Gentlemen of the Woods: Manhood, Myth, and the American Lumberjack

by Willa Hammitt Brown

the men, the myth, and the making of an American legend

The folk hero Paul Bunyan, burly, bearded, wielding his big ax, stands astride the story of the upper Midwest—a manly symbol of the labor that cleared the vast north woods for the march of industrialization while somehow also maintaining an aura of pristine nature. This idea, celebrated in popular culture with songs and folktales, receives a long overdue and thoroughly revealing correction in Gentlemen of the Woods, a cultural history of the life and lore of the real lumberjack and his true place in American history.

Now recalled as heroes of wilderness and masculinity, lumberjacks in their own time were despised as amoral transients. Willa Hammitt Brown shows that nineteenth-century jacks defined their communities of itinerant workers by metrics of manhood that were abhorrent to the residents of the nearby Northwoods boomtowns, valuing risk-taking and skill rather than restraint and control. Reviewing songs, stories, and firsthand accounts from loggers, Brown brings to life the activities and experiences of the lumberjacks as they moved from camp to camp. She contrasts this view with the popular image cultivated by retreating lumber companies that had to sell off utterly barren land. This mythologized image glorified the lumberjack and evoked a kindly, flannel-wearing, naturalist hero.

Along with its portrait of lumberjack life and its analysis of the creation of lumberjack myth, Gentlemen of the Woods offers new insight into the intersections of race and social class in the logging enterprise, considering the actual and perceived roles of outsider lumberjacks and Native inhabitants of the northern forests. Anchored in the dual forces of capitalism and colonization, this lively and compulsively readable account offers a new way to understand a myth and history that has long captured our collective imagination.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Folklore

368 pages, Kindle Edition

First published February 18, 2025

Reviews

[Lydia · Rating 5 out of 5]

READ THIS BOOK. It's amazing. It so thoughtfully situates lumberjacks as a nostalgic callback to a simpler, "purer" American time while also highlighting how lumberjacks were the architects of their own doom as a profession. The deforestation and lumber industry of the 1800s and early 1900s was an ecologic destruction on par with the plight of the rain forests in South America, but we still love to glorify lumberjacks. This book does an excellent job of explaining why. Really exhaustively researched and illustrated with so many photographs and other images. I have to admit that outside of a Paul Bunyan book-and-cassette from my childhood, I have never really thought that much about lumberjacks and their place in American and Americana history.

Thank you to LibraryJournal for an ARC and the opportunity to review this book!

[Ann Fisher · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's not hard to guess, even just from the title of the book, that it's a reworked Ph.d thesis. But Brown does an excellent job of making her work readable for a general audience. The lavish use of illustrations also helps bring her story to life. I appreciated her balanced look at both life in the woods and the ways local communities responded to the spring influx of workers. Perhaps most compelling, was her look at the extent to which, even under harsh conditions, individual workers moved from one job to another.

Of course, at least to the lay reader, the most enjoyable part of the book is Brown's description of the ways in which logged-over towns recreated themselves and embraced Paul Bunyan as an icon of the northwoods. I loved the photo of a huge Paul Bunyan made from recycled car parts at a festival in Muskegon, Michigan and would have enjoyed a visit to Tom's Logging Camp in northern Minnesota.

The book is thoroughly sourced and the author gives thanks to her copyeditor (if only more authors used a copy editor!). But it also needed a fact-checker. I am most familiar with Marquette, Michigan, so I was astonished to read that Marquette turned to ship-building when the lumbering days were over. Setting aside the fact that Marquette was never primarily a lumbering town (it was established--and remains--a town centered around the iron mines just to its west), it was never a ship-building town. I suspect the author was thinking of Marinette-Menominee, 120 miles away on Lake Michigan. In another geographic error, Brown twice suggests the the boisterous lumbering town of Seney was "just next door" to Marquette. In fact Seney is two counties and 70 miles from Marquette.

Despite these errors, which I hope were not repeated in other localities, this book will be appreciated by anyone with an interest in the history of the Upper Midwest and Great Lakes states.

[Paul · Rating 2 out of 5]

With apologies to Monty Python, "He's a lumberjack and he...has a really hard job."

I really wanted to like this. "Gentlemen of the Woods" is a great idea for a book. But Willa Hammitt Brown takes a rather perverse approach. By comparing the real life of real lumberjacks to the "myth," she basically tells us that a lumberjack's work was actually much less interesting. And there's no evidence of cross-dressing in these woods.

American myth is a powerful force in US history. But attempting to deflate the myth by devoting two-thirds of the book to describing the rather dreary day-to-day routine of late-19th and early-20th century lumberjacks doesn't really make for riveting storytelling. All credit is due Brown for her outstanding research and colorful detail. These were undoubtedly brave men who took on some brutal work. There's a compelling genius in their inventive methods and tools. And the role of recently-arrived immigrants is a key part of industrial history.

That said, "Gentlemen of the Woods" feels stretched out and repetitive. Only in the last few chapters does Brown get down to how the lumberjack myth was born and how it impacted 20th century society. Maybe it's just me. Growing up in the 1970s, the whole Paul Bunyan thing was a bit lost on me, apart from a few cartoons and commercials. But I was more than ready to be convinced of its centrality to American legend and lore. This book did not do that.

This is not to say that "Gentlemen of the Woods" wouldn't be fascinating to those who, like Brown, grew up or still live in the North Woods of the upper Midwest. The logging industry was surely a powerful (and colorful) aspect of the area's history. If your forebears made their living this way, you'll probably love this book, But this reader cannot recommend it to the general social history buff.

[Timothy Grubbs · Rating 4 out of 5]

Manly men, the great outdoors, and surprisingly large amount of social and political discourse…

Gentlemen of the Woods: Manhood, Myth, and the American Lumberjack by Willa Hammitt Brown covers the history of lumberjacks active in the Great Lakes…and their impact…

The focus of this book is nearly a century of woodcutters from late 18th to early 19th century…

It covers Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin with barely any rederence to wood jacks of other states (and that’s ok).

A spiritual follow up to the boom periods of rail workers and cattlemen, lumberjacks are another piece of Americana with its own history and customs.

The book covers many of the key figures (businessmen, politicians, con artists, and hooligans among others), popular lumberjack slang (and tall tales and monstrous legends), hazing rituals (which can get pretty brutal), and the rules of the camp…

The material drags a little as theres no consistent “lead character” outside of a succession of different lumber camp figures, so that may be a drawback. Thankfully the information is organized along a theme for each chapter (though some themes are fairly loose and dubious).

The key value of this book is the MASSIVE amount of material included…specifically photos, political cartoons, and paper advertisements or other materials that represent camp life or its reputation among others. Some of the camp photos are very slice of life and make one intrigued by the unsaid stories that come from the camps…

Worth checking out even if it’s not necessary to do a focused read…

[Christopher Gould · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fascinating look the timber industry in the upper Midwest, focusing in on the myth of the lumberjack (versus the reality of day-to-day life). The historic background is well-researched, as is the social history of iconic images such as Paul Bunyan.

[Reader · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book is totally entertaining, as well as, compelling, humorous, and educational.

[Meg Wippich-Olson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Okay. Non-fiction and it seems to wonder, repeat itself and get off track.
But I learned a bit about the logging industry.