User:Elizabeth Shiprock/sandbox/Cedar mining

Cedar mining or shingle mining is the process of creating wooden shingles from ancient cedar trees salvaged from bogs and swamps.

• "cedar logs ... found 4 to 20 feet below the surface"
• "up to 52 inches in butt diameter"
• "life span of 500 to 800 years"
• "perished owing to the constantly rising tide of salt water"
• Lakewood and Denisville New Jersey, also Florida,
• "mud shingler"
• "Cape May county, and in parts of Cumberland, Ocean, Atlantic, and Burlington counties."
• "Dennis and Upper townships in Cape May county"
• "Maurice River and Fairfield townships in Cumberland"
• "swamps closest to the salt marshes lost their trees to the tidal salt water first"
• "11' to 17' below the opaque surface, lay petrified cedar trees"
• "According to its smell, the miner determined if the tree had blown down or broken off; the former were more desirable because they were usually healthy and sound at the time."
• "The size of the shingles ranged from 18" x 6" x 1 1/2" to 36" x 7 1/2" x 1 1/2"."
• "The average lifespan of such a shingle on a building is 70 to 80 years."
• "in 1880 shingles brought $22.00 per 1000"
• "Dennisville 'shingle-getters' damned up Robbins swamp to gain access to the huge buried cedar logs"
• "This business attracted Civil War veteran Charles Pittman Robart"
• "In 1753 Anthony Ludlam and Lewis Cresse extracted logs from the Cedar Swamp from which they cut 16,500 three-foot-long shingles for export"

Notes

• Weiss1965 has an entire chapter dedicated to cedar mining. Only snippet view at GBooks. Worth tracking down. abe books has a copy for $86.25.
• Sebold1991 only cites Weiss1965.
• Dorwart1992 only has snippet view, probably worth tracking down.