Caldwell County MO Archives History .....FARM LIFE IN KINGSTON TOWNSHIP IN THE SIXTIES AND SEVENTIES 
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File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by:
Karen Walker khw4@yahoo.com September 1, 2008, 4:42 pm

THE JACOB WONSETTLER FAMILY AS PIONEERS NEAR KINGSTON
	Narrator:  Mrs. Sarah Wonsettler, 86, Kidder, Missouri

     Mrs. Wonsettler is the widow of Jacob Wonsettler who came into Caldwell 
County in the early sixties.  She is the daughter of Wm. A. Morrow, a pioneer 
in Daviess County 1854 coming when she was six years old.  (For those pioneer 
days, see paper of Mrs. Aurora Williams, another Morrow daughter.)
     At the age of twenty she married Mr. Wonsettler and came to Caldwell 
County where they rented of John D. Cox three miles east from Kingston and 
stayed there five years.  On the place was a heavy body of hard maple timber, 
about one hundred trees located south west of the creek bottom.  They had a 
sugar camp every year while there.  She still recalls the whole process.  You 
make spiles of elm out of which you could pinch the pith, fitted them into the 
sugar trees and caught the drip in troughs below.  The troughs were 
occasionally emptied into pails.
     Then you fixed up an out door brick furnace with a chimney at one end and 
on it you placed a twenty five gallon kettle with the drip from the maple 
trees.  You skimmed it occasionally and got syrup.  If you wanted sugar, you 
boiled it more and stirred it till it grained.  They had square pans about 
five inches across and sold the maple sugar cakes in stores for 10 cents a 
piece.
     Mrs. Wonsettler recalls how she used to make with her own hands 
absolutely every inch of her clothes, back in Daviess County.  Her father kept 
sheep for wool.  There was no big older son, so she did boy's work in shearing 
and washing the wool.  Then it was sent usually over to Watkins woolen factory 
in Clay County to be carded although at times she did it at home on small 
cards.  Then she spun it, wove it and sewed it up.  And when the dress had 
belonged to one or perhaps two members of the family and was out worn, she 
would tear it up for carpet rags.  Thus she said she could trace material from 
a sheep's back to a carpet - all work done on the home place by her own hands.
     She told of early dress styles.  One mode of trimming was cording.  You 
used candlewick or twine and sewed it into the seam, of course by hand.  Her 
mother would hold up a length of calico or home spun, from the neck to the 
waistline of the person to be fitted.  This person would hold the cloth in 
position while Mrs. Morrow cut out the arm-holes and neck line.  That was the 
way they made waist patterns for many years.  The skirts were full made of 
straight breadths and hung to the ground.  Hand sewing was an art then and no 
rough seams were allowable.
     Interviewed August 1934.


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