THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
December 26 
9o6 
The Farmer and His Chances Fifty 
Years Ago. 
Looking: Back Half a Century. 
PROF. W. J. BKAL. 
(Concluded.) 
The School. —The school teacher could 
do rather better; he boarded around and 
taught “ reading ’riting and ’rithmetic,” 
made the pens for the scholars out of 
home-grown goose quills ; set the copies, 
built the fires and swept the house, which 
was usually made of logs. The benches 
were of slabs each on four legs and with¬ 
out any backs. Ink was made at home 
and was not very good. Here is where 
some of my generation got a start on 
crooked backs and crooked legs. The 
readers and arithmetics were of many 
kinds, often hardly any two being alike. 
In those days considerable use was made 
of the ferule and blue beech switches. 
Every farmer had a rifle, of course, and 
knew how to use it, often finding it 
profitable to spend some time shooting 
deer and turkeys. 
Front Yard and Garden. —In front 
of the house was very early to be seen a 
picket fence, the pickets perhaps split 
from oak. There were the gate and a 
long, straight path leading to the front 
door. In the yard between the stumps 
were set some rose bushes, lilacs, 
pinks, hollyhocks, a few cherry trees, 
apple trees, and, nearby, some currant 
bushes. In the garden, all fenced in to 
keep the hens and pigs out, were raised 
beds of onions, lettuce, carrots, beets, 
etc., in short rows running across the 
beds. Cucumbers and cabbages were in 
rows on level ground, pumpkins were 
raised in the hills of corn : peas for the 
table were sown with oats to hold them 
up. Tomatoes had not yet become com¬ 
mon. The supply of strawberries was 
very meager and came entirely from 
native patches in fields. Blackberries 
and raspberries were usually abundant 
and good in clearings or where some 
storm had formerly blown down the 
trees. Some fruit was dried or preserved 
in sugar, as the canning process was still 
unknown. 
The House. —Let us look over the 
house of an uncle. It is made of logs 
notched at the corners, hewed on the in¬ 
side, chinked with wood, and newly 
coated with mud every autumn. Two 
or three small sashes with 8 by 10 glass 
let in the light. The door is made of 
boards, the hinges are of wood, the latch 
and catch of wood—the former is lifted 
on the inside by a string, extending out 
through a small hole. The latch-string 
was always out, i. e., not pulled inside to 
keep people out. The roof was made of 
unshaved shingles, shakes and in some 
cases elm bark were used, held in place 
by poles. The floor consisted of planks 
of basswood, split and hewed by hand 
before any sawmill was built in the 
neighborhood. Poles were roughly put 
together for a bedstead, a straw tick was 
always used, and, sometimes, a feather 
bed. Most of the seats were made of 
hewn planks, supported by four legs, 
which entered large holes in the planks. 
There was a small hole below the floor 
—the cellar—for winter vegetables. The 
open fireplace was of generous size, large 
enough to take on a back log a foot in 
diameter, and six feet long. The chim¬ 
ney was outside the house, made of split 
stielcs and plastered over with mud, and 
a squirt gun was kept handy to extin¬ 
guish fire Avhich was liable to catch in 
the chimney. Andirons in the form of 
big stones held up the wood. A stout 
crane with hooks like a long letter S 
held two or three pots and kettles, and a 
griddle when necessary. Bread and 
johnny-cake were baked in pans or on a 
board, or in a tin baker set before the 
fire. 
The Furniture.— The family was very 
careful to cover the tire overnight and 
not allow it to go out. I hqve often been 
half a mile to the house of a neighbor to 
get some fire. In some instances, fire 
was struck with powder, cotton, tinder 
and shavings by the aid of a flint-lock of 
a gun, or the back of a steel knife struck 
on a flint. The stove is about the height 
of a table, having a pothole at each end, 
a large one between them and a cubic 
oven in the middle over the fire. It was 
very heavy, and ill adapted to do good 
cooking, but was much less annoying, 
and burned the faces of the women less 
than the open fire. In the half-round 
beams overhead were some pegs bearing 
the gun, the seed corn in season, strings 
of onions and sundry other articles. In 
autumn long poles in the upper part of 
the room supported rings of peeled pump¬ 
kins for drying. 
The Clothing —Somewhere about the 
premises may be seen the improved spin¬ 
ning-wheel, the reel for yarn, and per¬ 
haps cards for converting wool into rolls 
for spinning. A few black sheep among 
the flock produced wool convenient to 
mix with the white and saved dyeing. 
Stockings, mittens and suspenders were 
knit by hand. Men’s shirts were made of 
homespun linen, or of cheap striped or 
checkered cotton cloth. The cradle was a 
long box on two rockers, a trundle-bed 
for the children was shoved under the 
large bed during the daytime to econom¬ 
ize space. A ladder led to the low loft 
with a rattling, squeaking floor. In 
this chamber slept the boys and girls. 
Huge Jiome-made chests of wood served 
to hold the surplus bedding. 
Religion and Pleasures. —Religious 
services with preaching were held in priv¬ 
ate dwellings or in the schoolhouse. Plain 
coffins were made on short notice to or¬ 
der. The greatest entertainments con¬ 
sisted of barn-raisings, husking bees, 
logging bees, quilting and tea parties, 
paring bees, spelling schools and sing¬ 
ing schools. There were love matches in 
those times as now, and rivalry in various 
games and in studies. There were plenty 
of quack medicines and some quack doc¬ 
tors. If a tooth made trouble, the only 
remedy was to have it taken out with 
the barbarous turn-keys. 
People of Sterling Worth. Though 
Inclined to Superstition. —The farmer 
of 50 years ago was usually not a. broad 
man. He had very few books and rarely 
took a newspaper. He knew little that 
was going on in the world excepting in 
his immediate neighborhood. Juvenile 
books and papers were unknown. The 
farmer and his family were superstitious, 
usually consulting the almanac to see the 
signs of the Zodiac so as to know when 
was the best time to wean the baby. The 
phases of the moon were observed as con¬ 
trolling the weather, the time to kill hogs, 
plant potatoes and sow turnips. This 
was past the-time when a hot horse-shoe 
was put in the churn to drive the witches 
out. A letter from the post-office was 
written so as to be folded without an en¬ 
velope. The postage was 25 cents and was 
to be paid by the one receiving the missive. 
Hides were tanned on shares, and in 
autumn the intinerant shoemaker, going 
from house to house, made up the stock 
of shoes for the family, and made new 
harnesses or repaired the old ones. * 
Everything considered, the farmer of 
50 years ago was enterprising, industri¬ 
ous and progressive, not usually very 
skillful in anything, but to some extent 
compelled to be a jack-of-all-trades. It 
seems needless to enumerate even by way 
of contrast, the present condition of the 
farmer, including all of his numerous ad¬ 
vantages by way of improved implements, 
cheap transportation, better and cheaper 
mails, books, papers, etc., etc., as every 
school boy or girl is capable of presenting 
this half of the story in high colors. 
Prof. Barnard writes of an old French 
Canadian and his sister who are growing 
the most remarkable fruits and vegeta¬ 
bles he ever saw. But he says ‘‘they can 
get no rest! The man watches the fruit 
till midnight when he wakes his sister, 
who continues on guard till sunrise, 
otherwise their labor would be thrown 
away, as they are continually subject to 
the incursions of pilferers from the 
village not far away. 
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