In the olden times log-rolling was always a great frolic and brought the
people from far and near to lend a helping hand in building the new house.
In handling logs, lumbermen have tools made for that purpose--cant-hooks,
peevy irons, lannigans, and numerous other implements with names as
peculiar as their looks--but the old backwoodsmen and pioneers who lived
in log houses owned no tools but their tomahawks, their axes, and their
rifles, and the logs of most of their houses were rolled in place by the
men themselves pushing them up the skids laid against the cabin wall for
that purpose; later, when the peddlers and traders brought ropes to the
settlements, they used these to pull their logs in place. In building my
log house in Pennsylvania we used two methods; one was hand power (Fig.
181). Taking two ropes we fastened the ends securely inside the cabin. We
then passed the free ends of the ropes around the log, first under it and
then over the top of it, then up to a group of men who, by pulling on the
free ends, rolled the log (Fig. 181) up to the top of the cabin. But when
Lafe Jeems and Nate Tanner and Jimmy Rosencranz were supplied with some
oxen they fastened a chain to each end of the log (Fig. 182), then
fastened a pulley-block to the other side of the cabin, that is, the side
opposite the skids, and ran the line through the pulley-block to the oxen
as it is run to the three men in Fig. 182. When the oxen were started the
log slid up the skids to the loose rafters _N_, _O_, _P_ and when once up
there it was easily shoved and fitted into place.