USA > Indiana > Grant County > Fairmount > The making of a township, being an account of the early settlement and subsequent development of Fairmount Township, Grant County, Indiana, 1829 to 1917, based upon data secured by personal interviews, from numerous communications > Part 7
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The Making of a Township.
style, with high hames, and the teamsters often had a set of what they called hame bells, so when they were coming we were well aware of it. If the tar-bucket was forgotten, what a squeaking noise we could hear, nearly a mile away, on a clear day in winter! They nearly always hung the tar-bucket on the hind axle. A hole was made in the lid for the tar-paddle. A leather whang was used to fasten the lid to the bucket to secure it. If there was more than one span of horses the driver rode one of the horses at the tongue. Oxen were used for log- ging and other heavy work. One Indian often came to town driving a team of oxen with a set of chain harness on, he sitting in the wagon guiding them with lines.
In the winter they made wooden sleds from the timber of a crooked tree, split and hewn for runners, with cross-pieces mortised in, plank laid on and straw and comforters. We packed in sardine fashion, as happy as larks in June.
There were the spelling schools, quilting bees, log rollings and quilt- ings combined, wool pickings, apple cuttings, and sometimes writing schools. To tell how these social gatherings were conducted would be too lengthy. Will mention the wool picking event.
They took their turns in the neighborhood and invited all to "come and help with the wool." Now, this was a gala time, and a good, old- fashioned dinner was spread. The teacher was invited to come after school for supper. The wool, having been washed and dried, it was brought in and spread out in the center of a large room. Then each put on her big apron. And such a hubbub all around the room, exchang- ing the last news, and each busy with the wool. There were burrs, Spanish needles and trash to be extracted. Then it was tied in sheets or old blankets to be taken to the woolen mill at Jonesboro, in my time. but earlier it was made into rolls at home with hand-cards about four- teen inches in width, with wire teeth, and handles like curry-combs. They combed the wool until it was in smooth lavers, then with forward and backward movements formed it into rolls ready for spinning.
One day I found grandmother's cards and asked mother to teach me how to make rolls. You ought to have seen some of my awkward movements before I got anything like a roll. The rolls made at the carding machine are over two feet long. They were in bunches of from fifty to a hundred. Then they were put in layers on the sheets the wool was brought to mill in, then rolled up very tight and pinned with thorns. My brother earned his "first big money," as he thought. by gathering thorns to sell to the proprietor of the mill at so much a dozen. Most everyone raised sheep, and the women spun and wove cloth for their clothing and blankets, knit their own hosiery, and the men's, too.
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Glimpses of Pioneer Life.
The farmers raised flax. It was pulled up by the roots, cured and put through the flax-brake. The coarse fiber was called tow, which was used for ropes, kite strings, twine, and to spin into carpet warp. The fine fiber was done up in twists and laid away, to be spun into thread for sewing and weaving into bedding, towels, tablecloths, shirts, dresses, pants and other useful things. Grandmother made a substan- tial button out of flax thread. It looked a little like a crocheted button of this time.
For weaving, there was the spool-holder, warping-bars, loom, quill- wheel, winding-blades, shuttle-quills, spools and yard-string. To try to describe all the attachments pertaining to a loom would be a task.
The spinning of wool was done on a big wheel, on a bench of three legs, two at back end, one longer in front. They spun the thread and wound it on a broach on a spindle. When full it was wound on a reel. One hundred and twenty rounds made a cut. The skein consisted of four cuts. Each cut was tied or cross-threaded. The girls often tried to see who could make the most in a day. Sister Sarah could get her twenty-four cuts.
In spinning flax they used a little wheel with a distaff, on which the flax was held while spinning. The thread was so stout it could not be broken. They used to cut it. I will not describe a flax-wheel, as you can examine some old book or painting and see the way they look at the little wheel.
One woman east of the Mississinewa River raised the silk worms and made silk thread. It was very good, stout thread. People raised most of what they used, both eatables and wearing apparel. All the sewing was hand work, and they borrowed patterns one of another, so there was no kick on high cost of living.
Hog killing time was a neighborhood affair, as they helped one another. There was an old colored man, Robert Brazelton, who was adapted to such occasions. He could knock a hog in the head and stick it with ease. The hogs were scalded, scraped, and then hung upon a long pole. A chip was put in the hog's mouth. Father was an adept in drawing them. The entrails were carried to a long table for women to extract the fat. They thoroughly washed out the inside. There were generally about eight to twenty hogs slaughtered at a killing, as the meat was cured and the farmers sold some to help run the expenses in summer. By the time the last hog was hung the first was ready for cutting up and salting away in the smoke-house to cure ready for smoking. They hung the joints on wooden hooks made of forked limbs of hickory. They used corn cobs or hickory wood to smoke with.
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The Making of a Township.
The women cut up the fat leaf lard and entrail fat. It was cooked down to make lard.
In making sausages there were no grinders, so it was all chopped by hand on a big chopping block. They made head cheese, pickled pigs feet, and hung the ribs before the fire and roasted them. Oh, they were fine!
Corn-planting time was a busy month. First, they plowed the ground, then run a single-shovel plow the longest way of the field, then they mustered all the help available to get the corn in one run, the sin- gle plow the other way of the field forming check rows. Following him was a dropper, putting four grains in each hill, followed by one with a hoe, covering it. Sometimes we made a bee of it. Then a lot of us girls would drop and the boys with hoes covered. Then we got a good dinner and supper, sure. The cultivating was mostly by the hoe. Some run the single plow a few times through it.
When the corn was ripe they snapped it, hauled it into the barn, or crib, to be husked at leisure. Sometimes they had a husking bee. It was an interesting sight, with those tin lanterns hanging here and there and the busy men and boys at their work. Women prepared them a treat of doughnuts, apples, pie and some coffee.
When they wanted to take the grist to mill a few sacks of corn were brought to the house after supper. All hands set to and did the shell- ing by hand. It was taken to the water mill, ground between two stones, and was sifted at home in a round-wire sieve. The corn bread and pones were fine.
Sugar and molasses were made of the sap of the sugar maple. They cut a downward-stroked notch in the south side of the tree, bored a hole so as to run into the notch, inserted a spile to let the sap run into a trough made of a log split and hewn out for a receptacle for the sap. They built a place to boil it by putting clay and rocks around the big iron kettles, put wood in the north end, as it was mostly south wind in spring. Father would build a shed, put in some straw and a few com- forters, so we could take turns watching the kettles. The first sap was used to make sugar. The last end of sap time it was made into molasses.
One night sister Millie, Charlotte Peacock and I helped father "sugar off." We slept until he was ready for putting it into crocks to cool and stir. The more we stirred it the whiter it got. Sometimes it was as light as coffee A sugar we get nowadays. This was our "com- pany" sugar. Some was darker for common use. Then we molded some into cakes and stacked it away.
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Glimpses of Pioncer Life.
Father waked us up to feast on wax. We put it on plates to cool. Soon we had our fun, pulling and eating. Then father told us to lie down until he was ready for us. So Millie said, "Shadrach, Meshach and Aebednego," or, "Get up, eat wax, and to bed we go."
Most of the farmers raised ducks and geese. The duck feathers were used to make pillows and the goose feathers to make feather beds. There was a good market for feathers when not wanted for home use.
They raised broom-corn, made their own brooms, and for scrubbing, sweeping the yard and barn floor they made a split broom by taking a pole of hickory wood and shaving it down within three or four inches of one end and then turn the splits over that stub, tie it and trim off even. It made a stout, serviceable broom.
They did their plowing for wheat as soon after having as possible, then harrowed it. Those who had no harrow used a brush as drag. They sowed the wheat broadcast by hand, then brushed it in. To har- vest the wheat, those who had no cradle used a sickle in cutting it. Then it was tied into bundles and put up in shocks ready for the barn.
When ready to thresh, they swept the floor (and here was where the splint broom came into good play). They used a flail. Some tramped it out with horses. Father had a fanning-mill. Some used the fire bellows. Some took it out on a windy day, spread it on a wagon cover or sheets and passed it from one vessel to another to get the chaff out. It was taken to the old water mill to be made into flour. The miller took his toll.
The farthest back that I can remember is when old Sorrel and Char- ley ran away while one of my brothers was eating a lunch before he started to Jonesboro with his wheat. He had been hauling rails for father to lay fence. The people laid the first row in the "right time of the moon." He took two planks, put them on the running gears of the wagon and piled his sacks of wheat thereon. The other brother and Millie were on the wagon when the horses started. They ran against a plum tree in the front yard, turned over wheat and all, with sister underneath. She was hurt. I was two years and a half old, but it was indelibly stamped on my memory.
The lanterns they used were made of tin, with oblong holes punched outward to emit the light. They used candles placed in a tin socket. Those who didn't have a lantern took the scaly bark of the hickory tree, tied it with a tow string and lighted it at the fire. There were no matches. People covered up live coals of fire with ashes to start fires. If the coals went dead on them, over to the nearest neighbor they would go
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The Making of a Township.
to "borrow fire." Smokers carried a tin box lined with ashes to keep coals for a pipe lighter.
Fairmount was a temperance town. I never saw a drunk man until I was eighteen years old, and that was at a colored camp-meeting. A young man from Marion was lying on his face dead drunk. It had a disgusting look to me.
People made their own soap. They saved the ashes and put them in an ash hopper, poured water on and it ran through into a trough similar to a sugar trough, boiled the lye down to where it would eat a feather, then put in old meat trimmings, old grease and such, and boil it until it roped from the paddle In washing, they used wide, flat pad- dles, soaped the clothes in strong suds made of this soap, and then laid them on a block, or slab, to be "paddled out." When I was past seven years of age they got to using a pounding barrel. as barrels were made by Jackson Reel and other men around there. This barrel was about a third full of water. The clothes were soaped and put in. Then a wooden pestle was used to extract the dirt. Then they were boiled. rinsed, starched and hung out to dry on a line made of tow. The starch was made by scraping potatoes, then washed. The part that settled made a good starch when cooked.
Blacksmiths in those days could make irons. These were heated in' front of the fire in the fireplace. Most of these fireplaces had what they called a crane-iron attached, with different lengths of hooks .to hang kettles on to boil dinners, cook pumpkins and other things. Grandmother Benbow had a reflector. It was a bright tin frame with slanting shelves toward the fire and used to roast sweet potatoes, squashes and meats, and to bake the Johnnie cakes and other things.
They made chairs, baskets, wooden spoons, bowls, churns and wooden tubs. On each side was left an extension of the staves to make openings for handhold. William Wellington made us a good wood washboard with a kind of plane he brought with him from Eng- land. He made our bedsteads and did other carpenter work. He was a well-read man and he brought his Advent books with him, and many other books. My brother-in-law, Micah Baldwin, did have some of his books when I was young. "Religious Emblems and Allegories" and "Daniel and the Prophets" were among them.
Now, I will write some of my recollections of father Nathan Morris. He was born in Guilford County, North Carolina, Tentli month 8, 1806. He was the son of Thomas and Sarah Morris. He moved, with his widowed mother, to Wayne County, Indiana, when a young man. Some time after his mother's death he married the eldest
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Glimpses of Pioneer Life.
daughter of John and Charity Benbow. After their eldest child, Sarah, was born they moved to Grant County. He entered eighty acres just north of Daniel Baldwin. After building a one-room log cabin, in the middle of the claim, he cleared out a garden and corn patch and set out an orchard. This was the old one (on the forty acres Allen Dillon bought of father afterwards). He lived in that cabin some years, until he built a large two-story house, which had a splendid brick fireplace and wide hearth. In this house I was born.
Father planted a fine orchard west of this house-apples, pears. peaches, cherries. West of the house, inside of the picket fence, he planted some plum trees for shade for his string of bee hives.
The garden was on the south. There were roses on each side of the gate and currant bushes in the back of the garden.
Now, father had a hobby for planting orchards, and every time I write of a change in farms just think there he was looking after fruit supplies, for no one had better fruit than he had. He lived in the two- story house and continued adding a room or two until it was quite a roomy place. (It was burned down after we left there.)
My father sold the north forty to Sammy Dillon and the south forty to Allen Dillon, and moved to a farm near Marion, in the spring of 1852.
In 1857 father traded this farm for the old Charles Baldwin farm, near Back Creek meeting house. Charles and Eunice Baldwin lived in the west end of this house. There were three orchards, as father bought three other farms. Grandmother had half of the west one, near the road. So I went to school at the old stamping ground.
The turnpike was made while we lived there. Father had a share of stock in the road when he left. He sold his share to Jonathan P. Winslow in time of the war.
In the spring of 1869 we went to Iowa by way of the old covered wagon.
In September we went back to Indiana. I went to normal at Back Creek and boarded at William Pierce's, then stayed in Fairmount with sister Sarah that winter. Father lived in the little town at Oak Ridge, as his farm was occupied until March. Father attended Oak Ridge meeting. His farm joined the meeting-house yard on the north. The next spring I took the school for the summer and stayed at home. The next winter I stayed with Sarah, as Micah had moved into the Jonathan Baldwin hotel.
In the spring, father took a notion he would go back to Iowa. He had interests there. We went by train this time.
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The Making of a Township.
Father died in 1880. He walked over three miles to meeting, preached as usual, returned home, and in a few days he passed away, and was laid to rest in the Oak Creek Graveyard, near Burr Oak, Jewell County, Kansas. He had preached fifty-one years. He was liberal in every good cause. I have seen a cart load of eatables, cloth- ing and things go out of the house and cellar at one time, and in his rounds among the poor, if he saw children too thinly clad would go to the store and buy cloth for us to make up, telling us the size and sex, so we could fit them. My mother died in the fall of 1850, and father later married Abigail Peacock, widow of John Peacock.
Father Morris had three brothers and five sisters. Elizabeth mar- ried a man by the name of Moorman. I forget his name, for he died about twenty years before I was born. Aaron married one of the Thomas girls. Hannah and Anna were twins. Hannah married John Lee and Anna married Solomon Thomas. Caleb married Polly Con- ner, Mary married Benjamin Benbow, father married Miriam Ben- bow, Thomas married Nellie Osborn, and Celia married Henry Carter.
Aunt Hannah Lee and Aunt Anna Thomas looked as near alike as" two peas. There was such a strong, sisterly tie between them that they never were widely separated. The only way I could tell them apart was by the horses they rode. When one of them was sick the other would say, "Now, get the horse ready, for I know sister is sick." It never did fail.
Solomon Thomas and John Lee moved to Towa when I was small, so I don't know much about them except that Uncle John lived to be over one hundred years old. Uncle Solomon married the second time. Father and I visited him and his last wife in southern Iowa, in 1862, and after that he moved back to Fairmount. When I was back on a visit I went to see him. Solomon was living at the tollgate. He was getting quite old, but was able to look after the collection of toll.
Now, I will tell of a few persons around Fairmount. There was one Bob Level, who was quite eccentric. When he came to town he always got off a pun or two. One day he came into Henry Harvey's store and said :
"Henry, I want a set of knitting-needles. Be sure not to put in the seam-stitch needle, for no difference how big a hurry I am in, the old woman says, 'wait till I get to the seam-stitch needle, then I will help you'."
Another time Bob said the flies were so bad out to his house they moved out on the porch. "I drove all the flies into the house but one. I killed it, then we ate dinner with pleasure."
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Glimpses of Pioneer Life.
When father went to Iowa the first time, Bob came to town one day. He said :
"Now that Uncle Nathan has gone we won't know when to sow wheat or plant our other crops or nothing. We are all broke up." Well, father was always considered quite a weather prophet, and hardly ever missed it. He was a close observer and people had faith in his predictions.
There was Joseph Knight. He was a regular bookworm. Often he would go in from his morning work to prepare for meeting, get his book, and forget the matter until the rest were ready to start and he was reminded of it . So, after meeting had begun here he would come in. One time, when he was clerk of the meeting, he did not come until late. He had the clerk's book under his arm and his hat in his hand. But he got there before the business had begun. One night we were at Martha Winslow's for supper. After supper the young folks pro- posed we all go to Fairmount to geography school, as we had then often in those days. This school was taught by Alpheus Weaver. Well, Joseph had forgotten his overcoat, cold as it was. So he picked up a buffalo robe off the lounge (one Jack Winslow brought home from the Territory now Kansas). This he wrapped around him and said he was ready. We marched two and two down the turnpike on through town, the end of the robe going clip-clip on the frozen sidewalk, on into the meeting house (for then we used the meeting house as an educational center). He never took it off until seated. He was a learned man, taught at several places, went to Iowa and married a widow with two boys, then came to Kansas and settled in Jewell County. He was living there when I went to visit my brother, Exum, and mother, in 1891.
Ottawa, Kansas.
١
THOMAS W. NEWBY.
( By Aaron Newby.)
Thomas W. Newby was born May 7, 1824, in Randolph County, North Carolina. When about three years of age his father, Eleazar Newby, died, leaving his mother, Mary ( Winslow) Newby, a widow with two small children, Thomas, about three years old. and Elea- nor, about one year old. When a boy, Thomas Newby made his home with his uncle Micajah Newby, who was the father of the late Nancy Thomas, wife of the late Amos Thomas. When a small boy, he moved to Indiana, first living in Henry County, then later moved to Grant County, where his uncle, Micajah. settled on the farm known as the Amos Thomas farm. When a young man, he hired to Uncle Nathan Morris, who was a Friends minis- ter of the Gospel.
AARON NEWBY
Sarah Hill was born in Ran- dolph County, North Carolina. on
December 7. 1824. When a little girl about three years of age, her father, Aaron Hill, loaded his belongings and family into a wagon and started for Indiana, and settled on what is now known as the Henry Harvey farm. The writer of this article remembers hearing his mother often tell about riding over the Blue Ridge Mountains in the feed-box on the back end of the wagon. Quite different from the ways of con- veyance of today with automobiles and aeroplanes.
I think it was while Thomas Newby was working for Nathan Mor- ris that his courtship began with Sarah Hill, which resulted in their marriage, the ceremony being performed in Back Creek meeting, the contracting parties walking from the home of the bride to the meeting house, and then back home again after meeting and the ceremony had been performed according to Friends discipline.
About the year 1847, Thomas Newby bought the eighty acres that
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Glimpses of Pioncer Life.
Aaron Newby formerly owned for ten dollars an acre, went in debt for the whole amount, and the writer has often heard him remark that if all his belongings had been sold at that time for one hundred dollars it would not have left a shirt on his back. The farm had no land cleared on it, there being seven acres deadened on the northwest corner of the eighty, the balance in green woods and swamps. He built a hewed-log house, of one large room, but built it tall enough so that it contained one large attic about three and one-half feet from loft (we called it those days, to the eaves), making it about six and one-half feet to the comb of the house. He also built a log barn and stable, with barn on one end, and stable on the other, into which three horses could be crowded, with shed between barn and stable, the barn being ten or twelve rods from the house. They could not see the barn from the house, the timber and bushes being so thick, deer often passing by in sight of the house.
At the time he bought the farm, his father-in-law, Aaron Hill, told him he was foolish, that they could not make a living on the place ; but he had too much energy and perseverance to be discouraged, and set to work clearing the land and ditching, and by his every-day habits of industry, and living very economically, he soon had the farm paid for ; and going right forward, performing such work each day as he could, and using close economy and good management, with his good com- panion giving all the aid she could in performing her part of the work. keeping house, cooking, washing, ironing, spinning, weaving and mak- ing the clothes for the family, they added, acre by acre, until they had bought over eight hundred acres of land, which is the choice of Grant County land today, there having been as high as ninety bushels of corn raised to the acre and fifty bushels of wheat without the use of com- mercial fertilizers.
In the year 1903, December 7th, Thomas Newby, at the age of sev- enty-nine years and seven months, passed away. After his death, it was agreed among the heirs to keep the estate in one body while mother lived. She remained in good health, most of the time, until March 7, 19II, when she passed from works to rewards, at the age of eighty-six years and three months. After the death of both, when the heirs met to settle the estate, it was found to be valued at over sixty thousand dollars, besides giving each of the six children eighty acres of land, which was worth about one hundred and forty dollars per acre. With the improvements the children had made on their land the entire estate rose from less than one hundred dollars in 1846 to about one hundred and thirty thousand dollars in 1911-all by steady habits of industry
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The Making of a Township.
and economy and keeping money at usury at only a reasonable rate of interest.
Thomas Newby was a man who liked to accommodate his neigh- bors, and was always willing to aid those in need. He had a great rep- utation for selling persons who were in need of feed and did not have the money, to let them have the feed on time and pay when they got the money. He was not a man to go security on notes or give security. He was a man who paid the cash for what he bought, outside of land, and in settling his estate we found only one account against him, of fifty cents.
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