I'm pretty certain that you're looking for info on "THE JAM ON GERRY'S ROCK (click)"---

Paul Clayton, who was a good researcher of the songs he sang, says of the song that while being the most popular of the ballads about the men who were killed after being torn and mangled while breaking log jams on the rivers used to float/transport the cut logs to the mills, "Despite a great deal of research, little concerning it's origin or the facts upon which it was based has been uncovered."

The great Canadian song finder, Edith Fowke, says, "While most critics agree that the ballad was written by a Canadian, there is no agreement about it's place of origin. The most exhaustive search to pin down the location was made by Mrs. Eckstorm in "The Pursuit Of Ballad Myth" in __Minstrelsy Of Maine__, pp. 176-198. Although she comes to no definite conclusion, she inclines to the belief that the accident happened at the Grand Pitch of Seboois in Maine."

Mrs. Fowke continues, "Professor Franz Rickaby notes, "Whatever the place of it's origin, the ballad of Gerry's Rock has traveled far...In the tide of migration, it traveled out into the plains of the west and the southwest where many sang it. It is said to have filtered back to the British Isles."

Art Thieme