No descriptive documents can be interesting without introductory preamble to take the minds of the readers back to the life experiences of long [ago] before the actual personal histories are presented. Facts about our ancestors, who lived before and during the 1800’s, are shrouded and dim in some instances as very little was thought of keeping records of families in the hustle and bustle of settling in new homes far distant from the old ones.
Little bits of mouth-to-mouth information have to be taken as authoritative and pieced together, but it is amazing what beautiful stories can be woven if a series of events are put together. We watch television in our enlightened age of entertainment and little realize the portrayal before our eyes is actually the picture of events, which took place on the trips our grandparents, experienced in the search for new country in which to settle.
Certainly the parts are played by professional actors and actresses, but if one can imagine enough that the faces of one’s own ancestors are put on the shoulders of those whom we see, we have a decided personal touch as though we are looking at our own flesh and blood of a hundred years or more in the past and can share liberally in all of the difficult situations as well as the joys which came to those who were responsible for us in our present environments.
Long trains of wagons, followed by walking livestock, wound their arduous ways through timber and brush, around hills, across rivers and creeks bumping over rocks and fallen logs, just as the TV actors play it out to the last details of voice inflections and facial expressions, as each small bit of landscape before them with its problems. In our poor estimations those who wear beards and handlebar mustaches above old-fashioned clothing for men and long, voluminous skirts and high shoes for women to fit the age they are picturing, should be given the highest awards of “Show Biz” as they are recording the events which led up to our own lives.
No one wants to return to the days when the head of the household saw his helpmate and offspring safely tucked into bed under pounds of blankets and spreads, before the solitary candle was pinched out between his thumb and forefinger, then he made a hurried dash to himself roll under the blankets to keep warm and sleep to the break of day by the heat of their bodies, when he arose, shivering, and started roaring fires to warm the house to livable temperatures again. Many times a sleeper’s hair would be frozen to the pillow by the ice formed from the sleeper’s breath, the tea kettle would have to be thawed and breakfast meat, which had been sliced the previous evening, was thawed and cooked in one operation.
Loaves of bread were thawed in a steamer and the children shivered as they ate breakfast. If a house had a living room in addition to the kitchen and bedrooms, a heating stove was also started with small split sticks, then chunks were placed on the red-hot coals to burn more slowly and hold the heat. These stoves were four to five feet long and three feet high with a front door for feeding in the wood and raking ashes through as was needed. Many had a flat, round lid on the top for a kettle or pot in which food could be cooked if the weather was cold enough to “keep the room stove going hard.”
Next: Father’s Birth & Marriages