You know where Conzelmann road goes up there? Hank Vincent was quite a young man yet and he had a saw up there and it was the winter time and he had his overcoat on and he got wrapped up on the big saw and cut his arm off and bled to death. And then the Conzelmann brothers, John and Mike and George, they had come out from Michigan and they bought that mill. That was about 1898. They bought 80 acres of timber there, where the sawmill stood on. They moved that mill down and set it up and put a dam on the west side of the mill. It was quite a big dam. And then they went to work and they built a boarding house that was on the north side of the mill and they built another house up there on the south side after they started the mill for Sam Westfall. And he was the engineer. Then Mike, he got married, about 1904. He married Dora Jurgesen. Then they built him a house there on the south side of the mill and then they started to saw. And then on the north side of the mill, west, they built a big barn for horses. Well, everything was ready and they started to cut about 1900.

A very sad accident happened at Vincent's saw mill, near Middleton, this county, last Friday morning. The proprietor, William Vincent, had oiled the mandrill carrying the saws, when he noticed a piece of bark against the saws which he reached over to remove. He slipped and his right arm was caught by the saw and cut off at the elbow. He staggered back and called to his men who came forward, but not to his assistance, for instead of lying him down and lighting the stump so as to stop the flow of blood, they led him first to his residence, some distance from the mill. The loss of blood was great. A surgeon from Newberg was summoned to dress the wound, but too much blood had been wasted and the patient died in the evening, about eleven hours after the accident. The deceased was 40 years and 6 months old.... A wife and eight minor children were left to mourn the loss of husband and father.... Hillsboro Independent October 13, 1893

A number of people worked there, it's hard to remember who they all were. There was one by the name of August Lehman. On a Sunday morning he went in the pond --everybody was to church or was gone-- and he went in there to take a bath and he drowned. That was about 1904.

And then later on the timber got to be further out all the time, and so they put in another dam west of the mill quite a ways. And then they bought more land all the time. They bought 100 acres there from a man named Johnny Brigham, that was up quite a ways.

Beautiful timber for ten dollars an acre. [He utters a sharp, loud laugh.] Then they bought more land, see? Timber had no value whatsoever.

They sawed there during the winter months and they had one saw and they also made flooring, and finished lumber and they built a drying shed --not a kiln, a drying shed -- there kind of on the south side of mill, see? And I worked there a whole year. I got a dollar and a half a day and board, ten hours a day. I worked in the mill and up in the timber and everyplace.

And they had four horses that they pulled them logs in with. And there was one place kind of southwest of there that it was up there-- hardly a goat could climb up. And then I used to haul water with Old Charlie, they called him, there was two canvas water bags hooked to the California saddle across his back. I'd go way down to the creek and fill them up and led Old Charlie up to the top of the hill and leave the water down and then they'd pull them logs out two at a time then see?, with four horses, down to that pond. And then when they had that pond full, why, they'd let the water out and float them to the other pond.

At that time, George, he done the logging and the hauling, with the four horses. Mike was the sawyer. And John, he kept the books and also got the logs from the pond up to the slips, see? And then later on in years, Sam Westfall quit engineering, and your grand dad John List and [his son] Ben both worked there for years and years, see? And I worked there about a year, and I helped saw the last log when they finished sawing.

I think they made enough to pay for that land and for each one to have a little nest egg, see? For all the hard work they done.

And George got married about 1905 to Borchers --I forget her first name-- and they had two children and then she died. I was going to school down there at Saint Paul's Lutheran Church. That's where I went to school. That was an awful hard blow on old George. He was quite heavy you know. A great big fellow. And he had it the hardest. He was out in all kinds of weather, and he had to deliver that lumber, you know, with the four horses and all you had at that time was mud from the mill on out to the main road there. They cut eight foot slabs and they laid them down to drive out with.

And later on, the timber wasn't gone, but it was getting too far out, you know, to haul in with the horses. There was still a lot of nice timber, but it was getting too far for horses to lug in. That was 1910. And then they dissolved the partnership, and sold what they could.

And Mike, he bought his father in law's place, the twenty acres. And John he built a house later on-- it burnt down, maybe you remember? Next to the road there. George, he got married later on to Mrs. O'Niel-- She was a widow and I think her and her husband were separated and he got married to her.

And they sold lumber. My dad bought lumber there-- the nicest lumber you ever seen --for $4.00 a thousand. [laughs] So that's about the story of the sawmill, unless I think about somemore. But I think that's about it.

We used to go fishing up there too, us kids. I want to tell you that story. I and Dan, my youngest brother and we had a nickel's fishline and a nickel's worth of hooks the two of us. We went up there on a Sunday morning and we fished till about 10 and here come two well dressed guys and they had waders on and they'd come from Portland with the train and then hired a livery rig from Sherwood and drove out there.

Well Dan and I we fished with this cheap outfit and they had flies --you fished with flies, see? We caught three big trout. They was between eleven and twelve inches long. And it got to be about train time for them fellers to go back to Sherwood. And they asked me if we wanted to sell those fish. [laughs] Well, we said we might. They said, We'll give you two bits a piece. [laughs] So we sold them, and they went home skunked. [laughs] So that's about the size of the saw milling.

Well, I've been gone from there for well near 65 years, see? I left there in 1912, but I still remember the things that happened there up till that time.

They had it awful tough, the Conzelmanns did. It was hard work. I was eighteen when I worked there and it was all hard work. You pulled them logs up out of the mill, and everything had to be done with a main saw. And then the slabs... There was five of us in the mill. There was the engineer and then there was Mike the sawyer. And Ben List, he was carriage setter. And then two of us was in back handing in all that lumber and slab wood.

They had a great big trestle built out south there where they put the slab wood on, and that was burnt, and the lumber went straight out east. It was piled in that way, toward south and that's where it was loaded. It was all heavy, hard lifting, the whole business, see? And anything they planed they had to take across on the other side of the mill, the north side, and pile it up there. If they had an order, they'd plane out an order, see? And that's the way it was. It was a big mill. It was about forty feet wide and eighty or ninety feet long. It was made out of big cedar logs, about two feet in diameter, they was laid down for mud sills. And they put the stringers across, north and south, and then they put a floor on that and they put the post up there, and the mill up there, see? They used most of the heavy stuff that you got from Vincent mill up there, see? A lot of that I don't remember unless I'm talking about it, see? So that's the way the situation is.

But that's about all that I can tell you about the Conzelmann Mill. It was all hard work.

...On my dad's place, there was plenty of evidence of the Chinese. There used to be an iron smelter at Tualatin. And on my dad's place there, they had these Chinese shacks, which I can remember well yet. And they had a what they call a kind of tramway on my folks' place. They would load cordwood on there --and I don't know how they got it down to the river, but they must have had some kind of a brake. They had regular iron wheels like they do on the railroad on the cars. And they had their cars --oh I don't know how long they was -- about sixteen feet. They had four wheels in them, you know, two in front and two in back. And then they'd run that down to the pond and throw that cordwood into the river, and they'd pull it out at Oswego, that was the Oswego Iron Works, see? They had a smelter in there. On my dad's place, when I was a kid, they had these Chinese shacks. About a half a dozen China men would stay in, see? They had their own teapot there yet and stuff that they left there. I didn't see any of their equipment but the tramway was there yet when I was a kid.They had two cars and they pulled them up with horses and going down to the river they had brakes. That's a long time ago. Of course the Tualatin River is different than it used to be. When the people used to grub, they didn't burn their stuff, they used to throw it in the river. [laughs] That's what made the river so full of rubbish, you see.

...I want to tell you a story about the Southern Pacific Railroad. There was hundreds and hundreds of cords of wood that went out of Sherwood. Hundreds of cords. The railroad tracks was lined with I don't know how many rows of cord, eight feet high. It all went to Portland during the summer months, see? In Portland they'd haul it to their wood yards, and cut it up with a buzz saw, and distribute it to the people, see? How things have changed!

...You remember Fickens? Well, the old man Ficken had eighty acres above Sherwood. And I think there was fifteen children raised on those eighty acres. This is what I saw with my own eyes. I was there one time, in the afternoon visiting with my dad. And he made cord wood for a Dollar and a Quarter a cord and hauled it down to Sherwood and had to stack it there until they had a car load, and then he had to go to work and put it on his wagon and load it on the car to go to Portland. For a Dollar and a Quarter a cord. And he had to saw that wood by hand and split it by hand. And he raised that family.

NOTE: Werre was born in 1892. The road to Conzelmann Mill pond still exists. It is called Conzelmann Road and interesects with Elwert Road. The Werre farm was on Scholls-Sherwood Road, at approximately the highest elevation between Scholls and Sherwood.

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