USA > Illinois > Illinois in the fifties; or, A decade of development, 1851-1860 > Part 2
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However, as to the divining rod, there were people who affirmed that when this was properly held in the hands of certain persons the point of the fork, or apex, was forcibly drawn down if there happened to be a vein of water in the ground beneath.
Very few of the early settlers had cisterns and rain water was obtained by catching it in a barrel into which the water from the eaves of the house was conveyed by a long, slanting board. In warm weather, if this rain-water was not used soon, it would come to be filled with "wiggle-tails".
In that period people dressed much more plainly than
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24
Home-Spun Clothes
they do today and most of them literally wore out their clothing. All working people and many others wore patched garments. For every day many men wore jeans and the women linsey; both home-woven and home- spun from wool grown on the backs of home-grown sheep. Winter and summer home-knit woolen socks were worn. For coloring these home-made articles, cop- peras (sulphate of iron), indigo, madder and various barks, especially that of the whiteoak, were used. Un- derclothes were not generally worn and many a boy of two generations ago reached manhood before he got his first overcoat.
On Sundays and special occasions most men dressed up in their "store-clothes", which were far from being as well-fitting and well-made as today. Furthermore they were much more liable to fade after being worn for a time. Few men wore "store" suspenders, and working people all wore "galluses", home-knit from woolen yarn, or made of strong cotton cloth.
Working men, for every-day wear, had what were known as "hunting-shirts", made of jeans, cut loosely and in length to reach to about the bottom of the pock- ets of the trousers. In that day trousers were usually called "breeches" and vests, "roundabouts".
An outer garment called a wammus was much worn by men. It was made of wool, was ample in width and had no skirt. It was held in place by a belt and had a button at the throat. The space inside of it around the body was so large as to serve its owner as a sack for carrying prairie chickens or squirrels when he went hunting. In fact it is reported to have done service in carrying home green corn, apples, peaches and other
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Dearth of Time-Keepers
pleasant provender in the night. It was scarcely large enough to carry watermelons.
As the fifties advanced professional and well-dressed men wore shawls instead of overcoats. These were large, made of thick, heavy woolen and were nearly al- ways gray in color. Watches were very much less com- mon than now; the teacher, the preacher and the doctor always carried a watch, but scarcely anyone else. These were nearly all of silver and a gold watch was seldom seen. Likewise clocks were not nearly so common as now, and working people were in the habit of referring to so-many hours "by-sun" instead of saying it was this or that hour by the clock. For illustration, in the event it was thought it would be two hours before the sun would go down, this was referred to as "two hours by- sun", and the same way in the forenoon.
Boots came in fashion in the early fifties, but most working men wore heavy shoes, called "brogans". Those who made more pretensions to dress would go to the village shoemaker and have tight-fitting boots made; so tight, indeed, that they had to go through a process of "breaking-in" which consisted of wearing them a few hours and then resting the feet in an old pair. Every house had its boot-jack for pulling off tight-fitting boots, and those hard to get off from being water-soaked. Rubber goods did not come into general use till the fif- ties had well advanced, hence rubber boots and rubber overshoes were seldom seen. When it was very muddy and when the snow was melting, men and boys would go all day with wet feet. It was sought to make leather foot-wear water-proof by greasing this with a mixture of beeswax and tallow, but while this helped it was only partially effective.
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What a Hat Contained
As elsewhere stated, buggies were very few, and a great deal of the travel was on horseback. In stormy weather men wore heavy overcoats and "leggins" made of strong, thick cloth, long enough to reach from the knees to the heels, and wide enough to go once and a half round the leg, to which they were attached by strong cords. When the roads were muddy the leggings would often become covered with mud and water, but when removed the trousers beneath would be found dry and -clean.
It was the custom for men to carry papers in their hats, so that a constable or other official when about to serve a writ or summons would turn his head to one side and carefully take off his hat, and search through its contents for the desired instrument. In this connec- tion it is interesting to note that Lincoln in preparing ·one of his great speeches made notes on scraps of paper which he kept in his hat.
Type of Log House common in Illinois in the Early 50's. (A. C. McClurg and Co., by permission )
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Pioneer Fireplace, Cooking Utensils, Etc. (Loaned by O. W. Converse, Springfield, Ill. )
CHAPTER II.
A PROGRESSIVE PIONEER AND THE EVOLUTION OF A HOME.
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Every beginning is hard; but most the beginning of a household. Many are human wants and everything daily grows .- dearer .- Goethe.
This was the way to thrive and he was blest. -Shakespeare.
While in very young manhood Benjamin Jones, in 1816, came to the Territory of Illinois, where in due time he built a cabin, married a young wife and began · life in earnest in the virgin Land of Promise.
With the lapse of time little Joneses had arrived, and their presence made more room desirable, and the father, ever ready to reach out and improve his surroundings, built another cabin the size of the first and ten feet dis- tant from it. The space between the cabins was floored, and in warm weather served as a sort of porch and a place for the dining table. Time went steadily on, and other little Joneses came on the scene and created the need for yet more room. This crying need caused Benjamin Jones literally to "raise the roof" of both cabins, extend this over the space between, and enclose it besides, thus making, for that period, a commodious house of six rooms.
In that era it was the custom of the pioneers to ac- commodate the traveling public by giving them shelter and food. Benjamin Jones fell into this way and kept
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Keeping Up With the Demand
it up till his patrons became too numerous for the ac- commodations he had at their disposal. In this emer- gency he added a dining-room and kitchen, with up- stairs, to the rear of his house, and at the same time remodeled the older part, by weatherboarding it, and putting in modern doors, windows and brick chimneys. Thus enlarged, the structure served its purpose for many years. However, with the advent of the early fifties the house was again remodeled and added to by building, at its front, a large room on the main floor and one above it on the second floor, with a porch on either side. Blinds, which were just coming in use, were put on all the windows and the house was given a coat of paint, something of an innovation in that local- ity. When completed the structure became one of the most attractive dwellings in all the country around. This house, whose first rooftree was reared nearly a hundred years ago, is yet standing-that is, the main part of it. The last portion added-the two rooms of frame in front-at the end of a half-century became dilapidated and was removed, leaving the part first built of logs, in seeming condition to weather the storms and winds of a second century.
Benjamin Jones was as progressive and enterprising in other matters as in improving and keeping his house up to date. No sooner had the rank prairie grass been turned under by the plow than he planted out apple, peach, pear, and cherry trees. Meantime, sad to tell, he chopped down some noble forest trees, that had the hardihood and vitality to encroach on the ever-hardy prairie grass, and planted in their places relatively insig- nificant evergreens. Fortunately a few oaks and hicko- ries were spared and today tower above and in every
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Always the Best
way overshadow the sickly pines and cedars planted sixty years ago or more.
As already said, Benjamin Jones was progressive, and consequently his fields were planted with the best corn, the best wheat and the best oats that could be obtained. On his pastures were seen the very best strains of cat- tle and horses, and in winter these were well housed in stables, while near-by barns were filled with well-cured hay and plenty of corn and oats.
In a garden of ample size grew all kinds, and the latest varieties, of vegetables. Asparagus and rhubarb, or pie- plant, were then novelties; nevertheless, he cultivated them in his always up-to-date garden.
But perhaps the pride of his heart was his orchard, where always could be found the very latest varieties ·of apples, pears, peaches, quinces, cherries and other fruit. Insect pests were far less numerous in that day than now and consequently fruit matured without inter- ruption or blemish.
In the orchard devoted to peaches were fine, large Yellow Crawfords, and luscious White Crawfords. : There was also a variety known as the Indian Blood peach, large as a teacup, blood red within and meat that would "tempt the gods".
In the apple orchard the first fruit to ripen were the "Junes", with coats smooth as though varnished, almost black in color, meat as white as cotton, and that ripened late in the month of June, as the name would imply.
Early in July came the Harvest Apple, yellow in color, mellow when fully ripe, and sweet and attractive in taste. In early fall the best eating apple of all was ready for use. This was the Rambo, which had a rich taste and rare flavor all its own-an apple that had over its
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The Apple-Orchard
surface fine streaks, between which were small speckles. A little later the Redstreak ripened-a large, fine apple, its whole surface covered with distinct red stripes from which it derived its name. Brown Russets also ripened early. As the name would imply, the coats of these were brown. They were also rough and often had on them warty-like outgrowths; but strange to say, these in no way detracted from appearance and character of that old-time favorite among apples, the Brown Russet. The housewife always prized them for baking and when in the oven they exuded a caramel-like substance that was the delight of the children. Later came the Winesap, a firm, red, smooth apple; and later still Jennetings, Rhode Island Greenings, especially fine apples, and .Romanites, Big and Little, but as unlike as two apples well could be. The Big Romanite was a winter apple with a yel- lowish-green coat on which were small scattered streaks and specks. The Little Romanite was deep red, its coat seemingly polished, it was so smooth. It had a sweet taste, was a great "keeper" and was in fine condition the spring subsequent to its gathering.
October was apple-picking month, and it was then that everyone got busy at Benjamin Jones' place. Lad- ders of various lengths, baskets and buckets provided with wooden hooks for attaching to limbs or ladder- rounds, and long wooden hooks for pulling in limbs, were the appliances the apple-pickers needed. With bucket in hand the picker, after placing his ladder against an apple branch heavily loaded with fruit, would go up, attach his vessel to a branch or round and then carefully gather the apples and place them in the bucket. Having picked all those within reach, he would use his long hook to pull in other loaded limbs. His vessel filled, he would
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The Cider Mill
go down to the ground and carefully empty the apples in a wagon, or maybe put them in a pile on the ground, and so on till the last apple on the tree was gathered and handled so carefully that no bruises were inflicted.
The apples that had been bruised and those that fell of their own accord, the wind-falls, were put to various uses; some were cut and dried, some made into apple butter and some into cider at the cidermill. This was, so to speak, homemade, and consisted of a round, barrel- like structure of strong boards held. together by strong iron hoops, in which was fitted a circular head, made of thick boards and which worked up and down and was attached to the center of a long, strong lever, one end of which was securely attached to a firm post, while at the other a heavy weight exerted great pressure on the head and thus squeezed the cider out of the pomace- that is, the apples that had been ground to pulp in the crusher. Two upright wooden wheels, two feet long, with cogs their whole length and four inches deep, com- prised the essential part of the crusher, which was en- circled with a strong casing and through the top of this the axle of one of the wooden wheels connected with a long, horizontal sweep or lever, at one end of which a · horse was hitched and furnished the rotary motion by going round and round. Just over the cogged wheels was a hopper containing the apples to be ground. The pomace found its way into a vat and from the vat was scooped into the press, from the bottom of which the rich-colored cider streamed out and ran into a large tub. From the tub the cider was dipped, and through a fun- nel conveyed into barrels. When filled the barrels were left for a time with their bungs open, and meantime, the
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Threshing Grain
small boy with a convenient rye-straw sucked "nectar" to his heart's content.
In the early fifties the interior of one of Benjamin Jones's large barns was used as a threshing floor. From the fields the wheat was hauled in and scattered over this floor where horses, with boys on their backs, were made to go round and round in the straw, causing each grain to fall from its delicate, film-like cover. After tramping the grain for a few minutes the horses were taken away, when men with forks removed the straw and then with scoops took up the grain and chaff and put it in a large pile. Then the barn floor was again covered with wheat, horses were ridden over it, the straw was removed, the wheat and chaff added to what had gone before, and so on till the whole product from the fields had been "tramped" over. Then the fan-mill was placed in proper position and one man turned it by a crank, while another shoveled in the wheat and chaff. The wind, generated by the fan-mill, blew away the chaff, and gravity caused the wheat to fall to the bottom and run out of a spout, free from impurities and ready for the miller.
Later came the threshing-machine which, in its first form, was called a "ground-hog" from the fact that it only threshed the grain, and did not separate it from the straw and chaff-indeed, left it precisely in the same condition it was on the barn floor when the horses had done their "tramping." Consequently men had to fork away the straw and run the wheat and chaff through a fan-mill, before this ground-hog threshed wheat was ready to be made into flour. However, it was not long till fan and separator became part of the threshing ma- chine, and the golden grain, clean and ready for market, ran from one of the sides of the improved thresher. In
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A Place of Utility
the old days threshing was always done by horse-power and never with steam and an engine, as is uniformly the custom today.
A good many people piled their wood in the front yard, and chopped it there with the result that the chips flew all about and created an unsightly litter. Not so with Benjamin Jones, the Progressive Pioneer! About his house was a lawn interspersed with shrubbery and shade trees, but separated from it by a fence, and yet convenient to the house, was a woodyard of ample dimensions, where wood hauled from the timber was placed and chopped in fire-lengths.
At the rear of this woodyard and convenient to the kitchen was an outhouse with several apartments; one of these, attached to the main structure by a shed-roof, was the smokehouse where the meat was salted, smoked and kept ; another, the principal room, was a sort of place for doing things which the women did not care to have done in the house, such as rendering lard, making soap, boiling down cider, making apple butter, and washing the family linen. In this room was a large fireplace, in that day, needed for doing the above-named things. Another thing done at this fireplace was molding candles. Benjamin Jones provided his household with several sets of candle- molds, each of which would mold a dozen candles. These were made of heavy tin, their tops, for shaping the big- end of the candle, connected by a common receiver. and their several tips just large enough to admit the small end of a candle-stick. When the housewife was about to make candles she first of all put a wick in each single mold. This she did by taking a piece twice the length of the candle, folding it upon itself, twisting its smaller end and passing it down and out at the bottom of the
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34
For the Outer and Inner Man
mold, leaving the double end at the top through which a short stick passed to hold it in place. When each sepa- rate mold was thus threaded, so to speak, melted tallow was poured in till all were filled. After filling, the molds were set aside, till the melted tallow could have time to "set," a matter of a few hours, when each candle was pulled out by the stick that had been passed through the base of the wick. In the end the housewife found her- self in possession of one, two, three, four or more, dozen candles, all depending on how many molds she had filled.
Another thing done beside the fireplace in this out- house was making apple-butter. In the beautiful month of October after apples were ripe and cider-making had gotten under way the thrifty housewife began to make apple-butter, peach-butter and preserves. For this pur- pose Benjamin Jones had a brass kettle that held perhaps ten gallons. Filled about two-thirds full of cider, this kettle was placed over a fire and heated while apples, peeled and quartered, were stirred in till all was cooked into a soft pulp, or in other words, acceptable apple- butter.
Peach-butter was made in much the same way, and likewise plum-butter and other butter varieties that a thrifty housekeeper well knew how to make.
In one corner of the large room was a loom for weav- ing coarse cloth and carpets. In the forties, as elsewhere noted, most of the men wore jeans and the women linsey, both woolen in texture. Till near the end of the forties most of the floors were bare, but with the coming of the fifties, women began to weave rag carpets. These car- pets, as their name signifies, were made of rags, rags of various hues and texture. All of the carpets then were
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1753042
A Pair of Bullet Molds
home-made and home-woven on the rude, awkwardly- constructed looms of that time.
In his younger days Benjamin Jones had been some- thing of a hunter and was a good shot. He still kept his old Kentucky rifle, but rarely used it for any purpose other than for shooting beeves and hogs at butchering time. At the fireplace in the outhouse he sometimes molded bullets for his rifle. For this purpose he had a pair of bullet-molds which, when closed, looked much like a pair of pliers. However, between their closed jaws was a round opening into which melted lead was poured and allowed to cool, when, by opening the handle-blades, a leaden bullet would drop out, due to the fact that half of the mold was in either jaw of the appliance. As the lead cooled quickly, bullets could be molded rapidly, but always at the expense of some dross. Lead for bullets was always purchased in bars at the community store.
As before noted, Benjamin Jones was ever progres- sive, and was in the forefront of that progressive era in Illinois that had its inception near the beginning of the second half of the Nineteenth Century and that depended not a little upon the free influx into the State of Cali- fornia gold. For this reason the next chapter will be devoted to the discovery of gold in California, notwith- standing the fact that this event occurred in the late forties, instead of the fifties to which this work is more especially devoted.
CHAPTER III
THE GOLD-SEEKERS OF THE LATE FORTIES.
What scenes they pass'd, what camps at morn, What weary columns kept the road ; . . What lines of yoked and patient steers! What weary thousands pushing west!
-Joaquin Miller.
The great energy and all but irrepressible enterprise of Captain Sutter were most important factors in bring- ing about the epoch-making discovery of gold in Cali- fornia near the middle of the Nineteenth Century.
Captain John A. Sutter a native of Switzerland, came to California in 1839, and calling to his aid a number of Mexicans and friendly Indians, built a Fort, where now is located the City of Sacramento, at the junction of the American and Sacramento rivers. This Fort occupied an acre or more of ground, was surrounded by an adobe wall twenty feet high, and at two of its diagonally oppo- site corners, had two, two-story block-houses. Within .the enclosure was a general store, a blacksmith shop, a , carpenter shop, and a room where Indian women made blankets and other articles of common use, indispen- sable to pioneers. Within the Fort there were also apartments for residence purposes.
Here Captain Sutter lived, managed his affairs and governed his employees and followers not unlike a Baron of the middle ages. Indeed, under Mexican law, he could inflict punishment up to the death penalty, if needs
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Captain Sutter
be. But in justice to Captain Sutter it should be said that, if ever he was unjust or cruel in the exercise of authority, such fact is unknown.
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But whatever Captain Sutter was or was not, he was most of all a man of affairs and at all times had an eye out for business. He supplied the pioneers, immigrants and travelers with staple articles of food for the inner man, and coarse, strong garments for the outer. He also kept a stock of things required by wagonmen and horsemen, such as harness, saddles, bridles and the thousand and one things needed in the wear and tear of frontier life. Further than this, he constructed a Tan- nery, where the hides bought from cattlemen were dressed.
When at the close of the Mexican war, California was ceded to the United States, Captain Sutter saw that there would be a heavy emigration from the States and con- sequently a greatly increased demand for lumber with which to construct houses for the incomers. Impressed with this idea he realized that a properly located sawmill would be a profitable investment. But where could a good site for a sawmill be found? Who could build and equip one? And who could run it as it should be run, after it was built? These were questions that came up- permost in Captain Sutter's mind after he had decided, if possible, to add a sawmill to his many other enter- prises. In this frame of mind he had the good fortune to make the acquaintance of one James W. Marshall, a native of New Jersey, a mill-wright, a carpenter, an all- around handy man with a roving disposition, a rolling- stone, in fact, who doubtless had helped others to make money, but who, as yet, had made none for himself.
After talking the matter over it was agreed that Mar-
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Seeking a Mill-Site
shall should find a suitable site and erect the mill, that Captain Sutter should furnish the money to purchase all needed appliances and material, that after it was fin- ished Marshall should superintend the running of the mill, and that the profits should be equally divided be- tween them.
As soon as the agreement was consummated Marshall disappeared from view and did not show himself again till the end of a month's time, when he reported to Cap- tain Sutter that he had found an eligible site for a saw- mill at Coloma, on the north fork of the American River, sixty-five miles distant by trail, forty-five as the crow flies. It was now late in the fall and no time was to be lost, so ox-carts and pack-mules were secured, loaded with such appliances and material as would be needed in the construction of the sawmill, and all, under the lead of Marshall, were promptly started on the trail to the far- away Coloma.
Having done what he could to get the sawmill under way, Captain Sutter dismissed it from his mind for the time, and busied himself with his numerous other affairs. Among the latter was a flouring-mill which he was build- ing at Brighton not far distant from his fort.
Meanwhile, Marshall in the face of many obstacles reached his destination and there pushed the work on the sawmill with due energy and enterprise and by the middle of January the structure was almost ready to operate. ' However, at the last moment it was found that the race which carried off the water after it had done its work, was too shallow. To remedy this Marshall decided to try the experiment of opening wide the flood- gates and permitting the water to sweep through, out and over all. Accordingly one evening the gates were
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