LAURENS COUNTY, GA - DEEDS  - 1833 LETTERS

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From 
The Forest Blade, Swainsboro. GA 
Wednesday, June 5, 2002 
http://www.forest-blade.com/ 

1833 letters describe area domestic characteristics 

By FARRIS CADLE 
Part One 
We will be publishing four parts of this article written
by Mr. Cadle. He has transcribed these old letters and
followed the original spellings.

In the late 1800s an eclectic monthly magazine called The
Old Homestead was published in Savannah. The April, 1891
issue carried the transcript of a series of letters that
had been written more than half a century earlier by
twenty-year-old Mrs. James Hine, to her mother. Little is
know about Mrs. Hine. She was from New York City, and
sailed to Savannah. From there she took a stage to Dublin
to visit her brother. This route took her through the
middle of Emanuel County. It is difficult to determine
which parts of the narrative deal specifically with
Emanuel County, but her comments are representative for
the entire region. 

Mrs. Hine was mesmerized by the coarseness and simplicity
of the people she met. Her descriptions are of particular
interest for the great detail they provide about domestic
life. During this period there were few hotels or public
livery stables in the countryside. As a result, stage
lines had formal arrangements for their passengers and
horses to stay overnight at private homes. 

Dublin, Laurens County, December 20 [1833].-- 
[My Dear Mother,] 
I feel as if I had so much to say I scarcely know where
to begin--so much that is new to me meets me at every
step. We left Savannah on the 8th.... 

When we got to Norwoods, where we were to spend the first
night, evening was closing in around us, but there was
still sufficient light to see the size and general
appearance of the house. As we approached it I saw that
it was of logs, a single story in height, presenting but
one window and one door, the window unglazed and a
ponderous wooden shutter used to close it. I supposed the
building to be the barn, and in my own mind pronounced
upon the unthriftiness of the man who had no better
outhouses. What was my astonishment upon finding that it
was the dwelling--the house of the family with whom we
were to stay. This is the stage road which we have taken,
and there is very little travel over it, and it passes
through a very barren and desolate section of country--as
poor perhaps, if not poorer, than any land in the state.
Dublin is, I think, about one hundred and thirty miles
from Savannah, and there is not a single public house the
whole distance; yet everybody's house is open to you, and
they give you a generous welcome and the best of
everything they have. Some of them will accept payment
for the food and shelter which they give you, while
others utterly decline it, claiming they have received
sufficient compensation in the pleasure your society has
afforded them. 

This house where we stayed contained three rooms--one
large one, into which the door opened, with a huge
chimney at the end almost the width of the room,
constructed of sticks piled upon each other, after the
fashion of the corn-cob houses I used to make in
childhood. It was built outside of the house; the side
where the chimney joined on to the house was left open,
and the logs sawed out to make the fireplace. The
interstices between the sticks were filled with clay,
with which also the whole thing was daubed outside and
in. This room was used as hall, parlor, dining-room, and
bedroom. On the side of this was a bedroom of a fair
size, and behind it a piazza, on one end of which another
very small bedroom was partitioned off. The furniture of
the room into which we were shown was a large pine table
and a half-dozen chairs of country make--turned legs and
splint bottoms. 

The family had retired for the night when we got there,
but the man and his wife got up and "made a light," as he
expressed it. He set fire to some pieces of resinous pine
and put them in the chimney, which I found was their
substitute for a lamp, and when we sat down to the supper
prepared, which was bountiful and well cooked, Mr.
Norwood took two of the burning sticks from the fireplace
and held the blazing, smoking torch above our heads to
give us light to eat by. He was a coarse, rough-looking
man, with no clothes on but shirt and trousers of the
coarsest kind of homespun, not even a shoe or stocking,
and with his bloused head of long and bushy hair and
unshorn beard, and that flaming torch about his head,
wearied as I was with travel and my nerves unstrung with
the fright of the evening, I could compare him in my mind
to nothing but an imp of darkness; and his wife, who came
in from the kitchen (which was a small log building back
of the house) to preside at the table, was almost equally
repulsive in dress and appearance. She had on her head
all the evening--not only as she was going back and forth
to the kitchen to attend to supper arrangements, but as
she sat at the head of the table pouring the coffee--one
of those long cracker bonnets ... which, when the head is
bent, effectually conceals the face, as the capes which
they have sewed on them, varying in width from six inches
to half a yard, conceals the neck and shoulders. They are
the most disfiguring article of dress I have ever seen a
woman wear. 

After the supper was finished I sought quarters for the
night, and they showed me into the little room on the end
of the piazza. It was barely large enough to hold a small
bedstead and have a space of about two feet on one side
of it. There was no space for the door to open; it had to
open outside. There was no article of furniture in the
room but the bedstead and one chair--not even a table to
hold a light, but that of course was quite unnecessary,
as I had no light to put on it and was expected to go to
bed by such light as came in through the open door, for
there was no window to the room, or else satisfy myself
with such light as came in through the cracks between the
planks which formed the walls. The bedstead was a rough
specimen of home manufacture, and the bed, professedly of
feathers, though there were not enough feathers in it to
have made a decent pair of pillows, while the dimensions
of the pillows given me were about twelve by eighteen
inches in size, with barely feathers enough in them to
show the purpose they were intended to serve. There was
no mattress, but a dried cowhide laid upon the cords to
prevent what feathers there were in the bed from sinking
down between them. With the door to my room opening as it
did out-doors, and no fastening on it--it simply closed
with a wooden latch which was lifted with a string--with
no water for bathing purposes, such sleeping appointments
as I have described, and the vision of that large,
uncouth-looking man with his flaming torch continually
before me, I leave you to judge how much repose I found.
I felt very much as if I had got on the extreme border of
civilization but one remove from savage life. I have read
much of frontier life, but I never pictured to myself
anything so wild as this. Indeed, I thought I had seen
something of life in the woods and primitive habitats in
western New York, but what I saw there was high toned
civilization and culture compared with this. 

(To be continued). 

Farris Cadle grew up in Swainsboro. He is a land title
and land boundary consultant in Savannah and does
research 
on the side.