History of the County of Westmoreland, Pennsylvania, with Biographical Sketches of Many of its Pioneers and Prominent Men, Part 39

Author: George Dallas Albert, editor
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USA > Pennsylvania > Westmoreland County > History of the County of Westmoreland, Pennsylvania, with Biographical Sketches of Many of its Pioneers and Prominent Men > Part 39

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1 All public amusements, celebrations, militia musters, or elections were occasions of much noise. Hallow-eve was celebrated everywhere with Bacchanalian revelry and pandemonian deviltry, and the noise arising from the racket that old and young made when they "shot off the old year" resounded from one farm-honne to another all over the land. One old custom long kept up was that of firing guns and all manner of explosive instruments at weddings, which being the lesser image of war has given rise to the observation that this no doubt was originally instituted to remind the nuptial party that the battle of life bad then begun.

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the furniture, was home-made. A few poles laid upon cross rails, resting in suger-holes in the walls and in the notches of an upright post in one end of the room, was the frame upon which were laid the straw and the scanty bedclothes. "Their stools were square or round blocks of wood resting on pins for legs. A couple of clap-boards resting on pina driven in the wall was the table. The rifle and pouches and powder-horn were hung over the fireplace or on a rafter, either on wooden pins or on the wide antlers of a mountain deer. To such a memento of the chase was usually attached a long story, which served to beguile the time of the long winter evenings, when a neighbor, . perchance, rested beneath the roof. The one side of the room, that next the bed, was reserved for the ward- robe. Here hung the dress to be worn when the preacher came once in a year to preach to the settlement, or when a young neighbor was married. . Whatever else was bright in color, or curious for being scarce, whatever might convey the idea of the possessor being in good circumstances in respect to worldly goods. or whatever could feed the vanity of the women part was here displayed. A faded ribbon, a silk hand- kerchief, a spare patchwork quilt, a miserable daub of a soldier or bunch of unnatural dahlias were ar- ticles of vertu. Next the fireplace, on shelves, were the pans, pots, skillets, pails, tin cups, tin and wooden plates, cooking-ware, rustically carved dippers of gourd, grubbing-hoes, harness, pieces of log-chains, indeed, nearly all the appurtenances and heredita- ments. If the house was so fortunate as to possess a small looking-glass, it hung beside the door or opposite it. Environed in rings and wreaths made of colored bird's-eggs and bright red peppers strung on woolen strings, and overtopped by sprigs of green from the garden or the woods, the looking-glass was, to the children of less fortunate neighbors, what the pocket compass of Capt. Smith was to the painted warriors of Powhatan.

We may form a more correct idea of the appearance of the early Hannastown by grouping a couple dozen of such cabins along the narrow cartway of the old military road, their huge chimney-tops reaching up ' among the trees which overarched the highway, leaving the sunlight in in patches. A house of square logs, larger than the others, by itself, and back of it another somewhat stronger, might be recognized as the court-house and jail. The stockade on a gentle rise within a stone's throw of the jail and in the edge of the village. One cabin with a clap-board porch, where, after the old fashion, the idlers drank their toddy or gin under a swinging wooden sign, would be known as the tavern. Among the stumps, with trees for hitching-posts, you would observe the blacksmith- shops, from one of which Connolly's crew, after forc- ing open, took the smith's hammer to break down the | Sr., the uncle of the founder of Irwintown, built on doors of the jail. And this was the ancient capital of Western Pennsylvania, and here was the temple where, betimes, was the visibly enthroned oracle of

the English law. Pittsburgh at that date was bet little better, only there was more activity there and possibly more sunshine. But in 1774 there was only one shingled house in the town, and that house was long pointed out as an evidence that the arts of co- lightenment had at that early day taken up their abode in the far West.

The description given by Dr. MeMillen of his early experience in this regard will here bear to be re- called :

" When I came to this country (In 1708) the cabin In which I wes to live was raised, but there was no roof to it, nor any chimney or floor. We had seither bedstead, mor table, nor steol, nor chair, Bor becket. W. placed two boxes, one on the other, which served we for a table, and two legs served as for sests, and having committed ourselves to God in family worship, we cprred s bed on the floor sad slept soundly till mora- ing. Sometimes, indeed, we had no breed for weeks together, bet wro had plenty of pumpkine sad potatoes and all the necessaries of life; se for luxuries, we were not much concerned about them."

Following the two-story log houses built of hewed timbers came the old stone houses. The abundance of good building material was an early inducement to erect structures of a more durable kind. Accord- ingly almost every locality can point out either the first square-hewed log house or the first stone house. The history of Old Redstone states that the first squared house in Fayette County was known far and wide, and long after other houses towered above it and the name had no meaning, as the High House. Dr. Power states that for many years after he was settled in the West there was not a stone or frame house within the limits of his congregation, which embraced the best portion of our Westmoreland. This, in a general way, may be correct when it applies to residences merely, or the houses of the common people; but a stone store-house had been built at Red- stone by the Ohio Company before 1754. Brick houses were unknown for many years; the first and only one till perhaps after the Revolution was the small brick building still standing near the point in Pittsburgh, built by Bouquet in 1764 of brick sent from England. Dr. Schoepf states that the first stone house in Pitts- burgh was built during his visit in the summer of 1783.

David Bradford, one of the first attorneys at the Washington and at the Westmoreland bar, and the fa- mous leader in the Whiskey Insurrection, built the first stone house at Little Washington. This was, perhaps, later than 1783, and it was considered an indication of enterprise. However, by the close of the century there were many stone houses, some of them having been built by the more enterprising class who came in upon the lands left by the settlers who emigrated westward after the close of the war. The stone house built by Thomas Culbertson, near St. Clair Station, was among the first in Derry township. John Irwin, his plantation, which included several of the neigh- boring modern farms, a stone house, which, with its wide hall and high eaves, was long regarded as the

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marvel of the times, and had a reputation as wide as Philip Reagan's brick house, built about 1800, after the alleged destruction of his first one by the Whiskey Boys. Many of these houses, erected between 1785 and 1812, are still standing, and some of them in re- mote places. Some of them may be seen on the sum- mit of the Ridge, built upon farms then considered for all purposes the best, and which were the most valuable.

The houses built in the towns were usually of two stories, but the stories were low in height, poorly ven- tilated, and miserably lighted. The best house erected in Greensburg before 1812 is far from possessing, even with later alterations, the conveniences of many of our modern farm-houses. But some of the old taverns and some gentlemen's seats erected before 1812 are still standing. Of these some have spacious rooms, lofty ceilings, wide entries, are surrounded with broad porches, lighted by wide and tall windows, and have dormer-windows in the roofs over the attics.

CHAPTER XXXI.

PRIMITIVE HOUSEKEEPING AND FARMING.

How to commence Housekeeping - Split-Brooms and Gourds- The Spinning-Wheel and Cradle-The Cock-Loft and Stable-Clearing the Forest-Getting to Farming-Resorts and Devices of the Farmer- Wheat Lands-Common Crops-Gardening-Rye Coffee-Mrs. St. Clair's Tea-Parties-The Raising of Flax, and a Description of the Process of its Manufacture-Spinning-Tow in Poetry and in Law- Wool-Carding-The First Carding-Machines-The old case of Mc- Ginnis versus Giger, in the matter of wrongly Dyeing the Linsey- Woolsey-Dress of the Common People-Going to Church-Nineteen Grooms married in one Blue Coat at different times-Dress of the Fashionable People-Calico.

SUCH were the houses and furniture of the majority of our forefathers; and while there were some who had brought with them from the east of the mountains more of the necessaries of civilization, there were others who possessed not so many. There have been instances of newly-married couples commencing housekeeping with only such paraphernalia as their own labor had got together. In one noticeable in- stance the husband and wife set out for their roughly- raised cabin, which was about a mile from his father's, he with a grubbing-hoe and an iron kettle, and she with a bundle of clothes and a split-broom, upon which, tied by their legs, were a couple of pairs of chickens.

One of the most common utensils about a house, and a common one because it was a necessary one, was the spinning-wheel. The distaff and the knit- ting-needles were to the women what the rifle and the axe were to the men. The spinning-wheel was, in a newly-formed family, a less indispensable article than the cradle. For the cradle there were many substitutes. Few children were rocked in a more ele- gant rocker than a trough, which answered alternately

for the calves and the babes. Many who became famous among their fellow-men as legislators and di- vines, who became illustrious in the pages of history and in the reports of law, were hushed to sleep in such a bed, the mother rocking and singing the simple air of " Barbara Allen," or the "Infant in a Manger." Few men have attained to greater eminence in the jurisprudence of their country, in diplomacy, and in oratory which controls senates and attracts the world than Daniel Webster ; and the infant head of Daniel Webster rested in a cradle which had answered for a sugar-trough. Thus the rising generation were raised from the very outset in a manner tending to make them rugged, and inuring them to hardship from their earliest years. From such cradles as the shield of the Spartan matrons and the rough bark of the forest-trees of the American mothers went forth such men as Lycurgus and Andrew Jackson.

The maxim of the common law that " every man's house is his castle" obtained in the times when the houses of the Britons were more scantily furnished than the houses of the American pioneers, and before the time when the American pioneer had barely the necessaries of life, but which necessaries would have been reckoned luxuries to the lords of the marshes. But the cabin of the early settler was, in truth, his castle. It surely contained all his availabilities. When a stranger passed over the threshold, his bed for the night was made on the floor before the blazing fire, or in the cock-loft into which he ascended by the never-ending pins driven in the wall, which answered for a ladder. There, among the chickens and the hung- up bacon, the keg of rancid fat and bunches of herbs, -the leaves that bore healing for the nations,-under the low roof, and beside a pile of corn, was made his bed. In fact, what could not be put into this miser- able place was left either in the lower room or in the horse-stall. The stalls or stables for the stunted and. scraggy brutes of such as were able to starve one or more bore as distant a relationship with the stables and barns of our day as did the houses of that day with the houses of this day. These were made of chestnut saplings, built to the height of a man, the interstices or openings between them being left open, and the top thatched with rye-straw or buckwheat- straw or wilding weeds ; the thatch held to its place against storms by the weight of other saplings tied or pinned down, and large stones all over. Yet often the sides were interfilled with straw and leaves, and the low opening for the door closed. This was done by provident settlers to protect their cattle not only from the terribly long and severe winters in this cli- mate, but also to secure their helpless stock from the hunger of the bears and wolves.

This portion of country, when the first settlers came in, was completely covered with a dense forest. The emigrant, of course, seated himself in the woods. Soon as his cabin was finished over his head he com- menced to clear the land. He began next his house,

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and worked his way outward. He chopped the large kidnap the children and shoot the men by taking the bolis off the animals and squatting in ambush behind the thick clusters of bushes or in a dark ravine. But the whites became wary, and such devices in a trees down, split some into rails, and the rest, rolling them in heaps and piling on top the loose and dead- ened branches, he set on fire and burnt up. He likewise, after selecting a patch which might be more | single community were not practiced often in succes- fertile by offering better promise, desdened the stand- ing trees. This was done by cutting a ring around the tree,-" girding" it, as it was called,-to obstruct the flow of the sap, whence the tree, losing its vital property, naturally withered away in decay. In a couple of days a good axeman could so prepare the trees which, in a few years toppling down, left an opening in the forest for a new field. A forester thus calling nature to his help could in a few years de- stroy an incredible amount of timber. What would now be considered worthless destruction was from the nature of the case not so then.

There are many now living who can remember when a fine old tree would be cut down to make from its roots a pair of hames ; another old oak destroyed to get a crotch for a pack-saddle; or three or four chopped down or a night to get a vagrant coon. but the chief difficulty was to remove the huge boles of the trees now lying upon the ground. To do this when he had no horse, or bat poor help, his recourse was to his neighbors. Their assistance would be re- paid by his own labor, and perhaps in the next week .. Of this day's labor, in the piping times of peace, was made another holiday. Again were feats of strength displayed; again all were made happy, so far as hap- piness could be enjoyed under such circumstances. It is to be remarked that the very assembling of these people, separated sometimes for weeks, had upon all parties an exhilarating effect. A log-rolling, a house- raising became to the second generation of these set- tlers as the volunteer parades and the fox-hunts were to the generation foHowing. On these occasions the bottle was again produced to make them feel good in general, and to prevent, they said, the effect of snake- bites in particular. Times change, and what then allayed the fear of snakes is now the most active agent in raising this fear. But hence, from the common way of preserving quaint and curious analogies of language in idioms, the mountaineer from Chestnut Ridge, to this day, when he sees a fellow-creature so limber that he cannot stand erect, and hears him ut- tering expressions becoming a madman, will express his opinion by remarking that the fellow is either snake-bitten or poisoned.

sion. In more tranquil times afterwards the sound of the bells kept off the wild beasts and the trouble- some " varmints," as they called the mischievous smaller beasts. It also warned the children when the cattle were encroaching on the cornfield, or on the little meadow inclosed by a rickety fence of brush, for the cornfield was the chief reliance of the family for their winter's breadstuff. But little wheat was grown till the land was more advanced in cultivation. One reason the oldest settlers had for not improving the lowlands, now our richest and most prolific por- tion, was that they could not produce wheat upon it. This will, in part, account for the fact which appears to us so unreasonable, the fact that the mountainous lands were the first settled, and settled in preference to that vast body which we now see covered with luxuriant harvests, and which are rich in mineral deposits. At the latter end of the last century a wheat-farm was the most desirable, and the one which the new immigrant tried to get. It was said that the wheat raised upon what are now our best wheat-farms was what they called sick wheat, a wheat which, they said, invariably produced sickness; that the wheat drew this property from the soil, which was yet rank with poisonous vegetation. The end of the wheat- corn was black, and when made into bread and taken into the stomach it produced cramps and vomiting. Nor was it fit for feed. It was not till such land bad been reclaimed that it was cafe to raise wheat. Their best wheat-lands were along the hills, noticeably the western sides of Chestnut Ridge. Seventy and eighty years ago the farms which would have sold for the most money, and which were regarded the most val- uable for wheat-growing, were those which we now regard as of the poorest, and on which the tenants at present live by irregular work and by continuous toil. Rye, therefore, was used in preference to buck- wheat, and as a secondary crop to maize or Indian corn. Nor is this to be wondered at, for the prolific yield of corn in such an abundant ratio, its adapta- bility to the soil, the little trouble needed in its cul- tivation were early noted by the red men, who pos- sessed no ideas of agriculture but the most primitive. Not only is this observable in the cultivation of it, but it is also to be noticed that it possesses more nutriment than any of the other of the ordinary cereals, and that as food a given quantity will go much farther for both man and beast. Those used to it affirm that a man can work longer on a meal of baked corn than even, as some contend, on meat. Whether this is born out by analysis is not known, but it is certain that old hunters and those exposed to inclemencies preferred corn as nourishment above

The land being thus by degrees cleared, and the stones piled in heaps in the curtilage round his cabin, a portion was next fenced in to keep the calves and the few sheep from straying, while the cattle and horses, when not needed, were allowed to wander at large to nibble the grass by the brooks and browse on the tender boughs of the birch and maple. Bells were hung on the necks of the animals so that they could be found when wanted. From this the Indians before and during the Revolution devised a decoy to i rye and above boiled flesh. Neither was the process

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of making corn into food so intricate as the process the spring, and the flax was pulled in the autumn by which wheat is converted into bread and cakes. | before the frost. A patch or field of flax in blossom Corn-meal could easily be baked into bread, pone, looked beautiful, as the flower was of pale blue, and johnny-cake (journey cake), or made into mush, ' the top of the stalk itself of a lightish color. The which, with milk, was a standing dish for at least one meal a day regularly the whole year round. And with corn were early cultivated potatoes and beans, yet no more than was needful for the sub- sistence of the family till the next year. But the planting of fruit-trees is coetaneous with the erection of some of the first buildings in the county.

Gardening, you may be sure, was not carried on to · perfection till long afterwards. Special attention was, however, given to the nurture of sage, which was made into tea, and served as a substitute for imported tea. For from necessity they could not, and from patriotism they would not, pay the exorbitant tax laid upon it, which was one of the immediate causes of the war. When Gen: St. Clair removed his family into Ligonier Valley, Madam St. Clair brought with her a chest of the invigorating leaves. It was talked of far and wide. She was remembered as one of the first who brought it into common use, and the fame of her tea-parties was part of the gossip of the country. Many to whom its properties were totally, or in part, unknown, walked a great distance to see the strange article, and to be cheered by its invigorating qualities. The root of the sassafras, mint, and spice- wood among some, in their season, were also substi- tuted, for coffee was not drank, only once a week, on Sunday. In lieu of this a kind of decoction produced from roasted chestnuts and rye was drank. Genuine coffee was considered a beverage exclusively for the women part of the household. Nor was it coveted by the men, for in this, as in all unnatural wants, it holds true that " use doth breed a habit in the man."

The first of wants to be supplied then, as it always has been from the time our more remote ancestors made their apparel of fig-leaves, was the want of clothing for the body. This was made variously of linen, of linen and wool mixed, and of the dressed and undressed skins of deer. But the great want was met chiefly by the raising and working of flax, and this served when made up for the hunting-shirts of the men and for the gowns of the women, for the coverlet of the bed and for the tapestry of the room. Tow linen was used for the clothing of the living and for the shroud of the dead, and the manufacturing of it was one of the earliest of the mechanical arts practiced by men and women in common.

If you are curious to know of the process by which it was manufactured, we shall briefly relate it. Flax is a fibrous plant which grows prolific in almost any kind of soil, especially if the soil be moist and shaley. The seeds being small and the growth sponta- neons, a small quantity of seed is sufficient for sowing an ordinary patch. Not more was raised in early times than was needed for the family's use, for it was not an article of commerce. The seed was sown in

flax, having been first pulled up by the roots, was laid along on the ground in windrows that it might be thoroughly dried by the sun and weather, while care was taken to keep it from getting wet, as the dampness rotted the stems and made it unfit for use. When suitably dried it was tied into bundles, gathered in, and thrashed with flails till the seeds were removed, when it was ready to be broken in a rude breaking- machine. The first part of this work was mostly done by the women and girls, especially if the harvest season was late. A long trough-like box set upon four legs held a lever fastened at one end by a movable pin, and the lever extending the length of the box was fastened to a heavy block something like a mallet. The face of this block was indented with two deep furrows and ridges, which fitted exactly into other furrows and ridges in the bottom of the box. This block, when the lever was raised up and forced down upon the flax under it, " braked," as it was termed, the flax, and loosed the outer covering of the straw, which on account of its coarseness was unfit for use. The flax be- ing thus broken was next "scutched." The machinery of the scutching-machine was not intricate, nor its mechanism difficult. A pointed clap-board was driven in the ground and allowed to extend upward three or four feet. The upward edge of this board was dressed sharp. A wooden beetle, called a knife, and bearing in shape some resemblance to a knife, was used by the person holding. it in one hand and the flax in the other, and striking over the edge of the board, under which beating the fibres of the straw were loosened and separated from the thread of the grass more effectively, and the body of the flax' still further mutilated and broken. The fibres thus loosened and strewn in piles wanted only to be ridded of all useless particles, when it was ready for the spin- ning-wheel. To effect this it was taken in small hand- fuls and drawn rapidly through a hackle, which was a board or block with numerous sharp points of iron from three to five inches in length fastened into it, so that when the fine substance of the flax was drawn quickly over it the chaff, the remaining seeds, and all extraneous substances theretofore adhering were com- pletely removed. Only the tow was then left, which was ready to be spinned.

As to spinning, it was not only a light labor but an amusement. The ideas connected with spinning have given expression to many of the most beautiful sen- timents in Hebrew, in Grecian, and in Latin poetry. Hence we learn its antiquity, and gather that spin- ning, with weaving, was the fine accomplishment of the matrons in the citadel of Priam and in the house of the Tarquins, from those who came out of Egypt and in the wilderness spinned the flax for the linen of the Tabernacle to the princesses of Europe in the

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History of the County of Westmoreland, Pennsylvania, with Biographical Sketches of Many of its Pioneers and Prominent Men, Part 39

Author: George Dallas Albert, editor Publication date: Publisher: Number of Pages:

Author: George Dallas Albert, editor
Publication date:
Publisher:
Number of Pages: