man meant so much to some struggling household. A heavy and sudden gust of wind might blow down a small tree, which had been carelessly "under-cut," and thus give an unexpected and premature collapse of the simple machinery of the grand finale.
A century ago a New Hampshire woman and her husband went out into the forest primeval; he cut down a few trees, made a little clearing termed a cut-down wherein a tiny patch of sky and cloud and scant sunlight could be seen overhead, but no sunrise or sunset, and built a log house of a single room—a home. With the opening spring came one day a group of kindly settlers from distant clearings and settlements, some riding from ten miles away the previous day. In front of the log house they chopped all the morning long with sturdy arms and swinging blows, yet felled nothing, till in the afternoon when all was ready for the final blow at the towering leader, which by its fall should lay low a great sloping tract for a dooryard and home field. As the noble trees fell at last to the earth with a resounding crash, lo! in the opening there appeared to the startled eyes of the settler's wife, as if rising out of heaven, a neighbor in her loneliness—Mount Kearsage, grand, serene, and beautiful, crowned with the glories of the setting sun, standing guard over a smiling lake at its foot. And every day through her long and happy life till ninety-six years old, as she looked at the splendid mountain, standing as it will till time shall be no more, did she thank God for His gift, for that noble companionship which came so suddenly, so inspiringly, upon the cramped horizon of her lonely forest home.
After the trees were all felled, it was no longer a "cut-down" but an "opening." This was made preferably in the spring. The fallen trees were left some months on the ground to dry in the summer sun, while the farmer turned to other work on his farm, or, if he were starting in life, hired out for the summer. In the autumn the tops were set on fire, and the lighter limbs usually burned out, leaving the great charred tree-trunks. Then came what was known as a piling-bee, a perfect riot of hard work, cinders, and dirt. Usually the half-burned tree-trunks were "niggered off" in Indian fashion, by burning across with a smaller stick of wood till the long log was in lengths which could be dragged by the farmers with their oxen and horses into vast piles and again set on fire. Another treat of rum accompanied this day's work. The word "log-rolling" was often applied to the latter bee, and occasionally the felling of trees and dragging into piles for firing was done in a single log-rolling.
Sometimes before the opening was cleared it was planted. The spring rains and melting snows carried the fertilizing ashes deep into the soil. Corn was planted and "dug in"; rye was sowed and "hacked in." The crops were astonishing; the grain grew among the fallen logs and stumps in rioting luxuriance. A stump-pulling was another occasion for a friendly bee, to clear off and put into comely shape the new field.
Another exhibition of coöperation was in a stone-hauling or a stone-bee. Some of the rocky fields of hard New England would defy a lifetime of work of one man and a single yoke of oxen. With judicious blasting, many oxen, strong arms, and willing hearts the boulders and ledges were tamed. Stone walls eight feet wide, such as may be seen in Hopkinton, New Hampshire, stand as monuments of the patience, strength, skill, and coöperation of our forbears.
To show the struggle and hard work willingly done for a home, let me give the statement in 1870 of a respected citizen, the historian of Norridgewock, Maine, when he was over ninety years old. He served an apprenticeship of eight years till he was twenty-one, then bought on credit a tract of fifty acres in the primeval woods. On eight acres he felled the trees and left them through the winter. In April, 1801, he spent three weeks in burning off the logs and clearing as well as possible by handwork three acres. These he sowed with wheat and rye, buying the seed on credit. He hired a yoke of oxen for one day and did what harrowing he could in that short time, grubbing around the stumps with a hoe for two more days. The crop grew, as did all others on similar soil, amazingly. The two bushels of seed-wheat yielded fifty-two bushels, the bushel of rye thirty bushels. On his other five acres among the fallen trees he planted corn, and raised a hundred and twenty-eight bushels. He adds:—
"When I could leave my work on my new land I worked out haying and other work. I made shoes in the Fall, taught school in the Winter, paid for my board and some clothing, but husbanded my resources to pay for my land. At the end of the year found myself worth two hundred dollars. I continued to clear up four acres each year till I had cleared the fifty acres, planted an orchard and erected suitable farm buildings and fences."