USA > Massachusetts > Franklin County > Ashfield > History of the town of Ashfield, Franklin County, Massachusetts from its settlement in 1742 to 1910 > Part 29
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35
346
HISTORY OF ASHFIELD
they raised a family of six children with no deaths in the family till my grandmother died at the age of 77 years. My grand- father as I recollect him was of sturdy build and jovial disposi- tion. My grandmother was smart and strong, resolute, in- terested in knowing all that was going on in the world, religious in her nature and an unfaltering believer in the doctrine of Pre- destination. She was known throughout the town as "Aunt Hitty." She was good company for both old and young and what she did not know about the Bible was not worth knowing. The young men of the town who were studying for the ministry, the Paines and Whites, took great delight in calling on "Aunt Hitty" to discuss "doctrinal points;" she could talk religion with the best of them, and was "a spectacle to behold" when she walked into the church wearing a red camlet cloak. (I think cousin Lavina has a piece of that cloak now.) I have a most loving remembrance of her, for within a little dirty tin cup she had a balm composed of mutton tallow, shoemaker's wax, and rosin which healed my sore toes when I was a little child, and I can never cease to worship her memory for the nice cup custards and the nice "piders" (pie dough) she used to give me every time she baked. She took snuff and grandfather smoked a pipe and both enjoyed it.
Their children were as follows: Annis, married Apollos Wil- liams; Hannah, married Ebenezer Cranston; Justus, married Jerusha Montague; Lucius, married - Wrisley, Lydia Bas- sett; Chipman, married Rebecca Porter; Betsey, married Alvan Cross.
My father's name was Justus, born in 1791, on "Peter Hill" in Ashfield where he lived, and died in 1846. His education was limited, never going to school after he was seven years old. He was an honest man, a good farmer, respected and beloved by all who knew him. He was drafted for the war of 1812 and spent several months on "Dorchester Heights" (now South Boston) but never saw the enemy. He was made a Captain of the State Militia and was elected once or more to represent Ashfield in the State Legislature ("The Gineral Court" as I was used to hear it called). He was frequently called upon to settle disputes between parties and his judgment was implicitly relied on in all cases when values or weights were to be considered. He took pride in raising the best crops and in having the best and fattest cattle. He would about once a year make up a drove of cattle, his own and those of his townsmen who had cattle they wished to dispose of, and drive them to Brighton market, and once I,
MRS. MILES' AND H. M. SMITH'S REMINISCENCES 347
a very green boy of eleven or twelve years, went with him. We met a very poor market and stayed over a week in Watertown for a better one.
My father married when he was thirty years old and located in Ashfield where Mrs. Wright now lives, which place he owned at that time. There all his children were born in the southwest corner room. He continued to live there till I was four years old when he sold the place to Mr. John Bement and moved to the adjoining farm which he bought of Mr. Joseph Porter and there he lived and died. It nearly broke my little heart when I knew that I had to leave my birthplace. I well recollect the time of moving. It was winter, and I rode over to my new home on a sled by the side of the soap tub. I suppose I soon became satis- fied with my new home as I have no recollections of any special longings to return.
My father and mother had six children only three of whom, Miranda, Justus and Horace, lived to maturity. My father was always kind and indulgent and always ready to do any thing within his means for the comfort and welfare of his children. We had everything we needed for our comfort, our home was one of love and peace; no wrangling, no scolding, no punish- ments; we had peace and plenty; our living was frugal but as good as any one had in those days. My father's farm contained a hundred acres and we raised plenty of corn and potatoes, wheat, buckwheat, fruit and "garden sass." We had an apple orchard of four acres and a cider mill in the yard back of the big barns, especially set apart for it when we made the cider for the town. For our own use we used to put in ten or twelve barrels of "winter apples," and ten or twelve barrels of cider, most of which was pretty thoroughly punished by the time we heard the creaking of the old cider mill again. Some of the apples nearest my heart were the "Seek no further" ("sig no feather" as I used to call it), the "Pig nose, " the " Mall Tom " and the "Early Tree" to which I used to skip in the early morning to gather those which had fallen during the night. The season of apple picking was a joyous time to me. My recollections of the "Old Homestead" and all that occurred there are very vivid and interesting. In the winter we always had two large barns filled with hay, rowen and fodder of all kinds which was fed out during the long winter months to two or three or more pairs of fat oxen, two or three horses and colts, four or five milch cows, and more or less young cattle and sheep. In the summer it was among my duties to drive the cows to pasture in the morning and bring them back at night; pick up chips for the fire, and go to the
348
HISTORY OF ASHFIELD
Steady Lane school, hunt hens' eggs, etc. In the winter I would help milk the cows, feed the calves and draw into the kitchen on my little sled plenty of wood to fill a big box by the stove with an elevated oven to keep us from being frozen.
However cold and stormy the weather might be, Miranda, Justus and myself scarcely missed going to school a single day. I remember with affection some of my early school masters, some of whom were Peleg Aldrich (who afterwards became Justice of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts), Earl Guilford and Austin Burr, and I especially hold one of my school marms in grateful remembrance-Mrs. Lydia Hall (Miles). She was an excellent teacher and drilled into our youthful minds the rudi- ments of knowledge. She would have the school repeat the multiplication table several times every day. It was burned into our minds never to be forgotten. The school house was a rough specimen built by "Uncle Elisha" (Wing). It would seat about forty boys and girls and was well filled in winter in my boyhood. There were the Wings, Halls and Clarks from "Bug Hill," the Halls, Bassetts and Williamses from the North, the Williamses, Fullers, Bryants, Lillys and Kilburns from the South, and the Coles, Stockings, Putneys and Smiths from the East. I at- tended school in the Plain district one winter when it was kept by Henry L. Dawes, afterwards Senator. I also attended Sander- son Academy several terms under Dawes, Mitchell and Cooley.
There is one institution I must not forget to mention. It is the "Curfew, " established before my birth and continued to this day. That same bell has been rung at 12 M. and 9 P. M. every day for more than seventy years. My father had the contract for ringing it several years and I myself have rung it for meet- ings, for funerals and all occasions. Our home was within twenty rods of the church. My father was not a professor of religion or a church member. He did not think he needed to belong to the church to make him a good man and citizen. The Golden Rule was his religion and he was as good as anyone in the town and as highly respected. He was accustomed to attend church once every Sunday (morning) and salt his cattle and sheep and care for them the rest of the day. We had a pew in the gallery of the old church and there I have had many a good sleep with my head on father's lap. The first minister I have any recollection of is "Priest Shepard." (All ministers were called Priests in those days.) He was very much beloved. The steeple of the "Old Church," the present town hall, has been very much admired for its symmetry. It is of the Christopher Wren style of church building in vogue in England centuries ago.
CHAPTER XXII
PRESIDENT G. STANLEY HALL'S BOY LIFE IN ASHFIELD
From a paper read before the American Antiquarian Society, published 1891, Vol. 7, pp. 107-128, "Boy Life in a Massachu- setts Country Town Forty Years Ago," by G. Stanley Hall.
Between the ages of nine and fourteen, my parents, who then lived in a distant town, very wisely permitted me to spend most of the school-less part of these five years, so critical for a boy's development, with a large family on a large farm in Ashfield of this State. Although this joyous period ended long ago, the life, modes of thought and feeling, industries, dress, etc., were very old-fashioned for that date, and were tenaciously and proudly kept so. I have freely eked out the boyish memory of those five years with that of older persons, but everything that follows was in Ashfield within the memory of people living there a few years ago. Time allows me to present here but a small part of the entire record, to sample it here and there, and show a few obvious lessons.
I begin with winter, when men's industries were most diver- sified, and were largely in wood. Lumber-or timber-trees were chopped down and cut by two men working a cross-cut saw, which was always getting stuck fast in a pinch which took the set out of it, unless the whole trunk was pried up by skids. Sometimes the fallen trees were cut into logs, snaked together, and piled with the aid of cant-hooks, to be drawn across the frozen pond to the saw-mill for some contemplated building, or, if of spruce, of straight grain and few knots, or of good rift, they were cut in bolts, or cross-sections of fifteen inches long, which was the legal length for shingles. These were taken home in a pung, split with beetle and wedge, and then with a frow, and finished off with a drawshave, on a shaving-horse, itself home- made. These rive shingles were thought far more durable than those cut into shape by the buzz-saw which does not follow the grain. To be of prime quality these must be made of heart and not sap wood, nor of second growth trees. The shavings were in wide demand for kindling fires. Axe-helves, too, were sawn, split, hewn, whittled, and scraped into shape with bits of broken glass, and the forms peculiar to each local maker were as char- acteristic as the style of painter or poet, and were widely known,
350
HISTORY OF ASHFIELD
compared and criticised. Butter-paddles were commonly made of red cherry, while sugar lap paddles were made by merely barking whistle wood or bass, and whittling down one end for a handle. Mauls and beetles were made of ash-knots, ox-bows of walnut, held in shape till seasoned by withes of yellow birch, from which also birch brushes and brooms were manufactured on winter evenings by stripping down seams of wood in the green. There were salt mortars and pig-troughs made from solid logs, with tools hardly more effective than those the Indian uses for his dug-out. Flails for next year's threshing; cheese- hoops and cheese-ladders; bread-troughs, and yokes for hogs and sheep, and pokes for jumping cattle, horses and unruly geese, and stanchions for cows. Some took this season for cutting next summer's bean and hop poles, pca bush, cart and sled stakes, with an eye always out for a straight clean whip stock or fish pole. Repairs were made during this season, and a new cat-hole beside the door, with a laterally working drop-lid, which the cat operated with ease, was made one winter. New sled neaps, and fingers for the grain cradle, handles for shovels and dung-forks, pitchforks, spades, spuds, hoes, and a little earlier, for rakes; scythes and brooms were home-made, and machines and men of special trades were so far uncalled for. Nearly all these forms of domestic woodwork I saw, and even helped in as a boy of ten might, or imitated them in play in those thrice-happy days; while in elder pop-guns, with a ringing report, that were almost dangerous indoors; hemlock bows and arrows, or cross bows, with arrow-heads run on with melted lead · (for which every scrap of lead pipe or antique pewter dish was in great demand) often fatal for very small game; box and figure 4 traps for rats and squirrels; windmills; weather vanes in the form of fish, roosters or even ships; an actual saw-mill that went in the brook, and cut planks with marino and black and white Carter potatoes for logs; and many whittled tools, toys and ornamental forms and puppets ;- in all these and many more, I even became in a short time, a fairly average expert as compared with other boys, at least so I then thought. How much all this has served me since, in the laboratory, in daily life, and even in the study, it would be hard to estimate.
The home industry in woolen is a good instance of one which survives in occasional families to this day. Sheep, as I remem- ber, could thrive on the poorest hay, or orts, the leavings of the neat cattle. In summer they could eat brakes and polypods, if not even hardhack and tansy, and would browse down berry briers and underbrush, while their teeth cut the grass so close
PRES. G. STANLEY HALL'S BOY LIFE IN ASHFIELD 351
that cows could hardly survive in the same pasture with them. The spring lambs were raised in the shed by hand, sometimes as cossets by the children, who often derived their first savings therefrom. Sheep washing day was a gala day when, if at no other time, liquor was used against exposure; and shearing, which came a week or two later, was hardly less interesting. A good shearer, who had done his twenty-five head a day, com- manded good wages, seventy-five cents or a dollar a day; while the boys must pull the dead sheep, even though they were only found after being some weeks defunct. Fleeces for home use were looked over, all burrs and shives picked out, and they were then oiled with poor lard. "Bees" to do this were often held. Carding early became specialized, and carders were in every town, but the implements were in each family, some members of which could not only card, but could even use the fine, long- toothed worsted combs in an emergency. The rolls were spun at home, novices doing the woof or filling, and the older girls the warp, which must be of better quality. It was taken from the spindle sometimes on a niddy-noddy held in the hand, at two rounds per yard, but more commonly on a reel, in rounds of two yards each. Every forty rounds was signalized on a reel by the snap of a wooden spring or the fall of a hammer, and constituted a knot, four, five, seven, or ten of which (in different families and for different purposes) constituting a skein, and twenty knots making a run. Four seven-knotted skeins of filling, or six of warp was a day's work, though now, I am told, few young women can accomplish so much without excessive fatigue. The yarn, doubled if for stockings, after being washed clean of grease, next went to the great dye-tub in the chimney corner. Butternut bark for everyday suits, indigo for Sunday suits, and madder for shirting was the rule. There were also fancy dyes and fancy dyeing, braiding, binding tightly or twist- ing in a white thread to get the favorite hit-or-miss, or pepper- and-salt effect, a now almost incredible ingenuity in making up figures and fancy color effects for loom patterns in girls' dresses. Next the filling was quilled and the warp spooled, the former ready for the shuttle, and the latter for the warping bars (both of these latter being often home-made), to which it goes from the scarn or spool-frame. In warping, the leese must be taken with care, for if the order of the threads is lost they cannot be properly thumbed through the harnesses and hooked through the reed, and are good for nothing but to make into clothes lines and the piece is lost. A raddle also acts in keeping the warp disentangled and of proper width before the lathe and tenters
352
HISTORY OF ASHFIELD
can hold it. Sometimes blue and white shirt-formed frock cloth was woven, sometimes kerseys and plaid dress patterns of many colors, or woolen sheets, and even woolen pillow-cases, which were as warm and heavy, although coarser, than those the ol- factorial zoölogist Jäeger advises, and sells to his followers. The complication of harnesses and treadles required to weave some of the more complicated carpet, and especially coverlid patterns, evinced great ingenuity and long study, and is probably now, although the combinations were carefully written down, in most communities a forever lost art. On coming from the loom the cloth was wet for shrinkage, and the nap picked up with cards of home grown teasels and sheared smooth on one side, although in those days this process had already gone to the local fuller. Coarse yarn was also spun from tag-locks, which was, of course, home carded. Knitting was easy, pretty, visiting work. Girls earned from two to three York shillings a pair for men's stockings, paid in trade from the store, which put out such work if desired. Shag mittens were knit from thrumbs or the left-over ends of warp. Nubias and sontags were knit with large wooden needles, and men's gloves, tidies, and clock stock- ings with ornamental open work in the sides were knit with one hook, and the tape loom held between the knees was kept going evenings.
Domestic flax industry still lingers in a few families. The seed was sown broadcast and grew till the bolls were ripe, when it was pulled and laid in rows by the boys and whipped, in a few days, to get the seed for meal. After lying out of doors for some weeks till the shives were rotten, it was put through the process of braking on the ponderous flax-break. It was then swingled, hatchelled, and finally hanked. It was then wound on the distaff made of a young spruce top, and drawn out for spinning. Grasshopper years, when the fibre was short, this was hard, and though ticking, meal bags and scratchy tow shirts could be made, finer linen products were impossible. After weaving it must be bleached in a good quality of air.
However it was with adults, child life was full of amuse- ments. Children were numerous in every neighborhood, and though they were each required to be useful, they were in early years left much to themselves and were at home in every house, barn, or shed, within a mile or more. There was, of course, coasting, skating, swimming, gool, fox and hounds, and snow- balling, with choosing of sides, lasting for a whole school term, with elaborate forts; cart wheel and men o' morn's in the snow; collar and elbow, or square hold wrestling, with its many differ-
PRES. G. STANLEY HALL'S BOY LIFE IN ASHFIELD 353
ent trips, locks and play-ups-side and back hold being unsci- entific; round ball; two and four old cat, with soft yarn balls thrown at the runner. The older girl-boys spent the hour's nooning in the schoolhouse and either paired off for small games or talks, or played "Here we stand all round this ring," "Needle's eye," "Kitty corners, " or "Who's got the button." As in the age of Shakespeare the queen's maids of honor played tag, so here all children, and even adults often played child's games with gusto. In the family, as they gathered about the stove, or sometimes about the grand old fireplace in the back kitchen, with its back-log, crane, pot hooks and trammels, there were stories of the old fort, of bears, wild cats, Indians and Bloody Brook, and other probably unprinted tales perhaps many generations old. There were some who could sing old English ballads that had come down by tradition, and which had never been in print in America, and more who could sing a comic song or pathetic negro melody. Lord Lovel, Irving, Bunyan, The Youth's Companion and many Sunday-school books were read aloud. A pair of skates was earned by a boy friend one winter by reading the entire Bible through, and another bought an accordion with money earned by braiding the plain sides of palm-leaf hats where no splicing was needed, for the women at a cent per side. All families allowed the game of fox and geese, a few permitted checkers, and one, backgammon, which was generally thought to be almost gambling; dominoes were barely tolerated, but riddles, rebuses and charades were in high favor by old and young, and were published in all the local weekly papers. It was here that I learned that card playing, which I had often seen before but did not much understand nor care for, was very wrong, and a boy friend was taught old sledge, and euchre, up over the horse sheds on Sundays be- tween services, by an older son of the officiating minister. There were hull-gull; cats-cradle with two series of changes; string and knot puzzles; odd and even, and most of the games, and many more than those in Mr. Newel's charming, and largely original, book entitled, "The Plays and Games of American Children," connecting many of them conclusively with the sports and pastimes of the English people in the merry olden time of Brandt. One maiden lady, whom we all loved, could spell "The Abominable Bumble Bee with his Head Cut Off," in an inverse House-that-Jack-built fashion, with a most side- splitting effect. There was the charming story of the big, little and middle sized bear, and I recall the thrill when at the turn of the story, "the dog began to worry the cat, the cat
354
HISTORY OF ASHFIELD
began to kill the rat, the rat began to eat the corn," etc. There were beech- and chestnutting parties; raisings; and days set apart for all the men in the district being warned out by the surveyor to gather and work on the roads with teams. Work was easy, as it was for the town, and stories were plenty. There were huskings, with cider and pumpkin pie, and games on the barn floor, when it was cleared of corn; paring bees, with bob- bing, swinging a whole paring thrice around the head, thence to fall on the floor in the form of the fancied initial of some person of the other sex; and counting seeds to the familiar dog- gerel-"One I love, two I love, three I love I say, four I love with all my heart, and five I cast away," etc. Here the apples were quartered and strung, and hung in festoons to dry all over the kitchen. There were quilting bees for girls about to marry, where the men came in the evening and partook of the new species of rice pop-corn, served in two large milk pans, with, perhaps, the most delicious home-made spruce and wintergreen beer. Spelling schools in which the parents took part, and where the champion spellers of rural districts, after exhausting several spelling books, agreed to spell each other down on an abridged Worcester's dictionary. There were weekly evening singing schools in winter, and several of us taught ourselves or each other to play the accordion, and fiddle by rote, to dance single and double shuffle on a board, and the steps of waltz, polka and schottische. Even square dances were attempted to our own music, if we could get a caller-off. This latter was here a stolen sweet, as was the furtive reading of the thrilling tales of the New York Ledger, especially those of Sylvanus Cobb, sets of which were smuggled around among the boys and read after retiring, or in sheep shed, hay mow, or attic, on rainy days. I must not forget the rage for trapping and hunt- ing, by which we learned much of the habits of crows, hawks, muskrats, woodchucks, squirrels, partridges and even foxes, and which made us acquainted with wide areas of territory. In a regular squirrel hunt organized by choosing sides, and a din- ner to the victors paid for by the vanquished party, as deter- mined by counting tails, boys of my age were not old enough to participate. We made collections, however, for whole sea- sons, of heads, legs, wings, and tails, as well as of woods, leaves, flowers, stones, bugs, butterflies, etc.
The dull days in haying time brought another sort of educa- tion. The men of the vicinity strolled together into a shed, and sitting on tool bench, grindstone, manger, wagons, chopping blocks, and hog spouts, discussed crop prices, ditching, wall-
PRES. G. STANLEY HALL'S BOY LIFE IN ASHFIELD 355
ing. salting cattle, finding springs with witch hazel, taxes, the preaching, the next selectmen, fence-viewer, constable, and, I suppose a little earlier, wardens, leather sealers, deer reeves, surveyors of shingles and clapboards and of wheat, field drivers, tithing men, clerk of the market, and pound-keepers, as well as the good brooks and ponds for trouting, or snaring pick- erel with brass wire loops and a white-birch-bark light at night, and every sort of gossip. The old uncles who came to be the heroes of current stories, and who were, in a sense, ideal men, were shrewd and sharp, of exceeding few words, but these oracular, of most unpromising exteriors and mode of speech, with quaint and eccentric ways which made their quintessen- tial wisdom very surprising by the contrast; while in weather signs and in drugs the old Indian was sometimes the sage. At the opposite extreme was the unseasoned fellow who can be fooled and not get the best of it if he was "run" or played some practical joke. Absurd exaggerations told with a serious air, to test the hearer's knowledge or credulity, were the chief in- gredients of this lowery-day wit. Thus the ass's head was not unfrequently clapped on some poor rich fellow, green from the city, or some larger town, suspected of the unpardonable sin of being "stuck up."
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.