Many were the opportunities that served to bring
together the frontiersmen, with their families, throughout a
settlement or county. Foremost among such occasions were the
log-rollings.
After a settler had felled the thick-growing trees on a plot
which he desired to prepare for cultivation, he cut them, either
by sawing or by burning, into logs twelve or fifteen feet in
length. Frequently these were three, four, or even five feet in
diameter, so that they could not be moved by one man, even with a
team of horses. In such a situation, the settler would send word
to his neighbors for miles around that on a given day there would
be a log-rolling at his place; and when the day arrived six, or a
dozen, or perhaps a score, of sturdy men, with teams of horses
and yokes of oxen, and very likely accompanied by members of
their families, would arrive on the scene with merry shouts of
anticipation. By means of handspikes and chains drawn by horses
or oxen, the great timbers were pushed, rolled, and dragged into
heaps, and by nightfall the field lay open and ready for the
plough--requiring, at the most, only the burning of the huge
piles that had been gathered.
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