THE INSIDE OF OUR HOUSE--A PICTURE FROM MEMORY.
As I have been led away, for some years, following poor Indian in his
belief, life and death, and in doing so have wandered from my story, I
will now return to the second or third year of our settlement. I
described how the body of our second house was made, and the roof put on.
I now look at its interior. The lower floor was made of whitewood boards,
in their rough state, nailed down. The upper floor was laid with the same
kind of boards, though they were not nailed When they shrunk they could
be driven together, to close the cracks. The chimney was what we called a
"stick" or "Dutch chimney." The way it was built; two crooked sticks, six
inches wide and four inches thick, were taken for arms; the foot of these
sticks were placed on the inner edge or top of the second log of the
house, and the upper ends laid against the front beam of the chamber
floor. These sticks or arms were about six feet apart at the mouth of the
chimney. Father cut a green black oak and sawed off some bolts, took a
froe, that he brought from York State, and rived out shakes three inches
wide and about an inch thick. Of these and clay he laid up the chimney.
It started from the arms and the chamber beam. After it got up a little
it was like laying up a pen. He spread on some clay, then laid on four
sticks and pressed them into the clay, then spread on clay again,
covering the sticks entirely. In this way our chimney was built, and its
size, at the top, was about two by four feet. It proved to be quite a
good and safe chimney.
[Illustration: "THE HOUSE BUILT 1836."]
The last thing before retiring for the night, after the fire had burned
low and the big coals were covered with ashes, was to look up chimney and
see if it had taken fire. If it had, and was smoking on the inside,
father would take a ladder, set it up in the chimney, take a little water
and go up and put it out. This was seldom necessary, as it never took
fire unless the clay cracked in places, or the weather wore it off.
When there was a small fire in the evening, I could stand on the clay
hearth and look through the chimney at the stars as they twinkled and
shone in their brightness. I could count a number of them as I stood
there. Father drove into a log, back of the fire place, two iron eyes on
which to hang a crane; they extended into the room about one foot.
Around, and at one side of these he built the back of the fireplace of
clear clay a foot thick at the bottom, but thinner when it got up to the
sticks; after the clay dried he hung the crane. It is seen that we had
no jambs to our fireplace. Father sometimes at night would get a backlog
in. I have seen those which he got green, and very large, which were
sometimes twenty inches through and five or six feet long. When he got
the log to the door, he would take a round stick as large as his arm,
lay it on the floor, so that his log would come crossways of it, and
then crowd the log. I have seen him crowd it with a handspike and the
stick would roll in opposite the fireplace. He would tell us children to
stand back and take the chairs out of the way. Then he would roll the
log into the fireplace, and very carefully so as not to break or crack
the clay hearth, for mother had all the care of that, and wished it kept
as nicely as possible. When he had the log on to suit him, he would say,
"There, I guess that will last awhile." Then he would bring in two green
sticks, six or eight inches through and about three feet long, and place
them on the hearth with the ends against the backlog. These he called
his Michigan andirons; said he was proud of them. He said they were wood
instead of iron, to be sure, but he could afford to have a new pair
whenever he wanted them. When he brought in a large fore-stick, and laid
it across his andirons, he had the foundation for a fire, for
twenty-four hours.
On the crane hung two or three hooks, and on these, over the fire, mother
did most of her cooking. As we had no oven, mother had what we called a
bake kettle; this was a flat, low kettle, with a cast cover, the rim of
which turned up an inch or two, to hold coals. In this kettle, she baked
our bread. The way she did it; she would heat the lid, put her loaf of
bread in the kettle, take the shovel and pull out some coals on the
hearth, set the kettle on them, put the lid on and shovel some coals on
to it. Then she would watch it, turn it round a few times, and the bread
was done, and it came on the table steaming. When we all gathered around
the family board we did the bread good justice. We were favored with
what we called "Michigan appetites." Sometimes when we had finished our
meal there were but few fragments left, of anything except the loaf,
which was four or five inches through, a foot and a half across, and four
and a half feet in circumference.
Later, mother bought her a tin baker, which she placed before the fire to
bake her bread, cake, pies, etc. This helped her very much in getting
along. It was something new, and we thought it quite an invention. Mother
had but one room, and father thought he would build an addition at the
west end of our house, as the chimney was on the east end. He built it
with a shed roof. The lower floor was made of boards, the upper floor of
shakes. These were gotten out long enough to reach from beam to beam and
they were lapped and nailed fast.
This room had one window on the west, and a door on the east, which led
into the front room. In one corner stood a bed surrounded by curtains as
white as snow; this mother called her spare-day bed. Two chests and a few
chairs completed the furniture of this room; it was mother's sitting room
and parlor. I remember well how pleased she was when she got a rag-carpet
to cover the floor.
Now I have in my mind's eye a view of my mother's front room. Ah! there
is the door on the south with its wooden latch and leather string. East
of the door is a window, and under it stands a wooden bench, with a water
pail on it; at the side of the window hangs the tin dipper. In the corner
beyond this stands the ladder, the top resting on one side of an opening
through which we entered the chamber. In the centre of the east end
burned the cheerful fire, at the left stood a kettle, pot and
bread-kettle, a frying pan (with its handle four feet long) and griddle
hung over them. Under the north window stood a table with its scantling
legs, crossed, and its whitewood board top, as white as hands and ashes
could scour it. Farther on, in the north-west corner stood mother's bed,
with a white sheet stretched on a frame made for that purpose, over it,
and another at the back and head. On the foot and front of the frame were
pinned calico curtains with roses and rosebuds and little birds, some
perched on a green vine that ran through the print, others on the wing,
flying to and from their straw colored nests. These curtains hung, oh,
how gracefully, around that bed! They were pinned back a little at the
front, revealing a blue and white coverlet, of rare workmanship. In the
next and last corner stood the family cupboard. The top shelves were
filled with dishes, which mother brought from the state of New York. They
were mostly blue and white, red and white and there were some on the top
shelf which the children called their "golden edged dishes."
The bottom of the cupboard was inclosed; by opening two small doors I
could look in. I found not there the luxuries of every clime, but what
was found there was eaten with as much relish as the most costly viands
would be now. It was a place I visited often. In hooks attached to a beam
overhead hung two guns which were very frequently used. A splint broom
and five or six splint bottomed chairs constituted nearly all the
furniture of this room. Before that cheerful fire in one of those
chairs, often sat one making and mending garments, little and big. This
she did with her own hands, never having heard of a sewing machine, as
there were none in existence then. She had to make every stitch with her
fingers. We were not so fortunate as the favored people of ancient times;
our garments would wax old.
Mother made a garment for father to work in which he called his frock. It
was made of linen cloth that she brought from the State of New York. It
was like a shirt only the sleeves were short. They reached half way to
his elbows. This he wore, in place of a shirt, when working hard in warm
weather. Southeast of the house father dug into the ground and made him
an out door cellar, in which we kept our potatoes through the winter
without freezing them. We found it very convenient.
Father wanted a frame barn very much but that was out of his reach. We
needed some place to thrash, and to put our grain and hay, and where we
could work in wet weather, but to have it was out of the question, so we
did the next best thing, went at it and built a substitute. In the first
place we cut six large crotches, went about fourteen rods north of the
house, across the lane, dug six holes and set the two longest crotches in
the center east and west. Then put the four shorter ones, two on the
south and two on the north side so as to give the roof a slant. In the
crotches we laid three large poles and on these laid small poles and
rails, then covered the whole with buckwheat straw for a roof. We cut
down straight grained timber, split the logs open and hewed the face and
edges of them; we laid them back down on the ground, tight together and
made a floor under the straw roof.
This building appeared from a distance something like a hay barrack. Now
we had a sort of thrashing-floor. Back of this we built a log stable. So
the north side was enclosed but the east and west ends and the south side
were open. We had to have good weather when we threshed with our flails,
as the snow or rain would blow right through it. It was a poor thing but
the best we had for several years, until father was able, then he built
him a good frame barn. It stands there on the old place yet (1875). I
often think of the old threshing floor. When I got a nice buck with large
horns I cut off the skull with the hide, so as to keep them in a natural
position, and nailed them on the corners of our threshing floor in front.
The cold and storms of winter did not affect them much. There they
remained, mute and silent, to guard the place, and let all passers by
know that a sort of a hunter lived there. Father had good courage and
worked hard. He bared his arms and brow to the adverse winds, storms,
disappointments, cares and labors of a life in the woods. He said, if he
had his health, some day we would be better off. In a few years his words
of encouragement proved true. He fought his way through manfully, like a
veteran pioneer, raised up from poverty to peace and plenty. This he
accomplished by hard labor, working days and sometimes nights.
One time father wanted to clear off a piece of ground for buckwheat by
the first of July. He had not much time in which to do it. We had learned
that buckwheat would catch and grow very stout on new and stumpy ground.
Sometimes it filled very full and loaded heavy. It was easily gathered
and easily threshed, and helped us very much for our winter's bread. One
night after supper, father sat down and smoked his pipe; it was quite
dark when he got up, took his ax in his hand and went out. We all knew
where he had gone. It was to put up his log heaps, as he had some
burning. Mother said, "We will go and help pick up and burn." When we
started, looking towards the woods, we could see him dimly through the
darkness. As we neared him we could see his bare arms with the handspike
in his hands rolling up the logs. The fire took a new hold of them when
he rolled them together. The flames would shoot up bright, and his
countenance appeared to be a pale red, while thousands of sparks flew
above his head and disappeared in the air. In a minute there was an
awkward boy at his side with a handspike, taking hold and doing the best
he could to help, and there was mother by the light of the fires, who a
short time before in her native home, was an invalid and her life
despaired of, now, with some of her children, picking up chips and sticks
and burning them out of the way.
We were well rewarded for our labor. The buckwheat came up and in a
little time it was all in bloom. It put on its snow white blossoms, and
the wind that caressed it, and caused it to wave, bore away on its wings
to the woods the fragrance of the buckwheat field.
The little industrious bee came there with its comrades and extracted its
load of sweet, then flew back to its native home in the forest. There it
deposited its load, stored it away carefully against the time of need.
Nature taught the bee that a long, cold winter was coming and that it
was best to work and improve the time, and the little fellow has left us
a very bright example to follow.