USA > West Virginia > Preston County > A History of Preston County, West Virginia, V.1 > Part 12
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 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51
Before leaving the house we take another look at the yawning fire- place. Built into the chimney is an iron crane, from which dangle the pots and kettles when not in use. Near one corner we notice a shovel, a pair of tongs, and a small bellows for putting life into a struggling flame. At the other side of the cavern lies a hickory broom, its brush being of shavings cut while the stick is green, and the free ends bent downward, gathered together, and tied with a cord. Above is the cup- board, with its small assortment of blue-bordered china.
As we go out to view the farm, we have a glimpse of the canine population. There are two deerhounds, "Lead" and "Trail," and two large bear dogs, "Buck" and "Brindle." On the rear porch are huge
115
PRESTON COUNTY, WEST VIRGINIA
traps for bears and wolves. John is the neighborhood squire, and men come to him for the acknowledgments that are necessary before they can get the bounty on their wolf and fox scalps.
The barn consists of two pen-like enclosures of log, and is covered by one continuous roof of rye straw, bound with hickory withes. The spaces between the wall-logs are wide, and not generally chinked. Passing the door of the old house, we see within a hand loom, that bulky yet very necessary appurtenance of a well-appointed farm of the period. We see no well about the house, but there is a walled spring of pure, cold water, with a gourd cup lying on the capstone. A strong rill flows through the milk-house, and lower down the ravine it fills a hollow log, whither the span of sorrel horses and sometimes the cattle are led to drink.
In the insect season, John can sometimes hardly milk his cows with- out first driving off the midges and deerflies with the smoke of burnt toadstools.
The farm covers 250 acres, yet only a seventh part is cleared. The open portion is not all in one tract by any means, and the fields are not at all symmetrical in form. Each represents a separate clearing, and was inclosed when cleared, so that the amount of fencing has be- come very considerable. Some of it is of rails laid in the zigzag or worm fashion. The other part is of tree roots and brush. The greater part of the cleared area is kept in meadow and pasture, yet the cattle browse a part of the time in the woods, their whereabouts telling its own story by the very necessary bell with which each animal is sup- plied. The hogs have a similar privilege, especially in the fall of the year, on account of the mast then abounding in the woods.
John has several pens in his wood lots for ensnaring the wild tur- keys, and there may yet be seen an old bear pen. The black bear will eat corn, and will climb a tree for sweet apples, but, except in the case of a female with cubs, is not likely to molest a man. In favorable years, a hundred bushels of chestnuts rattle from the trees, yet there is no appreciable market for this volunteer crop. But as to the many sugar maples the case is very different. John has a sugar camp, where under a rude shelter we find a stone furnace and three kettles. Here is made in its season all the sugar used at the house, besides the surplus sent to market over the National Road. The stock of sweet from the maples is augmented by the honey which the bees gather from the linn and other flowering trees and shrubs, and from the buckwheat bloom. But there are no galvanized sap-spouts and sap-buckets, and no modern
116
PRESTON COUNTY, WEST VIRGINIA
hives. A concern of straw, or a section of a hollow log, answers the latter purpose. Yet the farmer and his boys are ready to plunder a bee-tree whenever they can find one in the woods, and in more than a single instance they have brought away a hundred pounds of well-filled comb.
Stumps are quite gone from the old clearings, but are plenty in the newest one. The virgin fertility of the former is much impaired. The opinion is still held that a field is to be considered "good for so many crops," and then thrown out of active use in favor of a new clearing So long as a new field may be cleared there is little thought of keeping up the fertility of the older ones. The surface of the small tilled area is scratched with a wooden plow, which runs shoaler yet harder than the modern steel implement, and is liable to "ball up." There is a wooden- toothed harrow for heavy work, but the grain crops are "brushed in" with a bush harrow. The corn-field and the potato patch are given their chance against the weeds by means of the hoe, every grown or partially grown member of the family taking part in this crusade. The shovels and hay forks are made from hardwood trees.
The grain is reaped with the sickle, three "hands" making a sheaf, and thirty to forty dozen of the latter a day's work. The expert reaper brings his narrow crescent blade close to the fingers that are grasping the handful of straw, and the left hand bears the scars of more than one miscalculation. Threshing is done with the flail, and John is able to pound out from twelve to fifteen bushels a day, not including the time spent in winnowing away the chaff. Portions of the corn, wheat, and buckwheat are taken on horseback to some watermill, and there ground into flour or meal. Yet now and then John puts his old handmill to use, and by dint of elbow movement can turn out a bushel of meal in a day.
There is little leather in the "gears" he flings upon the backs of his sorrel team. The horse collars are of straw, bound together with hick- ory bark, and the lines are of the latter material also. The bridle, the hames, and the back and side bands comprise the other parts of the har- ness. The doubletrees are hooked to the plow or harrow by a hickory withe, and the convenient hickory bark is often resorted to in tying to- gether the parts of the harness.
The acre of flax that is annually grown is every whit as necessary as the little fields of corn, oats, wheat, and buckwheat. Cotton in bulk is almost a curiosity. The cotton country lies far away, and a bale of the white fiber could sell only at a very interesting figure after its long
117
PRESTON COUNTY, WEST VIRGINIA
wagon journey into this mountain land. As to cloth from the seaboard, the price is almost prohibitive to the lean purses of John and his neigh- bors. But, by virtue of much labor and no little skill, and with almost no outlay in ready money, John's farm produces both flax fiber and wool, and turns this raw material into the cloth of which the family clothing, the bedding, and the grain sacks are made.
A brown color is given to the new cloth by a cold solution of wal- nut hulls, but if a black is desired the liquid is boiled. Madder gives a red color, maple a green, and hickory a yellow. Copperas will also impart a yellow hue, but must not be used on wool.
The pulling, retting, breaking, swingling, and scutching of the flax consumes much time, and the swingling is dusty work. After the pulled stalks have become soft, as well as ill-swelling, from retting in the damp, they are broken by blows from a wooden knife, and the tow is separated from the splintered bark by passing through sets of steel blades in the hackling boards. The fiber is boiled in lye to soften it. The spinner is expected to know the number of threads to the inch, this matter being determined by a magnifying glass. In the finest linen the number is eight hundred. The product of one hundred and twenty revolutions of the spinning-wheel is the "clip," and twelve clips make the "skein." The spinner is paid either by the clip or the skein. The grades of the linen are the "pure linen," the "tow linen," and the "flax linen," the second having a tow woof, and the third a tow woof also, but coarser. Bleaching takes place on the grass. The sensation pro- duced by putting on a new shirt of the coarser grades is compared by John's boys to being rubbed with chestnut burrs. So it is the practice to beat the linen with clubs to break down the irritating "shivs," or to draw the shirt of torture back and forth over a smooth rail. The tenth of May is the conventional date for donning the summer's linen. When a warmer cloth is needed, it is found in the combination of wool and linen, known as linsey. When packthread is wanted, it is at once avail- able in the form of tow.
Potatoes do not arrive till near the fall season. That little inclosure inside a paling fence is the garden. It yields a smaller variety of vege- tables than in our day, yet is more prominent with respect to savory herbs. Peggy and her daughters have some flowers and ornamental plants, but we would esteem them of inferior quality. Among them are a few tomatoes, the deeply creased fruit not being supposed fit to put inside the human mouth.
-
118
PRESTON COUNTY, WEST VIRGINIA
A heavy beam, with one end anchored in a large oak, supplies the squeezing power for separating apple juice from the pomace. Apples are wanted for cider as much as for other purposes. Johns' father set out an orchard soon after his arrival, and other trees have been added since. In any but very unfavorable seasons there is an abundant sup- ply of apples, peaches, pears, plums, and cherries, a large share of the apples finding their way to the big copper kettle, whence the sliced fruit emerges in the form of apple-butter. Another portion is dried for winter use, and so is a quantity of the abundant blackberries from the old clearings.
John Dee is regarded as a "stiff" man. No one holds a mortgage or note against him. Very nearly everything worn or eaten by himself and his large family is produced on the farm. Whatever else he posi- tively needs can usually be had either by exchange of work or by barter. At the store, he may sometimes get rid of a few pounds of butter or a few dozen of eggs, yet the price of the former is only six cents a pound, and of the latter only three cents a dozen. There is no very appre- , ciable home market for the minor products of the farm. The surplus of these goes to waste, except so far as it can be eaten up by the farm animals. John's best source of cash income comes through the yearly visit of the cattle buyer. Yet his market animals bring what we would now esteem a ruinously low price. So, after all, if John is a well-to-do man for his day, he handles but a small amount of hard money. His taxes are two dollars a year. He pays his preacher a larger sum, and in the winter season he pays a still larger amount to the teacher in the form of tuition fees. He writes four or five letters in the course of a year, and pays in postage from five to twenty-five cents on each.
John's neighbors are not generally so well off as himself. They have large and small obligations to contend with, and find even the smaller of them very troublesome to meet. New as the country still is, there are men around him who do not possess any realty.
The men of the settlement occasionally drive cattle eastward over the newly-built National Road. They also make infrequent trips to the little towns on the Monongahela. From these points goods are "poled" "down the current to more navigable waters. From the little city of Pittsburg steamers have been plying on the Ohio for fourteen years, although the boilers have a disagreeable habit of exploding. At the river towns prices are as follows: Wheat, 50 cents a bushel; rye, 40 cents; corn, 35 cents; oats, 16 cents; buckwheat, 25 cents; butter, 10
119
PRESTON COUNTY, WEST VIRGINIA
cents a pound ; bacon, 21/2 cents, and eggs, 6 cents a dozen. It is nearer to the taverns on the National Road. These hostelries entertain many travelers, and require large amounts of grain, hay, and country pro- duce.
John's nearest neighbor is a third of a mile down the run, yet within a radius of two and a half miles are a dozen homes sheltering a hundred people. The most forehanded of his neighbors is living in a stone house of massive construction. But every one else is occupying a log house, which never is so large as John's, and is sometimes much smaller. Neither is the style of housekeeping always up to the standard main- tained by Peggy Dee.
One mile through the woods is the home of Sam Slow. This neigh- bor has a "rough farm," a few acres of which are indifferently tilled. Sam has a horror of over-exertion, and so he spends day after day in the woods, banging away at the game, or holding up a fishing pole. His round-log cabin is caulked with moss. The chimney of split logs lined with flagstones rises a few inches above the low gable, and is topped out with mud and sticks. The one window contains six lights, a shut- ter doing duty at another opening. Within are two small rooms. In the chimney is a trammel pole strung with round hooks, from which dangle the wood shovel and the few cooking utensils. Here dwell a man, his wife, and ten children. Two others have married while yet in their teens, and three more have been laid to rest in a burial ground. What little farming Sam does at all is with the help of a single ox. At his sugar camp he builds his fire between two logs rolled together, his kettle being suspended over the coals by a hickory withe. There is a shelter at this camp, or what, by a stretch 'of the imagination, may be called a shelter.
Several persons in the settlement, of widely varying age, bear the maiden surnames of their mothers. Several have informally been adopted as stepchildren by the man the mother may subsequently have married. Yet the paternity of all such is an open secret with the gos- sips of the neighborhood.
Two miles from John's home is the old field schoolhouse. To this small, uncouth, log structure comes once a month the itinerant preacher, who then addresses more people than can very conveniently get into the room. Few of his hearers are members of his church or of any other. Yet they are like all other Americans, inasmuch as they wish to see and be seen. The "charge" does fairly well in raising its quota of
120
PRESTON COUNTY, WEST VIRGINIA
the $100 that constitutes the salary, but then the preacher is a free guest whenever he comes into the settlement, and for so long a time as he may see fit to remain. There is a "big meeting" every winter, but, though begun by the preacher in charge, it is completed by a local preacher from another settlement.
As for the teacher, he boards around the district, in addition to re- ceiving $10 a month in cash or barter. A portion of his salary is from the educational fund of the state, and the remainder is from the slim purses of his patrons. The teacher, or master, as he is called, is almost invariably a man, and the room is well filled during the winter term of three months.
In the settlement across the creek are so many people of German birth or ancestry that the family records are written in the German Bibles, and some instruction is given through the medium of the Ger- man tongue. The older people do not converse in English with much freedom.
A wedding is a great social event, and is followed by the infare at the home of the groom's father. A party sallies thence to meet the bridal group. The leaders on each side then gallop to the house, the one arriving first receiving a bottle of liquor, which is immediately passed around with entire impartiality. A sequel to the infare is the inevitable serenade. The wedding festivities are not likely to pass off without some very coarse jokes.
In the Dee settlement is a still, where rye and peaches are turned into firewater. Corn whiskey is not thought fit to use, and the corn product is never more than forty cents a gallon. The jug or the bottle is in every house. If the use of liquor is unfortunately general, the poisonous alcohol is not combined with the even more deadly chemicals now employed. But with this qualification, alcohol is the same curse in 1825 as in 1913.
In the week-day social gatherings of the Dee Settlement, utility is nearly always a feature. There are "frolics" galore. Every little while there is a clearing of new land, a log rolling, a corn husking, a wheat harvesting, an apple paring, a quilting, a house raising, a wood chopping, a sheep washing, a fish gigging, or a kicking frolic. On an occasion of the latter sort, a hundred yards of new cloth are fulled by being laid on boards placed on the floor of a barn. The cloth is kept drenched with soapy water, and is then stamped on for several hours by barefooted men and women, lads and lassies.
rin
121
PRESTON COUNTY, WEST VIRGINIA
Notice of the "frolic" is given out, and the masculines or feminines, one sex or both, according to the nature of the gathering, assemble from within a radius of several miles. The work dispatched, the de- mands of the stomach are liberally supplied from a well-filled table. Unless the character of the work shuts out the sequence-of the social feature, the latter comes in for a full share of attention at the close. Not to have a period of amusement is unthinkable, for it would de- prive the occasion of all zest.
Since each farmer has to summon several of these gatherings in the course of a year, the aggregate number in the settlement each season becomes considerable. With ready money scarce, and labor-saving ma- chinery quite unknown, the cooperation of muscle is unavoidable. Each man who solicits a frolic expects to take part in another somewhere else, and no strict account is kept of the amount of neighborly aid thus asked for or granted. The frolic is therefore an absolute necessity. It serves a double purpose, being at once utilitarian and social. In fact, the purely social party is scarcely known, even among the young people. When it does occur, the sports which take place are likely to be rough. John's oldest son could tell of a young stranger wearing a white linen suit, who was crowded into a fireplace by the girls at a cer- tain party, and his face thereby blackened with soot. But the young ladies had the grace to wash his discolored clothes.
There are still other forms of neighborly assistance. The people of the settlement are usually "stout," yet occasionally some one is "dauncy" or "complaining," or else "down sick." There is a doctor fifteen miles away, yet he is less often called upon than is Aunt Polly Bee, who, with her native tact in the sick room, and her packages of boneset, chamomile, pennyroyal, and feverfew, seems sufficient for any ordinary emergency. Yet while the simple life renders the people hardy, and while nervous affections are not particularly common, the more serious diseases are more often fatal than with us, because their nature and proper treatment are less understood. And since certain ail- ments are not known to be "catching," they work no little harm. Fur- thermore, the crowded homes, and the non-observance or downright ignorance of proper sanitary care, are responsible for much of the ill- ness, especially among infants.
If Jerry Kee has a "spell of sickness" that lays him up, or is kept to his house by a broken bone, the neighbors take turns in sitting up with him, and in seeing that his farm work does not suffer. The nearest
122
PRESTON COUNTY, WEST VIRGINIA
doctor is the only substitute for the professional dentist, yet all he can do is to put an instrument of torture to the aching tooth and jerk it forth in blissful ignorance of anaesthetics. However, the unsound tooth is comparatively infrequent, thanks to the less common use of sweets, the thorough mastication required by the hard-crusted corn- bread, and the absence of our "predigested" soft foods.
But peace and concord do not have their way at all times in the Dee Settlement. The frailties of human nature reveal themselves here just as they do anywhere else. A falls out with B over a trespass committed by a "breachy" colt. He does not take the matter to the squire or to a lawyer at the county seat. He goes in search of B, and they have it out with their fists, the result of the face-bruising being regarded as a set- tlement of the affair. Or else A has a grievance against C, and it is un- derstood that when they meet at muster-day, or at the first day of county court, they are to have a fight. By that time their pugilistic propensities will be inflamed by liquor. Then there is Y, who pro- claims himself a champion bruiser because he has licked every man who has stood up to him. Z appears to dispute the claim of Y to be the "better man." Although it may be understood that the battle is to be square and without kicks, the victor may show his temper and his brutality by gouging the eyes of the vanquished, or by attempting other mutilation. Arrests are seldom made. But fighting will become infre- quent through a better moral training and a better enforcement of law.
And as the men fight, so do the boys also. Two members of the school nurse their ill-feeling toward one another, and on the last day of the term they fight until one or the other acknowledges himself worsted. The schoolmaster can see no other way of controlling his pupils save by the prompt and free use of corporal punishment.
The world, so far as actually comprehended by the Dee household, comprises a portion only of their home county, together with what they have seen along the roads they may have traveled outside. John is, by nature, an intelligent man, yet his own schooling was limited to the three R's. He never studied geography or history, and there is not a map in the house. He has never read so many as five books, and he does not read a newspaper with any regularity. The greater share of such books as are in the neighborhood are of a religious nature, and were sold by the itinerant preachers. John's mental stimulus comes largely through the Sunday sermon and the spread-eagle harangue of the politician. The county seat contains but fifty inhabitants, and he
123
PRESTON COUNTY, WEST VIRGINIA
goes there no oftener than actually necessary. Every second or third Saturday he visits the new village eight miles away. There he trades for something at the one store, converses with men he does not meet in his own settlement, and takes from the postoffice a possible letter or paper. Of remote portions of the county and of neighboring counties his knowledge is hazy, except for the illumination afforded by strangers who have lodged with him. The region along the Atlantic shore does not seem like a reality, and does not much interest him. Ohio and Ken- tucky, where relatives have settled, have more significance, and he has more than once thought seriously of moving to the former state. Yet his neighbor in the stone house has been to Baltimore with a drove of cattle, and he tells of the trip on every possible opportunity, not failing to describe the blistering of his feet.
With respect to what he has and has not seen. John Dee has but lit- tle advantage over his sons and daughters. The latter have never seen an illustrated paper. They have scarcely ever written or received a letter, to say nothing of their total ignorance of illustrated postal cards. They have never seen a light vehicle, or the polished furniture that comes from Grand Rapids. They have never heard a church bell or a steam whistle. They have never tasted an orange or banana, or a dish of ice cream. They have never seen a display of holiday goods. The girls know nothing of lace curtains, or the fashion designs in the "De- lineator." Neither have the boys selected a breech-loading shotgun from the descriptions found in the mammoth mail order catalog of Shears and Sawbuck. An organ, not to mention a piano, would be a seven days' wonder. The only musical instruments they know are the "fiddle," the accordion, and the jewsharp, with the addition on muster- days of the drum and the fife.
The stranger visiting in the settlement is an object of curiosity. Who and what he is is speedily found out, if there is any possible way of doing so. Yet he is treated with great hospitality, and the other stranger, who has moved into the settlement to stay, is made welcome with a housewarming. The community is not yet so old as to have de- veloped a clannishness that the newcomer will have to reckon with.
The other sons and daughters of John Dee will marry on arriving at mature age. Bachelors and spinsters of long standing are fewer in his time than in ours. The daughters will continue to live in the settle- ment. One of the sons will build a small house on the home farm, and eventually own a half of the place. Another will purchase some wild
124
PRESTON COUNTY, WEST VIRGINIA
land, and though it will not be easy to raise $100 with which to pur- chase the hundred acres, the parent will come to the rescue, though not in a gratuitous way. The third son will go to the newer land of prom- ise toward the Father of Waters. He will never think of turning his steps in the direction whence his grandfather came. Little more will he think of moving to Pittsburg or any suburb thereof. That little city had not the mammoth workshops with which it now abounds. Its manufacturing suburbs of today are no more as yet than country vil- lages. In fact, the call of the city is a mild voice in 1825. The indus- tries of the land are performed mainly by hand labor, and are carried on in the villages and farmsteads quite as much as in the cities. The people of America are still living in very much the same manner as when the Declaration of Independence was signed.
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.