AREA HISTORY:  History of Adams County, Chapter XII, Adams County, PA

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History of Cumberland and Adams Counties, Pennsylvania
Chicago:  Warner, Beers & Co., 1886
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Part III, History of Adams County, Pages 57-71

CHAPTER XII.

CUSTOMS AND MANNERS-DISTINCT STREAMS OF IMMIGRANTS-INDUSTRY AND RELIGION-GETTING 
A START-THEIR COMMERCE-RECEPTIONS-IMPROVEMENTS.

Already we have traced settlements in this county as far back as 1734.  It was 
the merest chance that threw in our way the authentic records of this date and 
who it was that came that year.  Possibly there may have been settlers here 
before that, a short time, but there is not in the world, so far as we can 
learn, a trace of evidence of this fact, and now there is no tradition.

This much is history.  There came here four separate and distinct streams of 
immigrants, and each one pushed its separate way into the wilderness about the 
same time.  They were as distinct upon their first coming as it was possible for 
communities well to be.  The Irish, the Dutch, the Germans and the English, are 
the three broad divisions that mark these separate people.  The Dutch and Irish 
were Calvinists in religion, and this was largely the only bond of affinity 
between them.  The Quakers were the English, and such odds and ends of 
nationalities as existed here at the first.  Then there were the Catholics, 
coming up from Maryland.  Although the Penns were Quakers, yet they seem to have 
been wholly impartial in the bestowal of lands and rights upon people of any and 
all faiths and creeds.  They had been just and liberal to the Indians, and they 
seem to have carried out this broad catholic spirit toward all mankind that 
sought the shelter of their protecting wings.  Considering the religious spirit 
of the age, the universal intolerance and bigotry that prevailed, we cannot too 
much admire the generous greatness of the action of these proprietaries of the 
province.  They must have acted without precedent in the face of settled 
conclusions by the world’s rulers at that time, and yet their conduct is a model 
that may still be closely followed, and it is a pity that the bloom and glory of 
the present great century, that is so rapidly closing, have not yet reached, to 
our common humanity’s misfortune, the high level of liberality that here marked 
an age that we have taught ourselves to regard as only half emerging, in many 
respects, from the dark and gloomy days of semi-barbarism.

There was apparently no connecting line in the coming here of these separate 
streams.  Each had been moved by its own volition, and pursued in parallel 
routes what then must have been a dark and devious way.  The Quakers came 
sparingly only into what is now the northeast part of the county.  The Irish and 
Dutch, and that scattering class that made up the remainder of the first 
settlers, had behind them a stronger propelling power, and they soon overran the 
county.

As early as 1749, while this was still a part of Lancaster County, we find 
people in all portions of what is now Adams County.  To indicate beyond all 
doubt the nationality in each part of the county, we give the following names of 
representative men.  These are the names of men who were known to the 
authorities at Lancaster.  We gather this official information from the archives 
at the capital.  They were appointed, upon the formation of York County, as the 
overseers of the poor, as follows:  Tyrone, Robert McIlvain and Finley McGrew; 
Strabane, David Turner and James Stevenson; Menallen, John Gilliland and John 
Lawrence; Cumberland, John McFarren and David Porter; Hamiltonban, James Agnew 
and William Waugh; Mountjoy, James Hunter and William Gibson; Germany, Jacob 
Koontz and Peter Little; Mountpleasant, William Black and Alexander McCarter; 
Heidelberg, Peter Schultz and Andrew Shriver (Schreiber); Berwick, Casper Weiser 
and George Baker.

The records show that these townships were formed as early as 1750, and at that 
time the York County authorities made these appointments.

They were, all classes, a distinct and marked race of men.  They nearly all were 
fugitives from religious persecution in the Old World.  They had been hunted 
across the face of the earth with a relentless ferocity.  Their progenitors 
were, in nearly every instance, a race of men that was ever ready for martyrdom 
for conscience sake, and the warring elements in which they had been born and 
nurtured had fully developed their natures into the fiercest elements of heart 
and brain.  For the slightest shade of a religious opinion they were ever ready 
to defy the powers of man, and, if necessary, without a cringe offer up their 
lives, go to the rack, the dungeon, the pillory, the stake or the block.  
Mostly, the immigrants who came here were of such a race as we have described.  
Then when we reflect that the children born of such a parentage had met in their 
native homes such an agony of cruelties, such shocking and destructive 
persecutions, it is to us almost inconceivable how prolonged and cruel it must 
have been to drive them to this new, strange world.  Thus equipped for the great 
work before them, here they came.  They came seeking peace and quiet, freedom of 
person, and, most important of all, freedom to worship God exactly as they 
pleased.  As a rule they were very poor in purse, and, among the Dutch and 
Germans especially, many of them, who had started with enough to bring them in 
comfort in our shores, had been cruelly robbed by dishonest agents and assumed 
friends.  Often to such extent was this the case that upon landing upon our 
shores the poor creatures found themselves in the clutches of cormorants, and 
had to indenture themselves, and become almost literally slaves to work out the 
outrageous claims made upon them.  This must have been quite common, as we judge 
from the great number of indentured servants that may yet be found traces of in 
the early records.  We are aware that it is true that some of these had agreed 
to thus dispose of themselves before they had left the Old World to come to the 
New, as this was the only possible resource left them whereby they could reach 
this promised haven.  Hence, while at the first coming all were poor, yet we 
find some who were, just as we find people in these days of so called plenty, 
incomparably poorer than their neighbors.  They not only had nothing literally, 
but there was a mortgage on their labor for about all that part of their working 
lives that could be made to yield anything.

Circumstances drove those speaking a foreign language into closer colonies than 
necessarily it did the English speaking people.  The Dutch especially were 
driven closely within themselves.  In a neighborhood there would be a very few 
that could speak a few words of broken English, and this was all.

These immigrants landed on our shores, and with hardly a halt began to push 
their way to where they could find unoccupied lands.  This was their first 
subject of consideration, and here they stopped as soon as they found it.  In 
the intensity of their new found joys of freedom and land-land that they could 
hope to own, and thus fill the once utopian dream of their lives of being real 
land owners-it is hoped they forgot the repelling features, the dangers and 
gloom that otherwise would have settled upon them at the end of their long 
journeys, and the first realizations of their arrival in the wilderness.

Industry and Religion.-These were the strong marks of all the early settlers, 
without regard to race.  They would land, sometimes, one wagon to several 
families, and, in some instances, there was wagon room enough to sleep the women 
and children, and where this was the case, the arrangement was regarded as very 
comfortable indeed.  When there was no wagon a brush tent was made, and here the 
entire family housed until the first rude cabin could be put up.  The clapboard 
cabin once up and the elated family moved in, then, floorless and doorless as it 
was, there was real, solid family rejoicing.  It was the first feeling of 
triumphant victory over their long days of doubt and sore trial.  Indeed, it was 
much more-it was home.  It was their world, conquered and won by their own 
strong arms and brave hearts, and in this struggle father, mother and all the 
children had partaken.  The father was the commanding captain, but he commanded 
as loyal a squad as was ever mustered upon this earth.  Bless these honest, 
brave, simple folk!  They gave a new meaning, almost a new name, to that 
sweetest of words in our language-Home.

The descendants of these brave old pioneers who are so fortunate as to possess, 
to this day, one of these spots where the smoke of the first cabin of their 
ancestors rose upon the unvexed air, may well regard it as hallowed ground.

Once housed, the work of their simple lives commenced.  Here every toddler even 
contributed all he could.  The men felled the trees, the women and children 
gathered and burned the brush, and to this general outdoor work there was but 
slight variation in the way of time used by the women in cooking.  If they had a 
little black bread and cold meat, their dinner was sumptuous indeed.  They 
attacked their simple fare with enormous appetites.  Their outdoor lives gave 
them health and a vigorous digestion.

In the midst of this work-a-day life there was no time when their family worship 
was neglected.  Their Bible and prayer-book were the sum of their books to read.  
The old board-bound Bibles were thumbed and dog-eared by horny hands, and the 
religious precepts were often slowly spelled out, and the most carping critic, 
had he witnessed the honest sincerity, would have forgotten at once the fearful 
mispronunciations that must have passed from sire to son as distinguishing 
family marks.

Without ever stopping to rest a moment, as soon as there were half a dozen 
families that could call each other neighbors, they commenced the effort of a 
church and schoolhouse.  In those days these were always one.  When the first 
passing preacher would visit them and hold service, it constituted a great 
event, a gala day.  They called him blest, and lifted up their hearts in joy.  
In their cheerless log meeting-houses the sermon could not be long enough for 
these long-fasting people.  It could not be too dry and dogmatical.  They wanted 
this and the severest morals that could be proclaimed from the pulpit.  To them 
the Bible was the literal word of God and without the figure of speech in it.  
They believed with all their heart and soul, and believed literally, and then at 
their hard, daily toil they treasured up the long sermon and its divisions, and 
when people conversed it was about what the dear preacher, that God had sent 
them, had said on this point of doctrine and on that.  The sum total of their 
ambition was to be good citizens and live in the hope of heaven.

The parental authority was unbending, and in the few simple arrangements of 
their lives it was nearly supreme.  This was but another manifestation of their 
full to overflowing religious sentiments.  And when they read in their Bibles: 
“Children, be obedient to your parents,” they became the old patriarchs, and 
thus the command was not only a filial duty, but is was a stern religious 
obligation.

They were without other diversions and amusements except their unremitting 
labors in the field, or their rare opportunities for attendance upon church 
worship.  They were wholly satisfied, it seems, with these.  By the second 
season the increase of house room would be noticed.  Out-buildings would be put 
up, the little stock they possessed housed, and nearly as well housed as the 
family.  A porch, or rather a wide covered shed, would appear in front of the 
cabin for purposes of storage, and in good weather here the family met, worked, 
conversed, and passed much of their time, as well as received their neighbors’ 
visits, now growing to be an important feature in their routine lives.  At long 
intervals some one in the colony would perhaps get a letter from the old home, 
and upon its most trifling words the people would listen open-mouthed, with 
bated breaths.

This thrift continued, and soon a more pretentious log house was reared 
adjoining the first small cabin.  This in rare cases had two rooms, and, whether 
one or two rooms, there would be a spacious “loft.”  A ladder reached this upper 
story-generally the boudoir of the big girls-the storehouse of richest 
treasures.  Here would be long strings of peppers, dried pumpkins, apples, 
bunches of sage, precious strings of garlic decorating the walls, and hanging in 
festoons from the rafters, flanked by dresses, dimity, and home made furbelows, 
such only as could be appreciated or understood by those daughters of the 
pioneers-the good and sainted great-grandmothers of this generation.  Many and 
many a comfortable mansion of those days had not so much iron in all its 
structure as a nail.  Then the saying: “My latch-string is always open to you,” 
was full of meaning, and a welcoming invitation to come, pull the latch-string, 
open the door, and without ceremony, walk in.

The agriculture of the farmers was of the most primitive character, their 
implements being few and of the clumsiest construction.  One small, inferior 
pony was a whole family pride, when once possessed.  A yoke of oxen, sometimes a 
cow yoked with an ox, or a yoke of cows, a wooden plow lined at the base with a 
strip of iron, a home-made wagon-the melodious old truck-with its solid wheels 
cut from a large tree, made round, and a hold in the center for the axle tree, 
and greased with soft soap, and when this began to wear out its call for more 
would ring over the hills and far away like the dying yells of a fabled monster-
all these were wealth to them.

The people of to-day cannot appreciate the amount of misdirected effort there 
was among these people-labor thrown away, because they had to experiment and 
learn all only by experiment.  They understood slowly the necessities and 
qualities of the new world in which they were, and we can gain only a faint idea 
of this by reflecting that, to this day, men are experimenting and still 
improving in planting, both as to the kind of seed to plant and the best mode of 
putting it in the ground.  

The very first consideration always with a settler in a new country is water.  
And in this respect it is not hazarding much in saying that, for domestic 
purposes, Adams County is the best watered spot on the globe.  Certainly there 
can be none superior to it.  Springs bubble up their sparkling waters 
everywhere; the silvery, cool, sweet mountain streams ripple; the clear valley 
brooks winding their way in the deep shade and the bright sunshine are upon 
every side, all of clear, pure granite water, with no trace of the limestone; 
and by drilling through the upper granite, as is found in the Gettysburg water-
works, great and inexhaustible lakes of the same pure, cold, sweet water are to 
hand.  Hence, everywhere in the county is inexhaustable water, and under the 
test of the microscope there is found less of animal matter in it than in any 
other known water.  

To these springs and clear streams the women went to do the family washing, 
where the clothes were paddled clean with a heavy paddle made for the purpose, 
after the method of their ancestors from time immemorial.  Everywhere the 
spinning-wheel was in use, and the females always greatly prided themselves on 
the dexterous handling of this stay of the family.  It was the only musical 
instrument these good dames ever had, the peculiar whirr and hum of the wheel, 
rising and falling, dying away to the faintest sounds only to commence again and 
again; and there was no child of that day in its hollow log cradle but 
remembered all his life this eternal lullaby-a sweet, sweet song now lost 
forever.  Then followed the bang, bang of the busy loom, where warp and woof 
were beaten together, where the clothing was made for all the family, the bed 
clothing, too, the articles of general use about the house, the ornamental 
hangings as well – linsey-wolsey and linen and tow.  The white goods were then 
bleached until they vied with the driven snow in whiteness, and the greatest 
pride of the good housewife was here found in the perfection of the goods that 
came from her deft hands.  The writer has been shown a piece of cotton-linen, 
made by the grandmother and great aunt of the proud possessor.  The seed of the 
cotton and flax were planted, grown and pulled by them, and every process to the 
perfected cloth was be their hands alone, and no more perfect piece of cloth 
ever came from the loom.  What a rich inheritance this piece of goods is?  What 
a history it possesses to even the nimble fingers, and feel the warm life breath 
again that wrought here so deftly, so long, so long ago.  A hundred years have 
sped away since last they looked upon it, and its associations rewarmed their 
hearts; yet this long chasm of time is bridged, the –oldered hands again are 
warm and nimble, the beam of wistful eyes, the holy smile of love shines down 
through these long, long corridors of time.  Thus by such simple trifles we love 
on and on, and forever renew those lives that did not live in vain.

The earliest pioneers in the deep, wild woods were a silent and gloomy race of 
men.  Their lives were too earnest to be frivolous.  They prayed more than they 
laughed.  Their thoughts and conversations were divided between bread in this 
world and heaven in the next.  What men now call sport, and is a great 
recreation to some, was to these pioneers but a portion of their serious, silent 
labors.  They pursued the chase and had to capture their meat or go to bed 
supperless.  From the game they supplied their tables until such times as they 
could begin to raise their own pork.

A wedding then, as it always has been, was a great event, but both courting and 
wedding must have partaken somewhat of the general serious business habits of 
the people.  A young man courted a neighbor’s daughter a little after the style 
of a business trip to buy of him a calf.  He would hardly have the temerity to 
venture up to her at church and ask to be her company home.  This would have 
shocked the old folks of all the congregation.  It would have been a case of 
dangerous rushness.  It was hardly the proper thing to go visiting on Sunday, 
and during the week he would have been missed from his regular work.  And thus 
many a poor fellow must have worked and pined in painful silence.  But love 
conquers all things, and in the end he would put on all the grim courage he 
could command and go, week day or Sunday, just as it happened when he reached 
the acting climax.  The lovers had never spoken the soft words of first love 
together, but they had looked the language of the heart, and when in clean 
bibber he unexpectedly presented himself, even if there were half a dozen girls 
there, the particular one he wanted to see somehow managed to understand she was 
wanted, although the blushing swain would be unable probably to call for any 
one.

After making herself “smart,” in the greatest of flurries, putting on a clean 
gown perhaps, she would appear, and, upon the first sight of her, John would 
commence mumbling his errand.  Perhaps in the bluntest language he could use, he 
told his mission, and as blunt a “yes,” if it was all agreeable, would be the 
reply.  The family would then be called in, the matter talked over, the old man 
would give his blunt consent and silently go to field to his work again, leaving 
all the small details for the family to discuss.  In a few days would come the 
wedding, without a single invitation, unless the ceremony would be at the 
church, which was often the case, when all acquaintances were considered 
invited.

In the course of time these grew to be more ceremonious, and then there would be 
a day of merry feasting at the house of the bride, continued the next day at the 
home of the groom, and this last would be known as the “infair,” eating and 
drinking on both occasions.  The Quakers were always, when possible, married in 
their church, the entire congregation signing the contract of marriage, as 
witnesses.  The Catholics also repaired, when possible, to their church, because 
to them, too, the marriage ceremony was purely a religious ceremony, a solemn 
church rite that could only end in death.  In none of them was there a mental 
reservation in their altar vows-none.  None expected to rue, and but few ever 
rued, their bargain.  And people had been living here nearly fifty years before 
we hear of an elopement from “bed and board,” or before there was a divorce suit 
on the court records.  These things came only with the innovations of time.

The average of education was low.  Some could not send their children to school 
and were not able to teach them the first rudiments at home.  The church schools 
were mostly for drilling in the catechism, whose meaningless words must have 
added confusion or nothing to the young minds.  We can well understand what a 
great general advance it was when the night or Saturday spelling school was 
eventually introduced.  It brought the young people together in a slight social 
life, without those iron restraints that had previously surrounded them.  It 
stimulated greatly the first acquirement in their education.  The best speller 
was a hero-no, generally a heroine, because girls can naturally outstrip the 
boys in learning to spell.  It was no small accomplishment, and then very soon 
the children could begin to correct the reading and pronunciation of their 
parents in the daily Bible lessons.  The men continued to dress in the plainest 
homespun, and the girls-girls they were then as they always will be, bless them-
also dressed in homespun; but they had found, in the barks of trees and in 
herbs, coloring matter, and here the dear creatures rivaled each other, badgered 
their heated brains for beautiful designs and color combinations; and then a 
bright ribbon from the tramping pedlar, and the real woman began to bloom again 
before the dazzled eyes of men.  Their hair, the solitary cheap ribbon, the 
bright colors in their frocks, were their implements of gratification to their 
own hears and for invasion to the strong citadel of man’s affections.  The 
preachers were greatly alarmed, shocked-to put it mildly.  They harangued, they 
raved, and thundered anathemas at the sacrilegious ribbons, gimcracks and awful 
furbelows; but, bless the dear, brave girls, they stood their ground heroically.  
As a rule they confessed their crime and promised amendment and put away the 
ribbon and tied up their curls.  This satisfied the preachers and the cruel war 
was over; but it is now well known that as soon as the preachers’ backs were 
turned, they redecked themselves a little gayer than ever, and employed their 
lovers to look out for the preacher, so as they could snap off the finery at his 
approach.

At first wind-mills were put upon the high hills to grind their cereals, then in 
a little while the plenteous streams over the country invited the erection of 
water-mills.  One was not greatly more reliable to do the work the year round 
than the other.  In the winter the waters would be frozen and in the winter and 
summer alike, the winds would not always work the clumsy wind-mills.  But soon, 
between the tow, the people did not have to carry on pack horses to Baltimore or 
Chester their milling.

A simple, pastoral people, leading a hard life, was and is the summing up of 
their existence.  The home and surroundings were of the rudest and plainest.  Of 
what is now esteemed a luxury they had not one.  It was all the bare necessities 
of life, won only by the most patient and tireless industry.  The economy they 
had been forced to learn was severe and pinching.  Thus they had experienced, 
before they came to the country, great trials, but they had to plant and grow 
here for some time before they ceased or were not often compelled to add 
experience to those severe lessons of the Old World.

Getting a Start.-This was the most trying ordeal to all the first comers.  They 
didn’t even find the Indian here with his simple culture of Indian corn and the 
very few simples that the squaws sometimes planted to the east and north of 
this.  With little to do with, he had to commence from the very beginning.  A 
few grains of corn or wheat, the seeds of an apple or peach, or a potato, and so 
on, were the only change to get a start in the seeds that must furnish his 
family bread.  Soon the country, as have been all new countries, was full of 
malaria, and malarial fever and chills added their quota to the already hard lot 
of the people.  They were without medicines, or the ability to procure them at 
any reasonable sacrifice or effort.  A great want for health was a variety of 
food, and as a consequence they probably ate too much meat for the other food 
they could obtain.  In the woods they could get a great abundance of meat, and 
here too they found the crab apple, the plum and the grape, and sometimes the 
paw-paw, as well as the many and delicious nuts that abounded plentifully.  
These were all life-giving to these poor people, and it is highly probable that 
they prevented the appearance of some dreadful epidemic-such as sometimes 
visited the large colonies in the great western prairies of Illinois, where 
people died to the extent sometimes of literally depopulating good sized 
settlements.  Children wandered into the woods and gathered crab apples, grapes, 
nuts, and in the spring the wild onion, and certain vegetables that had acid in 
them, and these they ate freely.  Except for this they must have all suffered 
from scurvy, because soon their almost constant diet was black bread and salt 
pork.  But the limpid, sweet waters, the bracing mountain air and the variety 
they could find existing in the county, gave them rather vigorous health, and 
strong and hardy constitutions.

Their Commerce.-Nothing could have been more simple than this among these 
people.  Their first dry goods store were itinerant-pack pedlars.  It was some 
time before the people had anything to sell and therefore they had but little to 
buy with.  The pedlar and his pack was one of the valued and really valuable 
institutions of the country.  His visits were few and far between at first, and 
at the rate of a visit a year he could easily supply the demands upon his 
assortment, the chief of which, at one time, was an assortment of combs.  And it 
was but seldom that you could not find somewhere a tuft of hair from a horse’s 
tail, fastened with a pin in an auger hole, for the purpose of cleaning the 
combs.  Where this work of civilization could not be found, you might take it 
for granted the family had been too poor to patronize, to that extent, the 
pedlar.  This itinerant merchant peddled his wares and retailed the news of the 
outside world.  He was both merchant and newspaper.  The elders of the family 
often detested him and his visits; they knew each visit meant some small 
purchase, but the younger members of the family looked to his coming with bright 
anticipations, and as a rule, these young people only spent their own small 
change-money they had made by their own labor and saved.  Such was the family 
economy.  In the course of time the pedlar came with a pack horse, and then he 
could take small lots of farm produce in exchange for his wares.  This opened 
wide the doors of trade and traffic to the farmer’s family.

And then began to come the first stores and locate at points where towns had 
probably been started, or at the cross-roads, or by the blacksmith and wagon-
makers’ shops.  This of itself was enough to at once start a town, and it was 
given a name; and to the young people, the children at least of the surrounding 
country, who heard of it and had never seen a town or a store, perhaps not even 
a smith’s shop, did it become the Mecca of their dreams and hopes.  They hoped 
to live to make the trip to see it. They would besiege father and mother to go 
with them on some of their rare visits “to town”.  Of course eventually their 
dreams became reality, though many of them were nearly grown men and women 
first, and behold them in the town, open mouthed, wide eyed and generally 
clinging closely to father’s or mother’s hands, or mother’s apron, their hearts 
beating wildly as they look for the first time upon this new, strange world.  
The family wagon would probably stop first at the smithy, to have a plow 
sharpened, and here the young novice saw the most astounding, the most 
incredible and indescribable things.  The din, the flaming, blowing forge, the 
red hot iron, the flying sparks, that would certainly burn any one else in a 
moment’s time, the brawny blacksmith and his great leathern apron, the strange 
sulphurous smell, all combined, made an impression upon the virgin mind that was 
never erased.  It was crowding a lifetime into a moment.  From thence to the one 
store of the place, and here again what expansive wonders break upon the senses.  
Their eyes were bewildered-here was everything in the world that was good and 
beautiful.  The peculiar smell of molasses, sugar, pelts, game, shoes, calico, 
whisky, cheap spices, new leather, tobacco, eggs in every stage and other odds 
and ends of the small trading and trafficking of the room, made as distinct and 
lasting an impression, as had already been made upon the eyes.  Amazement and 
awe were running a race in the young mind.  How blind had been their dreams of 
all this wonderland.  They would not have laid even the weight of a finger upon 
the rough counter for worlds.  They could no more have sat down on the ends of 
some of the boxes that were the only seats in the place, than they could have 
comfortably seated themselves upon the curling smoke.  They preferred to stand 
up, and vigorously bite the ends of the fingers and gaze and gaze in an ecstasy 
of awe and wonder.  It was all they could do.  It was their first lesson in the 
great voyage, the quick and stormful voyage across the face of the earth-from 
the unknown to the unknown.

Receptions.-The primitive “reception days” by the most distinguished families 
were the “house raisings.”  What splendid times, what gay and distinguished 
frolics were these!  No Jenkins was there to describe the splendor of the 
toilets, or tell who leaned upon whose arm as they filed into the 8 P.M. dinner.  
Some new neighbor had arrived, or some new married couple wanted to go to 
housekeeping, and word was sent to all the neighbors and from near and far they 
came-all came; and even sometimes the women came, and while the men worked at 
the new house, and worked like heroes on a wager, too, the women put in a quilt 
and also worked the live-long day.  The women’s work was not so violent as the 
men’s but they made ample amends for this in the talk and gossip that ran like 
the swollen waters when they break away an obstructing dam.  The new house and 
the quilt would be completed about the same time-all racing with the setting 
sun.

Improvements.-When we reflect on the cheapness of the land at that time, the 
land claims and the improvements were not large to the average family domains.  
Probably an average would have been 100 acres.  But these people after once here 
were driven by circumstances to regard small holdings as the safest and best, 
and their highest ambition was to rear their families respectably, give them 
some little education, and a fair start in the world, and the land continuing 
cheap they could easily acquire all they wanted or needed for themselves.  This 
was the average, from which of course there were many exceptions.  They fully 
succeeded in their laudable ambitions.  It was very rarely they contracted 
debts, and year by year, even if little or no ready money came to them, they saw 
their possessions grow in value.  Their children were being trained in economy 
and industry, growing up to take their places and carry on the work when old age 
should take them from the active duties of life.

All over the Old World, especially in England and on the continent, the habits 
of the people generally had been for centuries to eat enormous quantities of 
meat, and drink heavily of the coarsest and strongest liquors they could obtain.  
In 1684 gin was discovered, and a generation of English people were the vilest 
of sots.  Signs were put up at the gin shops to “come and get drunk for a 
penny,” and “for two pence you can become very drunk,” and “free straw will be 
furnished in the cellar to sleep it off.”  In the great London riot, when the 
drunken mob held the city for three days and nights, the mob rolled the gin 
barrels to the front doors and knocked in the heads, and the gutters were 
running with the liquid.  Women and children drank from the gutters many gorging 
themselves and dying on the streets; many more reeled and fell and lay in stupor 
and were burned by the falling and burning building where they helplessly lay.  
The average farmers’ choicest pastimes were drinking bouts, where they drank to 
insensibility.  In many a fashionable city circle, the boast was how many had 
attended the gatherings at different families, and how much they drank, and how 
many fell under the table.

In the course of a few years some of the people who prospered most, became 
wealthy enough to purchase and bring here their negro slaves.  A few immigrants 
brought their negroes with them when they came.  Slavery continued here in full 
force and effect until 1828.  With the introduction here of slaves, came, what 
some writer has designated “the most venomous worm” – the worm of the still.  
And these small hand stills were erected on many of the farms.  In fact among 
the earliest publication of notice of sale of a farm it was not uncommon to 
state, as a special inducement to purchasers, that there were “two stills of 
good capacity on the elegant plantation.”  They made whisky of corn and wheat 
and rye, apple-jack of apples, and brands of their seedling peaches.  It was all 
pure, fiery and strong.  They could get, for instance, only a little over a 
gallon of whisky from a bushel of corn (now they make over four gallons); yet 
everything was so cheap that they could manufacture it at prices that would seem 
incredible to the present generation.

Drinking was allowed to every one; they drank in quantities that now would 
swiftly bring death and destruction.  Yet drunkenness was sternly frowned upon.  
Among the Quakers, especially, it was not permitted, and to this day on their 
old church records are written out and signed and witnessed the confessions of 
members who humbly acknowledged their grevious sin, giving the day and date and 
place where they had thoughtlessly swallowed too much, and promising earnestly 
to sin no more.  And occasionally some preacher would be arraigned for habitual 
drunkenness, and, while the evidence would sometimes be clear and positive, we 
find no instance of a conviction and degradation for the offense.  To explain 
this a little, there was one case in the county where the synod convicted and 
sentenced the offender to dismissal, but the plucky congregation would not so 
have it, and in the face of the orders of the authorities they retained their 
preacher.  The general habits of the people, the heavy diet of salt port and 
black bread of which they eat so heartily, enabled them to drink great 
quantities of the liquor made at their own stills without serious bad effects, 
and in the long monotony of their lives is the ample excuse for their doing so.  
Let us believe, what was probably true, that they actually needed this stimulant 
of which they partook in great quantities, but nearly always at stated and 
regular times of the day.  They were not physically debauched by and indulgence 
they partook of.  They were left possessed of sound minds and strong and 
vigorous bodies, and they transmitted to their children sound constitutions.  
They generally attained great age, and to this day a strong mark of their 
descendants is a springing vitality that does and will carry them to more than 
the three score and ten years of active life.

Many of the first and second generations of women took their places beside the 
men in the hard work of the field.  Here they delved and toiled until often 
their hands became too stiff and horny to handle the needle at all.  They could 
bake the bread on Saturday for the coming week, and then fry the meat and 
sometimes make a pot of black coffee, and this was the sum of the cooking.  
Dishes were a few pewter plates, often the head of the family being the only one 
honored with a plate, while the other ate with their bare hands mostly; 
therefore the dish washing was a small affair in clearing away the table after a 
meal.

The growth and change from these simple habits of the early day were very slow 
indeed.  The young people accepted their manners and customs from the parents 
and as unimpaired as possible, transmitted them in turn to their children.  The 
long war of the Revolution forced upon them nay of the first changes in their 
modes of life.  It compelled the people to band more generally together; they 
met on serious matters of life and death in larger bodies, and men extended 
their acquaintance greatly with their fellow-man.  Young men who had never been 
ten miles from the farm where they had first settled, joined the army and 
started out to fight for liberty, and in their travels they saw something of the 
outside world.  In these hard and cruel marches they learned much of their own 
country, and in the march, the encampment, the prisons, the battle-fields, the 
bivouacs of those days that tried man’s soul, they learned rapidly of their 
fellow-men.  They came in contact with men of different ideas, manners and 
customs.  They newly tested themselves and tested others, and each one brought 
many new ideas back to his old home when the war was over.  It was a wonderful 
discipline and school for these simple children of the woods.  A feeble nation 
struggling in distress and poverty, fighting a rich and powerful enemy, and 
wresting victory in the end from the foe, are not apt to come out of the severe 
ordeal with that general demoralization that is so often the doleful afterpiece 
of war.  This happy exemption was the great distinguishing mark of our 
forefathers of the Revolution.  They returned from the army, resumed their 
places on their farms and were only better citizens than before.  What they had 
seen and heard, and the hard experiences they had passed, only made them that 
much better citizens, and there were enough of these men scattered through every 
community to bear up the civilization of the day and push it along-advance it in 
every line.  To a large extent, too, that war broke up the exclusive 
clannishness that had before marked different communities, especially those who 
spoke different languages.  The impetuous Scotch-Irishman learned that the 
phlegmatic Dutchman would fight and fight all day and all night if necessary, 
sturdily giving or receiving blows to the death.  And, vice versa, the German, 
learned to love his Irish messmate for his many good qualities in moments of 
great trial and danger.  The Macs and the Vons came back from the war, and they 
would visit each other; their families became acquainted.  The young folks would 
fall in love, of course, and marry, and hence to this day you need not, when you 
meet a Mr. McSomething, commence your Irish blarney upon him, because as likely 
as not it will turn out his is a German by descent.  And this is quite as true 
of the Vons as the Macs.  This was a happy solution of the once ill-conditioned 
question of nationality that prevailed in this county.