USA > Pennsylvania > Luzerne County > Nanticoke > History of Hanover Township : including Sugar Notch, Ashley, and Nanticoke boroughs : and also a history of Wyoming Valley, in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania > Part 18
USA > Pennsylvania > Luzerne County > Ashley > History of Hanover Township : including Sugar Notch, Ashley, and Nanticoke boroughs : and also a history of Wyoming Valley, in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania > Part 18
USA > Pennsylvania > Luzerne County > Sugar Notch > History of Hanover Township : including Sugar Notch, Ashley, and Nanticoke boroughs : and also a history of Wyoming Valley, in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania > Part 18
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It took a pretty skillful blacksmith to make a spindle for a flax spinning-wheel, or even a wool spinning-wheel, but they made them in the earlier times of the settlement here, and the farmers themselves made the wood work, with axe, saw, auger, spokeshave, drawing knife and a gimlet, awl and knife, and chisel, and these tools were also made by the blacksmith. This was when they had to have the wheels " right away," when they had no time to wait for tradesmen or mechanics, or for the appearance of dealers in hardware. The writer has seen some of these old wheels, for they were good and durable and lasted till his time, and he knows where- of he speaks. Necessity compelled them to produce these machines in some way to do the necessary spinning, for they had to have thread to make and repair garments. They hardly knew how to use the sinews of deer. Of course they would have used them had the necessity compelled, but they were white men and of too ingenious a kind ever to let the necessities of the savage come upon them in a matter of this kind.
Now, perhaps, will be as good a time as any to describe the carding of wool by hand, for no other way was then known, and describe the wheel, also, for the spinning of it at that time.
CARDING BY HAND.
The cards were made of a thin piece of wood about a half inch thick, twelve inches long, and six or seven inches wide, and with a handle to each card on one edge about six inches long. The face of the card was covered with hard leather filled with teeth of fine
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steel wire about three-fourths of an inch long, bent slightly in the middle so the points leaned slightly towards the handle of the card. A small handful of wool was separated from the fleece and laid upon one of the cards, then another card was taken and the wool- between the teeth of the pair -- was rubbed and combed by moving the cards back and forth on the wool, sometimes with the handles of the cards both in one direction, and sometimes with the handles-and, of course, the teeth-of the cards in opposite direc- tions. By these movements, continued long enough, all the kinks and knots in the wool were drawn apart and separated so as to leave a fine loose and fluffy mass of the handful, which was then patted lightly on the backs of the cards so as to form a bat about an inch thick and six or seven inches wide and thirteen or fourteen long; this was then rolled up on the back of the cards by the cards, into a roll for spinning, some three inches in diameter and fourteen or fifteen inches long. This was hand-carding and this was the "roll." The spinning was sometimes done from the bat, but generally the bat was rolled up for spinning.
SPINNING WOOL BY HAND.
The spindle was made of steel, about a foot long, a quarter of an inch in diameter, with one end brought down to a sharp point. The butt end had journals cut in smaller than the rest of the spindle and about four inches apart, one being close to the butt end. A wooden disk was driven tight on the spindle about midway between the ends. Between the two journals a wooden "whir" was fastened tightly on the spindle, having V-shaped grooves cut in around it for the driving cord to run in. This spindle was fastened in place by two thick leather journal bearings to two up- right pieces of wood an inch in diameter and five inches high, standing fastened in holes in a horizontal piece of wood about three inches in diameter and seven or eight inches long. This was called the "head" of the spinning-wheel. This head was fastened on the top of an upright post set in one end of a heavy 'bench made expressly for the spinning-wheel, and the spindle was run by a cord driven by a wheel about four feet in diameter, turning on an axle or journal fastened in an upright post set or standing in the other end of the bench, the cord running round the wheel and the
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whir on the spindle. The wheel was turned by one hand while the roll was held in the other, with a thread from it fastened to the spindle and winding out and over the point, and as it was rapidly turned and spun, drew out the thread or yarn from the roll. When the thread or yarn was sufficiently twisted it was wound up on the spindle, outside of the wooden disk, and this operation was con- tinued until the spindle was full. This was the old original wheel here, but in later years there was a "patent" head introduced. This had a small wheel on the "head" from which a second cord ran to the whir on the spindle. This improvement twisted the thread with much less turning of the larger wheel.
In flax spinning a very different wheel-and spindle-was used. The flax was held on a distaff, and the wheel was turned by the foot with a treadle.
THE FLAX SPINNING-WHEEL.
The flax spinning-wheel was made of oak. It consisted of a bench about two feet long, seven or eight inches wide and two inches thick. The spindle end was elevated a few inches higher than the rear end where the wheel ran. The legs spread wide apart at the floor, the back or rear ones being about a foot long. In the back end were erected two posts about eighteen inches high and leaning back. Between these posts ran a wheel about eighteen inches in diameter, the iron axle through the hub being let into the posts at the top. The iron axle has a small crank on it at the back end outside of the post for the connecting rod of a treadle under the wheel, to be 'attached to, to turn the.wheel. At the elevated end were two other posts about eighteen inches high erected from a cross-piece for the spindle to run in. The bearings for the spindle to run in were of stiff leather. The end of the spindle toward the spinner was hollow for the thread to pass through, and so through the bearing and journal of the spindle, and came out at the side.of the spindle through a hole. The spindle had "fliers" on it with hooked wires in the sides to carry the thread over the spool. The open ends of the fliers were towards the back or little end of the spindle, so as to allow the spool and whir to be put on and taken off. the spindle. The "whir" was a grooved piece of hard wood about two inches in diameter for the driving cord from
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the wheel to run in to turn the spindle. One part of the driving cord ran in a groove on the end of the spool next to the whir. This groove was a little smaller than those in the whir, so as to make the spool run a little faster than the spindle, thus winding up the twisted thread on the spool. This wheel ran with one long cord in two grooves around the wheel, the cord doubled to run around the wheel to the whir, back to the wheel and around again and then around the groove in the end of the spool. This cord ran like a double cord, but it was. only one, and crossed itself to go twice around the wheel and once each around the whir and spool. The distaff was set at the head of the wheel in a hole with a pro- jecting arm and bows standing up (the real distaff ) to hold the flax. The spinner sat at this wheel on the side with the spindle and distaff at the left and the wheel at the right and a foot on the treadle underneath.
Every girl learned to spin and to knit in those days, and most of them learned to weave, to make laces, fringes and tassels and work- . figures of men and animals, and landscapes, and embroidery of various kinds with the needle, and the dying of woolen cloth and yarns. It may be too much to say that every one learned all these or most of them, but it is not too much to say that every one tried, however poor her family was. These were accomplishments that our grandmothers, and grandfathers too, thought of the highest value in those days, when idleness produced want. They were all taught to do housework, and the boys and girls both learned to read and write. The boys learned not only to farm in the ordinary sense of it, but to raise and rot flax, to break it, to swingle it, to " hetchel," "heckel" or "hackel" it, to bleach it, and many even learned to spin and weave it. Weaving was no mean trade for a man. We have now in actual use in our own house, coverlets of blue, and also of red woolen yarn, woven in and over linen warp and filling, making a figure of raised blue, or red, on white, on either side of the coverlet, woven by one who came here with her father's family in 1779,* a young girl of sixteen, and died fifty-six years ago. She was not among the first settlers, for it was ten years after the first settlement was made that she came. The Wyoming Massacre had taken place the year before, and the Revo-
*Anna Hurlbut, afterwards wife of Elisha Blackman, of Hanover.
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lutionary war had been in progress for more than three years. At this time the people had some things that might be called comforts when compared with those of the settlers of the first three or four years.
The first store in Hanover was kept by William McKarrichan, in Nanticoke, who came to Wyoming in 1774. He taught school a short time and then established a store. He was captain of the Hanover Militia, and was killed in the massacre of Wyoming July 3, 1778.
Before the massacre and expulsion in 1778 several saw-mills had been built, and boards and other lumber could be got, but in general their houses and barns were built of logs, and after the first three years were roofed with shingles, but some were thatched with straw. After the end of the Revolutionary war when peace had been declared, and the third Pennamite and Yankee war had ended, better houses began slowly to appear. The houses were then built larger, and of hewed logs with the ends sawed off close to the corners. Some of these houses are still standing and are occupied as farm houses. (Indeed, one still in use, standing in the fields south-west of Petty's Mill, about eighty rods, is understood to have been removed some sixty or more years ago from "Button- wood," where it had been used for defense against the Indians in more than one attack before the end of the Revolutionary war.) These houses were generally built one and a half stories high- sometimes. a two-story one was built. Frequently they had a porch along one side, more frequently along the rear than the front, and were very comfortable houses; but they had to have the chinking replastered with clay inside and outside every year for winter. These houses were never lathed and plastered. The logs were bare inside and out. The rains during the spring and summer beating against the sides would wash out the clay, and it had to be constantly or yearly renewed. Good shingle roofs were put on these houses. Frame barns were the first frame buildings built. They wished to have their harvested crops well protected from the weather. A log barn was not a very good barn for various reasons.
The early settlers maintained free schools of their own free will and choice. There was no law here then to compel them, except
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such as they made in their own town-meetings, but, although on the far frontiers and very poor, they determined to have the rising generation-the future hope of safety, of defense-fitted for their duties in the best manner possible, and that it should not be scant even here in the wilderness, but equal to, if not better than their fathers received in the older settled and safer community. Several of their school-masters were killed in the battle and massacre, among the rest Capt. McKarrachan who taught school in Nanticoke. as early as 1774. Probably there was a school there in 1773. Afterwards when it became too dangerous to send their children to school, they were taught at home. Indeed, this was done long after fears of the Indians had ceased to exist, and the wars were ended. Some one who was thus engaged in teaching her own children, would announce to her neighbors that she would take a class at certain hours of the day at her own home to teach certain branches; nearly always in the case of girls it was coupled with needle-work in various branches, of knitting, making laces, netting, embroidery, etc., and families would send good sized children, girls and boys, more than two miles to such teachers, for the most skillful hand with the needle was not unknown to her neighbors for many miles round. This, if nothing else, would attract the girls, and the boys went to learn to "read, write and cipher." Money of any kind was so little in circulation that all pay was "in kind," that is, some product of the farm, dairy, or household. School books were taken care of in those days, and every one fur- nished his own. Books were something that could not be made by the father of the family, and often the books used by the father were the same books used by the children, and even the grand- children.
Physicians were, as a matter of course, not very numerous, and in the scattered population of a new settlement they were far apart. In such new settlements the inhabitants were liable to disease at least as much, if not much more so, than in an older settled country, as experience has abundantly shown. What then was to be done here in case of sickness? Well, in such cases they had what are called "old women" doctors. Everybody in those days, and especially the women, was more or less informed as to the sup- posed medicinal qualities of certain roots, herbs, plants, shrubs, and
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barks, all to be found in their gardens or in the neighboring woods. Every garden-and they prided themselves on their gardens-was provided with hops, sage, rue, wormwood, tansy, peppermint, spear- mint, catnip, thyme, hoarhound, camomile, mustard, rhubarb, yel- low-dock, comfrey, opodeldock, dill, colt's-foot, and many others equally good and equally nauseous, and they were very liberally administered, together with hot baths, and sweats, and salves, and poultices in what they considered proper cases.
The people of those early days had no very high opinion of the profession of an M. D., and in most cases would not call a doctor at all, even when he was within easy reach, or if they did, it would be as the very last resort. They did not wish to be poisoned for life-if they lived through it-by calomel. But they made it a practice to go once a year to the doctor and get bled! There were other people also, besides doctors, who used the lancet for bleeding people. It was not necessary, they thought, for one to be sick at all, in any way, that he should have that done, but he had himself bled so as to keep himself well, just as some people in this age physic themselves sick in the spring, in order to keep well during the rest of the year.
In these early times the people, though surrounded with stumps and stones, and brush and woods, and general disorder in their new clearings, yet had some taste for the beautiful in spite of cir- cumstances, and gratified it in a small way. Every house or family had a clump of rose bushes in the door-yard or in the garden, and a bunch or two of peonies, a clump of lilac bushes, and sunflowers, and hollyhocks, and many had white poppies and made their own opium. And if there were young girls in the family, they would have pinks, and pansies, and marigolds, and morning-glories, and as many other kinds of flowers as they could get. It took time, of course, for these things to be brought in from Connecticut. After the jurisdiction reverted to Pennsylvania there was not much beautifying of anything for three years, during a great part of which time Pennsylvania soldiers were trying to dispossess the inhabitants. But there were too many inhabitants and they were too widely scattered through the valley, for the soldiers to keep them out after throwing them and their goods out of the houses and nailing up the doors and windows, for as soon as the soldiers were gone to the
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next place, the women would break open the doors and carry their things, that were not destroyed, back into the house again-unless the soldiers had set fire to the house and burnt it down, which was frequently done. But in that case they would go to work at once, and build a new one. It may be supposed that few of these soldiers liked this work. All these things happened more than once along the River Road in Hanover, where almost the only houses were then, from 1783 to 1785, inclusive. It is proper to say, but few of their houses or barns were burnt in Hanover. This portion of my narrative is intended to take in and describe the condition of things in general in the township from the first settlement down to 1800.
With the troubles these people had with the government of Pennsylvania for their land, there were mixed other troubles from natural causes. After a winter of unusual severity in 1783-4 about the middle of March (13 and 14) the weather became suddenly warm and rain fell in torrents, melting the snows throughout all the hills and valleys in the upper regions of the Susquehanna. The ice began to break up and the river rose with great rapidity. The ice gave way in some places, and blocked up and refused to move in others. In this way several large dams or gorges of ice had formed, and the water and ice from above had spread out over the lowlands-the flats-to find an outlet. A gorge was formed among others, at Nanticoke, and the water had spread over the flats as far up as Pittston. Finally the gorges-or dams of ice-above, broke away and came rushing down upon this dam at Nanticoke. Houses and barns, and cattle, and stacks of grain and hay, and pig-pens with their pigs, were swept away by the rushing, roaring flood.
At the Hurlbut house below the Red Tavern, they were pre- paring to fly to the hills, .but the water was too quick for them. The good Deacon John was dead, but his family was there, and two of his sons who had gone down to the river bank to get a boat of theirs to use in case of necessity, were compelled by the rising water to run, but the water came up so fast, that, as they held the rope of the boat in their hands, the boat followed in the water to the door of their house. They tied the boat to the door and tried to get the family up stairs, but the water rose so fast and there were so many of them and some neighbors who had come
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there for safety, that their sister Anna (a young woman, being the last, or, for other reasons) had got into the boat to keep out of the water." The steps or ladders were swept away, and as she could not get from the boat into the house, and so up stairs, and there being no window up stairs on that side of the house, and the water being above the door, she had to stay with a brother in the boat all night. The rush of the water being so great they did not dare to untie the boat to get to a window or to the hill near by. By daylight the flood subsided. Many cattle were drowned and much provisions lost. This was always known afterwards as the " Great Flood" or "Ice Freshet." In order to determine the height of this flood the writer with two assistants went to the site of that house, and with a level took the height of the flood above the general level of the flats. The position of his level was five feet above the ground where the house stood. This was probably several feet lower than the surface of the water was there. The level was found then to be twenty-eight feet above the level of the flats near the road by the side of the creek. The writer does not know how high the flood of 1865 rose to at that place; but from what he does know of that flood of 1865, he will say that the flood of 1784 must have been from twelve to fourteen feet higher than that of 1865. In other words, such a flood as that of 1784 would submerge the Public Square of Wilkes-Barre, about twelve feet under water.
The position or site of the Hurlbut house was on the east side of the creek-(Behee's Creek)-below the Red Tavern and on the north side of the River Road, on some nearly level ground there. Back of the house was the garden, and near the garden apple-trees were planted. Some of those apple trees are still standing, and near these trees Deacon John was buried in 1782.
There was another flood in October, 1786, known as the "Pumpkin Flood," on account of the river being covered with pumpkins floating off. This was the last; both nature and the Pennsylvania government became more propitious ; the three years of trouble had ended.
The clothing worn after leather clothing was discarded, was called "homespun," and until within the last forty years was home- made. The materials were raised on their own sheep and farms,
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and the wool and flax were carded or hetcheled and spun at home, and woven, and dyed, and fulled, and cut and made into clothing at home, sometimes by the family, and sometimes by a tailor who came to the house and directed and did the work for the male mem- bers of the family. The female part of the family wore pretty much the same kind of materials in their dress that the males did. Although it did not look quite as well as clothing does now, it was just as thick, close, and heavy, warm and comfortable as any now worn. There were no carding machines in the township nor even in Wyoming Valley, it is believed, before 1814 .* At least the writer so understands it. After that time clothing of various colors and degrees of fineness began to be produced even as home-made. Previous to that time the carding of wool was all done by hand with hand cards, and all spun on a single spindled wheel. The "Spinning Jenny" was not invented or at least introduced here till more than ten years later than 1814. The cotton gin was invented by a Yankee school teacher in Georgia in 1793; before that the amount cleaned by a good hand at cleaning cotton was one pound per day; by this invention one machine performs the labor of 5000 persons. From about 1800, inventions in the United States have produced a wonderful change in labor. In these old times of which we are now treating, everything pretty much was done by hand; there were rude threshing machines, but nearly all threshing was done by hand with the same old flail, one stick fastened to another with a leather string, was hammered upon the grain. The winnowing of the grain was done with a "fan" as it was called, but it was done by hand and the natural wind that blew the chaff out. It was tedious work. The grain was cut with the "sickle," or with the reaping "hook ;" nothing else was known then for the purpose. The cradle came into use a little before 1800.
It was no great matter to make a cap out of the skins of any such fur bearing animal as was caught and tanned for the purpose, but they were not dressed, and sheared, and trimmed and dyed, so as to look very nice, still there was wear and warmth and service in them all the same, and when others all around the country wore the same kind, what was there to be ashamed of? There was a hatter in Wilkes-Barre soon after its settlement, and those who had
. *At this date Jacob Plumb built a set of carding machines at Pittston.
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a desire for a fine beaver hat would have it made to order, and fre- quently of the fur produced by their own hunting skill. Or they could have it made of wool. We do not know when the first hatter came to Wilkes-Barre, but we do know that such hats were made there to order. There was no hatter in Hanover.
Moccasins were frequently worn, but necessity only would com- pel white men to wear them, and the necessity did not last long. The boys and girls would go barefooted in the summer till they were sixteen or seventeen years old, and in fact many men and women managed to save their shoe leather in the same way while about home or on the farm. Tanneries on a small scale were es- tablished almost in the very beginning of the settlements, and shoe- makers were not wanting. The tanning was generally done for half the hide. Thus the farmers all had their own leather made from the hides of their own cattle, horses, sheep, dogs and some- times, hogs, and from deer-skins, and they had only to pay for the making into shoes, boots, clothing, saddles, mittens, etc. It cost three shillings and ninepence (50 cents) to four shillings and six- pence (60 cents) in Pennsylvania Currency to get a pair of shoes made. Shoemakers often went to the house and made up the shoes for the winter's wear of the family. Then they got their board and pay by the day for their work. Tailors also, usually, in the early times, went to the house and made up the family clothing for the male members of the family, except the leather clothing, which the tailor only cut or marked and the shoemaker cut and sewed together. Such seasons were frequently taken advantage of for calling together the young people and having a jollification. As all the women could sew the trade of a tailor was not a very good one, the sewing being pretty much all done by the family. There were tailors here in these early days and good ones, too, having served their time at learning the trade, but the trade of a shoemaker was so good a one, that many, if not most of the shoemakers were themselves "home-made," that is, they had never learned the trade by working with a shoemaker, but had "picked it up," as it were, and could make shoes and boots that would answer the purpose.
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