WHIP SAWING

From this the reader would judge that such a thing as a sawmill had been established in the county, but that is a mistake; there were no sawmills. Planks were ripped from hewn logs by a system denominated “whip sawing,” an upright saw, working perpendicularly, with one man above the other, to do the work now done by engines and steam. This was tedious process, yet the weather-boarding and framing timbers for all of the houses built in Henderson prior to 1818, was sawed in this way. There are at the present time, three houses standing in the city with the same weather-boarding which was nailed on at the time of their building, between 1810 and 1818. These buildings will be noticed in their proper order.

History of Henderson County by Edmund L. Starling, pg 122