The Process

The pine forests where the Palatine men were sent to work were approximately 6 miles from the camps, resulting in them being away for weeks at a time.  They were not fully aware of the laborious  process for making tar and pitch, and one can only imagine their reaction upon learning it.  First they would strip bark from sections of standing trees.   This would result in the trees oozing gum where the bark had been, and eventually sealing back over.  The trees would need to be stripped again and again over a two year period.  Those sections of the trees would eventually become saturated with gum, at which time the trees would be felled and cut.  The sections where the trees had been stripped would be slowly burned in an earthen kiln, with a barrel beneath to catch tar that gradually seeped out.   The tar could be used on ships ropes to keep them from rotting, and on ships hulls to protect from salt water corrosion.  Some of the tar would be boiled in large cauldrons until the liquid evaporated, making pitch.  This served as a caulk on ships hulls to keep them watertight.

Another much simpler and faster byproduct of the process was to use the gum soaked pine knots from fallen branches.  These could be used immediately, versus the two year stripping process.  The Palatine children soon followed the men into the forests to gather pine knots.  Within the first two weeks of the project, the men had stripped thousands of trees for the first step in the process.  The children, however, had gathered several wagon loads of pine knots and were apparently the only ones accomplishing something.  This did not set well with the already disgruntled Palatine men.  The women, who had been left behind in the camps, were unhappy with the responsibility of the livestock and fields to care for by themselves. 

Meanwhile, Governor Hunter was growing deeper in debt as he used his personal credit to continue providing for the Palatines.  No one, it seemed, was destined to come out ahead in this project.

 

 

Reference:  “Becoming German” by Phillip Otterness