Firewood

 Firewoodⁱ

Firewood

How Much Did People Use

A person (or perhaps a small family) consumed an average of one cord of wood a month for heating, cooking, and washing (though there were certainly seasonal variations).

Cost per cord

In general, the price of firewood varied according to the distance between the forest and the customer, and the degree to which the wood was processed. Just think of the charges we pay today for “shipping and handling.” The price of firewood, being such a mundane part of life in early Charleston, isn’t easy to pin down. Fortunately, however, I found a complaint about this matter printed in the South Carolina Gazette on 5 March 1763. On that date, an anonymous correspondent calling himself “John Carpenter” complained that in urban Charleston, “the sale of firewood has fallen into the hands of three or four persons, who command whatever price they please for it, so that a cord now costs almost, if not quite, six pounds by the time it is brought to one’s door, and at exceeding[ly] bad measurement too.”

In 1763, the sum of £6 (S.C. currency, or about 14 shillings sterling) was a healthy sum of money. Even if John Carpenter was exaggerating about the price of firewood (and he was probably was, in order to make his point), we’re still talking about a significant portion of a man’s monthly income. For example, I’ve found wage figures for various trades among the accounts paid by the Commissioners of Fortifications in Charleston in the late 1750s and early 1760s, right around the time of John Carpenter’s complaint about the price of firewood. According to these records, a white man earned 7 shillings and 6 pence (S.C. currency) for a day of unskilled labor (like shoveling mud or loading the ballast barge). At that rate, he’d have to work about 12 days to afford a cord of wood, which might last him a month. A carter, like John Braund, could earn between £15 and £25 for a month’s work. An overseer at a job site, who kept his eye on laborers and slaves, earned about £26 pounds (S.C. currency) per month, or a £1 a day. At that rate, nearly one-quarter of his monthly income was spent on fuel. Skilled tradesmen like carpenters and blacksmiths earned a bit more, between £1 and £2 (S.C. currency) per day, but the high cost of firewood consumed a sizeable portion of his regular income. In short, city life was expensive, even during the colonial era.

Delivery to Charleston

Note here that a significant supplier would have been the shipyards, given that only 10% to 60% of any tree was usable

For folks living in urban centers like Charleston, however, without easy access to trees and forests, the task of acquiring firewood involved several additional steps, each of which drove the price higher and higher. After the trees were felled and the logs chopped or sawed into smaller pieces, the wood was loaded in to small watercraft—flatboats, pettiaugers, or schooners—and floated through the coastal rivers to one of the wharves of Charleston. After being unloaded onto the wharf, the firewood was then re-loaded onto delivery carts, driven through the streets of the town, and delivered directly to the customer’s house or kitchen or workshop.

Measurer of Firewood

Insured all logs were 4' long

How was it sold and delivered

Wood by law sold by the cord of min. size pieces (4' pieces of wood stacked 4' high x 8' long)

Delivery fees were set by the Commissioners of Streets (beginning in the 1750s), and were calculated by the distance from the wharf to one’s doorstep

Contract with a factor

The firewood business was dominated by factors; that is, middle-men who connected suppliers and purchasers. Looking for random examples of this phenomenon, I recently browsed through one of Charleston’s newspapers, the Columbian Herald, for the month of November 1795. There I found advertisements for two firewood factors: Francis Robertson, with an office on Gaillard’s Wharf, and Jacint Laval, a Frenchman with an office on Prioleau’s Wharf.

Firewood factors, like factors specializing in other commodities, were logistical experts who arranged for materials to be transported from their source directly to the customer. They contracted with the foresters, the boatmen, the sawyers, and the carters. Factors charged a healthy commission for their services, of course, but firewood was a vital commodity that everyone needed.

Travelling Sawyers

Even after the rise of the firewood factors in the late eighteenth century, there survived another common position in urban Charleston: the ambulatory wood sawyer. He was the man who came you your house or yard and sawed your four-foot-long sticks of firewood into smaller pieces that would fit in your fireplace. This was a day-labor sort of job performed by a number of black men in the city, who went from house to house performing a very necessary task. `

It turns out that a man named John Braund (also spelled Brand) was a principal figure (perhaps even the principal figure) in the carting business in Charleston in the early 1700s. He was also the sexton and bell-ringer at St. Philip’s Church, and the proprietor of a public stable. John Braund, who died in 1740, was neither wealthy nor erudite, but he was apparently a very hard-working man who was well-known in Charleston.

How much firewood did the average person consume in a year? That’s an excellent question, and you can find clues by combing through the financial records of planters and merchants, as well as the government. On 19 June 1761, for example, the South Carolina Commons House of Assembly resolved that the Barrack Master of Charleston would receive an annual salary of £200 (S.C. currency) and twelve cords of firewood. From this small piece of evidence, we can conclude that a person (or perhaps a small family) consumed an average of one cord of wood a month for heating, cooking, and washing (though there were certainly seasonal variations).

How much did a cord of wood cost? Wood was very plentiful in the early days of Carolina, of course, but remember that it was also being consumed at an ever-increasing rate. During the American Revolution, for example, both the American and British armies chopped down trees for fuel with such alacrity that some property owners complained to the authorities and demanded compensation. If we could travel back in time to visit the South Carolina lowcountry during the era when wood was the principal source of fuel, I think we’d all be surprised at how bald the landscape might appear. Yes, there were fewer people and far less development back then, but a great deal of land was cleared for agriculture, and few people thought about the need replant forests or to harvest them in a sustainable manner.