Page:Historical and Biographical Annals of Columbia and Montour Counties, Pennsylvania, Containing a Concise History of the Two Counties and a Genealogical and Biographical Record of Representative Families.djvu/45

COLUMBIA AND MONTOUR COUNTIES potatoes and roasting ears, and while the meat was trying in the skillet the coffee pot simmered among the coals. Is there a picture of comfort more alluring in these days of restaurants and flats?

Cooking stoves did not make their appearance until 1835, the old "ten-plate" stove served as a heater, if such a luxury could be afforded.

The careful housewife had brought with her from their former home the homespun bed- ticks as well as bedclothing, and until the first crop of com supplied the "shucks" the forest was resorted lo for dried leaves for the bed¬ ding. The simple methods of transit precluded the carrying of furniture, so this lack was sup¬ plied from the forest also. The ax and the drawing-knife were all the tools at hand, but with these the pioneer fashioned the needed ankles. Rough benches with sapling legs sup¬ plied the seats and tables, but the bedstead literally had but one leg to stand on. The head and one side were the walls of the cabin, while the poles forming the other sides were supported by a post set into the ground at the proper distance. Cords or deerskin thongs were laid across from the walls to the side pieces, supporting the shuck-filled tick.

It was not an uncommon thing to find a family consisting of father, mother and six or more children living in a house about twenty-two feet square, with two rooms, and a loft reached by a ladder. In the bedroom were two beds (not counting the "trundle-bed/* which slid under the larger one), a "chest of drawers," a table and a chair or two. In the kitchen were the beds of the older children, surrounded with boxes, barrels and the many bins of grain and sacks of necessaries. Yet limited as the space was, there was room for all.

But little support could be expected from the land at first, so dependence was had upon the surplus stores of the neighbors who had come previously, and in instances where the family were the pioneers there was much suffering until the fields had yielded their harvests. Fortunately (he wild game and fish were abundant, and there was never recorded a case of actual starvation. There was no opportunity for the pioneers, even had they the knowledge, to carry on "intensive" farming. The land had to be cleared, and the newcomer devoted all of his energies to this end. The more industrious families worked far into the night burning the logs and brush heaps. The soil was filled with undecayed roots of the herbage, so that the rude plows simply tickled the land; and it laughed forth abundantly in response. Except for a few simple vegetables, corn alone was cultivated, and supplied all the wants of man and beast. Every part served some useful purpose. As the resources of the land were gradually developed the support of the family became a less serious problem. The stock found support in the forest and scarcely needed the fodder stored in the log barns. Hogs fattened in the forests upon the abundant mast. With milk, pork, meal, game, fish and wild berries there was small chance of famine in the house¬ holds. A patch of flax was sown after a time, spinning wheels and looms fashioned, and each home soon became a factory which turned out clothing for the w*hole family. Buckskin formed the wear of the men, but the women's chief dependence was upon "linsey-wooley," a combination of flax and wool, in the manufacture of which much skill and taste were employed. In those days there was no thought of the "high cost of living," neither was there any struggle for the cost of high living. Most of the wants of the household could be supplied from materials at hand, and the outside world was almost a sealed book to them.

In those days amusements were few and were allied closely to some useful occupation, the result of a night's frolic being an addition to the store of clothing or food. The women organized woodpickings, quilting and spinning bees, while the men reveled in log-rollings, house raisings and husking bees. The lack of quick communication caused these affairs to strictly local, and the isolated settlements of the past were really farther apart than communities now separated by thousands of miles.

The religious sects of the time formed their own communities and developed customs of their homes in the "old country" into many of the habits that are now‘ ingrained in their descendants. The influence of these customs was on the whole beneficial, and the religious enthusiasm of the immigrants was slowly modified by contact with others of different views than those of the communities in which they had been born. This mixture of nationalities is one of the wonderful causes of the development of the present great American nation— a nation without racial or religious prejudice.

ADVENTUROUS PIONEERS OF THE PAST

As far as can be ascertained the first actual white settler in the territory comprised within Columbia and Montour counties was Robert McWilliams, who with three sons, Hugh, John, and Robert, and a daughter, Jane, wife of