“Ginpole Johnson” and the woods jammer
The following article was provided by Chuck Johnson of Fairbanks, AK, a grandson of Charles Johnson.
Some time in the 1890’s, according to oral tradition, a portable jammer was developed by Charles Johnson, an immigrant from Sweden to Munising, Michigan. Johnson became known to his contemporaries as “Ginpole” Johnson because he employed the ginpole principle in developing his jammer for log loading. But whether developed by Johnson or someone else, the portable woods jammer was being used in Minnesota in the early 1890’s, and a picture taken at Gordon, Wisconsin, in 1903, shows an A-frame jammer in operation.
Eight former lumberjacks, all in their eighties when interviewed by the author some years ago, agreed, independently, that they had seen their first woods jammer some time between 1906 and 1908, either at Big Falls in Waupaca County, Galloway and Mosinee in Marathon County, or at Kempster in Langlade County.
There are variations of the portable jammer. One was the ginpole, which had only one pole reaching either straight up through the trees, or at an angle. Another was called the “A-frame” with two poles meeting at the top like the letter “A”, and the third type had a boom swinging out from the ginpole called the “swing boom” jammer.
No mechanical power was needed. Instead, a team of horses was used on cross-haul. A cable ran from the evener behind the horses to a toe block at the base of the ginpole, thence up to a block on top of the pole, and from there down on a traveling block to a crotch chain. After a “pup hook”, had been hooked to either end of the log, the log was hoisted into the air by the horses pulling on the cable. The pup hookers each held a long rope, called the “sucker line” attached to the pup hooks, and, at a signal from the top loader, the lines were yanked and the hooks were disengaged, releasing the log.
Although it was most commonly called the “woods jammer”, it was also known as a “side jammer”, probably because it was used extensively for loading flat cars and was usually stationed on the side of the cars. The A-frame jammer continued to be used to the very end of the logging era before machines replaced horses. Tigerton Lumber Company was using an A-frame powered by a Ford tractor into the 1950’s, at which time the hydraulic lift began to replace all jammers, large and small.
The construction of a jammer was simple. It was made almost entirely of logs to the specifications of the camp blacksmith. The upright logs or booms rested on two chamfered skids, which could be pulled in either direction by a team of horses. Had it been developed fifty years earlier, it would have saved a great deal of backbreaking labor. By 1915, at least, a swing-boom jammer was being manufactured by the National Iron Company of Duluth, and it is listed in their catalog for that year as the “Forest Log Loader and Decker”.
No one seems to be able to suggest where the word, “jammer” came from. Most dictionaries then and since, have ignored it.