Hello, I've been posting queries about my BHC great-grandfather's last days in Sandwich, NH, this year. (And, his son's life there.) And, a little investigating showed that there was a "Woodstock Lumber Company" in that town, and much "housing" for the employees. A researcher responded with a page from the "history of Sandwich." With her permission I'm posting it here - because it mentions people who were "French Canadians" who came down to work there. See below. Betty (near Lowell, MA, USA) (Reminder: BHC = British Home Children) (aka "Child Migrants" from Great Britain) FYI: According to the book Sandwich, New Hampshire, 1763 - 1900 by The Sandwich Historical Society, pg160 - 161 The Beebe River Logging Railroad ... Tainter's Publishers Paper Company finally agreed to sell his vast holdings in the Presidential Range as well as in the Sandwich Range to the White Mountain National Forest, thereby rendering "a notable service," according to the bronze plate on top of Mt. Whiteface. But his holdings northwest of Sandwich were sold in 1916 to the Woodstock Lumber Company and the Parker Young Company, and soon thereafter the tracks were laid for the Beebe River Logging Railroad. With influential citizens such as Henry Dorr, Alonzo McCrillis, and Charles Hoyt either working for or supporting the Publishers Paper Company, there was little opposition to this operation. Indeed, the Sandwich Historical Society's first and second excursions in 1920 and 1921 were trips on the company's flatcars up to near Camp 10 in Waterville, with the picnickers "wildly cheering" the company head at the end of the first excursion. Then "Mr. Frye, superintendent, gave a brief outline of the lumber company's work and everyone came back feeling better acquainted with the wonderful work the Beebe River Company was doing there." The logging railroad was in full operation by 1920 with twelve camps and a huge imported labor force of 408 men consisting mostly of new immigrants, including 95 Russians and 65 French Canadians who worked as choppers, reamsters, loaders, landing rollers, sled tenders, saw filers, blacksmiths, carpenters, and cooks. The elegantly dressed picnickers got a glimpse of one of these lumber camps, "set in swampy marshes, deep in the mud, surrounded by pigs." Even though this group of lumbermen almost doubled the Sandwich adult population between 1918 and 1923, Sandwich's economy did not benefit from this lumber operation. True, local citizen's could earn two dollars a day to help fight the company's frequent forest fires, but no Sandwich native was on Woodstock's regular payroll. Horses, food, and other supplies were brought in from outside. What spending money the lumbermen had was used at the company store or in Campton, not in Sandwich. The trains ran five times a day seven days a week and needed a dispatcher's telephone line from the Beebe River mill to each of the camps. But on July 12, 1923, the whole operation came to a virtual halt. What was to become Sandwich's most destructive forest fire broke out on one of the Flat Mountain's southern slopes, burning uncontrolled for four days and consuming 3,500 acres. It was so intense, the smoke could be seen from twenty-five townships. The fire was still burning in the ground two months later. The men at Camp 12, unable to flee by railroad, had to run south toward Sandwich. It must have been a strange sight to the villagers to see these Sandwich residents on their streets, the only time they would ever be seen in the Center. The August 1923 letter from State Forester John H. Foster to the manager of the Parker Young Company contains the following comments on the fire: This fire was a catastrophe, viewed from any angle...you were operating...during dry weather and heat and yet you do not appear to have taken seriously the risk. You cut too close to the right of way, you ( allowed) the telephone lines...to be broken down, you left piles of slash beside the tracks, sidings, landings, and camps, and you ran your trains through the heat of the day instead of at night with sets of camp buildings unguarded and no effort to regulate smoking. We have reached the limit on these forest fire expenses in the Beebe River valley and feel strongly inclined to turn the whole matter of adjustment...over to the Attorney General. Although other publications covered the fire in detail, the Sandwich Reporter scarcely mentioned it. Perhaps the newspaper thought it better not to alarm summer visitors and potential property buyers during the height of vacation season when business was booming.