OHIO STATEWIDE FILES - Know your Ohio: Tidbits of Ohio -- Part 47

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File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by
Darlene E. Kelley
http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00026.html#0006374
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Historical Collections of Ohio
And Then They Went West
Know Your Ohio
by Darlene E. Kelley
Tid Bits - part 47
Notes by 
S. Kelly

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Tid Bits - part 47.

  Life in the Backwoods of Adams County

The Pioneers of Adams County, Ohio were a class of honorable and moral
men and women. They represented  some of the best families of Virginia,
Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Maryland, New Jersey, and the Carolinas. They
were hardy, industrious, and fugal people, who had come determined to
make a home for themelves and their generations in the Great Northwest. 

The first settlers could have not have sustained themelves had it not
been for the wild game that was in the county. This was their principal
subsistance; and this they took at the peril of their lives, and often
many came near starving to death. If they obtained bread, the meal was
pounded in a mortar or ground in a handmill. Hominy was a good
substitute for bread, or parched corn pounded and sifted, then mixed
with a little maple sugar and eaten dry, or mixed with water was a good
beverage. On this course fare the people were remarkably healthy and
cheerful. No complaints were heard of dyspepsia; and if the emigrants
had come to these backwoods with the ailment, they would have not been
troubled long with it; for a few months living on buffalo meat, venison,
and good fat bear meat, with the oil of the raccoon and opossum mixed
with plenty of hominy, would soon have effected a cure.

Their children were fat and hearty, not have been fed with plum pudding,
sweetmeats, and pound cake. A more hardy race of men and women grew up
in this wilderness than has ever been produced since; with more common
sense and enterprise than is common to those who sleep on beds of down,
and feast on jellies and preseves; and although they had not the same
advantages of obtaining learning that the present generations have, yet
they had this advantage; they were sooner thrown upon the world, became
acquainted with men and things, and entirely dependant on their own
resources for a living. A boy at the age of sixteen was counted a man of
labor and hunting, and was ready to go to war; now, one of that age
hardly knows the road to mill or market.

Their attire was in perfect keeping with their fare. The men's apparel
was mostly made of the deer's skin. This, well dressed, was made into
hunting shirts, pantaloons, coats, waistcoats, leggins, and moccasins.
The women sometimes wore petticoats of this most common and useful
article; and it supplied almost universally the place of shoes and
boots. If a man was blessed with linsey hunting shirt and the ladies
with linsey dresses, and the children with the same, it was counted of
the first order, even if the linsey was made from the wool of the
buffalo. On some occasions the men could purchase a calico shirt; this
was thought to be extra, for which they paid 
$ 1.50 or $ 2 in skins or furs. And if a woman had one calico dress to
go abroad in , she was considered a finely dressed lady. Deer's hair or
oak leaves were generally put into moccasins and worn in place of
stockings or socks. The household furniture consisted of stools, and
bedsteads made with forks driven into the ground and poles laid on these
with the bark of the trees, and on this beds made of oak leaves, or
cattail stripped off and dried in the sun. They rocked their children in
a sugar trough or pack-saddle. 
The cooking utensils consisted of a pot, dutch oven, skillet, frying
pan, wooden trays and trenchers, and boards made smooth and clean. The
table was made of a broad slab. And with these fixtures there was never
a heartier, happier, more hospitable or cheerful people. Their interest
were one, and their dependence on each other was indispenable, and all
things were common. Thus united, they lived as one family.

They generally married early in life, the men from eighteen to twenty
one, and the girl from sixteen to twenty. The difficulties of commencing
the world were not so great; and as both parties were contented to begin
with nothing, there was no looking out for fortunes, or the expectations
of living without labor. Their affections were personal and sincere,
which constituted a chief part of their domestic happiness, and endeared
them to home. The sparkling log fire in the backwoods cabin, the gambols
of half a dozen cheerful, healthy children, and the smiles of the happy
wife and mother, made an earthly paradise. [ The early records of Adam
County contain but few divorce cases. In commenting on this fact, a
judge in the judicial district once remarked that there is not a case of
divorce on the records where courting was done in a flax-patch or sugar
camp; at a quilting or apple cutting. And we might add or " white
bladin' cane." according to the observation of Judge Mason.]

Nothing could produce more hilarity than a backwoods wedding. Most
generally all the neighborhood, for miles around, were invited. And if
it were in the winter, there would be a log heap or two somewhere near
the cabin. Around these fires the men assembled with their rifles; the
women in the cabin; and if there was a fiddler in the neighborhood, he
must be present at an hour stated. The parson, if one could be had, if
not the justice of the peace, called the assembly together, then the
couple to be married. After the ceremony was over, and all had wished
the happy pair much joy, then, if it could be had, the bottle passed
around; the men then went, some shooting at a mark, some throwing of the
tomahawk, others to hopping and jumping, throwing the rail or shoulder
stone, others to running foot races; the women were employed in cooking.
When dinner was ready, the guests all partake of the very best bear
meat, venison, turkey, etc. This being over, the dance commences, and if
there is no room in the cabin, the company repair to or near the log
fires; there they dance till night, and then they mostly return home;
yet many of the young people stay and perhaps dance all night on a rough
puncheon floor, till their moccasins are worn through. The next day is
the infare; the same scenes are again enacted, when the newly married
pair single off to a cabin built for themselves, without twenty dollars'
worth of property to begin the world with, and live more happily than
those who roll in wealth and fortune.

The chimmeys of the cabins were built on the inside by throwing on an
extra log, three and a half feet from the wall. From this it was carried
up with sticks and clay to the roof and some two feet above it. The
whole width of the cabin was occupied for a fireplace. And wood ten or
twelve feet long could be laid on; when burned in two in the middle, the
ends could be pushed up, so as to keep a good fire through a long
winter's night.

When there was but one bed in the cabin, it was no sign that you could
not have a good night's rest, for after supper was over, and the feats
of the day about hunting were all talked over, the skins were brought
forth, bear, buffalo, or deer, and spread down before a sparkling fire,
and a blanket or buffalo robe to cover with; you could sleep sweetly as
the visions of night roll over the senses, till the morning dawn
announced the approach of day.

There were no windows, and but one opening for a door. This was
generally narrow, and the door was made of tw slabs, or a tree split in
two and then hewed to the thickness of six or eight inches, then set up
endwise and made with a bevel to lap over. The fastenings consisted of
three large bars fastened to staples on the inside walls. The floor, if
not earth, was of hewn slabs, and covered with clapboards. These cabins,
if there was some care taken in putting down the logs close together and
they were scutched, would make the sweetest and healthiest habitations
than man can live in. They are much healthier than stone or brick
houses.

All the mills that the early settlers had was the hominy block, or hand
mill. The horse mills or water mills were so far off that it was like
going on a pilgramage to get a grist; and besides, the toll was so
enormously high, one half, that it was preferred doing their own
milling.

Almost every man and boy were hunters, and some of the women of those
times were experts in the chase. The game which was considered more
profitable and useful was the buffalo, the elk, thebear, and the deer.
The smaller game consisted of raccoon, turkey, oppossum, and groundhog.
The panther was sometimes used for food, ad considered by some as good.
The flesh of the wolf and wildcat was only used when nothing else could
be obtained.

On difficulty with the pioneers was to procure salt which sold
enormously high, at the rate of $ 4 for 50 pounds. In the backwoods
currency, it would require four buckskins, or a large bear skin, or
sixteen coon skins to make the purchase. Often it could not be had at
any price, and then the only way to procure it was to pack a load of
kettles on our horses to the Scioto salt lick, and boil the water
themselves. Otherwise they had to forgo its use entirely. Then they
cured their meat with strong hickory ashes.

The law of kindness governed our social walks, and if such a disasterous
thing as a quarrel broke out, the difficulty was settled by a strong
dish of fistcuffs. No man was permitted to insult another without
resentment; and an insult was permitted to pass unrevenged, the insulted
party lost his standing and cast in society. It was seldom we had any
preaching, but if a traveling minister came along and made an
appointment, all would attend, the men in their hunting shirts with
their guns.

The first settlers were attacked with a skin disease which produced a
terrible itching. All newcomers to the settlement became afflicted with
this disease. It was attributed to the water. Sore eyes prevailed to a
very great extent, and influenza was a frequent scourge in the early
spring of each year. I was then believed to be caused by the melting of
the snow in the mountains. Fevers prevailed along the river bottom and
the valleys of the larger streams due to the rise of creek and river
water , there being no wells, and to the decay of vegetable matter in
the newly cleared lands. For this reason the highlands were occupied by
the pioneer in preference to the rich bottoms which could be purchased
at the same price per acre, as the uplands. The bloody flux prevailed at
frequent periods in the very early settlement of the county, produced by
bad water and excess use of green vegetables, and unripe fruit,
especially wild plums which grew in great abundance in the bottoms of
all the streams.

There were few, if any, physicians in the early settlement. In cases of
fractures, some one in the neighborhood more skilled than others did the
setting and bandaging. Cuts and bruises were simply bound up and nature
sis the rest. Cases of childbirth were attended by the elderly women of
the vacinity. The ills of the children were colds, bowel complaint and
worms; horehound, catnip and the worm-wood were the remedial agencies.
Among the other standard roots and herbs were senna serpentaria
virginia, tormentilla, stellae, valerian, podophillum peltatum ( may
apple ), percoon, sasaparilla, yellow root, hydrastis canadensis,
rattleweed, gentian, ginseng, magnolia ( wild cucumber ), prickly ash,
spikenard, calamint, spearmint, pennyroyal, dogwood, wild ginger
(coltsfoot), sumac and beech drop.

In the early days of the country all classes used whiskey as medicine
and beverage, 
" Old Monongahela double distilled" was a staple article. Old and young,
men and women drank it, and there was but little drunkeness. After the
settlements were in the interior, there were hundreds of little copper
stills set up along the spring branches, and much of the grain grown was
comsumed in making the " old Monongahela" or something just as good. The
whiskey and brandy in those days had one recomendation- they were not
adulterated. But even the appetite of some overcome their discretion,
and they became sots and eyesores to the community. It took and early
Methodist preacher to give his reason for not becoming a member of a
Seceder congregation as he had seen one of the elders carried home drunk
and at the next Sabbath he again saw him at the communion table. Of all
the early prominent families, nearly all got a start in the world in the
whiskey business, in either its distillation, or by keeping a tavern or
grocery where the cheif souce of profits was from liquor sold. But then
it was fashionable, and fashion rules the world.

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To be contiued in tid bits- part 48.