USA > Massachusetts > Franklin County > Ashfield > History of the town of Ashfield, Franklin County, Massachusetts from its settlement in 1742 to 1910 > Part 30
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
In this air a good "nag" has great viability. As a boy here, e. g., I often played hunt, snapping a disabled old flint-lock musket at every live thing in field and forest, for which an adult neighbor* used to "run" me unmercifully before the whole shed. Years after, when I was at home on a college outing, he had not forgotten it, and for perhaps a dozen summers since I have met it. On a recent evening, when walking with a dig- nified city friend, he met me with the same old grind, "Hello, huntin' much this summer with Philander's old gun?" as he slapped his thighs and laughed till the hills rang, and, though I did not hear him, I am no less certain that he said to the neighbor with him, when they had ridden well by, that I was always a pretty middlin' good sort of a fellow after all, and wasn't stuck up. The joke will no doubt keep fresh another quarter of a century if my friend lives, and there are many more of the same kind. Another grind at my expense illus- trates the inventive cleverness of this old Yankee type. As one of the speakers at an annual dinner in honor of the old town Academy, I had been several times introduced as a specimen of the former students of the Academy. One night, at the crowded post-office, this shrewd old farmer told, in my presence
*William Bryant.
356
HISTORY OF ASHFIELD
and for my benefit, the story of old Joe W., who went on the road as a drummer for the old tannery. He said Joe had just experienced religion, and was just then so all-fired honest that he selected, as the samples he was to sell from, pieces of sole leather a trifle below the average quality, instead of above, as an honest drummer should do. He was afraid to hope that Professor N., who presided at the dinner, had experienced re- ligion, but leastways he was so all-fired honest that he leaned over backwards worse than old Joe in calling me out as a sam- ple Academy boy, for although I was middling smart there was not a boy of them who wasn't a plaguey sight smarter than I was. Another of his stories was of Stephen and Ann. They were courting, and she had sat in his lap in the kitchen one Sunday evening for some hours, when she suddenly asked if he was not tired. He gallantly replied, "Not a mite, Ann, keep right on settin'. I was awful tired an hour ago, but now I am numb." That is the way he said it was probably with my hearers and pupils.
Then there was the story of old Deacon S., who sold home- made cider brandy or twisted cider, at the rate of twenty-five cents per gallon, but who always used to get his big thumb into the quart measure, which had lost its handle, displacing its cubic contents of brandy. There was another tale of Cap- tain A., who being cheated in a horse trade by Mr. B., called all his sons and grandsons together solemnly, as if for family prayers, told them the circumstances, and enjoined them to cheat B. back to the amount of six dollars, and if they did not live to do it to teach their children and grandchildren to cheat his descendants to the end of time; but a few months later, after another trade with B., the captain convened his family again to say that the score had been paid with interest, and to release them from the covenant. There was the story of Uncle G., who began his courtship by "creepin' in, all unbeknown, " be- hind his best girl, stealing up close behind her as she was washing dishes, hat on and chair in hand, with the salute, "Well Sal, feel kind 'er sparky to-night?" to which she coquet- tishly but encouragingly replied, "Well, I reckon p'raps a leetle more sorter than sorter not;" and how at last, the minister being away, they rode together on one horse twenty miles alone, and were married. There was the legend of old Squire V., who used to be a great favorite with the girls. Driving up to the town clerk's door one day he told him to have him "published" the next Sunday with Miss B. and drove off. Soon he returned and desired the name changed to Miss C.,
PRES. G. STANLEY HALL'S BOY LIFE IN ASHFIELD 357
and finally, after several changes and some minutes of profound deliberation, settled on Miss H., whom he married. There was the tale of the turning of the Deerfield River by the two · great but mystic ancestors of one family in town. It once flowed down the gap in Mr. P.'s pasture, through the pond and over the plain of the village, and was stipulated as the northern boundary of the possessions of these pioneers. They were ambitious, and had noticed that new settlers and their depredations followed rivers, so they hired hundreds of Indians to dig with sharpened sticks, day and night, one entire sum- mer, till the stream at length washed over down a more north- erly valley so suddenly as to sweep away the dusky maiden beloved by one of the pioneers; with many other romantic in- cidents. There was the story of the old horse jockey G., who in his travels found a negro of great strength but so simple as to agree to work for him a hundred years, on the expiration of which time the old jockey was to give him all the property and serve him a century; and who cured him of the inveterate habit of sucking eggs by showing him a dozen, apparently freshly laid, in his bed one morning just after he had risen, and frightening him out of the practice by convincing him that he had laid the eggs while he slept. There was the story of the old cat ground up in the mill with dreadful caterwaulings, and of the two bushels of good rye required to grind the mill- stones clean again. Another, was of the case, famous in his- tory, of the non-conforming Baptist deacon who would not pay his town tax to support the Congregational preaching, and whose apple trees were dug up by the constable and sold for payment; of the Deacon's going to Boston to the General Court, and of his return with a barrel of cider brandy drawn on two poles strapped together, one end of each in the hold- backs and the other end dragging on the ground. There were stories of a noted lady pioneer in the cause of female education, who solicited domestic utensils and produce of every kind for a young ladies' seminary, following the men into stable and around hay mow in her quest; of old Nightingale, suspected of witch- craft, who lived apart and was buried outside the cemetery; of old Sloper, who had no friends, and vanished so mysteri- ously that gradually a detailed story of his murder by a promi- nent, but not beloved, citizen was evolved; of the old church, stone cold in winter, with two services and sermons from ten to four, and in summer with the rocks black at nooning with people, mostly members in close communion, eating their Sunday dinner, and picking caraway or meetin'-seed; of the
358
HISTORY OF ASHFIELD
waste of timber, or the greed of individuals in shacking hogs on the then extensive undivided land or common, and cvcn of the secular variations of the compass to account for the disparity between the old surveys of boundary lines and new ones.
Evenings in the kitchen were spent in light work and gossip unremitting. Candles, in olden times before cotton, it is said, were made by loosely spinning tow-wicking. Candle rods were then whittled out or cut from cat-tails, on which wicking for a dozen candles was put, and they were hung over the back of an old, high, straight-backed chair tipped down, and dipped every few minutes in beef, or better, mutton tallow melted in the tin boiler. Of course candles grew faster on cold days, but were more likely to crack. Good iron candlesticks were rare, and at balls and parties potatoes were used, and wooden blocks. The evolution, I have heard, was first a "slut" or linen rag in fat, or a bowl of woodchuck's oil with a floating wick through a wooden button. Later came a square strip of fat pork with a thin sliver of wood thrust through to stiffen it and serve as a
wick. Fire could still be made by friction of wood in an emer- gency. The best-raked fire would sometimes go out, and then fire must be borrowed from a neighbor. Those who wished to be independent obtained tinder-boxes with flint and iron, smudged tow and punk. Home-made matches, with brimstone and saltpetre, would catch readily, but friction matches were a great novelty. One of these friction matches, also home-made, of spruce lumber, by the boys, was "drawed" by their incrcdu- lous father, who, when he found it would really go, put it care- fully in his pocket for future use.
The ideal hearth and fireplace of olden times (restored at Plymouth, and especially at Deerfield, Mass., by George Shel- don) was indeed the centre about which the whole family sys- tem revolved. On the swinging crane, evolved from the ear- lier wooden lug-pole, hung from pot-hooks, chains and tram- mels, several species of iron pots and brass kettles, in front of a green back-log, so big and long that it was sometimes snaked in by a horse. Below, attached to the upright part of the and- irons, was the turnspit-dog, revolved by hand, and sometimes, at a later date, by clockwork, for fancy roasts. There were roasters and dripping pans, and the three-legged spider, in which bread was baked, first on the bottom and then, tipped up to the coals, or else the top was done by a heavy red-hot iron cover. Here rye used to be roasted and mortared for coffee, which was later boilcd in water and maple molasses. On the shelf or beam above the fire stood the foot stove, a horn
PRES. G. STANLEY HALL'S BOY LIFE IN ASHFIELD 359
of long and another of short paper lamplighters; a sausage stuffer; tin lanthorn; mortar; chafing dish; runlet; noggin; flatirons, perhaps of new fashion, hollowed for hot iron chunks; tinder-box; tankard; and coffee pots; and high above all a bayo- neted flint gun or two, with belt, bayonet sheath, brush and primer. Overhead on the pole hung always a hat or cap on the end, and perhaps a haunch of dried beef, with possibly a ham, a calf's rennet stretched with a springy willow stick in- side; pumpkins cut into long ringlets; bundles of red peppers; braided seed corn and dried apples, the latter also perhaps half covering the roof and south side of the house. About the fire- place stood or hung the bed-warmer, the tongs, and long "slice," a hollow gourd or crooked-necked squash; candle holders with long tin reflectors; bellows; woolen holders; toasting irons; smoking tongs; pewter porringer; spoon moulds; trivet; skillet and piggin; a tin kitchen; a tin baker and steamer; a flip iron; the big dye tub always in the corner, and the high-backed settle in front. Near by stood the cupboard, displaying the best blue crockery, and the pewter, kept bright by scouring with horsetails (equisetum); sealed measures, and a few liquids, and perhaps near by a pumpkin Jack-o'-lantern, with an expression when it was lighted in the dark as hideous as that of the head of an Alaskan totem-post.
The grandma was both nurse and doctor, and the children had to gather for her each year a supply of herbs. Chief among these were pennyroyal, tansy, spearmint, peppermint, catnip, thoroughwort, motherwort, liverwort, mugwort, ele- campane, opodeldoc, burdock, mayweed, dogweed, fireweed, ragweed, pokeweed, aconite, arnica, scratch-grass, valerian, lobelia, larkspur, mullein, mallow, plantain, foxglove or night- shade, osier, fennel, sorrel, comfrey, rue, saffron, flag, anise, snakeroot, yarrow, balmony, tag alder, witch-hazel, and blood- root. Each of these, and many more, had specific medicinal properties, and hung in rows of dried bunches in the attic, and all grew in Ashfield. In Mr. Cockayne's "Leechdom, Wort- cunning and Starcraft," a remarkable collection of Anglo-Saxon medical prescriptions, I have identified the same symptoms for which the same herb was the specific, showing how this un- written medical lore, as Mr. Mooney calls it in his interesting pamphlet, survives and persists unchanged.
The attic floor was covered a foot deep with corn on the ear, to be shelled winter evenings by scraping across the back of a knife driven into a board; the cobs being fed out to stock, or used for baking and smoking fires. Here, too, were tins and
360
HISTORY OF ASHFIELD
boxes, and barrels of rye and barley, and, later, oats, wheat and buckwheat. In the corner stood, or hung, perhaps, a hand-winnower, a tub of frozen cider apple sauce, an old hat and wig block, a few woodchucks' skins to be made into whip- lashes, a coon skin for a cap, a hand-still for making cider brandy or twisted cider. So, too, the cellar, shed, hog-house, barn, sheep and horse barn, sugar-house and corn-house, were stored with objects of perennial interest to boys.
The "sense of progress," which a recent psychological writer calls a special, though lately evolved, sense, was by no means undeveloped. 'Men loved to tell of old times, when maple sap was caught in rough troughs made with an axe, and stored by being simply turned in their places; to show the marks on old maple trees, where their grandfathers tapped by chipping with a hatchet and driving in a bass-wood spout made at a blow with the same iron gouge that prepared for its insertion, and to describe how, later, the rough unpainted tubs with unbarked hoops and, because smaller at the top, so hard to store and carry, and so liable to burst by the expansion of the ice on freezing, were superseded by the Shaker pails. The old days when sap was gathered by hand with a sap yoke, and stored in long troughs and boiled out of doors in a row of kettles on a pole or crotches, were talked over, with complacent pity, perhaps, while modern pans on a new arch and in a new sugar- house were kept going all night during a big run which had filled every tun and hogshead, while the best trees were running over.
Hour-glasses, especially to spin by, and dials, were some- times used, and there were many noon-marks at intervals over the farm. In many families, even where coal and kerosene stoves are used, along with wood, oven-wood is still cut for the old brick oven, which Christmas time, at least, if not once every week or two through the winter, is heated, and then swept out with a wet birch broom. First, the rye and Indian bread is made up in a bread trough and then put on the broad, meal-sprinkled peel, with hands dipped in water to avoid stick- ing, and very dexterously thrown in haycock and windrow shapes, perhaps on cabbage leaves, on to the bottom of the oven. When this was done it was still so hot that pies could be baked, and last of all, a bushel of apples was thrown in and the week's baking was over. Many could then tell of the time when, with pudding or mashed potatoes and milk for the meal, no table was set, but each took a bowl of milk and helped him- self from the kettle on the stone; or again, the family gathered about the well-scoured table, with no individual plates or
PRES. G. STANLEY HALL'S BOY LIFE IN ASHFIELD 361
butter knives, or waiting on the table, but each took a slice of bread and helped himself from the meat dish, or dipped the brown bread into the pork fat with forks. Wooden, pewter, then earthen plates, was the order of evolution. So, in the dairy, milk used to be set in wooden trays, then in thick, brown earthen bowls, before the modern milk-pans came into vogue. The evolution of the skimmer from the clam shell, through a rough wooden skimmer; of churning, from a bowl and paddle on to the old dasher churn; of straining milk, from the linen rag strainer, up; of bails, from the ear and peg fashion, on; the history of the artistic forms of butter balls, and the stamps used; the very gradual development of the scythe-snath, which no artist ever represents correctly, to the present highly physiological and very sharply discriminated forms, as well as of the hoe and pitchfork; why are not these and the growth of the corn-sheller, hen-coop, plough, mop, the story of the penstock, the broom, from a bush or bundle of twigs, up through the birch broom with fibres stripped both up and down; of window transparencies, from the hole and oiled paper, etc., as scientific anthropological themes, as the evolution of the fish-hook, arrow-head and spear? Why is not the old soap-making process, with the lye, strong enough to support an egg, dripping from the ash barrel on the circularly grooved board or stone, and the out-of-doors boiling and basket straining, etc .; why is not the old-fashioned semi-annual geese- picking day, with the big apron, great vase-shaped goose basket, and the baby's stocking drawn over the goose's head to keep it from biting; why is not cheese making, when the milk from three families was gathered in a big tub, coagulated with a calf's rennet, broken up into curds and whey by the fingers, scalded, chopped, salted, perhaps saged, hooped, turned, and pared of those delicious curds, and daily greased all summer; why is not the high festivity of road breaking in winter, when all the men and oxen in the neighborhood, often twenty yokes of oxen in one team, turned out after a long storm and blow to break out the roads which the town had not discontinued for the winter, to church, stores, doctor and school, when steers were broken in, sandwiched between the yokes of old cattle, where often up to their backs in a drift, with a sled to which ploughs were chained to each side and a dozen men and boys on it, they could only wait, frightened and with lolling tongue, to be shoveled out; why are not the antique ceremonies and sequelæ of butchering day, and the fun and games with pluck and lights and sausages, which city-bred boys were told, and
362
HISTORY OF ASHFIELD
said to believe, are caught like fish; the process of making pearl-ash and birch vinegar; cider-making; the manifold sum- mer beers and other domestic drinks, etc., quite as worthy of investigation, of illustration in museums, as the no more rap- idly vanishing customs of savage tribes?
At the place and time of which I write many domestic indus- tries were more or less specialized. Farmers' sons often went away to learn trades. Broom making, e. g., was the evening occupation of one member of the family I knew, and I saw the process of planting, breaking, tabling, hatchelling, for the seed was worth about the price of oats, bleaching with brimstone in a big down cellar, etc. Tying was the most interesting pro- cess. It included arranging the hurls, braiding down the stalks on the handle with wire, pressing in the great vise, and sewing with a six-inch needle, thimbled through by leather palms. I was allowed to sandpaper the handles, and once, in a time of stress, when a man was making forty plain Shaker brooms per day, even to put on the gold leaf. The local tanner allowed us to run among his vats, and see the hides salted, pickled, washed and limed, and, best of all, skived over the big beam. Last summer this tanner told me he believed his eighteen months in tanning an ox hide and the six weeks required by modern chemical methods, represented about the relative durability of the two leathers. His trade has lasted on, despite such com- petition, because his townsmen have something the same idea. Within boy-range, too, was a cooper's shop, a gunsmith, a family who made baskets, a small carding mill, turning shops where wooden spoons, bowls, sieve rims, pen handles, plain broom handles, etc., were made, a general tinker and solderer, besides carpenters, blacksmiths, shoe and harness makers. Some farmers specialized more or less, in sheep; others in young cattle, or pigs and horses. Some were always lucky with corn, others with rye or wheat, buckwheat, potatoes, grass, etc., to which they had mainly settled after much ex- periment, or to which the traditions of the farm or family in- clined them. Thus, in fine, there were many grades of prog- ress and versatility. Many of these old home industries I can still practice and have added to them by "lessons" in Ger- many. All come handy in the laboratory. I know I could make soap, maple sugar, a pair of shoes, braid a palm leaf hat, spin, put in and weave a piece of frocking or a rag carpet, do crude carpentry, farm and dairy work, and I envy the pupils at Tuskegee who can do more of these things and better than I.
I have alluded to but few of the occupations of these people.
PRES. G. STANLEY HALL'S BOY LIFE IN ASHFIELD 363
Their commonest industries-planting, fertilizing, gathering each crop-have been revolutionized by machinery and artifi- cial fertilization within twenty-five years. These, and their religion and beliefs, and domestic social customs, methods of doing their small business, are all fast changing. The women are haggard and worn with their work, the men are sometimes shiftless, and children are very rare. The heart of these com- munities has left it, and only the shell remains. The quaint, eccentric characters that abound in these towns, types of which may be found faithfully depicted by Mary E. Wilkins or in Mary B. Claflin's "Brampton Sketches," or in a few of the sketches in "Profitable Tales," by Eugene Field, are for the most part types of degeneration well recognized by alienists and characterized by Morel. These are quite different from the no less rustic characters in De Gaspe's "Old Canadians, or the work of Du Pray's School." Life then and there, although per- haps a century or more later than that described in the books of Alice Morse Earle, did not differ much from it. Did the earlier generations work too hard in digging stumps and stones, and laying the hundreds of miles of heavy stone wall and clear- ing the timber? Were the conditions of life too severe? Is our race not adapted to the new conditions of climate, soil, water, and, as Dr. Jarvis said, is it still a problem whether the Anglo- Saxon race can thrive in its new American home, or is this but an incident, an eddy in the great onward current of prog- ress? I have no answer, but I know nothing more sad in our American life than the decay of these townlets.
Nowhere has the great middle class been so all-controlling, furnished so large a proportion of scientific and business lead- ers, been so respectable, so well combined industry with wealth, bred patriotism, conservatism and independence. The farm was a great laboratory, tending, perhaps, rather more to develop scientific than literary tastes, cultivating persistency, in which country boys excel, if at the expense of versatility. It is, says Professor Brewer, the question with city parents what useful thing the children can do; while in the country, where they are in great demand on the farm they are, in a sense, members of the firm. Evenings are not dangerous to morality, but are turned to good account, while during the rowdy or ado- lescent age the boy tendency to revert to savagery can find harmless vent in hunting, trapping, and other ways less injuri- ous to morals than the customs of city life.
Some such training the heroes of '76 had; the independent conditions of communities like this was just the reverse of that
364
HISTORY OF ASHFIELD
of the South at the outbreak of the Rebellion; such a pcople cannot be conquered, for war and blockade would only drive them back to more primitive conditions; and restore the old in- dependence of foreign and even domestic markets. Again, should we ever have occasion to educate colonists, as England is now attempting, we could not do so better than by reviving conditions of life like these.
I close by mentioning an interesting new educational experi- ment, as a bright spot in this sombre present, which was some- what feebly but happily tried in Ashfield, as a result of the recently awakened interest in its own antiquities. A prominent citizen, once a teacher, has studied from sources largely un- printed the history of the town, which connects it with the Revolution, and even the French and Indian wars, and on the lines of an old map he has made of the original town surveys, gave an hour per week during part of a winter in teaching history, from a local standpoint in the little academy, with its score of pupils, and adding many of the antiquities such as this paper has referred to, with frce use of the museum, and all with ex- cellent results. A village pastor, who is an excellent botanist, took the class a few times each year on excursions, and the older girls have gathered and pressed for him in a school mu- seum all the Ashfield plants and grasses, on the basis of which he taught a little botany gratuitously. The Doctor cooper- ated with them and talked on physiology and hygiene, and brought his microscope and other instruments. A student of an agricultural college has gathered all the Ashfield rocks and minerals and taught geology. He has gathered cabinets of the local animals, birds, eggs, butterflies, and insects, which a summer resident makes a basis of some instruction. A sum- mer boarder was drafted in to teach drawing to all comers half a day per week. This experiment, in what I consider cooper- ative education, begins at home, with what is nearest and often despised. The local Faculty about the teacher give but little time, but their teaching is full of interest and stimulus. They strengthen the teacher whom they really guide, and bring home and school nearer together. This new curriculum is without expense, and altogether may prove a suggestive nov- elty. To-day old domestic industries of the age of the tinder- box and stone milk pan and niddy-noddy are taught by a spe- cialist to history classes from the city schools in turn, by Miss H. B. Merrill, in a central museum of American antiquities in Milwaukee.
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.