THE OLD HOME WEEK BOOK
History of the Village of Prospect, PA
Transcribed and Donated by Robert A. Stumpf
Chapter III
Settling In The Wilderness
What a state of society the pages of those old newspapers reveals. The "news"
in them is meagre to starvation and old -- months old. It will be interesting
to notice the dates given and the means of disseminating intelligence, as
well as the subject matter of the items, and compare them with any of the
ordinary news sheets of today.
The advertisements show how primitive the life of the people and state of
society was. We must remember that when the first settlers located where
Prospect now stands, they were very near the beginnings of history in Western
Pennsylvania. They came there by the Indian trails from Turtle Creek, Fort
Duquesne, and Kuskuskies on the Beaver. They came first on foot or on horseback,
and then, when the road was cut through from the Ohio at Fort Duquesne, they
came in the great Conestoga wagons which plied across the mountains from
the East. With the mother and children in the wagon, the rifle slung above
their heads as they sat on the household effects, the older boys driving
the cattle and the father driving the team or walking alongside, the settlers
came, to make for themselves a home in the vast wilderness.
What did they see as they journeyed day by day and camped by the way-side
through the night? A mighty growth of forest trees on either side and on
all sides as far as the eye could penetrate. The face of the country has
changed since then. At that time it was, and always had been, an almost unbroken
wilderness. All that portion of the state north of the Ohio river was known
as the "Indian country". The Indian trails and the paths beaten by wild animals
to the salt-licks and along the water courses, were all the roads that
intersected the hills and valleys. Swarthy savages had not long since traversed
these ways in war-paint and feathers bent on rapine and destruction. Poisonous
serpents, copperheads and rattlesnakes, lurked in the stony clefts and by
the leaf strewn path. And prowling beasts of prey; panthers, catamounts,
wild-cats, wolves and bears roamed about seeking what they might devour.
Here and there green oases, where the Indians had long before burnt over
the land or had their encampments, dotted with feeding deer, broke the monotony
of the dark forests. Abundant watercourses they crossed and streams fed by
the copious springs with which the region abounded. The hills were cut through
by them and they in turn were marked by shady dells, savage gorges, matted
thickets of fox grapes, chicken grapes, Virginia creeper, crab apple and
greenbrier, blackberry, raspberry and other plants, and vast swamps where
the frog and turtle, water snakes and other crawling denizens of the slimy
depths over which the dragon-fly and snake-feeder hovered, glittering in
all the prismatic colors of the rainbow, greeted their eyes as they moved
slowly to their destination, and diversified the sylvan scenery.
And when they arrived at the place where their home was to be nobody was
there to meet them with the word of cheer and the glad hand of welcome. They
were alone in the wilderness. The dark woods were all around them and all
they had of civilized or even human life was what they had brought with them
in the big Conestoga wagon - the wife and children and the household goods.
But those men were the men for the hour and for the duty. they swung the
axe and in a short time threw up a half-faced cabin; a big log in front against
which the fire was kindled, a shelter of poles and bark and a bed of leaves;
and thus the first nights were spent.
Then a log cabin was builded. It would not be necessary to describe the building
of it, seeing it has not yet entirely disappeared from our view, but not
many men now living know how it was erected. And therefor, it may be well
to make a note of it right here. While our pioneer is coming others are coming.
Let us suppose some are already on the ground. Not every man can be first.
To him who came last the others extend their welcome. On his quarter section,
or smaller farm, a spot is selected for the location of his house. It is
always near a spring. A day is set for the building of it. Choppers, splitters,
cornermen and carpenters are chosen. Timber is felled, clapboards and puncheons
are split, often enough on the site of the house to build the house, so luxuriant
is the growth of the forest, and the day appointed for the "raising". From
far and near the neighbors come, they select a man for each corner --"corner
men" they call them -- whose duty it is to notch the logs as they are hoisted
up to them and to put them in their places. When the logs are a few rounds
high the joists and floor-puncheons are put in place. The places for the
door and windows are made by sawing out the openings for them and a similar
opening is made for the chimney which is made of mud and sticks. The roof
is made of clapboards held in place by logs, which in turn are held in place
by projecting logs at the ends of the building.
Later the carpenters levelled off the puncheon floor, with adzes, fitted
up a door and window frames, glazed with deer skin or greased paper, made
a table of split logs and stools, and benches of the same rough material.
A bed was made by fastening forked sticks into the floor, laying across these
supports, the other end of which are inserted between the timbers which form
the wall of the house, put up a front, fill in the bedding, and make a couch
whereon the honest laborer may sleep the sweet sleep of innocence and weariness
in peace.
Pegs around the walls are inserted for hanging garments on and a pair of
buck's antlers is put up over the broad fireplace to receive the rifle which
forms a necessary part of the furnishing of every well equipped household.
In many houses a loom is set up whereon is woven the linen, woolen and
"linsey-wolsey" cloth from which the garments worn by the men and women are
fashioned. The flax is grown on the cleared patch beside the corn, beans
and potatoes. It has to be pulled and spread to cure, fired, broken, skutched,
heckled, spun and woven by hand; just as the wool must be shorn from the
sheep, carded, spun, reeled and woven to make the cloth with which the clothes
are to be made -- all by hand. And the mixture of the linen and the wool
in the spinning and weaving is used to make "linsey-woolsey", so servicable
and so rough, which some of us yet living wore in our youthful days.
The food of the family was plain and wholesome. At first there was
corn-bread-pone and Johnny cake, with that one Indian dish that has survived,
"succotash", that is corn and beans; psittamon, a compound of dried venison
beaten in a mortar and mixed with parched corn, maple sugar and deer's tallow;
hominy, which was corn leached in lye and boiled; game of all sorts; mush
and milk and all sorts of wild fruits and berries in season. Later, when
the fields were cleared, began the harvests of wheat and rye, buckwheat and
occasionally barley. The folds yielded mutton and the pig-pens pork, beef
and veal also came to grace the board. Chickens, ducks, geese and turkeys
came from the pens and coops, after the wild turkeys, pheaants and smaller
game grew scarce. Pumpkins, turnips and rutabagas, green-corn (roasting ears),
and beans, used in succotash figured largely in their season separately.
They were dried, too, with the fruits and berries which gave variety to the
table before the art of canning came into general use.
The berries which grew wild and abundantly added not a little to the settler's
bill of fare. There were black-berries, dew-berries, black, red and white
raspberries, straw-berries, thimble-berries, blue-berries, and the most prolific,
long suffering much despised but useful of all -- elderberries, together
with wild plums, service-berries, which in Nova Scotia are called "Indian
pear berries", haws, wintergreen or mountain-tea berries,and other kinds.
Bye and bye a garden was made and then the good women came into their own.
Such gardens one seldom sees now-a-days. There was a vegetable end with its
cabbage, beets and onion. There were the rows of beans and peas, the beds
of carrots and parsnips, the little corner for chives, garlic, and parsley,
the cucumber bed, though the cucumbers grew better in the ashes on the burnt
land, -- the horseradish and tomatoes. And, by the way, it will be in order
here to say that tomatoes were not always considered a wholesome vegetable,
in fact they were by many considered poisonous and were called "Jerusalem
apples". And thereby hangs a tale. It was told to the writer by an old friend
and it was on this wise. When his mother came with her family to America,
after tarrying a while in Erie where the opportunity was offered to buy for
a trifle a large part of the land on which the city now stands, and refused,
the family finally located near the Berry church on the road from Harmony
to Rochester. To that church they went where the men appeared in their bare
feet and shirt sleeves and the women carried their shoes in their hand to
within sight of the church and only then put them on. Together they sat within
the log walls on puncheon benches. The good woman was so discouraged by her
surroundings in the wild, uncouth, howling wilderness that one Sunday she
determined, when she reached home, to end her life. It was an awful conclusion
to reach, but she could no longer endure the wilderness and roughness of
the present life. She was desparate. Anything -- no matter what it might
be in the dark unknown -- was better, she felt, than the present ills. She
formed her resolution and without consulting anyone, went into her garden
and ate a tomato. To her surprise she did not die. She did not even get sick.
But she learned, what all our foremothers gradualy learned, that tomatoes
were not poisonous.
Then in the gardens of our grandmothers there was the corner for herbs; There
was camomile of which they brewed a hideous and maybe wholesome drink; Cumfrey,
which we boys used to pound and press out the juice of to scent the worms
with when we went fishing. Old Man and Old Woman that they wrapped in their
handkerchiefs around their hymn-books when they went to church; peppermint
and spearmint, summer savory, and sweet marjoram that went into the stuffing
of the chickens and turkeys that graced the board on Thanksgiving and other
days; sage and coriander that flavored the sausage according to taste; thyme,
saffron to bring out the measles, fennel, rue and sweet Basil to be used
as desired, and tansy, the standard ingredient in the morning bitters.
And the flowers; who can forget them? Grand, hardy, beautiful, gaudy or modest;
it is a delight to think of them. The big sweet lilacs, purple and white;
the roses of all varieties; the howling sunflowers and hollyhocks; the wee
daisies the modest violets; Easter flowers or daffodils among which, in
grandmother's garden, the Easter rabbit laid its colored eggs; and sweet
lilies-of-the-vally; the pinks and sweet-williams; marigolds and nasturtions;
poppies and tulips; larkspurs and peonies; lavender, which they laid in their
bureau-drawers and clothes-chests to scent their garments with a holy fragrance;
bachelor buttons; cowslips; butter-cups; and rue, herb of grace; snow drops
and snow balls; sweet peas and pansies, otherwise called "Johnnie-jump-ups";
every flower of which has a different and most expressive countenance, just
as the face of every sheep in a flock, is different from all others and
individually expressive; and the morning glories convolvulus, columbine;
trumpet flower and honeysuckle; with the sweet brier or eglantine which they
placed where it would grow and shade the porch. Who has not sat on such a
shady portico -- the vestibule to a home within as sweet and pure?
Then there were the nuts furnished by the wild trees without money and without
price. Big, white, ridgy shellbarks; brown chesnuts which the frost threw
down; black walnuts and sweet butternuts; fat hazelnuts, so good to open
with a knife and eat in study hours; and beech-nuts, for whoever saw fit
to gather them.
And honey which came with the busy bees which came into the woods when the
settlers came --curious fact --never came before them. At once a delicacy
and a food, fit for a king and wholesome for an invalid, a soverign emollient
for a cough or cold and a viand suitable to grace the stateliest feast or
feed an infant in its mother's arms. Afterward it became a source of revenue
and a helpful addition to the pioneer's table. The swarms of bees that left
the mother-hive took to the woods and settled in some hollow tree. There
they remained until discovered and then the lucky finder found a rich reward.
As many as two hundred and fifty pounds of honey have been taken from one
of these vagrant swarms. The wax was made into candles or sold at a good
price.
Then there were the merrymakings, which turned work into play, any one of
which, if properly reported, would furnish material for a whole chapter.
There was the raising, when the house or barn was put up. One man could not
do the work alone. The logs were too heavy for one man to handle alone. Word
was sent to the neighbors. Then "neighborng" began. On the appointed day
the neighbors came. What was too much for one was light work for many. The
heavy logs were put in place; the house or barn was "raised" nobody was the
worse and the proprietor was the better __ and under obligations to help
his neighbor in his turn when he was called upon.
Again there were "haulings" when all the teams in the immedate neighborhood
were summoned to help haul out manure, haul in grain, or to do whatever was
required. And "loggings", and "choppings", corn-huskings, flax skutching
frolics for the women, butchering, and anything else in which more than the
household could engage. Any one of these and every one deserves a separate
chapter; but who is sufficient for these things? |
