USA > Wyoming > The pioneer women of Wyoming : an address before the Wyoming Valley Chapter, D.A.R. > Part 3
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).
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distress, the entire power of Pennsylvania was turned against them after the prolonged strife was supposed to be ended by the Decree of Trenton in December, 1783. Petition to the General Assembly of Pennsylvania was in vain. "Our houses are desolate," they said, many mothers are childless, widows and orphans are multiplied, our habitations are destroyed and many families are reduced to beggary." The Assembly replied by sending more troops to oppress their already sadly harrassed people. They were told they must give up their lands, though a concession was made that the widows of those who had been killed by the savages might retain possession for two years, at the end of which time they must vacate. The women of Wyoming were even subjected to the hardship of having the soldiers billeted upon them. Mrs. Col. Zebulon Butler (his third wife, Phoebe Haight, whom he married in Connecticut a year before,) was com- pelled to board twenty of the troops. But the climax of the Pennamite cruelty was reached in May, 1784, when the sol- diery obliterated the Connecticut boundaries by destroying the fences and at the point of the bayonet dispossessed all the Connecticut claimants. "Unable to make any resistance the people implored for leave to remove either up or down the river in boats, as, with their wives and children, it would be impossible to travel on the bad roads of that day. Their request was refused and they were compelled to go across to the Delaware through sixty miles of wilderness. About five hundred men, women and children thus made their way to Connecticut, mostly on foot, the road being impassable for wagons. Mothers, carrying their infants, literally waded streams, the water reaching to their armpits. Old men hob- bled along on canes and crutches. Little children, tired with traveling, crying to their mothers for bread, which they could not give them, sunk from exhaustion into slumber, while the mothers could only shed tears of sorrow and com- passion, till in sleep they forgot their griefs and cares. One child died and the mother buried it beneath a log." Seven long days and nights were occupied in making the sixty miles to the Delaware. When reached this was less than half way to the nearest border of Connecticut.
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Years ago, when the old burying ground on Market street was abandoned, there was found what is the oldest grave stone of which we have any record. It was a rude mountain stone and marked the grave of a pioneer woman of Wyoming. It was deposited in the Historical Society, but cannot now be found. Fortunately I took a copy of it and this early epitaph read as follows:
HERE LISE THE BODDEY OF ELIZABETH PARKS SHE DIED MAY THE 7th A. D., 1776 AGED 24.
It would be interesting to know who she was.
There was a William Park, a brother-in-law of Capt. Obadiah Gore, who came to Wyoming with the Connecticut settlers in 1769. The family was from Plainfield. Some matter concerning the Park family is found in the Harvey Book, page 307.
DOMESTIC LIFE.
The prevailing characteristics of the pioneer women of Wyoming were industry and frugality. Labor was honor- able in all and there were few, if any, artificial distinctions. Each woman was as good as her neighbor, provided she behaved as well. Nearly all the people were farmers and in the earlier days each housewife had to depend largely on herself for articles necessary to family use. The men raised flax and wool and the women dressed it, spun it and wove it. Each family became a little manufacturing center for mak- ing materials suitable for clothing and we may imagine how the women vied with one another in spinning, weaving; dye- ing and in making the materials into clothing, linen, bedding and other necessary articles. Nearly every family had its patch of flax and in the fall came the pulling, rotting break-
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ing, swingling and combing. Without this homemade linen they could not have sheets, or pillowslips, or towels, or hand- kerchiefs, or shirts or dresses. Many women took in flax to spin and the buzzing of the linen-wheel was music in the humble kitchen. Neighbors often carried their linen-wheels and flax when they went visiting. When the cloth was woven it was bucked and belted with a wooden beetle on a smooth flat stone, then it was washed and spread out on the grass or bushes to bleach. Sometimes young women made "all tow," "tow and linen," or "all linen stuff," to barter for their wedding outfits.
The women carded wool with hand cards and in order to lighten their burden and furnish social diversion resort was had to "carding bees," or "wool breakings." It was woven in hand looms. The common color was "sheep's grey," the wool of a black sheep and that of a white one being carded, spun and woven together. This was used mostly for men's wear. Out of the finer wool could be made gowns and undergarments for the women and children. The women in winter wore a heavy woolen cloth called haize, dyed, with green or red. Sometimes they made heavy waled cloth and dyed it with bark at home. Later indigo came as a great convenience and the blue frock was the best and handiest of garments. It was whole in front, put on over the head, came below the knees and was gathered about the waist with a belt. So generally was it worn that it was said that when the minister prayed at town meeting a square acre of blue frocking rose up before him. If the housewife was not skilled in making garments she could get help from the itinerant tailor, who was an adept at cutting and fitting. There were also itinerant cobblers, who carried their kits about the country making or repairing shoes. The pioneer mother made for her husband and sons caps of the pelts of rabbits, woodchucks or other animals and lappets were sewed on to protect the ears. Occasionally a hat was made of home-made felt.
Neatness was the characteristic of the early Wyoming home. The floors, after they were so far advanced as to
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get smooth floors, were scoured white and kept sanded. The shelves gleamed with mugs, basins and platters, all of shin- ing pewter scoured with rushes. Their home-made towels, sheets and pillow cases were of spotless purity. In the yawning fire place were crane and andirons and pothooks.
Of paint there was none. Earthenware had to be brought from England and was rare. To meet this want home-made wooden ware was largely in use, turned with lathes.
The walls, mostly of logs, were unadorned with pic- tures. In their stead the powder-horn and leather shot-bag hung on their pegs, and the shot gun rested in the forked branches of a deer's horns, fastened up with wooden pins. Overhead supported by iron hooks in the beams were poles on which were hung hats, stockings, mittens, cloth and yarn. In the autumn they were festooned with strings of quartered apples or cubes of pumpkin.
The water had to be brought from well or spring. Fires were not easily kindled or kept. There were no friction matches. Each night before retiring some live hardwood coals must be buried in the ashes. Should there be no live embers in the morning, they had to be obtained from some neighbor, often at a considerable distance. With a live coal and some dry kindlings and bellows it was an easy matter to quickly obtain a roaring fire. If the live coal was not obtainable recourse must be had to the flint and steel tinder box, reinforced perhaps by a few shavings previously dipped in melted brimstone. How they managed in midwinter, with only a single open fire, to keep from freezing will ever remain a mystery. What little light was needed, when peo- ple went to bed so early, was obtained from tallow dips, though many a family had not even these and must depend on the light from the hearth. Many a studious youth has gotten his inspiration from the generous blaze of the open fire. It is said of these open fire places that they carried the greater part of the heat up the chimney and when the wind was wrong sent half the smoke into the room.
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Clocks and watches were scarce. Some people had sun dials and others built their houses square with the sun that they might always be certain of the noon hour.
Each family had to depend on itself for tallow, beeswax, cider and soft soap and each was expected to take turn in entertaining the school master when he went boarding round.
The women and girls could drive oxen. hold plow, plant potatoes, hoe corn and cut kindling wood as well as the men when occasion required.
At first the facilities for cooking were very primitive, and cooking had to be done at the open fire places, for as yet there were no stoves. From an iron crane in the fire place hung pots and kettles for boiling. Frying was done in a pan over a bed of hot coals raked out upon the hearth. Bread was often baked in a kettle.
Venison, bear, woodchuck, wild turkey or domestic meat was roasted in front of the open fire, suspended from a stout cord attached to the mantel piece, a dripping pan placed below to catch the savory juices. The housewife or one of her children revolved the meat, so as to cook it evenly all around. Potatoes were roasted in the hot ashes. In the old brightly scoured tin kitchen johnny-cake was baked. Food was plain. Salt pork and potatoes were the staples. Shad was abundant. The housewife was often hard pushed to furnish a variety. Bean porridge was in great favor and it is recorded somewhere that when the goodman was going away in the winter to work with his team, the wife would make a bean porridge, freeze it, with a string, so he could hang it on one of the sled stakes, and when he was hungry he would break off a piece and eat it. Bread and milk or mush and milk were much used. In the earlier days there were few tablecloths, tumblers, cups or saucers and not many knives or forks.
Recreation was almost unknown and of amusements there were very few. Occasionally the young people had spelling matches, sugar boilings, husking frolics or apple cuts, rarely a dance, and the more staid of the matrons had tea drinking and quilting parties.
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There was little or no money in circulation. Debts were paid in labor or farm produce and at long intervals accounts were rendered and the balance carried forward on the book until another reckoning was had.
In those days the pioneer mother usually had a large family and nearly always she was doctor, nurse, cook and teacher.
SOME REFLECTIONS.
It has not been convenient to weave into a connected whole the material which I have presented, and it is there- fore a mere bundle of fragmentary jottings, not possessing even the merit of chronological order. It has been limited as far as could be, to the first settlement and to Wyoming's great tragedy of 1778, with special reference to the part which women played, though the general facts have been made familiar by historians and poets to all the world. It is by no means a complete recital of woman's work, in fact I have been embarrassed with a wealth of interesting materials from which to choose and found the difficulty to be in the task of condensation.
While we rehearse some of the privations of those stir- ring times we need not be ashamed of the fact that our recital deals largely with the annals of the poor. Our ancestors came to the Susquehanna with but little of this world's goods and they had to wrest a living from the soil and against the heavy odds of a hostile Proprietary Government, and an im- placable savage foe. The stories of poverty and privations and the sorrows and sufferings which have come down to 11s, have doubtless not been exaggerated.
The vast deposits of coal which in our time have made this valley a busy hive of industry and brought millions of dollars of wealth and made us all a highly favored people were then unsuspected. Here in the wilderness of Penn- sylvania our fathers planted a little republic that made and executed its own laws, a little republic whose allegiance to Connecticut brought on a civil strife which lasted nearly a third of a century and wet these fair plains many times with
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the blood of patriots who were willing to die if need be for that home to which in the sight of God they felt they had a right to bring their wives and little ones. Though our present county of Luzerne is only a small portion of what was originally styled Wyoming, it yet has a population larger than that of either Delaware, Idaho, Montana, Nevada or Wyoming. Although our ancestors were poor, it does not follow that they were ignorant. On the contrary they were keen, intelligent, hardheaded men, who made the most of such advantages as they had. Their little libraries were well read, and as carly as 1777 they established post routes be- tween Wyoming and Connecticut for the carrying of letters and newspapers, one trip every two weeks, the same being maintained by private subscription. Stewart Pearce relates that during the Pennamite war, the wife of Lieutenant John Jameson left Wyoming for Easton, where her father, Major Prince Alden, and upwards of twenty other Connecticut set - tlers were held as prisoners. As there was no mail route, she secreted in her hair-dressing letters for the prisoners, and though intercepted on the way by Pennamite soldiers and examined, her precious consignment of letters escaped detection.
For years the pioneer women of Wyoming lived in con- stant fear of attacks from marauding bands of Indians. When their husbands went to the fields to work, carrying their guns with them, these mothers spent the hours in fear lest their protectors should be slain by Indians in ambush. We have seen how often this occurred and how the pioncer mother in our fair valley was never free from the haunting fear that her children might wander for a moment from her sight and fall a prey to savage cruelty.
Living as we do, surrounded by every comfort, we can- not realize the isolation and the self-dependence of our pioneer mothers. They had made the toilsome journey from Connecticut, through the forest to this promised land, over roads that were mere bridle paths and which had no bridges to span the streams. Almost no stores, few vehicles and only rare communication with the mother colony. She must
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provide her own remedies for times of sickness, supply her husband and children with garments of her own spinning and making, bake corn bread from meal of her own pound- ing and attend to a multitude of other domestic duties, and yet so little with which to do it all as to make us wonder how she ever did so much.
Words cannot adequately picture the privations of the pioneer women of Wyoming, and we do well to venerate their memories. It is to them we owe a debt of gratitude for having helped win from the wilderness such a heritage for us as that which we now possess. They died that we might live and we can best glorify their memory by emulat- ing their virtues.
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