1888 



GLEANINGS IN UEE CULTUKE. 



127 



MRS. MAHALA B. CHADDOCK. 



A BRIEF SKETCH OF HER LIFE, BY MRS. LUCINDA 

 HARRISON. 



fHE subject of this sketch was born in Grant 

 County. Ind., Dec. 15, 1S44. Her progenitors 

 were Scotch, and distinguished for their 

 great strength and endurance, her mater- 

 nal grandfather at one time lifting a bed- 

 tick filled with wheat. When she was six years 

 old she met with an irrejiarable loss by the death of 

 her mother. Her father, John Pettay, being a 

 poor man, the children were " put out," and by the 

 vicissitudes of fortune she reached a haven of rest 

 in the home of a family of Friends at Missinnevva. 

 Here she became fired with the ambition of be- 

 coming a teacher, and bent all her energies to that 

 end. She attended scliool from seven to nine 

 months in the year, earning- her board and clothes 

 until she taught her first school, which was a sub- 

 scription one, when she was fifteen. She attended 

 school one winter more, and then commenced 

 teaching in the public schools, which she continued 

 to do until she married, at the age of twenty-two, 

 John Chaddock, prominent farmer of Fulton Co., 

 Illinois. 



MRS. MAHALA B. CH.^DDOCK. 



Since her marriage (with the exception of a few 

 years of early married life) she has lived on the same 

 farm. In 1873 she hived a runaway swarm of black 

 bees, which had clustered upon a peach-tree, and 

 this was her first start in bee culture. I was then 

 writing bee-letters to the Pea inc Farmer, and Mrs. 

 Chaddock was a contributor to that paper, under 

 the nom da plume of " Hail Columbia." She wrote 

 to me, asking some questions about bees; and when 

 I had read Gleanings I would send it to her to 

 read, and return. She became a subscriber and a 

 contributor. I sold her an Italian queen in 1874, 

 and she Italianized her apiary. Her apiary is not 

 large, as it has never numbered more than 30 colo- 

 nies, but she has sold bees nearly every year, and 

 is now wintering 17 colonies. 



During the hard times of 1873 to 1878, when our 



national statesmen (?) were reaching resumption, 

 through contraction, of specie payment, and 

 nearly " squoze " the life out of the industries 

 of our land in so doing, many a poor farmer went 

 down under a blanket mortgage, and tramps filled 

 the land. Mr. and Mrs. C. worked hard and almost 

 unceasingly to free their farm and fair home from 

 a heavy debt which hung like a dark pall over it. At 

 this time. 1 think, Mrs. C.'s energy, coupled with her 

 great desire to get out of debt, led her to overtax 

 her strength. In the fall of 1878 I visited her, driv- 

 ing there with my horse and buggy, the distance 

 being sixty miles. It was dark and raining when I 

 reached her pleasant home, and I was weary with 

 my drive; but it wa.s soon dispelled by the cheery 

 welcome I received from her and lier excellent 

 husband. During my stay I examined her apiary, 

 and soon saw that it was well cared for, and the 

 whitest of comb honey graced her table. I never 

 ate finer canned peaches than at her table, which 

 were sweetened with honey. At the time of my 

 visit she was a woman of splendid physique, 

 abounding in health and strength, and said she en- 

 joyed taking her ax and cutting up trees after they 

 were felled. I thought I never saw a person pos- 

 sessing equal magnetism. In 1876 she took a sick 

 sisterin-law to Dansville, N. Y, to a sanitarium at 

 that place, and also visited the Centennial at Phila- 

 delphia. While at the "Home on the Hillside " she 

 made the acquaintance of Clara Barton, who has a 

 world-wide reputation for philanthropy and good 

 will to all mankind. When Miss Barton, as presi- 

 dent of the Red-Cross Society, steamed down the 

 Mississippi in 1884 to relieve the distress caused by 

 the flood, she invited Mrs. Chaddock to accom- 

 pany her on board the steamer " Mattie Belle." 

 Miss Barton used to call Mrs. C. her "child of na- 

 ture." 



Mrs. C, by her energy and varied abilities, is a 

 fair type of the American country-woman, a class 

 peculiar to this land, and scarcely possible in any 

 other. That she may regain her former health 

 and strength, and that there may be many years of 

 usefulness in store for her, is the sincere wish of 

 her friend,— Mrs. L. Harrison. 



Peoria, 111. 



Mrs. H., we owe you a vote of thanks for 

 your excellent sketch of our friend and con- 

 tributor, Mrs. Chaddock. I do hope, as you 

 say, that she is a fair type of our American 

 country-women. She is a peculiar type, it 

 is true ; and several times our new contrib- 

 utors, before they got acquainted so as to 

 understand her as her friends understand 

 her, have complained some. But it really 

 does me good to see somebody so intensely 

 original as xjur good friend Mrs. C. God 

 didn't intend us to be all after one pattern ; 

 and these gifts that have been vouchsafed 

 to us should not be repressed. Whatever 

 the gifts are, they should be chastened and 

 subdued by Clivist's love; but let us not re- 

 press them. Mrs. Chaddock has, I am sure, 

 been the means of doing a great amount of 

 good, for she has a peculiar way that en- 

 ables her to do what you and I and every- 

 body else would fail in doing ; and to illus- 

 trate what I mean, I think I can do no better 

 than to stop right here and give a sample of 

 her work and her manner of working, in the 

 terse little article that follows this oiie. 



