USA > Indiana > Morgan County > The pioneers of Morgan County : memoirs of Noah J. Major > Part 5
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monial sea that were unknown to the old hoosieroon or his children.
Few or none of those obstacles stood in the way of the lads and lasses of "ye olden time." They married young, sixteen or seventeen for the girls, nineteen to twenty-one for the boys. Shakespeare says, "They are married best who die married young." Shakespeare was a very intelligent man, but got tangled in love, of the theatrical "persuasion," which warped his judgment.
True the boys and girls, especially the girls, used to sing at play parties :
"I am too young, I am not fit,
I cannot leave my mamma yet."
But surely they did not believe it, for some of these selfsame singers married at fourteen and fifteen, and clung to their husbands as faithful and true as Ruth clung to Boaz. They went to housekeeping in earnest. Everything was plain, and many things very unhandy compared with our modern equipments for housework; for instance: one log house, ten by twenty, chinked and daubed with mud, roofed with clapboards and weight poles, puncheon floor, no carpets or rugs, stick and clay chimney, lug pole and pot tramble; no cook- stove or range, safe, or refrigerator; one bed, by and by a trundle bed for the "little after whiles," a set of chairs, no rocker, one chest or trunk, a corner cupboard, some pots, pans and delftware, a piggin and gourd, a bucket and sugar kettle, a cow, sow and pigs, eleven hens, and one rooster. This constituted a first-class "set up" in our boyhood days in the county of Morgan, State of Indiana. Into this rude home the bride and groom went, in good faith, to work like beavers, be- lieving in their ability to succeed, Providence willing,
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which they most generally did. They had neither clock nor watch, nor friction matches. If they let the fire go out at any time, they must trot to a near neighbor and borrow, or strike fire with flint and steel. They had no washing machines or wringers, clothespins or clotheslines. They hung the clothes on a peeled pole, where they often became the sport of frolicsome winds. There were no sewing machines in those days. If they had a well, they drew the water with the house bucket tied to the end of a grapevine attached to the well- sweep, and not with the "moss-covered bucket that hung in the well." In short, they had nothing a modern housewife would respect, except the live stock and poultry. As to modes of amusement, there were few. There were no pianos or organs, guitars or mandolins, neither melodeons nor accordians. The home music was made upon the jew's-harp and "fiddle." The church choir sang the doxology in soprano. The boys usually went whistling to the plow, and the girls sang merrily at their work.
According to statistics, it's a wonder that half the wives did not go crazy, for it is asserted that more farmers' wives go insane than those of any other class, all because they are so hard worked, poorly paid, and little amused. Be that as it may, we cannot call to mind a half-dozen such cases in twenty years after the first settlement of the county, and surely no equal number of wives have been more isolated, lonely, hardet worked, or less amused, than those of whom we have been writing, and their mothers before them.
The enterprising men and women were sustained in their arduous task by the perpetual hope of seeing the day when they would be as well, or better, "fixed up" than the old folks at home in Kentucky or Ohio. And
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so they took joyfully the knotting of their hands and the soiling of their complexions, which was indispens- able in order to gain the result sought. From them, principally, have sprung the people who have dotted the country all over with churches, schools, villages, towns, and cities, and threaded it with railroads, gravel roads, electric lines, telegraph and telephone lines. Yet the great working classes are not as contented, as happy, as they were in the days when our fathers and mothers ate their frugal meals off of slab tables and slept "the sleep of the just" upon a "continental" bed.
§9. WOOING AND WEDDING.
Wooing for a wife is a very interesting phase of human life. It lost none of its charms when carried on in the backwoods in times now almost forgotten. The children of the old settlers knew little and cared less about flirtations. One Saratoga belle of to-day can out- flirt as many old-time girls as it would take to stock up a camp meeting. Nor were the boys much in the habit of trifling with the affections of the girls, for their "big brothers," of whom they usually had a supply, were morally certain to have a reckoning with the cul- prit. However, there was a good deal of courting that did not materialize. Some unforseen contingency would arise to hinder the promise or cancel it after it was made. But, as a rule, all earnestly begun courtships ended in marriage.
Sometimes the fathers and mothers, or at least one of them, filed objections to the company-keeping of their son or daughter. Sometimes the exceptions were well taken; at other times, they were not. If the girl were fatally in love, the old folks were likely to be cir-
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cumvented. The case would turn out something like the following :
About four miles east of Martinsville there lived in an early day, a good neighbor whom we will call B- R- for short. He was the proud father of four or five daughters, who were so handsome and charming in their teens that most of them had lovers at fifteen.
But the stern father forbade the girls receiving com- pany, and no young man was allowed to make love to his daughters. He had determined there should be no billing and cooing about his premises. He succeeded about as well as fathers usually did in such cases, espe- cially in the backwoods. In due time the boys stole his girls like they did his watermelons, as fast as they got ripe. The boys may have read of the old Romans, who stole the Sabine women, yet it is not good form to steal a wife. As a general rule, it is better to get peaceable possession.
There were some very embarrassing circumstances attending courtship in those early days. There were no parlors, drawing or reception rooms,-just one big in- convertible sitting room, parlor, dining room, bedroom and kitchen, all in one.
Sunday night was the usually accepted time when "Willie went a-wooing." Saturday night was "nig- gers'" night and, therefore, not in good taste.
If it was winter time, there would be a glowing log fire in the old stick and clay chimney, with its clay jambs and back wall. If in summer, the fireplace would be filled with the green boughs of elm or wild cherry.
A tallow candle or greasy lamp would cast a faint, sickly ray on the nervous swain as he shifted first one leg, then the other, over his knee and tried to keep up a running conversation with the family group. If the
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girl happened to be the oldest of the family, there was the additional annoyance of several urchins, winking, blinking, and tittering until they grew tired and were ordered to bed. Then there was a short respite for the young man, who proceeded to turn a "searchlight" on the old folks. Although there was no one authorized to send them into retirement, it was well understood that if they were friendly to the beau they would avail themselves of the earliest opportunity to vacate the hearthstone and leave the way clear for the "com- mencement exercises" of the evening. But if they wished to show their disapproval of the young man's attentions they would stay up and sulk until a late hour. Sometimes when the girl did not wish any further an- noyance, or was after another beau, she would get "pap" and mother to "sit him out" until midnight. This was a polite way of informing him that "his room was better than his company."
Sometimes it so happened that the girl had "two strings to her bow," or, properly speaking, two beaux on the string. This complicated things very much, especially if they both happened to call on the same evening to engage her company for some party or other amusement. This situation usually brought on the crisis, and one or the other had to go. Unless she could satisfactorily explain her position, she would there- after be released from the double duty of playing belle to two beaux. There were few things the boys dreaded more than the "sack," or to be "cut out" by the other fellow. A prudent girl generally avoided making a "scene" when it became necessary to be relieved of a suitor's company ; sometimes, however, she gave the "mitten" in such a decided way as to fairly carry the young man off his feet. This was only done after re-
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peated attempts on the young man's part to intrude his attentions.
A very common way of beginning the ticklish busi- ness of courting was to "sidle up" to a girl on the road home from church, singing school, or quilting party, and ask, "May I have the pleasure of seeing you safe home?" Of course neither the young man nor any one else thought her to be in any particular danger from wild beasts or ghosts. If he were a bashful boy, just getting entangled in the masterful meshes of love, he would talk but little more until they reached "daddy's" gate, when he would say, "Now Sally Ann, don't tell anybody I 'beaued' you home," to which she would re- spond, "I won't, Tom, for I'm as 'shamed of it as you are."
As there were no buggies in those days, the modern mode of courting on wheels was unknown. But love- making on horseback or on foot was almost as good, though not nearly so pleasant as the buggy way.
To know how to help a lady on and off a horse was accounted quite an accomplishment. Now and then a young man-being a little flurried, or "out of his head" -would lead the horse up to the stump or block with the "gee" side next the girl, and when she would modestly inform him that he had better "swap sides" with the horse, he looked for all the world like he had let a whole bevy of birds go at once.
Courtship was long or short according to the seem- ing necessity of the case. If the lovers were young when they were first smitten, the "set to" might last two or three years, but usually in the case of young widowers it was cut down to two or three months. The longest courtship we ever knew lasted seventeen years and did not then "materialize." The shortest was about
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three weeks. How much shorter we do not know-he was a widower. Something has been said about "pur- suit being better than possession." That holds good in a fox chase, but not in courtship.
A modern writer of much notoriety says, "All women and girls love the romantic." If so, the bride of old must have fully realized all her expectations on her wedding day. She was usually very young compared to the brides of to-day, bashful, innocent, inexperienced, and unsophisticated; she knew nothing whatever of the "ways that are dark and tricks that are vain," which of late have honeycombed very fashionable society. She surely would appear very plain beside her modern sisters, yet, weighed in an even balance, she would not be found wanting in those qualities that go to make a faithful wife.
Among the festivities of the backwoods none were more enjoyable than those of the wedding and "infare" days. Barring some unpleasantness arising from fancied slights or neglects in the matter of invitations, all went merrily. As there were no bridal tours to be undertaken over the mud and corduroy roads further than the groom's home, and as they had not learned to swap sunlight for gas and electricity, and as the bride and groom were not ashamed to be seen in daylight, the ceremony was performed at noonday, after which con- gratulations were showered in abundance, followed by the old-fashioned country dinner. The table fairly reeled under the weight of roast beef, pork, and turkey, stacks of cakes, pies, and crullers, with corn and wheat bread, butter, and home-made molasses-all plentifully interspersed with cabbage, beans, potatoes, and baked custard, pickles, catsup, and peppersauce.
As the whole affair was informal at the table, a roar-
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ing conversation was carried on, with shafts of wit-dull and sharp-shot at the bride and groom. Of course there was the "king's fool," or the fool without the king-a "smarty" who usually joked in the key of D flat, for it is not possible to say startling things all the while.
Sometimes where the families were well-to-do and had two or more rooms, if dancing was permissible, there would be a "hop" at night, lasting until the "wee sma' hours ayant the twal." The bride and groom would be excused about midnight and retire. But they would be visited at regular intervals from then until morning, each time served with appropriate lunch. This custom, however, was not universal. The dancing and feasting were continued at the infair, and the gay- eties prolonged through the second day and night.
I knew a young woman who said she danced all night at a wedding and the infair, then went home and slept sixteen hours, when her mother became alarmed and broke up her "nap." This time it was "No sleep till two morns when youth and beauty meet."
In the matter of dress, the bride and groom then, as now, put on their best "bib and tucker." We have seen brides sixty years ago as neatly and becomingly dressed as we see them to-day. They were not decked in diamonds nor were their dresses made "en train," but they were universally robed in white cambric or swiss lawn, with cotton hose, and kid slippers ornamented with silver buckles.
The laced jacket had quite a tight hold on the girls. A small, tapering waist was thought to be a "thing of beauty," but it never was, nor can it be a joy to the one who wears it with the use of a "block and tackle." Why should 'men have ever been such fools about a "wasp waist"? We believe such waists are indicative
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of the mind that can submit to such torture for the sake of fashion.
There was one bit of the bride's adorning we were glad to see laid aside years ago-that was the grand- motherly looking bobinet cap. While that artificial headgear set off the elderly ladies in good style, it had no business on the head of a bride of sixteen, whose wealth of natural curls hung over neck and shoulders in such rich profusion as to command the admiration of all-even of a confounded old bachelor. I use this word in its true sense; for all men who were never married and never wished to be, are "confounded" some- where. Neither was the bridegroom indifferent as to the conventional wedding suit. First he would go to the store and buy four yards of English broadcloth, six quarters wide, for which he paid seven dollars per yard; then the trimmings consisted of silk linings, buckram, silk velvet for the collar, silk thread, silk twist, and one and a half dozen highly polished brass buttons. With this he would go to his merchant tailor, who some- times was a month behind with his customers. If the groom was in a hurry to get married, he would have to possess his soul in patience; if a widower, he would visit his tailor and prospective wife twice a week, and would be out of his head most of the time until after the wedding. The whole cost of a wedding suit-not including the invisible garments-was from forty-five to fifty dollars. As farm wages were not more than thirteen dollars per month, it took a young man about four months to earn his wedding suit. Of course, there were many less expensive wedding outfits, wherein the parties did as well, and enjoyed life as much as their more pretentious neighbors.
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§10. CORN FIELDS.
Our early settlers, upon their arrival, if it was in the spring season, being equipped with a horse or two and maybe a wagon, together with ax, maul, and wedge, mattock, and hoe, the jumping shovel plow, gun and . shot pouch, and a small supply of salt, meal, a little bacon, and a few gallons of whisky, proceeded to select an arable piece of ground handy to water and easily cleared, upon which they built a small cabin or a "half- faced camp." The horses were hobbled and belled and turned loose long enough each day to browse on the twigs of the newly fallen timber in the clearing, and later on, as the season progressed, they were pastured on the luxurious peavine which everywhere grew in abundance. This was the finest and best wild grass that ever grew in Morgan county, but so sensitive to the tread of civilization that not a spear of it remains to perpetuate its memory. Like ginseng, spignet, and their fiery neighbor, the nettle, it would rather die than be trodden under the feet of men and animals.
The clearing was immediately begun in good earnest, with the view of planting by the 10th or 15th of May. This was as late in the season, at that time, as a man could plant with the expectation that his corn would miss the early frosts of autumn. In 1832 much more than half of the corn in the White river bottoms was frostbitten; and in 1833 corn planted as late as the 15th of May was likewise ruined by frost. Indeed, some began to despair of being able to mature corn at all. Two reasons may be assigned for this drawback. One was that the seed corn came mostly from the South, where a much longer season had been extended
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for its maturity. The other reason was the newness of the ground and its wonderful fertility, which kept the stalks green and growing for a much longer time than now.
Much trouble and travel were experienced in getting good seed corn. Men went from here to Haw Patch, in Bartholomew county, in order to secure the best grain. Later on men came from Hendricks county to Martinsville for seed. But in a few years this trouble ceased and the "fathers" found themselves in one of the best corn counties in the State.
The most common way in those days was to clear new ground of all trees eighteen inches in diameter and under, leaving all those of larger dimensions stand- ing. Of course all fallen timber, rotten or sound, must be gotten rid of in some way; either heaped and burned, or hauled off the clearing. The standing trees were girdled or burned. Such trees as walnut, hickory, elm, and some others, if cut to the dark wood, would never again put forth a bud; but beech, sugar, hackberry, and ash, had to be severely burned all around with brush or they would shade the corn. But the hardest work of all was "grubbing." On all the rich lands, partic- ularly along the river and creek bottoms, the pawpaw, spicewood, grape vines, and leatherwood grew in such magnificent abundance as to strike terror to the heart of a lazy man when he thought of the pounds of sweat that would be required to oust these "understrappers."
Sometimes a few acres would be "cut smack smooth." That is, everything from the "grubs" to the tallest trees was cut down. This way of clearing required an immense amount of chopping. The price was about $5.00 per acre for making it ready for rolling, and an average chopper would make about 25 cents per day.
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After the first year or two of settlement, the ordinary way was to "deaden" all of the useless timber two or three years in advance of the clearing. This was the best of all the ways for reducing a heavy forest and bringing the land into cultivation.
It often happened that a well-to-do neighbor with plenty of land, would lease to his less fortunate neighbor from twenty to forty acres for a term of years-say from three to six-on condition that he should build a house and stable thereon, and clear and fence the de- scribed tract in a certain specified manner. Those leases gave rise to much controversy and litigation and neighborhood unpleasantness, for the reason that the lessee, if he chose to do so, could take many privileges not warranted by the contract. But all fields, except the smooth cleared, were to be gone over each succeed- ing spring for several years, as the dead timber was falling ever and anon throughout the year, and by springtime there would be another log-rolling where one had occurred the year before. Men often helped each other roll logs from twelve to sixteen days in the busy time of spring work. But these second and sub- sequent clearings were lighter every way than the first. The fallen trees could be "niggered" instead of being chopped in rolling lengths, and the logs were much lighter and usually burned easily. But the picking of chunks was a tedious and back-breaking business, as all the boys and some of the women and girls of that day would tell you, if they were living. Sometimes after the corn was planted a windstorm would hurl the dead timber all over the field and cause a week's work to be done to put it in such condition as would enable the tenant to plow it. In 1836 a storm passed over one
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of my father's fields of twenty-five acres after the corn was planted, and blew down thirty-seven trees.
Let us return to a little corn field in Morgan county, made ready for plowing seventy-five years ago. It cannot help being rooty and stumpy, be it ever so well grubbed and shrubbed. It has been cleared "in the green," and beneath the surface of the ground the roots are woven together in such a friendly manner as to shame man's untoward selfishness ; unlike us, they have dwelt together in unity for years. The long, slender elm roots formed the chain; white and blue ash and hackberry, beech, and sugar tree were woven in as filling, with spicewood and pawpaw for napping.
But what of the plowman who has the task of pulver- izing this young corn field? He sees never a bit of poetry in this groundwork of nature. He almost wishes all the world had been prairie. If he is a South- erner, he will use the jumping-shovel plow and will jump as many roots as possible; if an Eastern man or "Yankee," he will have the old bar-share with a point as long as a garfish's nose, and which will be fast in the roots half the time and outkick a "sore-headed" poli- tician.
For once the "Yankee" was outwitted by his plodding brother, for the ground, both by nature and grace, was exceedingly mellow, and the "jumper" would stir the surface with much more ease to man and horse than the "bar-share" plow. After the ground had been plowed as well as might be, it was furrowed out in rows about four feet wide, the corn was dropped by hand and covered with a hoe. So far, so good. But there arose another bother. The squirrels and birds began to pull and dig it up as soon as it peeped through the ground, and in numbers they were almost like the
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sands on the seashore; so that the planter had to rise at early dawn, and, armed with dog and gun, horse-fiddle and scarecrow, he "shooed" and shouted till hoarse to save his "plant." But after four days, the grain being decayed and the sprout toughened, these pests left off their depredations and returned not again to molest the farmer until roasting-ear time, when they had a second inning, reinforced by the coons and bears. The squirrels and birds stole by day, the coons and bears by night, and so they kept the first settler anxious until his corn was safely cribbed out of their reach.
§11. ANECDOTE AND INCIDENT OF EARLY FARMING.
Life in a wilderness is two-sided. It certainly is not all sunshine, neither is it all shadow, though plentifully shaded. The old settlers planted no shade trees, not even in the dooryard, but clipped off everything that grew in the forest, not allowing the friendly little sugar tree to lend its beneficent shade against the midsummer sun.
As between the men and women on the frontier of a settlement, the men had the advantage every way, especially in the matter of diversions. True, the "bread- winners," as the schoolgirl said of the pilgrims, "had the bangenest time in the world" to keep the corndodg- ers going, with mills five to ten miles distant. We heard a Mr. Harryman say, at one of the Mooresville meetings, that he once went thirty miles to mill; and several old men present nodded their heads as much as to say, so did we.
And the roads in those days-why, they were noth- ing but horse-paths winding hither and thither to avoid old logs, ravines, and other obstacles. It might not be
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safe to trust the modern young man to walk a narrow path at all, and especially to walk it thirty miles. But I suppose those old "mill boys" greatly enjoyed the poet's song of
"Sweet is the bread that toil hath won, And sweet the sleep it brings,"
when they came home with a sack of meal from the far-away "corn cracker." Corn bread was, as a gen- eral rule, the best bread to be had on a frontier settle- ment like ours, for the following reasons: It was as many as seven years after the beginning of wheat cul- ture before anything like a good grade of grain was produced. Straw you could raise in abundance, but rust and smut so shriveled the grain that it was of little use. Besides all this, there were a few years in which several fields produced nothing but "sick wheat." An instance was related to the writer by Mrs. Sarah Stipp Rudicell verifying this statement. Her husband, Mr. John Rudicell, sowed a piece of wheat in the valley near the present site of Centerton about the year 1828. This wheat, seemingly, matured nicely, with a good- sized berry. Mr. Rudicell carefully harvested it and the family greatly rejoiced at the prospect of wheat bread for the next year. But lo! the very first bread baked from that flour turned every stomach topsy- turvy as with an emetic. The whole crop was a loss, save for seed, for which it was as good as any wheat. Nothing will eat of "sick wheat" more than once; even hogs, whose stomachs are proof against arsenic, never give it a second trial. Like milk sickness, the cause lies hidden in profound mystery. There was a little pink color on the end of the grain; this was all the difference seen between the good and the bad wheat. The effects of "sick wheat" and milk sickness on the
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