My own recollection reaches no farther back than the time in which
all of them had families and when most of their children were small,
but I have understood that their bread was made of unbolted wheat
meal sifted through hand sieves to take out the coarse bran, until
after they had grown up to years of maturity, and that after bolting
meal was first introduced some persons said it was too extravagant to
use only the fine flour to eat and to use all the rest for feed.
During this time, and until all had families, many deers, bears,
raccoons, wild fowls and fishes continued to exist, and the
inhabitants were furnished with many meats, in consequence of which
they did not make use of as much pork and beef as they did after
those wild creatures and fishes became scarce.
As far back as I remember, being from about the year 1774, in my
father's family mush made of Indian meal and milk (generally
buttermilk), bread and milk, buttermilk pop of two kinds and bread
and butter was a very general diet, not only of his family but of all
those in the forts during the war and for some years thereafter
throughout this neighborhood. It was also very common to have a
dinner pot of pork and beef, or either of these boiled together with
peeled potatoes, turnips or other sauce. The bread used during this
time was rye bread, not as white as we generally now have it. It was
very common to have a pot of sweet milk thickened with wheat flour
lumps boiled every Sunday morning for breakfast and for a part of the
dinner. These were the most general diet during the warm season of
the year. In winter, a greater proportion of meat, potatoes, turnips
and other vegetables, dried apples, pumpkins, beans, &c. were eaten,
and less milk diet; yet the supper generally consisted both summer
and winter of mush and milk or buttermilk pop, except in families
during a time where cows happened to be all dry. The supper was had
without any addition except in the long summer days when bread and
butter was added. Some buckwheat pancake was generally eaten in
winter. Now, in addition to those common diets, they sometimes had as
a rarity, wheat flour shortcakes, doughnuts boiled in hog's lard,
pancakes baked thin in a frying pan, puddings and dumplings boiled in
water and eaten with a palatable gravy, chicken pot-pie, chicken
soup, eggs boiled or fried and sometimes used in other different
ways; many apple pies and huckleberry pies were made when these
fruits and berries were plenty. They also had for winter rarity
sausages of hog's meat, &c.
In respect to the other attendants of air, water and exercise which
have heretofore been mentioned, this generation enjoyed all these in
the same manner as the first, but, these had superior dwellings which
were comfortable stone houses which every farmer, with very few
exceptions, in this town possessed before the Revolutionary War
commenced. These were closer than the first dwellings erected here,
but still not very tight houses. Each room generally had an outside
door, and all the rooms generally were on the lower floor; the
chamber above these was used for granaries, flour barrels, and to
store many different articles. The cellars were used for their milk
and dairy articles, meat casks, cider barrels, winter apples,
potatoes, turnips, and other vegetables. These cellar articles were
not salable in former times, but were generally used by the families
who produced them.
The table furniture generally consisted of ordinary table knives and
forks, pewter plates, pewter basins and platters of different sizes,
pewter spoons, and a pewter mug which would contain about two quarts
of cider, on which was a cover to open and close by means of a hinge,
which last article was generally brought on the table for drink when
the meal consisted of meat and hearty victuals but was not used with
their milk diets.
In the time of the war many of those articles were destroyed, and
wooden plates, wooden bowls and dishes of different sizes were
manufactured with a turning lathe and used for table furniture.
Now, although our parents lived in this plain and simple style, yet
our mothers were as neat and clean housekeepers as their
circumstances and business concerns would admit. They generally
cleaned house every spring and fall, in which they scrubbed and
washed with soap-suds the under part of the upper floor and beams,
and whitewashed the walls, and every Saturday scrubbed and wiped the
floors of their sitting rooms and kitchens. Floor carpets were not
used in their time. The linen shirts, trowsers and frocks of the men
and boys, and the linen clothes of the women worn during one week,
were in the next boiled in a pot or kettle of lye, and, after a
proper time, the pot was carried out to a pounding block, where,
while hot, the clothes were taken out by pieces and battled on the
block with a battle, and then put in a tub of soapsuds, made of soft
home-made soap, in which the same was washed and thereafter rinsed in
clean water and dried. Our fathers, their sons and slaves, labored
hard in the hot season of the year and often wet their shirts and
trowsers with the sweat of their bodies, and this manner of boiling,
battling and washing those linen clothes was very effectual to clean
the same.
All the travel before the war, in time of the war and for some years
thereafter, was performed on foot, on horseback, and in lumber wagons
and lumber sleds. In this manner people visited each other, and
attended to all their religious and other meetings, and to all their
traveling business concerns. Many of the women had become habituated
to ride on horseback, and had their side-saddles for the same. When a
dance was had, the young men fetched the girls on horseback, and the
young man's horse became the carrier of him and his lady, who mounted
on it behind him. In those times no paints adorned the houses of our
fathers, nor articles of fancy their rooms. No fanciful tables or
table furniture; no great variety of eatables and drinks were
furnished for one meal; no clothing of superfine cloth or silk was
worn in those times, nor even a pair of boots and rarely a fur hat.
Pleasure wagons and pleasure sleighs did not ease and make
comfortable the travels of our parents; no umbrellas covered their
heads from the rays of the sun and the storms through which they had
to pass. All of which articles are now furnished in great abundance,
and generally all can enjoy more or less of them.
The buildings of those times, especially before the war, for storing
grain, hay, horses and cattle, consisted of a barn and one or two
barracks for each farmer, all covered with straw roofs. The barns
were built nearly square on the ground, with a floor through its
middle and a stable along one side for horses and one along the
other side for cattle. When the barn would not contain all the grain
raised on the farm, one or two barracks were erected by setting four
or five long posts in the ground, hewed eight square, tapered towards
the top end. Holes to contain iron bolts about an inch and a half
thick were bored through each post at about one foot and a half
apart, from the bottom to the top. These holes contained the bolts on
which the frame of the roof laid, which was raised to the top of the
poles by means of a windlass, and, after being filled with grain,
whenever any of it was taken out, the roof was let down therewith to
prevent rain and snow from blowing on it.
This generation generally ended their days after the commencement of
a great change in our country; and by contrasting their manner of
life with that of the present time (now 1858), we behold the great
change made in a term of about half a century in the habits of life
in this town.
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