USA > Indiana > Greene County > Biographical memoirs of Greene County, Ind. : with reminiscences of pioneer days, Volume I > Part 4
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member John Cooper. He was noted for his honesty and integrity, and his word and all his acts were in strict accord. As evidence of this fact, in the summer of 1845 he contracted to a farmer a few miles away fifty bushels of corn at twelve and one-half cents a bushel, which at the time was considered the market price, but before the day of delivery came around the price dropped to ten cents a bushel, and the buyer demanded the fall in the price ; not so with Uncle John, for he sternly refused to accept anything but what his contract called for. Then the buyer refused to take the corn unless it was shelled, although this was not stated in the contract. But as Uncle John was sorely in need of a little ready cash, and not wishing to have hard feelings or a lawsuit, he agreed to comply with the buyer's demand. So he and his two boys shelled the fifty bushels of corn by hand, which re- quired a whole week's time of hard work for the sum of one dollar and twenty-five cents, and five dollars for the corn made a total of six dollars and twenty-five cents. It will be remembered that sixty years ago the county was new and wild, and but few farms were clear of stumps and trees, so that farming could be done with any kind of machinery ; in fact there was no kind of farm- ing machinery then in use, and for many years after, when it cost more labor and time to raise one bushel of corn than it now takes to raise five bushels. Doubtless Uncle John Cooper then plowed his ground for corn and laid
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it off and tended it with the same plow, and dropped the corn by hand and covered it with a hoe, and corn then had to be hoed, or a farmer didn't get half a crop among the weeds and sprouts that were sure to grow without the good use of a hoe and the sweat of the brow. Talk about hard times and work for almost nothing, to the man that rides the four-horse breaking plow, the drag, the roller, the harrow, the planter and the cultivator, as compared with the making of corn crops of fifty or sixty years ago. When a day's work on a farm among the stumps was from sunrise until sunset, for twenty-five cents a day, and often for less money for any and all kinds of farm work, except wheat harvest, which was generally about fifty cents a day.
True we had many privileges and favors then that we don't have now and never can again. Then a neigh- bor hired to his neighbor to do a day's work or more. It was the rule long established to go before breakfast and stay until after dark, thus getting three "square" meals a day and that the best "grub" the country af- forded, and it was good and very good, and the writer wishes he could afford as good as we could sixty years ago, when wild meat was plenty, of all kinds, on almost every man's table three times a day; and bacon didn't cost fifteen to twenty-five cents a pound, nor bread made out of corn at fifty cents a bushel, and if we had to buy tree molasses to sop our biscuits, corndodgers and buck-
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wheat pancakes in, we didn't have to pay a dollar or a dol- lar and a half a gallon for the sap, but the contrary, only about fifteen or twenty cents a gallon, or the real tree su- gar at five cents a pound. Who wouldn't like the sap and the bread, too, made and baked at an old-time fireplace such as was in use over sixty years ago?
In the days of my boyhood I saw not a few times cows milked in a gourd. In early times almost every family raised gourds, as they were considered a necessity, and useful in many ways besides for milking in and placing the milk in to raise the cream. The long-handled or crooked-handled gourd had a place in the water pail, or bucket, also at the well or spring, thus saving the expense of tin cups or glass, when money to buy them with was so hard to get. The gourd was all right in its place, and it had many places to fill in the homes of the early settlers, and with many it was claimed that the water, milk or cider drunk out of a gourd tasted "a heap" better than out of a tin cup or glass, and the writer believes it, too, especially new sweet cider just from the press, such as we used to have in our boyhood days when the boys and girls went to apple cuttings miles and miles away, and drank cider out of a gourd, as cider was a prime neccessity at all apple "cuttings," and then we played old Sister Phoebe and "weevily wheat," sometimes until the wee hours of the night. Who wouldn't like to be young again and drink cider out of a gourd as
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we used to, sixty years ago, when the girls were a "heap" sweeter than they are now, when it was no dis- grace to drink cider, milk or water out of a gourd, and this brings to our memory a little rhyme that was com- mon then.
We had a little old cow, we milked her in a gourd and sat it in the corner and "kivered" it with a board, and mother used to tell how she skimmed the milk with a mussel shell.
A mussel shell for skimming milk was quite often used, and many of the old women argued that the butter wouldn't come as quick where a tin skimmer was used as when it was skimmed with a mussel shell.
Back in 1846 poultry and everything else was cheap. Tame turkeys were cheap and cost but little to raise; wild turkeys were cheaper, and cost nothing but the hunting and the sport was free, hence the price of turkeys sixty years and more ago. In our boyhood days, twen- ty-five cents would buy many articles of trade and com- merce that couldn't now be bought for twenty-five dol- lars and more. The price of a fat turkey, twenty-five cents, would then buy two acres of marsh land at twelve and one-half cents an acre, land that now is worth fifty to one hundred dollars an acre, and five turkeys would buy an acre of congress land, or ten turkeys would buy an acre of canal land. A forty-acre tract of either of the last named lands with timber on would now be an independ-
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ent fortune. What if we had as good foresight as we now have hind-sight?
The price of a weekly newspaper at two dollars, with the postage added, would almost take the price of a twenty-five-bushel load of corn, or of eight or ten bushels of wheat or of several fat turkeys.
Turkeys, wild and tame, ranged the fields and wood and got fat beyond description on the grasshoppers and beechnuts and acorns.
When the writer was married, in 1858, the license fee was one dollar, and not many years before, I think, the fee was fifty cents. Preachers and justices of the peace were often called on to perform the marriage ceremonies on credit. A young man of the writer's acquaintance, not one hundred miles from Bloomfield, whose funds were a little short, employed David Burcham, an old-time justice of the peace, to marry him, and the day following the young man paid for the ceremony by grubbing on the farm of the justice of the peace. Some of the old people of Bloomfield well knew Mr. Burcham in the days long gone by.
A. very little money in early times had to go a long way in more ways than one. This the writer well knows from actual experience. The late Baldwin Harrah used to tell of one Daniel Moss, who, in 1835, lived a few miles from where Linton now is and who was then a young man and wanted a marriage license and wasn't
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the owner of a horse and couldn't afford to hire a horse to ride to Bloomfield to get the coveted document, so concluded to walk and did walk, with a gun on his shoul- der, and on the way shot a wild turkey, which he car- ried through to the clerk's office and paid in part, or all, for the license. Samuel R. Cavins was then clerk, and often befriended his many friends in times of need and when funds were short.
Sixty years ago the average day wages on the farm was about twenty-five cents, except in harvest time, when the wages were about doubled. Fifty cents would then buy one hundred feet of clear yellow poplar lumber, a better grade than can now be bought for six dollars a hundred.
A hearse was not then in use or thought of. Friends and neighbors kindly tendered their services in digging and filling the graves. Funeral expenses and doctor bills were then very light as compared with the present times. It used to be said that many doctors only studied the profession from three to six months, when they would be full-fledged and ready to go out to kill or cure, as the case might be, a sure "pop" one way or the other.
Many of the early preachers had hard times in car- ing for the wants of the body as well as for the soul. One old preacher whose head is getting white with the frost of many winters tells of living a whole year on one circuit where the sum total paid him was seventeen dollars.
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Many of the old-time members of the Methodist Episcopal church constructed the quarterage rule or sys- tem to mean twenty-five cents every three months, which no doubt made a lean steak for many of the carly preachers.
One old-time Methodist Episcopal church member boasted that he had paid his quarterage twenty-five cents regularly every three months for "mor'n" thirty years.
The old Methodist Episcopal church at Linton was the first church in the county, and was built in1842. Prior to this date no one went to church, but nearly everybody went to "meeting" (not in buggies or surreys) but. on foot, on horseback or in the old-time, home-made, linchpin wagons, riding in hickory bark bottom chairs, with mother's reticule, hanging on a chair post, with a pipe stem sticking out of the top of the reticule, as most all women in those days smoked a pipe.
A reticule was a prime necessity with the old and young women alike to carry the pipe and tobacco in. Many of the old ladies and men, too, of Greene county will recollect this. Col. Levi Fellows, one of the first settlers in Taylor township in 1819, was the owner of the first buggy in the county, but it was called a carriage, and resembled a buggy but had little linchpins, the same as all the old-time wagons had, the front wheels being about half as high as the hind wheels. The bed was big enough to hold seven or eight bushels of corn and was
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all painted in the colors of the rainbow. It was a dandy. The writer took a ride in this grand old buggy in the summer of 1840, and it was his first buggy ride; he thought it was almost heaven on earth.
EARLY MARRIAGES. BY HENRY BAKER.
Isaac Ward, a stonemason, living near the old Rich- land furnace, engaged Col. Levi Fellows to marry him at a fixed day and hour. The day arrived and the colonel, agreeable to promise, was on time, but the groom failed to put in appearance. It was soon ascertained that Mr. Ward had gone about two miles distant to work at his trade. Two young men who had come to witness the ceremony were sent posthaste for the groom, while the anxious crowd and expectant bride whiled away the time as best they could. The groom was captured and soon brought to time, and was not slow in explain- ing to the colonel and all parties present that he had forgotten the day.
A SHORT CEREMONY.
About 1826 Colonel Fellows was engaged in build- ing a mill at or near Fair Play, the main business town
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. of the county. Daniel Ingersoll and others were in his employ. The colonel had just been elected or appointed judge, and hadn't yet performed a marriage ceremony.
Mr. Ingersoll engaged the newly-fledged officer to marry him at the home of his intended at Fair Play. As the wedding was at night all the hands in his employ repaired to the wedding to witness the young officer's first marriage ceremony.
All were top-toe with glee, much to the embarrass- ment of the new officer. The ceremony was gone through with the groom, but when he came to the bride, his con- fusion was too great to proceed further. After a little halt his speech was regained, he told the waiting couple they might take their seats, saying he guessed they were married enough anyway.
A WEDDING WITHOUT A HONEYMOON.
Alexander Plummer, an old pioneer flatboat man, started down the river to New Orleans on a flatboat from near Gosport and landed on the west bank of White river, near the home of old Thomas Plummer, the home of his intended wife, some two or three miles west of Bloom- field, late in the afternoon in February, 1828. Mr. Plum- mer at once proceeded to the home of his intended father- in-law, Mr. Thomas Plummer, a distant relative, and of the same name, and soon arrangements were made for
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a wedding. A messenger was dispatched to Bloomfield for a license and a justice of the peace and the happy couple were married the same night. Next morning Mr. Plummer bade the wife of less than one day an affection- ate good-bye, and started on down the river and was gone six weeks. Mr. and Mrs. Plummer made honored citizens and lived to a ripe old age. Thomas Plummer, the last one of the family of Alexander Plummer, yet lives in Fair Play township, where he was born and has lived all his life, and is in his seventy-sixth year in 1908.
MEANT BUSINESS.
Samuel Simons, ex-commissioner and United Brethren preacher, who once lived where Lyons now is, was three times a widower, and each time concluded it was not best for man to live alone, and the last, time a widow of long acquaintance in his neighborhood was the center of his affections, and as old folks' courtships are generally short and mean business, so it was with Uncle Sam, as he was long and familiarly known. So early one summer morning he repaired to her home and gently rapped at her door. The door was opened, and with a friendly good morning, he was invited to come in and take a chair, to which he answered that he hadn't time and that he came to see if she would marry him. The good widow, somewhat astonished at the abrupt
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manner of popping the question, said she never had thought about it, but would think it over and give him an answer. Uncle Sam was bent on business and demanded an answer in fifteen minutes and said he would sit down on the woodpile in front of her house and wait the time and answer while the good old lady whirled the wheel and drew out the long home-made yarns, for she was spinning when Uncle Sam called to see her. Time up, he went to the door, and laying one hand on each side of the door and asked what she had concluded to do, to which she replied that she would marry him. The proposi- tion was no sooner accepted than Uncle Sam mounted his horse, and, on double-quick, started to Bloomfield for the license, returning the same day, and the two were married before the sun went down. Although both well advanced in years they lived long to enjoy the sweets of connubial bliss, as reported by a near neighbor.
ONE COAT ANSWERED FOR BOTH. :
The following good story is related by Samuel Bald- win Harrah of one Adam Ridingbark and his son, Isaiah, of Shake-Rag settlement, near the Sullivan county line, who in 1832 married sisters, and both the same day and by the same justice of the peace, but with separate cere- monies. Between the two they had only one coat, and the coat had to answer the purpose for each to be mar-
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ried in. The father claimed as he was the older he should have the use of the coat first, to which the son readily consented.
After the ceremony was over and the usual hand- shaking and congratulations were ended, the old man shed the coat and the son donned the "linsey-woolsey" and was soon made a happy bridegroom and the four started out with fair prospects for a happy never-ending honey- moon. A few weeks or months after, the tune changed and Isaiah concluded if "sparing the rod would spoil the child," the same would be applicable with his wife, as he was not slow in frequently applying the birch to her as a gentle reminder that she must be subject to his control. Not content with his own way of running af- fairs, he hied away to parts unknown, leaving the young wife to stem the storms of life as best she could alone. But like the prodigal son, he found time to repent and return home to his rejected better half, who didn't care to meet with a fond embrace, or have a "fatted calf" killed for the occasion. The repentant asked permission to come into the house and lie down on the floor. The request was granted, and the good wife, to keep his clothes from getting soiled, spread on the floor a home- made tow-linen sheet for him to lie on. Wearied and wornout from loss of sleep and hunger, the offer was gladly accepted, and soon the truant husband fell into a deep slumber, from which he didn't awake until he
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found himself safely sewed up in the sheet the good wife so kindly spread on the floor for him to lie on. The wife, quick to instinct, seized the opportunity, and with a good cudgel proceeded to administer justice to the way- ward husband in such a way as to leave a lasting impres- sion and a call for faithful promises never to desert her or whip her again, if she would only set him at liberty.
On the 14th day of April, 1832, Elisha B. Cush- man, a justice of the peace of Bloomfield, married Rob- ert Inman and Rhoda Wines (afterward the father and mother of the writer's wife) at the residence of the bride's parents, Mr. and Mrs. Martin Wines, one mile . west of where Linton now is. The distance from Bloom- field was about fifteen miles. Mr. Cushman rode over in the morning on horseback, married the happy couple and returned home in the evening and charged fifty cents for his services. The probability is that the justice of the peace had to pay twelve and one-half cents for ferry- age, which reduced the amount to thirty-seven and one- half cents. At that time ten-cent pieces hadn't come into general use. The wages of a day laborer then was about ' twenty-five cents, so the justice of the peace was aliead twelve and one-half cents and a good square dinner, such as was common in those days, when every farmer's table was spread with the best "grub" the country afforded in an abundance.
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Mr. Cushman, the justice above mentioned, used to tell of. a couple that called at his office in 1842 to be married. After the ceremony had been performed the happy groom asked what the fee was, and was told that it was fifty cents. Not a little embarrassed he hardly knew what to do, as thirty-seven and one-half cents was the sum total of his pile. Bravery cheered him as he handed over the thirty-seven and one-half cents, and with a promise to pay the remaining twelve and one-half cents, the first time he should see Mr. Cushman, and al- though they only lived a few miles away, it is hardly probable that he ever saw the justice again, as the sum was never paid. Samuel R. Cavins, who was clerk at the time, said Mr. Cushman came out better than he did, as the licenses were obtained on a credit, and never paid for. Mr. Cavins was noted for his generosity, and the poor never went from his door empty-handed.
The writer is reminded of a puncheon floor he saw in the eastern part of this, Greene county, where he attended a wedding in the spring of 1858, fifty years ago. In those days puncheon floors and clapboard doors were quite common, and good poplar timber was plenty, from which the puncheons were mostly made. The puncheons in the floor referred to were just five inches in width, three feet in each puncheon, and two lengths to the room. And the bride and groom and the justice of the peace who
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performed the ceremony, all stood on one puncheon, fac- ing the long way of the room. The floor showed it had been in use many long years and was as white as soap, sand, water and a hickory broom could make it, for the occasion. The house hadn't a pane of glass in it, and doors stood open all times of the year to afford light. After the ceremony and the usual handshaking was over the blushing groom asked what the charge was and was told that as it was Sunday and the justice of the peace didn't have to come put a mile, he wouldn't charge but twenty-five cents. The fee was paid and the justice of the peace and wife and myself were invited to stay for dinner. The invitation was cheerfully accepted, and I shall never forget the nice biscuits, fried ham and eggs and tree molasses we had for dinner, and what made the dinner relish the more was that is was all cooked by an old-fashioned fireplace such as was common in those times when not one family in ten wanted or thought they could afford a cookstove and many believed they couldn't make as good bread by a stove as by the old-time fire- places and the writer believes it too, especially the corn- dodgers with the finger prints in it, such as our dear old mothers used to make. The grand old poplar trees and log houses with puncheon floors and huge fireplaces, with their pots, skillets and frying pans sitting around, are about all gone, and our dear old mothers, too, are gone, in a space of fifty years.
SUGAR MAKING TIME.
BY HENRY BAKER.
As the season of the year for maple sugar and syrup of the kind we used to have long years ago approaches, when men were honest, and when maple sugar and syrup didn't get into market three months before its season, a good story is in season as told by a doctor who was many years a resident of Indianapolis, and whose reputation for truthfulness and veracity was never doubted. Many of the good citizens of Indianapolis were no doubt ac- quainted with him.
In the midst of the season for maple syrup an old farmer, wearing a slouch hat and smoking a cob pipe, with his better half, seated in a home-made split-bottom chair, right from the rural district, drove into the city in a rickety old linchpin wagon, drawn by two old horses that compared favorably with the wagon and driver, a type of an old-time, honest farmer. In his wagon were about twenty gallon jugs corked with cobs, the novelty of which attracted the attention of the passers by. A location was sought close by the sidewalk, where there were many passing.
The old farmer alighted from his wagon and the
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good wife handed the jugs out, and they were placed in a huddle, and the announcement was made, "Tree mo- lasses, one dollar a gallon, and ten cents for the jug."
Enquiry was made of the honest old farmer if it was genuine. The answer was, "Taste it," and it was tasted, and each with a gusto smack pronounced it all right. "It's the 'r'al' stuff." And one old man hap- pening along who had spent his early days on a farm was asked to sample the molasses.
A taste and a smack, with an honest wink that it was all right, satisfied the crowd that had formed a circle around the jugs that they had a rare treat before them.
A stampede ensued as to which should be the first to get a jug, and the old farmer was kept busy handing out jugs and receiving his pay. And soon all were gone and several were sadly disappointed at being too late. And one expressed his disappointment by saying he guessed he was born in the dark of the moon.
After the sale was over the old farmer knocked the ashes from his cob pipe and filled it anew, and with a . smile assured his patrons that he would return in a few days with another load and would then pay each one ten cents for all jugs returned.
The honest old farmer from the rural "deestricts" wended his way home, but was never heard of after, and each lucky buyer no doubt, as he wended his way home
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with a jug in each hand, fancied how he would sop both sides of his pancackes for a long time to come, but their fancies ended in disappointment when they found their jugs had been filled almost to the top with cheap sorghum, with just a taste of hickory-bark tree molasses at the mouth of each jug, as a taste for the lucky buyers. Dr. Minich spent several years of the last of his life at Worthington.
SMALLPOX IN THE EARLY DAYS.
BY HENRY BAKER.
In the summer of 1843 the family of Eli Faucett, living near the old Fellows mill, had the smallpox in the very worst form. Joshua Roach, James Elder and my father and mother were the only persons in the neighbor- hood who had had the disease and that could minister to their wants or visit them save the doctor in attendance. The mother died and the father lost his sight from the effects of the disease. Mrs. Faucett was buried at the family graveyard on the farm a few hundred yards from the residence. Mrs. Faucett was a large woman, weigh- ing over two hundred pounds. My father made the cof- fin and with the help of my mother put the corpse in the coffin, and Mr. Elder and my father and mother car- ried the coffin and corpse to the grave, which had been
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made by the neighbors, and after depositing the coffin in the grave those who dug the grave came and filled it up.
In carrying to the grave Mr. Elder and my father carried the front end almost balanced on a hand-spike, and my mother followed behind and carried the head of the coffin. How they managed to lower it into the grave I never fully understood, though probably on the balancing of the rope or lines the same as the carrying of the coffin and corpse. Considering the weight it was a herculean undertaking.
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