USA > Indiana > Johnson County > History of Johnston County, Indiana. From the earliest time to the present, with biographical sketches, notes, etc., together with a short history of the Northwest, the Indiana territory, and the state of Indiana > Part 22
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"Linsey, neat and fine, manufactured at home, composed gener- ally the outside garments of the females as well as the males.
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The ladies had linsey colored and woven to suit their fancy. A. bonnet, composed of ealico, or some gay goods, was worn on the head when they were in the open air. Jewelry on the pioneer ladies was uncommon; a gold ring was an ornament not often seen."
In 1820 a change of dress began to take place, and before 1830, according to Ford, most of the pioneer costume had disappeared. " The blue linsey hunting-sbirt, with red or white fringe, had given place to the cloth coat. [Jeans would be more like the fact.] 'The raccoon cap, with the tail of the animal dangling down behind, had been thrown aside for hats of wool or fur. Boots and shoes had sup- planted the deer-skin moccasins; and leather breeches, strapped tight around the ankle, had disappeared before unmentionables of a more modern material. The female sex had made still greater prog- ress in dress. The old sort of cotton or woolen frocks, spun, woven and made with their own fair hands, and striped and eross-barred with blue dye and Turkey red, had given place to gowns of silk and calico. The feet, before in a state ot nudity, now charmed in shoes of calf-skin or slippers of kid; and the head, formerly unbonneted, but covered with a cotton handkerchief, now displayed the charms of the female face under many forms of bonnets of straw, silk and Leg- horn. The young ladies, instead of walking a mile or two to church on Sunday, carrying their shoes and stockings in their hands until within a hundred yards of the place of worship, as formerly, now came forth arrayed complete in all the pride of dress, mounted on fine horses and attended by their male admirers."
The last half century has doubtless witnessed changes quite as great as those set forth by our Illinois historian. The chronicler of to-day, looking back to the golden days of 1830 to 1840, and com- paring them with the present, must be struek with the tendency of an almost monotonous uniformity in dress and manners that comes from the easy inter-communication afforded by steamer, railway, telegraph and newspaper. Home manufactures have been driven from the houshold by the lower-priced fabrics of distant mills. The Kentucky jeans, and the copperas-colored clothing of home manu- facture, so familiar a few years ago, have given place to the cassimeres and cloths of noted factories. The ready-made elothing stores, like a touch ot nature, made the whole world kin, and may drape the charcoal man in a dress-coat and a stove-pipe hat. The prints and
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silks of England and France give a variety of choice and an assort- ment of colors and shades such as the pioneer women could hardly have dreamed of. Godey and Demorest and Harper's Bazar are found in our modern farm-houses, and the latest fashions of Paris are not uncommon.
FAMILY WORSHIP.
The Methodists were generally first on the ground in pioneer settlements, and at that early day they seemed more demonstrative in their devotions than at the present time. In those days, too, pulpit oratory was generally more eloquent and effective, while the grammatical dress and other "worldly " accomplishments were not so assiduously cultivated as at present. But in the manner of conducting public worship there has probably not been so much change as in that of family worship, or " family prayers " as it was often called. We had then most emphatically an American edition of that pious old Scotch practice so eloquently described in Burns' "Cotter's Saturday Night:"
The cheerfu' supper done, wi' serious face They round the ingle formed a circle wide; The sire turns o'er, wi' patriarchal grace, The big ha' Bible, ance his father's pride; His bonnet rev'rently is laid aside, His lyart haffets wearing thin and bare; Those strains that once did in sweet Zion glide; He wales a portion with judicious care, And "let us worship God," he says with solemn air.
They chant their artless notes in simple guise; They tune their hearts, - by far the noblest aim; Perhaps " Dundee's " wild warbling measures rise, Or plaintive " Martyr's" worthy of the name; Or noble "Elgin " beats the heavenward flame,- The sweetest far of Scotia's hallowed lays. Compared with these, Italian trills are tame; The tickled ear no heart-felt raptures raise: Nae unison hae they with our Creator's praise.
The priest-like father reads the sacred page,-
How Abraham was the friend of God on high, etc.
Then kneeling down, to heaven's Eternal King The saint, the father and the husband prays; Hope " springs exulting on triumphant wing," That thus they all shall meet in future days;
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There ever bask in uncreated rays, No more to sigh or shed the bitter tear,
Together hymning their Creator's praise, In such society, yet still more dear, While circling time moves round in an eternal sphere.
Once or twice a day, in the morning just before breakfast, or in the evening just before retiring to rest, the head of the family would call those around him to order, read a chapter in the Bible, announce the hymn and tnne by commencing to sing it, when all would join; then he would deliver a most fervent prayer. If a pious guest were present he would be called on to take the lead in all the exercises of the evening; and if in those days a person who prayed in the family or in public did not pray as if it were his very last on earth, his piety was thought to be defective.
The familiar tunes of that day are remembered by the surviving old settlers as being more spiritual and inspiring than those of the pres- ent day, such as Bourbon, Consolation, China, Canaan, Conquering Soldier, Condescension, Devotion, Davis, Fiducia, Funeral Thought, Florida, Golden Hill, Greenfields, Ganges, Idumea, Imandra, Ken- tucky, Lenox, Leander, Mear, New Orleans, Northfield, New Salem, New Durham, Olney, Primrose, Pisgah, Pleyel's Hymn, Rockbridge, Rockingham, Reflection, Supplication, Salvation, St. Thomas, Salem, Tender Thought, Windham, Greenville, etc., as they are named in the Missouri Harmony.
Members of other orthodox denominations also had their family prayers in which, however, the phraseology of the prayer was some- what different and the voice not so loud as characterized the real Methodists, United Brethren, etc.
HOSPITALITY.
The traveler always found a welcome at the pioneer's cabin. It was never full. Although there might be already a guest for every puncheon, there was still "room for one more," and a wider circle would be made for the new-comer at the log fire. If the stranger was in search of land he was doubly welcome, and his host would volunteer to show him all the " first-rate claims in this neck of the woods," going with him for days, showing the corners and advantages of every "Congress tract " within a dozen miles of his own cabin.
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To his neighbors the pioneer was equally liberal. If a deer was killed, the choicest bits were sent to his nearest neighbor, a half- dozen miles away, perhaps. When a "shoat " was butchered, the same custom prevailed. If a new-comer came in too late for " crop- ping," the neighbors would supply his table with just the same . luxuries they themselves enjoyed, and in as liberal quantity, until a crop could be raised. When a new-comer had located his claim, the neighbors for miles around would assemble at the site of the new- comer's proposed eabin and aid him in "gittin' " it up. One party with axes would cut down the trees and hew the logs; another with teams would haul the logs to the ground; another party would "raise " the cabin; while several of the old men would "rive the clapboards " for the roof. By night the little forest domicile would be up and ready for a "house-warming," which was the dedicatory occupation of the house, when music and daneing and festivity would be enjoyed at full height. The next day the new-comer would be as well situated as his neighbors.
An instance of primitive hospitable manners will be in place here. A traveling Methodist preaeher arrived in a distant neigh- borhood to fill an appointment. The house where services were to be held did not belong to a church member, but no matter for that. Boards were raked up from all quarters with which to make temporary seats, one of the neighbors volunteering to lead off in the work, while the man of the house, with the faithful rifle on his shoulder, sallied forth in quest of meat, for this truly was a "ground-hog " case, the preacher coming and no meat in the house. The host ceased not the chase until he found the meat, in the shape of a deer; returning, he sent a boy out after it, with directions on what " pint " to find it. After services, which had been listened to with rapt attention by all the audience, mine host said to his wife, "Old woman, I reckon this 'ere preacher is pretty hungry and you must git him a bite to eat." "What shall I git him?" asked the wife, who had not seen the deer; " thar's nuthin' in the house to eat." " Why, look thar," returned he; "thar's deer, and thar's plenty of corn in the field; you git some corn and grate it while I skin the deer, and we'll have a good supper for him." It is need- less to add that venison and corn bread made a supper fit for any pioneer preacher, and was thankfully eaten.
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TRADE.
In pioneer times the transactions of commerce were generally carried on by neighborhood exchanges. Now and then a farmer would load a flat-boat with beeswax, honey, tallow and peltries, with perhaps a few bushels of wheat or corn or a few hundred clapboards, and float down the rivers into the Ohio, and thence to New Orleans, where he would exchange his produce for substantials in the shape of groceries and a little ready money, with which he would return by some one of the two or three steamboats then run- ning. Betimes there appeared at the best steamboat landings a number of "middle men " engaged in the "commission and for- warding " business, buying up the farmers' produce and the tro- phies of the chase and the trap, and sending them to the various distant markets. Their winter's accumulations would be shipped in the spring, and the manufactured goods of the far East or dis- tant South would come back in return; and in all these transactions scarcely any money was seen or used. Goods were sold on a year's time to the farmers, and payment made from the proceeds of the ensuing crops. When the crops were sold and the merchant satis- fied, the surplus was paid out in orders on the store to laboring men and to satisfy other creditors. When a day's work was done by a working man, his employer would ask, "Well, what store do you want your order on?" The answer being given, the order was written and always cheerfully accepted.
MONEY.
Money was an article little known and seldom seen among the earlier settlers. Indeed, they had but little use for it, as they could transact all their business about as well without it, on the " barter " system, wherein great ingenuity was sometimes displaved. When it failed in any instance, long credits contributed to the convenience of the citizens. But for taxes and postage neither the barter nor the credit system woukl answer, and often letters were suffered to remain a long lime in the postoffice for the want of the twenty-five cents demanded by the Government. With all this high price on postage, by the way, the letter had not been brought 500 miles in a day or two, as the case is nowadays, but had prob- ably been weeks on the route, and the mail was delivered at the pioneer's postoffice, several miles distant from his residence, only
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once in a week or two. All the mail would be carried by a lone horseman. Instances are related illustrating how misrepresenta- tion would be resorted to in order to elicit the sympathies of some one who was known to have "two bits " (25 cents) of money with him, and procure the required Governmental fee for a letter.
Peltries came nearer being money than anything else, as it came to be custom to estimate the value of everything in peltries. Such an article was worth so many peltries. Even some tax collectors and postmasters were known to take peltries and exchange them for the money required by the Government.
When the first settlers came into the wilderness they gener- ally supposed that their hard struggle would be principally over after the first year; but alas! they often looked for "easier times next year" for many years before realizing them, and then they came in so slily as to be almost imperceptible. The sturdy pioneer thus learned to bear hardships, privation and hard living, as good soldiers do. As the facilities for making money were not great, they lived pretty well satisfied in an atmosphere of good, social, friendly feeling, and thought themselves as good as those they had left behind in the East. But among the early settlers who came to this State were many who, accustomed to the advantages of an older civilization, to churches, schools and society, became speedily home- sick and dissatisfied. They would remain perhaps one summer, or at most two, then, selling whatever claim with its improvements they had made, would return to the older States, spreading reports of the hardships endured by the settlers here and the disadvantages which they had found, or imagined they had found. in the country. These weaklings were not an unmitigated curse. The slight im- provements they had made were sold to men of sterner stuff, who were the sooner able to surround themselves with the necessities of life, while their unfavorable report deterred other weaklings from coming. The men who stayed, who were willing to endure privations, belonged to a different guild; they were heroes every one,- men to whom hardships were things to be overcome, and pres- ent privations things to be endured for the sake of posterity, and they never shrank from this duty. It is to these hardy pioneers who could endure, that we to-day owe the wonderful improvement we have made and the development, almost miraculous, that has
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brought our State in the past sixty years, from a wilderness, to the front rank among the States of this great nation.
MILLING.
Not the least of the hardships of the pioneers was the procuring of bread. The first settlers must be supplied at least one year from other sources than their own lands; but the first crops, how- ever abundant, gave only partial relief, there being no mills to grind the grain. Hence the necessity of grinding by hand-power, and many families were poorly provided with means for doing this. Another way was to grate the corn. A grater was made from a piece of tin sometimes taken from an old, worn-out tin bucket or other vessel. It was thickly perforated, bent into a semicircular form, and nailed rough side upward, on a board. The corn was taken in the ear, and grated before it got dry and hard. Corn, however, was eaten in various ways.
Soon after the country became more generally settled, enterprising men were ready to embark in the milling business. Sites along the streams were selected for water-power. A person looking for a mill site would follow up and down the stream for a desired loca- tion, and when found he would go before the authorities and secure a writ of ad quod damnum. This would enable the miller to have the adjoining land officially examined, and the amount of damage by making a dam was named. Mills being so great a publie necessity, they were permitted to be located upon any person's land where the miller thought the site desirable.
AGRICULTURAL IMPLEMENTS.
The agricultural implements used by the first farmers in this State would in this age of improvement be great curiosities. The plow used was called the "bar-share " plow; the iron point con- sisted of a bar of iron about two feet long, and a broad share of iron welded to it. At the extreme point was a coulter that passed through a beam six or seven feet long, to which were attached handles of corresponding length. The mold-board was a wooden ore split out of winding timber, or hewed into a winding shape, in order to turn the soil over. Sown seed was brushed in by dragging over the ground a sapling with a bushy top. In harvesting the
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change is most striking. Instead of the reapers and mowers of to- day, the sickle and eradle were used. The grain was threshed with a flail, or trodden out by horses or oxen.
HOG KILLING.
Hogs were always dressed before they were taken to market. The farmer, if forehanded, would call in his neighbors some bright fall or winter morning to help "kill hogs." Immense kettles of water were heated; a sled or two, covered with loose boards or plank, con- stituted the platform on which the hog was cleaned, and was placed near an inclined hogshead in which the scalding was done; a quilt was thrown over the top of the latter to retain the heat; from a crotch of some convenient tree a projecting pole was rigged to hold the animals for disemboweling and thorough cleaning. When everything was arranged, the best shot of the neighborhood loaded his rifle, and the work of killing was commenced. It was consid- ered a disgrace to make a hog "squeal" by bad shooting or by a "shoulder stick," that is running the point of the butcher-knife into the shoulder instead of the cavity of the breast. As each hog fell, the "sticker" mounted him and plunged the butcher-knife, long and well sharpened, into his throat; two persons would then eatch him by the hind legs, draw him up to the scalding tub, which had just been filled with boiling-hot water with a shovelful of good green wood ashes thrown in; in this the carcass was plunged and moved around a minute or so, that is, until the hair would slip off easily, then placed on the platform where the cleaners would pitch into him with all their might and clean him as quickly as possible, with knives and other sharp-edged implements; then two stout fellows would take him up between them, and a third man to manage the "gambrel " (which was a stout stick about two feet long, sharpened at both ends, to be inserted between the muscles of the hind legs at or near the hock joint). the animal would be elevated to the pole. where the work of cleaning was finished.
After the slaughter was over and the hogs had had time to cool, such as were intended for domestic use were cut up, the lard " tried " out by the women of the household, and the surplus hogs taken to market, while the weather was cold, if possible. In those days almost every merchant had, at the rear end of his place of
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business or at some convenient building, a " pork-house," and would buy the pork of his customers and of such others as would sell to him, and eut it for the market. This gave employment to a large number of hands in every village, who would eut and pack pork all winter. The hanling of all this to the river would also give employment to a large number of teams, and the manufacture of pork barrels would keep many coopers employed.
Allowing for the difference of curreney and manner of market- ing, the price of pork was not so high in those days as at present. Now, while calico and muslin are eight cents a yard and pork is five and six cents a pound, then, while calico and muslin were twenty-five cents a yard pork was one to two cents a pound. When, as the country grew older and communications easier between the seaboard and the great West, prices went up to two and a half and three cents a pound, the farmers thought they would always be content to raise pork at sneh a price; but times have changed, even eon- trary to the current-ey.
There was one feature in this method of marketing pork that made the country a paradise for the poor man in the winter time. Spare-ribs, tenderloins, pigs' heads and pigs' feet were not con- sidered of any value, and were freely given to all who could use them. If a barrel was taken to any pork-house and salt furnished, the barrel would be filled and salted down with tenderloins and spare-ribs gratuitously. So great in many cases was the quantity of spare-ribs, ete., to be disposed of, that they would be hauled away in wagon-loads and dumped in the woods out of town.
In those early times much wheat was marketed at twenty-five to fifty cents a bushel, oats the same or less, and corn ten cents a bushel. A good young milch-cow could be bought for $5 to $10, and that payable in work.
Those might truly be called "close times," yet the citizens of the country were accommodating, and but very little suffering for the actual necessities of life was ever known to exist.
PRAIRIE FIRES.
Fires, set out by Indians or settlers, sometimes purposely and sometimes permitted through carelessness, would visit the prairies every antumn, and sometimes the forests, either in autumn or spring, and settlers could not always succeed in defending them- selves against the destroying element. Many interesting incidents are related. Often a fire was started to bewilder game, or to bare
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a piece of ground for the carly grazing of stock the ensuing spring, and it would get away under a wind, and soon be beyond control. Violent winds would often arise and drive the flames with such rapidity that riders on the fleetest steeds could searcely escape. On the approach of a prairie fire the farmer would immediately set about "cutting off supplies " for the devouring enemy by a " baek fire." Thus, by starting a small fire near the bare ground about his premises, and keeping it under control next his property, he would burn off a strip around him and prevent the attack of the on-coming flames. A few furrows or a ditch around the farm con- stituted a help in the work of protection.
An original prairie of tall and exuberant grass on fire, especially at night, was a magnificent speetaele, enjoyed only by the pioneer. Here is an instance where the frontiersman, proverbially deprived of the sights and pleasures of an old community, is privileged far beyond the people of the present day in this country. One eould scarcely tire of beholding the scene, as its awe-inspiring features seemed constantly to increase, and the whole panorama uneeasingly changed like the dissolving views of a magic lantern, or like the aurora borealis. Language cannot convey, words cannot express, the faintest idea of the splendor and grandeur of such a conflagra- tion at night. It was as if the pale queen of night, disdaining to take her accustomed place in the heavens, had dispatched myriads upon myriads of messengers to light their torches at the altar of the setting sun until all had flashed into one long and continuous blaze.
The following graphie description of prairie fires was written by a traveler through this region in 1849:
" Soon the fires began to kindle wider and rise higher from the long grass; the gentle breeze increased to stronger currents, and soon fanned the small, flickering blaze into fierce torrent flames, which curled up and leaped along in resistless splendor; and like quickly raising the dark curtain from the luminous stage, the scenes before me were suddenly changed, as if by the magician's wand, into one boundless amphitheatre, blazing from earth to heaven and sweeping the horizon round,-columns of lurid flames sportively mounting up to the zenith, and dark clouds of crimson smoke curling away and aloft till they nearly obscured stars and moon, while the rush- ing, crashing sounds, like roaring cataracts mingled witli distant thunders, were almost deafening; danger, death, glared all around; it »creamed for victims; yet, notwithstanding the imminent peril
1
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of prairie fires, one is loth, irresolute, almost unable to withdraw or seek refuge."
WILD HOGS.
When the earliest pioneer reached this Western wilderness, game was his principal food nutil he had conquered a farm from the forest or prairie,-rarely, then, from the latter. As the country settled game grew scarce, and by 1850 he who would live by his rifle would have had but a precarious subsistence had it not been for "wild hogs." These animals, left by home-sick immigrants whom the chiils or fever and ague had driven ont, had strayed into the woods, and began to multiply in a wild state. The woods each fall were full of acorns, walnuts, hazelnuts, and these logs would grow fat and multiply at a wonderful rate in the bottoms and along the bluffs. The second and third immigration to the country found these wild hogs an unfailing source of meat supply up to that period when they had in the townships contignous to the river be- come so numerous as to be an evil, breaking in herds into the farmer's corn-fields or toling their domestic swine into their retreats, where they too became in a season as wild as those in the woods. In 1838 or '39, in a certain township, a meeting was called of citizens of the township to take steps to get rid of wild logs. At this meeting, which was held in the spring, the people of the town- ship were notified to turn out en masse on a certain day and engage in the work of catching, trimming and branding wild hogs, which were to be turned loose, and the next winter were to be hunted and killed by the people of the township, the meat to be divided pro rata among the citizens of the township. This plan was fully carried into effect, two or three days being spent in the exciting work in the spring.
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