Josiah Hunt, How He Made His Secret Camp-Fires, Part One©

 

 

Author’s note -- I hope that you enjoy learning from this resource!  To help me to continue to provide valuable free content, please consider showing your appreciation by leaving a donation HERE.  Thank you and Happy Trails!

 

Before we start with this week’s article, I’ve found some new material, that sheds some new light onto last week’s article, “Josiah Hunt and The Palmer Furnace©”.  It challenges my belief that Josiah Hunt was the originator of the ‘secret camp-fire’ technique.  While I still haven’t seen any primary or secondary source material specifically stating that Simon Kenton used smoldering bark in a pit to keep from freezing, Ted Franklin Belue, writing “Terror in the Canelands”, DID find evidence of early frontiersmen using bark to make “nearly smokeless” fires.  He printed research into Daniel Boone and the salt-boilers taken captive by the Shawnee at the salt-springs at the Licking River, and wrote that Benjamin Kelly, who in 1782 escaped from the Shawnee towns of the Ohio territory with another captive, used hickory bark to create a “nearly smokeless fire”, while making good his escape.  This was eleven years prior to Josiah Hunt’s adventures near Fort Greenville and the importance of this is that Simon Kenton was both a hunter and a scout for the salt-boilers who were captured in 1778.   Benjamin Kelly and Simon Kenton would have known each other, and if one knew that hickory burned nearly smokeless, so might have the other, or it’s possible that Benjamin Kelly learned this from the Shawnee, during his captivity from 1778 to 1782, since archeological reports for the Luce Creek site in Maryland and the Stony Run site in Pennsylvania described the Native Americans as preferring hickory and trees from the white oak family as fuel wood. 

 

However, the description of Josiah Hunt’s ‘Secret Camp-fire’, still remains the earliest and best how-to-guide for creating a ‘coal pit’ and a ‘secret camp-fire’, that I’ve found.

 

When I first read about Josiah Hunt, manner of making “secret camp-fires”, it left me with three questions. 

 

One, how deep and wide did he dig his ‘coal pit’; what exactly was the size of a hat crown in 1793? 

 

Two, why did he use the “roth”, the bark from a dead and dry, white oak tree, specifically?  Are there other barks that he could have used?

 

And third, how did he know, in the dark, in the winter, which trees were white oaks?

 

“he dug a hole in the ground...the size and depth of a hat crown”

 

Just what was the size and depth of hat crowns in the late 18^th century?  Thankfully, Captain Phineas Meigs Hat’s, from 1782 still exists.  Captain Phineas Meigs was the last Connecticut man killed in combat during the American Revolution, in 1782.  In 1850 his grandson donated the hat he wore when he was shot through the head to Connecticut Historical Society Museum and Library, which still has it today. 

 

According to Andrea Rapacz, at the Museum the width of hat’s 7 ½ to 7 ¾ inches (19.1 to 19.7 cm) in diameter, and the crown of the hat is 4 ¼ inches (10.8 cm) deep.  The average human palm for both sexes 3 ¼ inches wide at the knuckles, and the hand is about 7 ¼ inches long from the bottom of the palm to the tip of the longest finger.

 

So dig your ‘coal pit’ as wide as your hand is long and a bit deeper than half a hand and it will be about “...size and depth of a hat crown”.

 

Don’t forget to come back next week and read “Josiah Hunt, How He Made His Secret Camp-Fires, Part One©”, for more on how to make nearly smokeless, secret campfires.

 

I hope that you enjoy learning from this resource!  To help me to continue to provide valuable free content, please consider showing your appreciation by leaving a donation HERE.  Thank you and Happy Trails!

 

I hope that you continue to enjoy The Woodsman’s Journal Online and look for me on YouTube at BandanaMan Productions for other related videos, HERE.  Don’t forget to follow me on both The Woodsman’s Journal Online, HERE, and subscribe to BandanaMan Productions on YouTube.  If you have questions, as always, feel free to leave a comment on either site.  I announce new articles on Facebook at Eric Reynolds, on Instagram at bandanamanaproductions, and on VK at Eric Reynolds, so watch for me.

 

That is all for now, and as always, until next time, Happy Trails!

 

 

Notes

 

Sources

 

Bigelow, David; History of Prominent Mercantile and Manufacturing Firms in the United States, Vol VI, [David Bigelow, Boston, 1857], page 265-270, https://www.google.com/books/edition/History_of_Prominent_Mercantile_and_Manu/y1w-AQAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%22History+of+Prominent+Mercantile+and+Manufacturing+Firms+in+the+United+States%22+1857+%22josiah+Hunt%22&pg=PA266&printsec=frontcover, accessed May 7, 2026

 

Howe, Henry; Historical Collections of Ohio, [Derby, Bradley & Company, Cincinnati, 1847], page 199 to 200, https://books.google.com/books?id=ri8WAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA199&lpg=PA199&dq=%22josiah+hunt%22+roth&source=bl&ots=M7iiOgL5Xj&sig=WXic_CR-GpPKHcgxxeXT3oCTcz4&hl=en&sa=X&ei=noyDU8XEDuilsQTX7ICQCw&ved=0CEQQ6AEwBg#v=onepage&q=%22josiah%20hunt%22%20roth&f=false, accessed May 7, 2026

S.J.R.; “Fuel Value of Wood”, Hardwood Record, October 10, 1912 [Chicago], page 32 to 33, https://www.google.com/books/edition/Hardwood_Record/7QQ3AQAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=does+dry+oak+bark+burn+without+smoke&pg=RA12-PA33&printsec=frontcover, accessed May 16, 2026

 

Rapacz, Andrea; Connecticut Historical Society Museum and Library, Personal conversation regarding The Phineas Meigs’ Hat, May 01, 2016, 10:51 am

 

University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; “N. W. Territory Map, 1801”, by William Barker, [© 2026], https://digital.library.illinois.edu/items/9d2ba5e0-994e-0134-2096-0050569601ca-2, accessed May 9, 2026

 

Webster, Noah; A Dictionary of the English Language: Compiled for the Use of Common Schools, [George Goodwin & Sons, Hartford, 1817], page 275, https://books.google.com/books?id=fJ8RAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA275&dq=ross+bark+dictionary&hl=en&sa=X&ei=T5kXUu-ZAcTd4QTxtYCQCw&ved=0CC4Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=ross%20bark%20dictionary&f=false, accessed May 9, 2026

 

Westmore Arboretum; “Shagbark Hickory, Carya ovata”, https://westmoorarboretum.org/shagbark-hickory/, accessed May 16, 2026

 

Wikimedia, “An engraving of Simon Kenton, by Richard W. Dodson, after Louis M. Morgan, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts”, ca. 1834-39, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Engraving_of_Simon_Kenton,_by_Richard_W._Dodson,_after_Louis_M._Morgan.jpg, accessed May 16, 2026