Jay County IN Archives History - Books .....Chapter XIV 1896
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Book Title: Reminiscences Of Adams, Jay And Randolph Counties

CHAPTER XIV.
SKETCH OF MARIAH MENDENHALL'S LIFE.

    My father and mother, Jacob and Mary Bowersock, lived in. Adams County, Pa.
They were strict members of the Lutheran church. I was born May 2nd, 1813.
Mother died when I was eight years old. Father was a weaver by trade and he kept
the family together by hiring an old lady to assist until the year 1825, when we
moved to Columbian County, Ohio. I was then 12 years old. I do not think I ever
went to school over six months. At the age of 14 I went to live with my uncle,
William Galbreith. I was married at the age of 18 to William Farrington. William
worked in a saw mill for several years. We moved to Jay County, Ind., in
October, 1838. We first stopped at William Mendenhall's. From there we went to
our place in Jackson Township, joining on the west the place now owned by Albert
Bronson. Myself and children set around on logs while William built a three
sided shanty. We lived in this six weeks. We hung a coverlet in front of our
three sided shanty. At night the wolves often came and stuck their noses under
the quilt so I could see their eyes. William would have his gun standing in
reach and would fire at them. That would be the last of them for that night. One
reason the wolves were so bad, we had built our house right on their trail,
which was packed down like cow paths. Game of all kind were plenty. William
often killed a turkey or two and sometimes two deers before breakfast. Once he
killed two deers at one shot. He tanned his own deer skins and made his own
buckskin pants. For the vest he would take fawn skins when they were spotted and
tan them; with the hair on. We often would see eight or ten deers in a drove and
had six deer hides tanning in the house at one time. After living in the shanty
six-weeks, William and his brother John, built a cabin in the woods. William
chopped down trees and trimmed them up, leaving the brush lay until evening,
when I and the children would go out and pick up and burn brush until nine and
ten o'clock at night. We got five acres cleared and put in corn the next spring.
Some of the; corn grew 15 feet high. We paid $1 a bushel for corn meal from the
time we came to Jay County until we raised a crop. The meal was brought here by
Nathionel Coffin, from Winchester, until Joshua Bond's mill was built.

    One of the necessaries of those times was the successful use of the gun in
which I proved very successful. I went squirrel hunting; the first time I missed
the squirrel, but the second shot brought it down. After this I shot at marks
with Dr. Lewis and Thomas Sumption, easily beating them.

    One afternoon I went to William Mendenhall's, a distance of one and one-half
miles, and was late in getting started home; darkness overtook me. I had a small
dog with me and the wolves got after us; the dog growled and snapped at them,
keeping them off until we got home. In five years after we landed in Jay County
William died. He took the milk-sick in June and only lived ten days. He was
attended by old Dr. Beel, and was buried at West Grove. At the grave I took sick
and commenced vomiting. I was taken home in Daniel Votaw's wagon. I and two of
the children were sick four weeks. I was left a widow in the woods with seven
children, four boys and three girls. My oldest boy was 12 and the youngest six
months old.

    William had sowed about five acres of oats besides the corn we had out.
About the time the oats began to get ripe Seth Rigby's and Isaac Irey's horses
got to breaking in. As we could not keep them out, Jonah Irey loaded a gun with
shot and broken nails and told me to shoot them and he would stand by me. They
would break in at the same place every time after night. One of them had a bell
on so when I heard them coming I took the gun, and my boy, Jesse, went with me.
I went to a tree that stood in the field close to where the horses came in. I
put the butt of the gun against the tree so it would not kick me, aimed the gun
at them the best I could, and pulled the trigger. The gun went off. and so did
the horses, Seth Rigby's horse carrying a lot of shot and broken nails in her
neck and shoulders. They were but little bother after that and did not come back
after any more oats or nails. This was my first horse hunt. The next spring
after William's death John Reed and Ensley Lewis moved us on Ensley's farm,
where J. R. Hopkins now lives. After living a widow a little over a year William
Mendenhall and I were married. I had seven children and he had six, and from
this union one more was born, making in all fourteen children in the family. We
also adopted a weakly little girl, Lib Slack, by name. After doctoring her up
she got to be a stout, hearty girl. So we had fifteen in the family. We took
this girl when our youngest was three years old.

    We made our own clothing. After getting our wool carded we spun it. As one
of the girls was a weaver one would spin, one weave, one do the cooking, one
wash the dishes and one rock the cradle. You see we had enough to carry on the
whole business. We also raised our own flax and made our linen. In the spring we
would make quite a lot of sugar. My husband mended our shoes.

    In the year 1849 the bloody flux broke out. Holyfurness Wood lived southwest
of Rifesberg, about twelve miles from us. His neighbors were so afraid of the
disease that they would not go in the house to help them, so Thomas Sumption
came down and told us about it. Margaret Lewis and William and I saddled our
horses and went up there to lay out one of the girls who had died. There was
five of them down with the flux. As soon as they were able to be moved we took
two and Enos Lewis took two of them and cared for them until they were well. The
same year Seth Rigby's family took the flux; Margaret Lewis and I went and took
care of them for three weeks. There was five deaths in this family. After this
George Stansbury and his wife took the milk sick. After his wife died George was
brought to our house on stretchers and we took care of him until he got well. We
also took care of his baby for a few weeks until it took the diphtheria and died.

    My first call as a midwife was by a family by the name of Whitacre, in the
year 1840. Since then up to this date I have attended nine hundred and eighty
cases. In all these cases I have never had a woman to die while under my care.
In two instances I have waited on three generations, grand parent, parent and
child. I always went when called upon. Went through rain and cold many times wet
to the skin.

    One night I started home bv mvself at 11 o'clock at night, from north of my
home. The man peeled me a hickory bark torch some three feet long. I took off my
garter and tied it around the torch and away I went with old Charley on the
gallop. When I got to where Sam William's lived the horse kept shying at
something in the woods so I could hardly make him go. I threw away my torch,
garter and all, put whip to the horse and went home on the run. The house we
lived in when my first husband lived, was of round logs, skutched down on the
inside. It was 18x20 feet big and had but one door and one six-light window. It
had puncheon floor and the floor over head was laid with 4-feet clapboards. The
roof was held on by weight poles. The fire place had mud jams and a stick chimney.

    After my second marriage our house still had a stick chimney. In this short
sketch it will be impossible to tell the incidents of pioneer life, but as the
years went a daughter died and two of the children were taken in and cared for
by th large-hearted grandparents and kept until they could care for themselves.
Then a stepdaughter, her husband and children were given a home under the roof
of the old homestead for a while. After living near thirty-eight years with her
last husband, William Mendenhali, she was again left a widow.

    Thus the old pioneers have been dropping off one by one until the subject of
this sketch is almost the last one left. She passed her 83rd milestone May 2nd,
1896. The young people of today, as they drive over the smooth gravel roads in
their fine carriages, will never realize the hardships and privations our
pioneer fathers and mothers had to undergo to give us the comforts we now enjoy.
Grandmother Mendenhall is now living with her step-daughter, Mrs. George Paxson.


Additional Comments:

Extracted from:

Reminiscences of Adams, Jay and Randolph Counties

Compiled by Martha C. M. Lynch

Ft. Wayne, IN: Lipes, Nelson & Singmaster

Circa 1896


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