"Thirty-Six Feet of Boys"

The title of this memoir came from Peter Dunkle's mother's common remark that she had "thirty-six feet" of boys among her six tall, lanky sons.  Peter's father, Michael Dunkle, and mother, Carolina Boyer, raised their family in Pine Hollow, Perry Township, on the farm that today is the Jordan Dairy Farm.  Michael Dunkle built the barn and house that are still in use today.

Peter Dunkle's memories of the earliest days of Clarion County -- before oil and the Civil War changed it -- and his description of how pioneers arrived from Germany, traversed Pennsylvania, and settled in the wilderness that was to northwestern Pennsylvania, are fascinating in their detail.  His recollections of people and events, both in daily antebellum living and later during the War, are remarkable.

Chapter 1

My first remembrance is of a spacious room.  On one side was the great stone mantle, worn smooth by frequent whetting of knives.  A big hearth-stone fronted the fireplace with two andirons standing guard at its rear, while from one side hung an iron crane on which dangled various lengths of pothooks and usually one or more great kettles.  A huge backlog was always in place with a bed of hot coals or a blazing fire in front.  The fireplace had to do duty for the baking of hot breads between regular outdoor baking supply and to keep kettles bubbling.  In cold weather it was the gathering place of the large family.

There was far more sentiment than genuine comfort about the fireplace in bitter weather, for the wide chimney allowed a strong current of heated air to pass out creating a strong draft against the group circled near.  However, the ruddy glow from this cheery spot was wider spreading than that of the lantern hanging opposite -- of tin, perforated on all sides like an immense nutmeg grater.  Its greatest virtue was its portability for at its best it emitted a dim yellowish light when the tallow candle inside was lit.

A spinning wheel stood in the chimney corner, with its tree-shaped rack for bundles of wool or flax.  Also there was the long table, and the much prized dresser.  These two larger articles and the chairs were the handicraft of the local wheelwright and cabinet-maker.

So photographic is memory that it does not omit the humble splint broom made by "Grandaddy Painter," the large straw clothes basket and the trundle bed.

I remember vividly a six-foot rocking cradle, fitted with a child's crib at one end and an open seat at the other.  This cradle was always doubly full for our family consisted of six sons and two daughters, who every two years with clock-like precision claimed admittance to the crib and afterwards graduated to the seat.  From there to be scattered far and near.

My grandparents, uncles, and aunts in fun called me "Peter the Redhead."  Now, here, I wish to state that the woes of a child are not entirely within the confines of bodily pain.  Many childish sufferings are unnoticed by his seniors, or, if observed, are only ridiculed; in after years they may appear even to himself to have been trivial.  Nevertheless, they were poignant enough once.  In those early years, two ever-present sources of annoyance were my hair and my name.  In boyhood, my hair was fiery red and curly; making me more conspicuous, my eyes were black.  To my sensitive nature, it seemed that everyone had eyes on my hair; the frequent references, even in an admiring way, abashed me; and, when others referred to it in sport, I actually suffered as if I had been taken in a crime, foolish as it afterward appeared, and I have always secretly pitied any boy with hair like mine.

I date a dislike for my name to a day when I heard my mother tell a friend how it was given.  She said Father's brother, Peter, next to him in age, objected to my father's marriage.  No doubt this was on general principles, as the helpful old maid and bachelor brother are always relinquished with regret.  However, a rumor of his opposition had reached mother's ears, and, from that day, the name Peter did not exactly appeal to her.  She continued to her visitor, "I would have like to have called my son John Wesley, but I told my husband to name the boy.  I thought Peter was bad enough, but, when he added Snyder -- for his mother -- it was almost too much.  However, it was impossible to make it any worse."  I think my father's motive was to pour oil on the troubled waters, which, no doubt, it did for mother and my uncle afterward became good friends.  Mother evened matters somewhat by naming her next son Henry Crull, after her father's first and her mother's maiden name.  The third son bore the illustrious cognomen of John Wesley.

I remember being called the inelegant name of "Pete" but once, although for short I was often called "P.S." in our immediate family; but when Post Script was playfully substituted, I rebelled; there had to be some limit.

My forbearers [sic] were of that large class of American pioneers of colonial times now known as either Pennsylvania Germans or familiarly as Pennsylvania Dutch.  They came to America in the early seventeen hundreds from Germany through Holland as they were fleeing from German conscription in Palatinate wars.  At times they were for months awaiting transportation in ports of Holland, and one large group at least was many months dependent upon the grace of Queen Anne of England on their way to America.  Small wonder that their nationality should become confused in the minds of the colonials of English extraction.

As the province of Hesse-Darmstadt in Germany as well as that of Mannheim were deeply involved in the Palatine wars and their Palatine princes busily conscripting the farmers on the land and then seizing the lands themselves, it was from the district surrounding Hesse that many fled to America.  One of the most uncalled for innuendoes then is that the Pennsylvania Germans are descendants of the Hessians employed by the British.  The truth is they were loyal and true citizens of their new land for almost a hundred years before the surrender at Yorktown.  My great-grandfather [Dunkle?] served in the Fourth Division of the Cumberland Militia under Captain McKinney.

It is not to be supposed that these oppressed refugees had in their hands money to buy tickets for themselves and their families on the ships going to America.  The ship's companies at Amsterdam were ready with a plan -- that of indenture.  This was, in short, an arrangement with well-to-do colonials to pay the passage and keep the newcomer and family as unpaid workers for a specified time.  Redemptioners they were afterwards called and even proudly called themselves that for they had redeemed themselves from serfdom.

At last after delays for arrangement of indenture papers they were off.  Crowded into unsanitary and unseaworthy ships they faced a pitiful underrationing -- salt meat, salt fish, and beer were the staples.  Passengers fortunate enough to be on the same ships with their chests broke into their cherished stores of seeds, grains, peas and beans intended for planting their future farms.  With all their effort to supplement their poor diet, fever and dysentery took heavy toll.  The youngest child of one of my [which?] ancestors was born and died on the passage.

These waves of German immigrants, with the one notable exception of Queen Anne's pensioners to Governor's Island, New York, were absorbed in Pennsylvania.  This was due in large part to the previous visit of William Penn in Germany.  His policies were very acceptable to the freedom craving immigrants.  In 1682, the year of Penn's arrival, a number came over in response to his generous offer of free lands.  It is here the place to say these Germans were not actuated as were the New England colonists by religious motives but primarily by actual destruction of their European homesteads.  They were lovers of land and to land they came despite obstacles.  The earlier arrivals once settled, their distressed fellow countrymen soon followed in waves of thousands.

As the lands near the port of entry, Philadelphia, were first occupied, the newcomers advanced further inland.  Here the first temporary homes were mere dugouts, a cellar-like arrangement with a bank for a rear wall, a tier or two of logs and a make-shift roof.

My ancestors settled on a militia man's grant in what was then Cumberland County.  The section was called Path Valley because from time immemorial it had been the trail of the Indians from north to south in their tribal affairs.  Here in the foothills of the Tuscaroras, in present Franklin County, my forbearers [sic] saw many a bloody war with the redskins who resented the farming of their hunting grounds.  Times were not easy with Colonial wars to be supported also.  Farming must have been left often to the sturdy wives.  Hewing out for themselves homes in the wilderness, they were indeed the sifted remnant, the survival of the fittest.

Increasing in wealth and numbers, they pushed westward into the rich limestone valleys of the higher Appalachians.  In those days there was a fertile virgin land across the mountains.  As the current of settlement went by, it had been left like an eddy behind a rock in a river, the passing side currents meeting again and slowly working their way back into the wilderness as fast as timber was needed for towns and cities or to fill the insatiable maws of the blast furnaces.  Although the farmer followed this returning wave, the axe was more often heard than the sickle and the sawmill than the threshing machine.

There was one especially fine large land section thus passed by along the lower course of the Clarion River, then called Little Toby Creek.  Still a portion of the public domain, its forests were, in 1810 when my grandfather first saw them, an unbroken unit.  Rumors of it from traders and trappers had reached the home of my great-grandfather, Jacob Dunkle, and his sons.  Four of them -- Michael, Henry, Peter, and John -- in the spring following the death of their father in Path Valley, left with their wives and children to trek directly across the Allegheny Mountains.  My father was among the children and has often recounted to me that thrilling journey and the excitement it was to the younger members of the party.  Double ox-teams were used, each Conestoga wagon loaded with farm implements, tools, seed, their choicest poultry and a pig.  The family cow was tied behind each wagon in the caravan.  Little furniture was carried for the load had to carry food and bedding for the trip, their clothes and cooking utensils.  The older children walked at times and even mothers with babes in arms would climb the steepest hills to lighten the load.

On the Little Toby, now the Clarion River, in what was then Armstrong County, this group of brothers settled, not many miles from the Allegheny River.  Each father with thrifty foresight covered with land patents what he felt he needed, and also as many acres as he felt his sons would eventually need.  This was the day when daughters were rather out of the picture, for each was supposed to wed in due time and, of course, her husband would have a farm.  Soon these earlier comers of about the time of my grandfather's trek were followed by friends and kin, among them were carpenters, masons, shoemakers and tanners, and wheelwrights.  These last named included in their handicraft the making of spinning wheels and cabinet work.

Here again were enacted the scenes staged by their forefathers in eastern Pennsylvania but with several advantages for these were now a free, high-spirited people, well prepared to cope with pioneering.  In the prime of life, with superb physiques, their wives were not only as willing but sometimes as capable as their husbands in wielding the axe or using the handspike.  They brought with them their traditional customs and rather strict religion.  My own family was not dead sure whether German Baptists or Quakers would someday predominate in heaven.  This made them a little broader than some of the various cults who believed so whole-heartedly each of his own mysticism that he gave short shrift to any other.  Again my family differed from most of its neighboring families in that they were English-speaking; most of the others spoke the hybrid Pennsylvania Dutch.   However, their traditions were the same and so many and interesting they merit a special chapter.

Building at first temporary homes, they hastened to clear enough land to let in the sunshine for growing of grains and vegetables to vary their diet of wild game and herbs.  What first comers went through was not easy, but they welcomed the additions to the growing community with open arms and cordially shared their frugal fare with a hospitality that was heartfelt.

In many respects they were a favored band.  The Indians were not as many as in that crossroad of paths they had left.  There was an abundance of fish in the streams and game in the forests.  Not only a large part of their food was free for the taking but the deer provided them with moccasins and coats, the bear with warm robes for their beds, and wild turkeys and pheasants provided them with the softest of feather beds and pillows.  The oak gave them material for the substantial furniture of that day and for farming equipment.  Walnut and cherry were plentiful but utility rather than beauty had to be the creed, so these beautiful woods were piled with others for burning in clearing the land.  Pine gave them shaved shingles, the chestnut split rails, and the maple the sweetest of the sweet.  Nuts of many kinds were on the hills and the bottomlands were festooned with berries and wild grapes.  The fertile, friendly soil responded as soon as sunlight and seed reached it.  Hogs did not have to wait for crops to be grown for them as the white oak gave them immediate mast.

As soon as a crop of flax could be raised, it was sundried, fire-dried, broken, scutched, and heckled to remove the shove or woody fiber, after which it was spun and woven into grain sacks and clothing.

What an important man the wheelwright was in that community!  He made the spinning wheels, looms, chairs, tables, chests of drawers as well as all the other needed furnishings, for very little household goods except an occasional heirloom was transported in the long journey.  In the making of wagons he divided honors with the blacksmith who generally did the shoeing of the wheels.

Ships were far distant in those days and, oddly enough, little missed.  Salt was the one indispensable commodity for which they could not find at hand or manage a makeshift.  For that they had to send a canoe to Pittsburgh, many miles away.  Tea and coffee were kept on hand for important functions such as weddings, that the feast might not be coldly set forth, and again at times of funerals for in that day the far-off guests were ever appropriately entertained.  At all other times these resourceful folks knew how to brew acceptable cheering cups from grain and chicory, after they were correctly parched.  Berry leaves such as raspberry and strawberry were substituted for tea and sassafras had not fallen into complete disuse in my boyhood.  It was, however, more used as part of the bill of fare in early pioneer days, and as a spring medicine or alternative during my boyhood.

My father was nine-years-old when his father came to Clarion County and was often asked to visit a family established in the valley a year previously.  They had their own grain and flour and the small boy looked forward very keenly to these visits and the treat he knew he would receive -- all the fresh bread and butter he could eat!  One day he was asked over but there happened to be no bread for dinner.  As he trudged home the three miles he said he was thinking all the way of the treat he missed.

Chapter 2

When my grandfather and his brothers came across the mountains to western Pennsylvania their caravan came down the Little Toby on its southern side.  Group by group, in families, they selected desired spots for their homes along that beautiful valley.  The lands chosen by grandfather were furthest west and not very distant from the Allegheny River.  He took up the entire peninsula formed by the river where Pine Hollow Run flows in.  For convenience the neck of the peninsula was made the boundary, and as the rest of the lands were bounded by the river this made less work of fencing.

We were thus rather isolated from the settlement of Pennsylvania Germans who had preceded us, and as no one in my home could understand their dialect, we were rather more drawn in with the settlers of Scotch-Irish blood.

My grandfather, Michael Dunkle, as was customary those days, took up lands so that each of his sons, Michael (the boy who doted on his bread and butter), Jacob and Peter, should have one hundred acres of land each in his legacy.  They wee not all fitted temperamentally to be farmers so Jacob and Peter took up trades, selling to Michael their legacy.  Thus it was my grandfather's original holdings came into my branch of the family.   I knew every foot of it; half was a level plateau about two hundred feet above the river, the remainder was a gentle hillside and woodland.   There on the bench land he built his log house which was considered the best in that community; a roomy house of white oak logs, flattened on all four sides with the broad ax and set together with white clay, finished smoothly with concave joints that were neatly attractive; one and a half stories in height, with the corners accurately fitted with "V" and saddle cuts, the second story was then substantially covered with oak clapboards.  There my father with his sister, Polly, as housekeeper, lived for years after his father's death and was a bachelor until forty-five years of age.

The grant taken up by my grandfather was a primeval forest with no meadow land.  Clearing was done by chopping a ring around each tree and allowing it to die before it was chopped down, when they were cut into convenient lengths for rolling and piled with refuse for burning.  Nothing but the white pine which could be floated in rafts to market and a sprinkling of other trees for fencing, fuel and other home uses, was left standing.  There was a little pine on the lower course of the river that was used for local building or floated down to Pittsburgh.   Although the hardwood was of greater intrinsic value than the soft wood, the grand old oaks, white, read and black, the hickory birch, maple, and other valuable woods were burned on the spot, or when near blast furnaces used for fuel.  In vindication of this ruthless destruction we must take into account that the pioneer depended on the fruits of the soil; to him the forest seemed an enemy to be exterminated; he must clear the land or live like the savage.  In those days, too, when income was limited, he welcomed the cash for sales of wood to the blast furnaces.

Log rollings were frequent, and then the whole community would gather happily; the women to quilt and later prepare a hearty meal for their men folk who worked together in the clearing.  Evenings following the work would be given over to a "frolic," and it was at these gatherings that much of the matchmaking occurred.

In my earliest recollections, there was a "Grand-daddy Painter" who would remind me every fourteenth of May that he planted corn for my father in the upper field on the day I was first placed in the family cradle.  There at the end of that six-foot crib my life responsibilities began when two years later I was told to "rock the baby."  By right of priority I assumed the leadership of my brothers and a sort of parental feeling remained long years afterward.   It was I who led in the childish games, taught the younger ones to discriminate between the friendly toad and the snake, chased off the big rooster and the turkey gobbler, baited the boys' hooks, "scutched" the chestnut trees, shook down the butternuts, and tested the depth of the swimming holes.  The hoe, the ax, scythe and reins passed through my hands while I proudly gave instructions as to their use.

After a few years our many boys made hired labor unnecessary.  We strapping boys were a factor to be reckoned with both in the field and at the table.  Mother had great pride in her stalwart sons and in later years boasted that she had "thirty six feet of boys" as we all grew to be six feet tall or taller.  In this we were no exception to our cousins, and there were many of them.  The Pennsylvania Dutch townsmen had a simile in their quaint vernacular; they said, "Dunkle stout-like."  Of the scores of men by the name in my home county, the only exception to the case of a good height was one distant cousin called "Little Pete."

Poultry played an important part on the farm.  They furnished all the meat but game in the summer months.  The geese were plucked twice a year and their feathers were a small part of the income of the fowls, but the farm supply of hens' eggs was more considerable.   They not only were much used on the home table but were also exchanged for groceries.  Both geese and hens were given the freedom of the premises, the garden being well protected by a picket fence.  Daily the eggs had to be gathered in warm weather and placed in the springhouse to be kept cool.  In winter weather they had to be brought in the house lest they freeze.

No Secretary of Agriculture more keenly felt his importance upon receiving his presidential appointment than I felt when first given charge of the egg gathering.  My job entailed some sleuthing, for the hens crept into deepest weeds or crawled under the buildings.  Some individuals seemed always to hunt the highest spots in the granary.

The goose after carefully covering her eggs goes stealthily away.  It was, however, the turkey hens that played havoc with my pride.  Their domestication had not been long enough to wean them from the woods.  As the flock wandered beneath the trees, scratching up the fresh, crisp bugs and luscious grubs, the turkey hen about to lay dropped behind the gobbler and the rest of his harem, crouched low, stretched out her neck and turned off smartly at a right angle from her companions.  Her speckled feathers so camouflaged her among the decaying vegetation and dry leaves she was all but invisible.  While many a time I acknowledged defeat when after turkey eggs, I invariably told all it would not be so next time.

My egg hunting began when I was five.  One day my father told me that I could go with him to Grandfather Boyer's shoe shop.  I wanted to gather the eggs first, and scampered fast to the barn.  One of the most used nests was in the loft above the thrashing floor where there was loose straw scattered on the boards.  My way up was over the granary and the corner braces.  One of the floor boards had no bearing on the sill; when I stepped on it, it gave way and dropped me to the floor below, eighteen feet.  My fall was heard at the house for the board fell, too, with a clatter.  Thinking a vicious bull was breaking out of a corral, my parents ran first to the stableyard, then came up the stairway to where I was crawling on the floor.  I was told afterwards that I complained that my leg was limber and I could not walk.

Father tenderly gathered me up in his arms and carried me to the house, where he placed me on the best bed, and there I stayed for five long weeks.  I was not much frightened until they told me that the doctor would soon come to set my leg.  Father had set the leg of a lamb that spring, and it had seemed to me that the splints so deeply imbedded in the wool which had some blood on it, were deep in the lamb's flesh.  All was well as soon as they convinced me that I was mistaken.  Nothing of the weariness of those bedridden days remains in my mind, but I do remember brother Henry, tiptoeing in and out, bringing me stacks of flowers and hundreds of dandelion stems to be split with my tongue and made into "wagon wheels."

I, too, can see the picture books piled about me for at that time the whole world seemed to revolve around my wishes; there were the big volumes, The Wonders of the World, The Guide to Knowledge, The Indian Book, History of the United States, and still another called by us "The Little Black Book."  All of these had lost their covers before the end of my five weeks in bed.  Two pictures stand out in memory clear-cut -- Zaccheus in the tree, looking down at his Master, and the little girl with a flower garland about the necks of a lion and a lamb as they peacefully lay at her feet.

One day the doctor came with a pair of small crutches he had the wheelwright make for me, and mother gently helped me into my little knee pants.  The doctor had not babied me much when removing my bandages and splints but when he swung me quickly up on the crutches, I was so frightened that they could not induce me to venture a step, and I never would try to use the crutches afterward.  When the doctor was gone, and I felt I was among friends, I found I could stand by a chair and follow along as it was moved.  The family made it a holiday! My elder sister, Olive, always thoughtful and kind, took charge of the moving about of my chair.  Henry danced around, now out, now in -- chattering about my achievements.  Even little year-old brother John, cooing, joined in the performance for he would demonstrate how he could stand just about as well as his big brother Peter.

My accident had been in the early spring.  Now the wheat and oats were up and waving tremulously.  In the front yard the great clump of lilacs with their heavy heads of lavender flowers filled the air with fragrance; the symmetrical snowball bush was so completely smothered with flowers it resembled a winter hillock; the swelling buds of mother's rosebush were an earnest of the summer soon to be, and the weeping willow stood apart by the wall with its graceful, long limbs trailing to the ground like a robe.  On my second day up mother carried me to the garden to stay while she worked in the bed of young vegetables.   Our garden was not large and a full third of what there was had in it currants, raspberry and gooseberry bushes.  Along the fence were sage, parsley, hoarhound, peppermint, and wormwood which we dried each year.   The rows of vegetables were in narrow beds, bordered with perpendicular boards and so planned as to be very easily cultivated and weeded.  Olive had a posy bed there, safely away from the farm fowls.  I considered it much beneath the dignity of a five-year-old boy to pay any particular attention to such sissy things.  In the garden mother let me pick some lettuce and afterward told father, "Peter picked the lettuce for our dinner today," and we three laughed as if it were an excellent joke.

Schooldays began in the old Pine Hollow Schoolhouse.  It stood in a thick growth of white oak without an evergreen in sight, but the little brook which passed close by dropped in its lower course into a ravine dark with pine and hemlock.  The spaces between the round logs that were used in the building of our schoolhouse were chinked with wood and daubed with mud.  In side there was a fireplace that had been the sole source of heat before my time there.  It was now boarded up and a heavy box stove stood in the center of the room.  Around it were benches for the pupils.  The teacher was envied because he could stand up whenever he chose to rest his back.  The older boys and girls sat on benches around a large plank which lay on pegs driven into auger holes in the walls.  This plank served the double purpose of a desk and a storage place for books.

The beginners sat all day with primer in hand as we were allowed neither paper nor slate.  The only break in the monotony was when the teacher would call us to his side where he sat like a cross-legged potentate with a pen-knife as a scepter.  While teacher and taught held the primer he would begin at "A," with the knife as a pointer, and go to "Z" and back again, naming the letters that puzzled the pupil.  I thought he must be very wise to know the letters upside down! In this mechanical way, much as the organ man grinds out his tunes, I learned the alphabet forward and backward.  No one was allowed to attempt to read until the letters were thus learned, so the end of the first year found me in my "A-B-C's."  For the life of me I could not distinguish "P" from "Q."  Before another term had opened there was a new school built nearer home, and I am glad to say we had a better teacher.

The wagon road that skirted Pine Hollow Hill made a sharp turn in the ravine and doubled back to climb the other side.  From that turn of the road in the ravine a path led up to the schoolhouse.  One evening, Aunt Lavina, Sister Olive and I ran noisily down the path through the thick underbrush to the open bank above the road.  Just at the turn of the road a charcoal wagon had been upset in making the turn and two blackfaced men were reloading it.  As we came through the bushes the men threw out their arms and gave unearthly whoops.  We ran back as fast as we could go, making a wide detour to reach a road that would take us quickly to our grandfather's home.  Six black mules with black-faced drivers who acted so unusual were just a bit too much for us.

Chapter 3

The thrifty Pennsylvania farmer invariably replaced his log barn with a modern building long before he built a new home.  His theory in this was crystallized in the saying that "in five years a good barn will build a good house."  He and his were thus very willing to deprive themselves of comforts for a short time.  The barn structures of the Pennsylvania Germans in our section were built large enough to comfortably stable the livestock as well as to hold the grain and hay.  Not a few disparaging remarks were made by those who sheltered their animals in winter about the less considerate farmers whose cattle stood in mud and snow for months.

The building of a new barn thus meant that the owner really foresaw a good home in the near future, so to the neighbors it was a sure omen of prosperity.

Long before the day set for the "raising" the materials for the structure were arranged close to the new site; huge timbers were hewn for the frame work and the several parts of each section numbered to aid their rapid and correct joining on the big day.

On the day of the "raising," the whole countryside would gather early, a crowd of stalwart men with a sprinkling of the of the aged men who were invited out of courtesy.  To the women folk fell the important duty of preparing at least two feasts.  And there were, even in those days, little social amenities.

It was a motley crowd that gathered around those bents.   The trestles, which resembled the trestles of a railroad bridge, were first raised into place and secured with braces and capped with plates.   The men with pike poles and tackles pushed and pulled to the rhythmic "Heave ho!" of the foreman.  The perlines and long rafters were next drawn up and fastened in place.

Our new barn was framed from hewed oak, but the two top plates were of hewed pine, the full length of ninety feet without a splice.  All the new barn material was found on our home place; the side lumber having been sawed at a neighboring mill.  The frame of the barn which was fifty by ninety feet stood on a stone wall that enclosed three sides of the stable basement.  It was of a style called "overshot" on account of the recess on the lower side to give shelter to the outside stock.   For the other cattle there were two rows of stalls -- one for the general herd and one for the milk cows, also two large stables for the young cattle and calves and a double foddering room.  All of these opened into the overshot recess.

Advantage was taken of a rise of ground on the upper side to make a bridging to the threshing floor where they hay and grain were unloaded.  Large double doors opened to the threshing floor which was twenty feet wide and ninety feet long.  Eighteen feet above the threshing floor were sills covered with loose boards; the ones well remembered because of the accident of my boyhood days.

A granary occupied the lower part of the barn at one end of the hay bay.  The barn was annually filled to overflowing -- wheat, rye and oats were stored for threshing when the busy season was over, but the buckwheat was flailed out, a load at a time as it was brought in as it otherwise would shatter and much of the grain be lost.

"There wrought the merry harvesters and many a creaking wain
Bore slowly o'er the long barn floor its load of husk and grain;
Till broad and red as when he rose, the sun sank down at last,
And like a merry guest's farewell the day in brightness passed."

For more than a year preparation had been in progress for the building of our new house, and this before the ground was broken for the basement.  Pine was selected from our own timberland, sawed at a neighboring mill and dried in a kiln father had built close to the site of the new house.  Soft white sandstone rocks that split straight and true as wood had been shaped where they were dug then hauled and neatly piled until it seemed to me there was enough for the entire building, not just a basement.  Upon return from school one evening, I found father and his man behind the house, digging in the bank.  Father told me that the new house was going to be built.  After the excavating was done, the masons were not long in putting up the eight-foot basement walls, but the carpenters had a much longer task.  At that time the timbers of a house frame were hewed from trees and the end mortised and tenoned instead of being spiked together in the modern way; the flooring and siding was smoothed and matched with hand planes, and all the window sashes and doors made by hand from rough timber.

Robert Bell, who had framed the barn, was in charge of the building of the new house.  Since our "barn raising" his wife had died, leaving him three little children but even this adversity did not suppress his cheerfulness.  Whenever he was near, his lighthearted whistle and snatches of song were in the air.  He owned a full score of different planes, but the ones that were of the greatest interest to me were his "tongue and groove" planes used in matching the flooring.  With a sixteen-foot board held rigidly in place by several vises, he would strut along the full length, his plane to the edge, while ribbons of shavings would writhe over his shoulders and around his neck with scarcely ever a break in their whole length.

I was eight years old when we moved into the new home.   It was an ample square building with a massive stone chimney in the center.   The eaves of the four-sided roof were trimmed close, the narrow projection without bracket or relief of any description.  The structure gave more the impression of strength than of beauty but the site was chosen for the fine scenery it offered.

The new house stood directly north of the barn with the garden between, and was painstakingly lined up with the compass.  One cannot help wondering to what extent ancient sun worship enters into the orientation of buildings, for from the pyramids onward there has ever been this feeling of the need for such meticulous arrangement of walls.   It is as if these spots were so sacred that a careful setting was its due.  The more modern and admittedly more practical idea of orientation is to insure the proper sun and lighting to the various rooms.  I fear this did not enter into our home placement.  The river, the beloved river, dominated all! The house was "square with the universe" but was carefully placed where there were two inspiring views, one from the front and one from one side of the house.  On the brow of the river embankment, its front was raised a few steps and this to make the rear entrance on a level with the land and the dairy and spring house which were but a few steps from the rear.  An eight-foot basement, not properly a cellar as it was well lighted from three sides was used for the general workroom, where washing, ironing, fruit preserving, and meat curing were done.  Back of this was the capacious frost-proof cellar.  This well-thought-out planning left the combination kitchen and dining room a very tidy spot whose floors though bare were a pleasure to see as mother and sister Olive kept them "fit to eat off of" as the expression then was, and this was on their hands and knees with a block of sandstone from the fields.

The sitting-room was a large one as the first floor of the house above the basement had but three rooms, the third being that of my parents.  This room was entirely covered with the gay, new rag-carpet which mother had woven for it.  Its fireplace glowed with a coal fire as for some time now we had developed our own coal bank.  Very few framed pictures were on the walls but the great clock brought "over the mountains" in 1810 and father's many books were enough with the treasured chest of drawers to satisfy our humble tastes.  This spot generally saw our parents at the center table.  Here father read aloud while mother sewed or knitted underwear and stockings.  This reading aloud was not solely for our benefit, although I know well my busy mother would have missed much without it.   Father and his father before him had the rather odd custom of reading aloud even when alone.  Maybe this was a survival of the days when the mere ability to read was so unusual that not a scrap of anyone's enjoyment should be enjoyed selfishly.  "Morris" and "Odd and Even" were our games around the fireplace.  Cards were anathema to my mother, their faces "pictures of the devil," and the sole one I recall ever having been dropped in our home (left by a visitor), she picked up with her apron between it and her hand lest she be in some way contaminated.  That left quite an impression on us, and we never played cards while we lived at home.

In all seasons the great front porch with its low banister was our glimpse of the outside world; the vantage point from which we viewed romance.  Its varied scenes were doubtless enhanced by having sympathetic companions for we boys equally thrilled to its views.

The river, the changing river, came abruptly around a hill and flowed directly toward us for a mile, when it took a sharp turn to the right.  A hillside of pine, hemlock and birch with a suggestion of young orchards at its base was on one side of the river, while on the other the view was of level lands with fields, homes and orchards.  Here we watched the rising sun reflected directly in the water, and here father called our attention to weather signs in the cloud formations and in the coloring of the morning and evening sky.

How the river smashed along when the ice was breaking up, and how its swollen waters seemed to rejoice when the scent of flowers and songs of birds floated over it in the spring!

But there was a call to the outer world coming to us in a strong undertone; that was when the rafts of lumber began to float down the river.  Scarcely was the ice out of the way when an occasional raft could be seen to pass down, and at times a dozen or more would be in sight at once, increasing daily until so many would go by in a day that we could keep no count of them, although we variously estimated them in prodigious boyish numbers.  Occasionally we would witness a wreck for it was a turbulent mountain stream and rocks were plenty.  Many a time we watched those muscular young raftsmen exerting themselves to the last ounce of their energy.  I know that in that hour to be a raftsman was the most glorious calling I could imagine, and my heart swelled with anticipation.

Directly across the river was a raftsman's boarding house kept by John Elder.  It was a favorite stop for it had a well-sustained reputation for comfortable beds, bountiful country fare, and "that which makes merry."  It was thrilling to watch from our porch the manoeuvering when the rafts were shaped for landing at the boarding house.  In the flood time the current was too strong and the eddy sharp and small for a turn at any season.  Generally John Elder tried to accommodate by having a man on the shore to help with the snubbing, if this were not the case the raft would have to be brought near enough to the shore for a raftsman to jump off.  An effort was always made to reach the first tree with the cable that other chances might be left.   As I grew older, I often used to leave my work and cross in our skiff to be in the thick of the excitement and was sometimes privileged to take a hand at the oar.  On rare occasions I would cross the river at daybreak and make the short trip out to the confluence with the Allegheny River.  Of course, I had to walk back but what was that! In this way I gained experience that stood in good stead later.

Near John Elder's place there was a headrace which led the water off to Bell's combination saw and grist mill.  The power was furnished each mill by horizontal water wheels attached to vertical shafts.  Only one set of burrs was installed to do the grinding which therefore was limited to the making of chop feed and corn meal.  One man constituted the entire crew at the saw mill where an old fashioned up and down saw did the work.  It was here that the lumber for our farm buildings was sawed.  Higher up the course of the river there was more power and the mills utilized it more fully, but "turning a score of mills, the river no more ran free."  Bell's mill was swept away in the flood of '61 but the dam remained for many years.

The pool above the dam's headrace in the river proper was called "Sassafras Eddy" and had a soft sandy bottom making it ideal for swimming.  Daily on warm summer evenings we would run down for a swim.  The cove where we entered was quiet and shallow so the water was warm, but the deeper water was so exhilarating we screeched like Indians.

With a tow line of mother's spinning I landed my first fish on the bank of Pine Hollow Run.  It was all of five inches long!  It was to be expected with our love for the river that we boys would have a mania for fishing.  The pure waters of the Clarion at that time were teeming with a variety of fish, which, with our simple home-made equipment, required a fund of fish lore if we caught enough for our large household's needs.  Their biting depended on the season, the time of day, the state of the water and the weather conditions.  There were then no law restrictions, so we got our largest catches by spearing through a hole in the ice in the winter and with a basket in the other months.

My first business transaction was with Jimmie Bell; a partnership catching fish.  He to furnish the craft and I the tackle.  There was a deep hole in the river at the further end of Bell's Loop where Jimmie lived.  This had the reputation of giving refuge to some regular old grandfathers of the finny tribe during low water.  Jimmie found two large pine scantlings which he framed together by nailing on cross strips; this answered for the craft.

Mother helped me to double and twist, from her homespun thread, a stout line long enough to span the hole.  In addition, we made a dozen short drop lines to which we attached as many hooks.  This was my addition to the stock of the partnership.  To each end of the long line we attached heavy stones to serve as anchors and dropped them on either side of the deep, dark hole after baiting the hooks and fastening a piece of wood to the center of the line for a float or marker.   Ready for business we left the hole for the night.  Next morning before breakfast I ran down and with Jimmie hurried to the raft.   I took the front end, and we pushed out to where I could seize the line.   Something was on it and the block of wood was being swished hither and yon.  The line whistled through the water as we piloted the unwieldy craft along, and I managed in great excitement to draw alongside a ten pound catfish.  It was a strange bewhiskered specimen with no scales, and had swallowed the hook.  The short drop line refused to be loosened from the main line, and we were not strong enough to break the line, but boys have their teeth with them all the time.  I chewed off the strong twisted linen thread and bore our catch from one house to the other to display it in greatest triumph.

That evening after the two families had declared that particular catfish more delicious than brook trout and certainly "more of it" Jimmie called a serious business meeting.  He would forswear being an Indian fighter if I would give up being a raftsman.   I did, but with mental reservation.  A mile below our fishing hole and sixty rods up a ravine flanked by a steep rock wall was a precipice one hundred and fifty feet high.  Alum exuded from its surface, but aside from that peculiarity, it was most interesting to the people for miles about who came to picnic and leave their initials on the trees around about.   Its profile resembled that of a giant Indian, and to make it more realistic it was overhung by a segment of earth and shrubs giving the impression of a forelock.

Level land extended back from the edge, and it was reported that long ago a buck and a pursuing dog went over the cliff together.

Martha Bell is one I associate with the river.  Scott Bell, her husband, was one of the first to enlist from our section when three month's volunteers were called.   His patriotism was rather questioned by those who well knew how little responsibility he had ever shown for his large family.  He had always left the brunt of their support to Martha and used his regular earnings to support the local saloon man's family, so his going really made little difference although he re-enlisted for three years.

The Bells lived on our side of the river.  During Civil War times when she was the sole support of her family, I used to help her catch stray timber and lumber.  In rafting time it was a common occurrence for a stick or two of timber or a few boards to be knocked out of a raft and go adrift.  From the vantage point of our porch, strays of this kind could be seen in time for me to run down to the river.   My shouts as I ran down the hill gave her time to be in the boat with oars balanced ready for me to jump in at the stern.  She would swing expertly around when we met the prize, I would hook into it, and she would pull for shore.

If the owner from some mill above came down the shores toward the close of the season hunting through the various "catching pieces," he would first have to pay a small fee for the catching before he could take it, and he also had to show his private timber mark.

The alert Martha would meet all comers with a quizzical gaze.  Before they began conversation, she would get to the essentials: "Have you-uns a mark?"  "H and C" was the mark most often heard.  If we had it, she would know it, but she generally made it a little harder by asking:  "What kind o' timber air ye looking for?  When did you-uns stove?" or "What do you pay for ketchin'?" before she would lead them to her neat pile with the timber marks laid where they could all be seen at one end of the lot.

After the rafting season was over there would remain a good number of sticks.  One year we received twenty-eight dollars for our season's catch when we took the timbers by raft to Munn's Mill, and this was in addition to our several little catching fees.

Martha lived in a tiny house, crowded with children, but it was neat and clean.  In some way she was able to do a man's work outside and a woman's work too without seeming to neglect either.  She had just enough bottom land for a small garden and kept a row-boat with which she earned stray nickels ferrying travelers across the river.  On her boat she rigged a "jack" where she burned pine knots at night with spear in hand, a very Amazon.  Woe to the fish that lingered too long in the glare of that light!

And so the river was as essential in those days as the veins of a man are to his own life; it carried salt for the pioneer; was the common way over which the products of farm and forest went to market, and for our pleasure it provided pure and lovely spots for bathing and fishing.  It was all things to all men.

Chapter 4

On the events and issues of the Civil War so much has been ably written, these memoirs of mine will allude to the subject as briefly as possible, noting only those points that had a direct bearing on the community in which we lived.  I was born in 1851 and so had no active part; my part in the way all lived in rural districts then may be called a sidelight.

After the firing on Fort Sumter the first to enlist were the young men from schools and colleges.  Often every eligible student would enlist with their principal as their captain.  This was the case at West Freedom Academy.   Its doors were closed.  With Professor Hosey as their captain, the students formed the nucleus of the company from our village and were named the West Freedom, Pennsylvania Company.  Soon almost every home was a house of mourning.   There were no authorities in our decidedly backwoods community to check disloyal speech and there was plenty.  It came from the pulpit, and the listeners would quarrel roundly with each other before leaving the church.

It came from the teacher with a sort of authority.  The Pine Hollow School being only for the younger grades was not closed.  My teacher was a southern sympathizer and in the guise of current events would question us and at the same time tell us how the North was losing ground.  His parting question often was this:  "Who is the greater man, Jefferson Davis or Abe Lincoln?"  We all knew to retain his favor we had better say, or rather shout, "Jefferson Davis's!"

Mother, busy as she was, made it a point to be present during these closing exercises one afternoon and could hardly contain herself.  She took me aside at home to ask me what I said.  Mother, I said Abraham Lincoln, so I did, but I was careful not to say it loud."   She laughed and I escaped a reprimand.

The name we northern sympathizers got was "Black Republicans," and we retaliated with one we thought very cutting, "Copperheads."

Several years later I claimed among my good friends a cousin of brave "Stonewall Jackson." One day when we were driving together, he took me to visit the boyhood home of that intrepid southern general and the talk turned to reminiscences of him.  His cousin said that at the outbreak of the war, General Jackson wrote his mother that at that early stage of affairs he was in a dilemma and could not state positively which side he ought to take.  He afterwards wrote her that after much deliberation he was quite convinced that his duty lay with the people among whom he was then teaching -- in Virginia.  We cannot but admire all who fought according to their convictions.

There was one public spirited merchant in our town by the name of Harry Jordan who said that he felt it a personal honor to carry any war widow's account.  In recalling war days afterward, he told me that he could wait on any three of them at once, as it required so long for them to make their selections; eking out their meager thirteen dollars a month.

Owing to their common interests these women became closely drawn to each other.  They would often meet in each other's homes to discuss the all absorbing topic of "When will the war be over," or pitifully hover about the post office waiting for letters that were infrequent enough and to gather scraps of news.

Small drum and fife corps were many during war times; these would head the procession on recruiting days when patriotism seemed to be greatly inspired by martial strains.  Our corps boasted of one fife, one bass and two snare drums.  In our village there were two men by the name of Robert Bell.  One was the carpenter-musician; the man in charge of the building of both our home and our barn.  To distinguish them, he was called "Red Robert." Short, light of limb and agile, hair sandy, eyes pale blue, nose upturned comically, he would have been odd enough had he not another peculiarity I have never seen so marked in any man -- a fatuous, frozen smile.   He was the fifer in our drum corps and always carried off the laurels.  When through with his fifing he would nimbly skip among the drum on its under side without losing a beat of time.  As a matter of fact he was musical enough that in some way he cleverly managed to either accent or interpolate a bang just when and where it was best needed to put zest into what threatened to become a mere drone.  Tolerated perhaps in any conversation requiring much intelligence, he was here not only the center of all eyes with his clowning, but he really added to the musical performance.

Red Robert played the fiddle at dances but where he shone with greatest brilliancy was at singing school.   Life had to go on, you know, and young folk were young folk in the sixties as much as they are today.  There was not as much singing instruction in the classes as the name seems to signify.  During the long winter evenings, the young people would gather at Red Robert's home and were made gladly welcome.  No one thought of offering him anything for teaching the reading of the old fashioned buckwheat notes, but knowing well that their teacher never had enough money to provide candles in plenty to light the songbooks so they could be seen, the young men would consider they had done the magnificent thing when they brought a dozen homemade dip candles.  These they would pin to the log walls of the house with jack knives and a youth, each would then take charge of keeping one candle snuffed.

Some twenty or more two-foot cuts of a log with dry boards to place over them were stored in Red Robert's work shop for the purpose of putting up for seats on nights of singing school.

Each of the young people had to choose a seatmate for the supply of song books was short; and what was nicer than to be obliged to sit close enough to see to read by tallow candles! Though there was occasionally a small display of coyness, I cannot recall when two boys had to share a book.  Some way the supply of girls for boys always worked out surprisingly well.

Although there were hymns between the covers of those old song books, their names did not remain in my memory, perhaps confused a little by the ones we sang so often in church.  My favorites were: My Lovely Anna, and When You and I Were Young, Maggie.  The song, Oh, the Singing School, Beautiful was attempted but once, and we did get from the war front in the latter part of the war the song Lorena that was sung so often around the campfires.  Strangely enough, the one song Red Robert said he loved the most was not a gay, rollicking tune but a long drawn-out wailing thing, and a hymn at that, entitled: How Tedious and Tasteless the Hours.  It seemed to us the last thing suitable for such a time and place.

Standing in the exact center of the rows of seats on which his class would arrange themselves facing both ways, Red Robert would hold his fiddle out one side of him and his bow the other, pop his eyes open wide, then close them dreamily as he snuggled his instrument under his chin and drew the bow across in a long thin note to give us the pitch.  After this he would lead, sometimes playing with his eyes tight shut, sometimes holding his instrument out stiffly and beating time with the bow.  When genuinely settled to his satisfaction in a song he thought we sang well, he would sit to play and then tap out the time with one foot quite snappily.  If it were his favorite hymn, he would sway half around first to the left and then to the right until he appeared half hypnotized.

We always insisted on at least one solo from our host and singing teacher, and were better pleased when it was The Frog a-Courting He Did Ride than when he sang his dolorous hymn which said in one place, "Sweet music, sweet prospects, sweet smiles, have long lost their sweetness for me."

Red Robert would then coax a solo from one of the young folk and we would pair off to go home.  Our muffled steps in the snow would crunch along to the tune of the fiddle in the doorway.

Chapter 5

To the older members of the family, the war meant greater seriousness.  To be sure the prices of farm produce increased but not in ratio to that of the commodities purchased.  Then, too, there was that constant feeling that we, who passed through the World War, appreciate -- that the boys at the front were skimped in rations and it would be selfish indeed to let one home product be wasted.  So, we scrupulously practiced conservation.

From the days of grandfather's arrival we had a great oval Dutch stove in the back yard   Built of stone and clay, it had a hearth six feet in diameter.  A great fire of hardwood was built in it and allowed to burn down to the coals after it had been kept up long enough to thoroughly heat the thick walls.  Sometimes a fire would be built for the purpose of drying fruit and berries but on "dry-boards," but generally the family baking would be done first when the oven would be of the proper heat for drying the fruit.  Mother would slip the large pans of bread in on a long-handled paddle and close the oven for one hour to the minute.  There was a time when it needed filling twice with bread but whether or not the pies followed.  Close by stood the leach barrel where the hardwood ashes were soaked and the lye from them was, from time to time, used in making homemade soap.  So, the enormous soap kettle was installed at what we called the "was place" for all the year, except when rain or snow prevented, mother and Olive washed outdoors and boiled the clothes there in a large copper kettle.

In this matter of laundering as it used to be done, one quaint and rather poetical belief held; that the proper time to bleach new linen, which was an even pale cream to yellow, was when the apple trees were in blossom.  So exactly was this saying believed that the new linens were always to be seen spread in a circle as close as might be to the overhanging sprays of flowers.  Some concession, you see, was made to the sun's rays, but the flowers must be given their fair chance.  No wonder they smelled sweet.  Our towels (at least the first time or so we used them) were unironed in the press of spring work, and occasionally the pillow cases and sheets, too.

It has ever been interesting to me, and so I hope to those who read these pages, to speculate upon the causes of well established customs and sayings; may it not be that the housewives who spent their winter days at weaving had piles of the new linens about the time the sun's rays came as a new annual miracle? That they placed them on the grass, at some very early date, under the blossoming trees and beheld a fine bleach? It pleases me to think that way.

Pork and beef were seldom killed in spring or summer.  Poultry, game, calves and lambs were the between time family supply of meats.  The farm hogs fared rather slenderly during the summer months as the porker was supposed to hunt on the common and in the woods under the oak trees.  However, he ran no chance of becoming wild in that way as daily he was enticed to the great buttermilk barrel in the farmyard.  In the fall the hogs were penned and fed the second grade of corn.  To be explicit this was the third grade as the very best perfect eaters were selected for seed and the second grade sold or used at home.  The hogs were fed this corn until they were unable to walk about.  I have seen them rise to their front feet only to take their meals.

Butchering day came about Thanksgiving and it was the only time of the entire school year Mother excused any one of her large brood from attendance.  Everyone able to lend a hand was pressed into service.  There was always a man or two in our neighborhood who made a practice of taking charge of this work, while many more were glad to help not only to lighten the labors of a family of friends but also because there was always a nice portion of meat given as a slight remuneration.

Everything was so arranged that the work could be commenced by daybreak and by noon eighteen to twenty or more clean, pinkly-white carcasses would be hanging by the heels stiffening, ready for cutting and trimming.  Only the leaf and kidney fat was saved for rendering into lard, that from the other viscera being set aside for soap grease.  From the hams, flitches and head was trimmed the meat for sausage.  For the wurst and the pawnhaus the head was cleaned and set aside with a portion of the livers and the hearts.  These were set boiling in a fifteen gallon copper kettle.  It is of interest here to understand just why the head was boiled instead of stripping the meat from it.  This was done to extract the gelatine which made the wurst and pawnhaus of a jelly-like consistency.  It was a meticulous job to properly clean a head, and mother stood over us with many a firm order.  It would be dark when all had gathered in the big basement room and the sausage grinder and sausage stuffer had begun to turn.  Long ropes of unadulterated and carefully seasoned sausages now rolled out steadily as the work went merrily on.

My boyhood days were before those when the canning of fresh fruit was understood and practiced generally, but berries were dried and so were some of the larger fruits, by a process at home.  The ideal place for doing this was on "dry-boards" as we called them.  This drying process was done in the big "Dutch oven" where a fire was occasionally built for the express purpose of drying fruit.  More frequently, however, the oven was used first for a baking of bread and one of pies or biscuits, after which it was the proper temperature for slowly evaporating the fruit.

In a big oven, mother browned rye and chicory -- our wartime substitute for coffee   Outside the oven, however, she dried the mints and herbs which she put away each year for seasonings and simple home remedies.

Of all the wholly or partially prepared foods there was but one that was rigidly excluded from a place among its fellows.  That was the big barrel of sauerkraut, whose peculiar odor so ready to taint its associates condemned it to a nook by itself.  Never-the-less, it was welcomed occasionally on the family table.

After all that has been said in regard to the bursting barns and cellars, it may appear to the casual reader that there was no need for economy at the table.

Today our tables are well supplied with the good things of all climes.  The poorest of us consider it a hardship unless we can have our choice of these foods prepared in the daintiest way.  We pay exorbitant prices for things out of season, nor are our appetites supposed to be constant.  The grocer, the butcher and the baker have to cater to our daily call, sometimes through carelessness on our part three times a day, and we naturally expect to pay suitably for this service.  Then the preference of each individual member of the household is made a matter of serious thought and study.

I would not set myself up as a reformer; in seventy years from today perhaps future generations may be lavishing pity on us for our present privations.  The manner of living is so radically different than that of seventy years ago that we cannot fully appreciate the difficulties in those times.  We but vaguely realize the pioneer's hardships and entirely lose sight of the contributing causes that then perforce made a homely table fare in vogue to suit the circumstances of those times.

I would have you know some of the enjoyments to be found in the simple life.  My home was not exceptional but rather was characteristic of the period.  To furnish food for ten healthy, hearty appetites was no trivial task; undertaken in the right spirit, it became a game in which each took a cheerful part.  One of the pleasant features was that the grocer's and butcher's bills did not mount up monthly.  Cash from the occasional sale of a colt or a beef paid the heavier accounts, while the butter and eggs were exchanged to satisfy the accounts at the grocery and dry goods store.  Hence it will be understood when the butter and eggs were used rather sparingly at the table.

Corn and buckwheat are each such complete articles of diet and are also so simple of preparation that they were made the staple foods on our table in the winter, especially, as there was then no great amount of work of any kind in progress.  Winter mornings we had our buckwheat cakes or our Johnny cakes, served with meat fryings diluted with milk and seasoned nicely.  At noon it would be a great dish of vegetables boiled with meat and another great dish of "pone."  The evening meal was the only one that sent the boy away unsatisfied and that not for lack of quantity but rather on account of its monotony, for unless a visitor would be with us corn meal mush and milk would be our supper.  Our cornmeal was not the ordinary, finely bolted kind, as the miller by father's instructions set his burrs when he ground our corn so as to rind our meal coarsely and left it unbolted for mother to run through a sieve at home.  Meal in that shape required a longer time for cooking; not less than an hour for mush and Johnny cake required double the usual time.

We were never consulted as to whether we were fond of a certain kind of food, nor do I recall any complaints.  However, I remember clearly how eagerly we looked forward to the great piles of doughnuts for Christmas and the quantities of eggs for Easter -- eggs fried, scrambled and also those pretty gaily-colored boiled eggs.

Chapter 6

Conditions during the Civil War gave a new impetus to the already frugal mode of living and all sorts of make-shifts were adopted in order to avoid having to buy at the suddenly inflated prices.

Our hats were made at home from rye straw that was cut before the grain was mature as it was most pliable at this stage and when bleached was perfectly white.  We children did the braiding; the four-strand braid was of two styles, the smooth and the "rough and ready," but we were able also to braid five, six, and seven-strand braids.  Each child's head was duplicated in a wooden block to be used by mother as she sewed the long braids we had prepared for her and shaped the hat to fit each as she sewed.

Most of our clothing those days was made from pure linen, or from a combination of linen and wool.  We manufactured the linen from flax of our own raising.  The lint of flax is a thin outside fiber that encloses a woody stem called the "shove."   To prepare the lint for spinning, the shove has to be removed.  To understand the preparation of flax, it is necessary to begin with the planting.  The seed was sown quite thick to make it grow both tall and slender with one straight root.  Thus sown, it attains the height of about three feet and, when mature, it was pulled up with the root.  It was made into small sheaves and stood in long rows for curing.   After the seed for the coming year's crop was flailed out in the barn, the flax stems were spread out thin on a stubble field to remain until thoroughly sun dried, then bundled and taken to the firing place.  This was a chimney-shaped stone wall, five feet high and open in front.  Two poles were placed over the top, on which the flax was spread out, about six inches deep.  A fire was built under the flax in the chimney and kept going moderately until the stems became very brittle when it was broken, a handful at a time, in wooden meshes.

Next came the scutching process, done by holding a handful of the flax in the left hand over the end of an upright board and striking the over-reaching flax with a wooden paddle called the scutching knife, for the purpose of removing the shoves.  This hand work was a slow process so brother Henry and I engaged a local wheelwright to make us a foot power machine of our design to lessen the labor.  It required two operators; one to hold the flax and one to furnish power to the wheel, but it was a great improvement over the hand-scutching process.

The heckling followed.  This was done by drawing the lint, a handful at a time, through a mesh of long, sharp spikes to separate the tow from the long lint fibers.  The tow was spun for woof or for rope, while the finer lint was utilized for warp and thread.  The most fish I have ever caught were on lines of mother's spinnings.

As country stores of that time carried no ready-made clothing for boys, it was necessary that the mothers should cut and fit from whole cloth.  Our mother not only did this, but, with the help of her sisters, spun the material with which she later wove the cloth and then made our suits.  Before mother's marriage, she and her sisters had a large, old-fashioned loom which she later set up in our basement; then, with the aid of Aunt Rebecca, Mary Ann, or Lavina Jane, as the case might be, they would put the warp into the loom.

The process of this setting-up is a long one, even in the telling.  Sufficient thread and yard had to be on hand ready-spun, reeled and wound into balls for the desired web.  The threads of the warp were passed through the racks and fastened to the back beam on which they were rolled.  The threads were made the required length and adjusted to the front beam.

The weaver sat in front and, with foot power, manipulated the rack, which raised and lowered alternately ever second thread of the warp.  The woof, previously wound on bobbins, was put into a canoe-shaped shuttle.  The shuttle was dexterously cast through the separate strands of the warp.  After each successive cast, the thread of the woof was struck into place.

When all linen was used, the goods were left uncolored and bleached white.  When part wool was used, it was called linsey-woolsey, and the wool material in part colored.  Brown was a favorite dye, and we procured it from walnut bark.  Black, and blue were second in point of popularity.  A white linen warp with a black woolen woof was called "salt and pepper."  Checks were made by alternating a certain number of different-colored threads in both warp and woof.

Clad in linen shirt, salt-and-pepper trousers, linsey-woolsey jacket, and with my rye straw hat on my knee, I have listened many an hour long sermon that was Greek to me, while my heart was out with the free living things.

Stumps were plentiful in the home fields in those days.  An idea of what had once been there could be gained by observing the few small adjacent groves that had escaped the woodman's axe.

Several circular black spots about thirty feet in diameter were to be seen in the fields and they were quite conspicuous after all the stumps were gone.  To the outsider, they were a mystery, but to us they appeared as naturally in place as the stumps themselves, for we had seen some such black spots in the process of making.  They were the hearths where the timber had been converted into charcoal to be used for the manufacture of pig metal.

The manufacturing of charcoal, locally called "coaling," was done in the open by making a hearth on which the wood was stacked on end, slanting toward a common center.  The wood was cut uniformly, four feet long and thus ranked in tiers, until the apex was reached, giving the so-called "pit" the appearance of a haystack.  The wood was next thoroughly covered with leaves to sustain a thick covering of earth preparatory to firing.  When the wood was fired, a man had to be in constant attendance day and night to see that it was kept completely covered; otherwise, a current of air might create a draft and flame which would soon have left nothing but a heap of ashes.  This light product of imperfect combustion was next loaded into schooner-shaped wagons and hauled to a furnace.  For this work, three pairs of mules constituted a team, the heaviest at the wheels, the lightest as leaders.  The driver's saddle was on the "near wheel mule," and a single jerk line on the left leader was the only guide.  A long-lashed blacksnake whip hung over the driver's shoulders' his face and clothes were as black as the coal he handled for when loading he carried on his head the open meshed baskets of coal and the grimy dust filtered through, literally covering him.

While charcoal was available, the manufacture of pig iron, or more correctly pig metal, was the main industry of a considerable section which lay in close proximity to the lower Clarion River.  At one time, there were a score of charcoal blast furnaces in Clarion County.  I have seen a dozen dismantled remains there, but of all, only Sligo survived in active blast when I attained my majority.  Five of the Presidents, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Polk, and Buchanan, were honored by furnace namesakes.

There was no big body of ore, but there were general outcroppings of a vein or veins from the foothills on either side of the river.  In many places, there was but little earth lying over the vein, which made the ore easy of access.  Nearly every farmer had his ore bank which paid him wages for digging and hauling and a little something beside for his mineral right.  The ore was rich in metal, but of a hard, stubborn nature, requiring limestone for fluxing.  Fortunately, limestone was abundant in the immediate vicinity.

The furnace proper, called the stack, was of heavy stone masonry, the exterior being the frustrum of a pyramid, about twenty feet square at the base and twenty feet high, while the interior was cylindrical.  The site was always against a bluff bank, in order that a road could be easily graded to reach the top of the stack, into which the charcoal, limestone, and ore were fed.   An archway at the front base admitted the blast and allowed the exit of the metal and slag.   These two were easily separated as the slag would float on top of the molten metal as oil floats on water.

When the molten mass had reached the proper consistency, the metal was led off into small trenches on a sand hearth for cooling.  There were usually two central grooves, from which branched at short intervals to right and left others of about thirty inches in length.  Technically, this was "pigmetal"; the central piece was the "sow" and the side pieces the "pigs." When thoroughly cool, these laterals of a hundred pounds or more were broken off, and the central part was also broken into pieces of nearly the same weight.

Pittsburgh was the nearest market for this metal.  It was hauled to Clarion and from there floated down on flat boats.  The hauling was generally done in the Winter and the metal ranked on wharves conveniently near for transferring to the boats in early Spring.

Boat-building itself grew to be an important industry as boats were also used to float coal down the Ohio; the building of boats was thus kept up long after the furnaces had "blown their last." The "boat bottoms" as they were called, were a hundred and sixty-five feet in length by twenty-five feet in width.  They were built bottom-side up in scaffolds and turned over into the water.

Soft whit sandstone was also loaded into these boats and taken down the river to the various glass works; also about this time fire clay from this locality was carried in these same boats to the brick yards.  A boat that had been used for carrying down a load found a more ready sale with the coal dealer at Pittsburgh than a new and untested boat.

Here I must digress by calling attention to the many natural resources of that part of Pennsylvania.  Underlying the rich forests, the fertile soil, and the valuable sandstone, were found immense quantities of limestone, coal, iron, and petroleum; in some instances, all of them were found on a single hundred-acre tract.  Yet, we poor, benighted creatures turned our backs on it and went scouting all over the land for a mess of pottage.

Much of the home place was near the outcropping of a vein of coal overlaid by a heavy, clay soil.  In time, such soils become "dead," although literally full of organic matter.  It did not require a scientific analysis of the soil in those days to teach these wide-awake farmers that quicklime greatly benefitted clay soils.  The lime did not act as a fertilizer, but changed the composition and physical state of the soil, liberating the organic matter.

Father purchased and added to his original holdings thirty acres of upland that were rich in coal and limestone, both easy of access.  As we boys grew older, we assisted in the work of burning lime.  The limestone lay near the surface and required no blasting, being in large flakes easily broken with a sledge and not hard to burn.  Commercial lime is burned in kilns, but we burned it in the open, calling our contrivance a kiln just the same.

We generally burned about fifteen hundred bushels of lime at one operation.  This was the amount father ordinarily used on a ten-acre field.  The lime and coal would be hauled in Winter to a spot near the center of the field.  For convenience, the bed of the kiln was made in the proportion of one-to-two in width and length.  Three trenches were dug crosswise of the bed of the kiln to extend a foot or two beyond at either end.  These we would fill with dry, split wood to use for starting the fire.  At the center, upright poles were used for a draftway.  A layer of eight or ten inches of wood was laid lengthwise and covered with a few inches of coal, then alternating layers of limestone and coal in the proportion of two parts of limestone to one of coal.  The pile now assumed the shape of a great heap of potatoes.  A coating of slack coal was added, after which it was all covered with dirt, except the ends of the six ditches.  The kindling was fired simultaneously at these openings and allowed to burn until well under way when they also were covered up.  The kiln became intensely hot, but did not cinder when carefully kept from currents of air.  In two or three days, it would burn out, but was allowed to remain covered to gradually cool; otherwise, the outside lime would air slack and be difficult to handle.  The limestone remained intact, but was reduced nearly a half in weight.  The unslacked lime was hauled out and put in small piles to be scattered when slacked.  To get the full benefit of the lime, we had to plow or harrow it in at once after slacking.  So treated, our heaviest clay soils became rich and loamy.

Labor-saving machinery was little known by the agriculturist as I remember in my boyhood.  Hay was cut with the scythe and raked by hand.  An agent came to our farm with a horse rake, a small affair, requiring the driver to walk behind and to lift it over the windrow by the rear handles.  Father showed some skepticism about its strength.  To reassure him on that point, the agent picked up Olive, who stood near, and with her on the rake started the team off at a trot.  This demonstration dispersed his doubts, and he was a willing purchaser.  Several years afterward, when Alex Wilson, the most thrifty and progressive farmer in our section, brought in the first mower, it aroused keen interest among the farmers.  During my stay at home, we had to use "arm-strong" power.

Grain was cut with cradles.  Father had two small cradles made, one for brother Henry and one for me, which we began to wield while we were yet boys, and, in time, we became expert in their use.  We could lay rye in straight swaths when the rye grew as high as our heads.   In later years, Henry was the only cradler to whom I would take off my hat.

The little threshing machine was our greatest labor-saving device.  It was called a "four horsepower tumblingshaft machine," because the power was given by four horses, and transmitted by tumbling shafts.  The threshing coming at the end of a busy season was hailed as a sort of jubilee.  The three sets of cousins were a strong and jolly combination and, as we went from barn to barn, it made the labor light on each of our farms.  The days were short and the evenings were long; fruit and nuts were in season and plentiful; the fall air was bracing, and we had time after work to engage in all kinds of athletic sports and afterward spend the rest of the evening in a round of merrymaking.

Chapter 7

Traditional belief in signs and wonders had a great influence at that time on many people of our section.  Even those who disclaimed all belief in them were more or less under the burden of their influence.  There were ghosts; there were lucky and unlucky days of the week for beginning work and there were warnings by unusual movement of animals.  These simple folk knew nothing of astrology but they were thoroughly conversant with "Moonology."

If the new moon were far south, the month would be warm; if far north, it would be cold.   If it made its first appearance on end, the water would run out, and it would be wet; it on its back, the old Indian could hang his powderhorn on it, and it would be dry weather.  The almanac was made a daily study, and no matter how often the signs failed, their faith in them was unshaken.  Work was planned ahead according to weather predictions, and the picture of the "spread-eagled" man with the bull above and the fish below seemed a living guide to them.  If the sign were "in the head," it was time to sow cabbage, but turnips and potatoes were planted when the sign was down "in the feet."  Everything that grew must necessarily be planted in the increase of the moon.  The truth is that they so thoroughly prepared the ground and afterward cared for what they had planted that the results invariably seemed to justify their faith.

You may call it superstition, you may call it ignorance, or you may call it simply want of thought; but, call it what you may, it was an indisputable slavery.  Superstition is a tyrant and tradition had fitted a yoke from which they could not extricate themselves.

The best that conscientious parents could do was to avoid transmitting the virus of superstition, but I can testify to the fact that the taint was far-reaching.  To the last day of my natural vision, I could not see the pale crescent moon hanging low in the western sky just after sunset without taking note of my position, the intervening objects and the relative position of the sun and moon.

As I recollect, there was never an authentic wraith seen between the hours of sunrise and sunset.  True, there was a lonely little graveyard by the side of the road, but no one had ever been able to detect any supernatural agitation there when the sun shone.

It was at night, and especially on moonlight nights, that ghosts were said to roam at will; headless figures, horseless vehicles and veiled apparitions were to be seen moving among the shadows.  At such times, all kinds of signs and warning sounds were to be heard by the observing few.  Unlucky the swain whose sweetheart lived beyond the haunted woods.   However, if she were of the really sympathetic kind, she could induce him to remain until the spooks had gone to rest.

Boyd Bright had often gone home through the haunted woods on old Dobbin in moonlight, starlight and scarcely any light at all, but never had been able to see anything supernatural.  In fact, he boasted that he wasn't "afraid of any living man, much less a ghost!"  Flora Cupples, who lived near the little cemetery, had often heard him make these proud boasts and determined to test him.

Observing that Boyd tarried at his cups a little late on Saturday evenings, she draped herself in a white sheet and seated herself on a newly-made grave.  When the rather unsteady rider came by, she rose slowly and advanced.  It is hard to say which was worse frightened, rider or horse.  The animal sprang forward and Flora, fearing for the safety of the man, dropped her sheet and ran after him crying, "Boydie, Boydie! It's me." which only served to frighten him the more.  He urged the already speeding horse to even greater speed and, like Tam O'Shanter, was only too glad to reach home in safety.   Dobbin's tail was not missing to give the secret away; but, for some reason, Boyd's much vaunted bravery from the next day on was a thing of the past.

Chapter 8

Henry Boyer, my maternal grandfather, was much younger than Grandfather Dunkle.  He came into the neighborhood later from one of the original settlements in Schuylkill County and took up a piece of vacant land adjoining Father's, where he and his sons made harness, boots and shoes from leather of their own tanning.  He spoke very broken English; he had been so long in America that it was, he said, his father's grandfather that "had come from the old country."

The site and general plan of grandfather's house was nearly identical with our new home; in fact, more accurately speaking, our house itself was a replica of his.  There was the same eastern exposure overlooking the Clarion, the lower level basement and the alcove above.  The exception was in the location as not so much of the river was in view from grandfather's house, and its flow approached closer with only a precipitous bank intervening.  A little group of three houses, a mill and a boat scaffold were so nearly opposite and so close across the river on a low point of land that a missile from a well aimed sling might have reached the workmen.

Near grandfather's house was a building containing his tannery and shoe shop.  A bark shed adjoined with drying facilities and a mill for grinding the bark.  There were but six vats in the tannery and these were sunk in the ground so that their upper edges were on a level with the floor.  Each had its particular function; the first vat contained a strong solution of quicklime to set the hair free, the second loosened the hide for fleshing, and so on.  The complete process of tanning required much labor and nearly a year's time for its completion.  As no splitting machines were used, the hide had to be dressed by hand for use in making boots, shoes and harness.  The heaviest hides were finished for use as sole leather, the next grade for harness and heavy boots, and the third grade was called "kip" and the lightest, called "calf skin," was used for ladies' and children's shoes.  Sheep pelts were tanned in this shop and were prepared with the wool on.  I had the freedom of the shoe shop and roamed about watching grandfather and my uncles use what seemed to me the jumble of tools required to make a complete boot or set of harness.  In addition, they made their own waxed threads, wooden pegs, shoe lasts, boot trees, and other accessories.

The style of footwear for men passed from the buckskin moccasin of my father's boyhood days to high topped boots, without stopping to give the shoe a place.  Many a lad stoically endured the torments of putting on and taking off boots, which in winter time became as hard as cast iron stocks, that he might thus show he was a man.

Grandfather had a most amazing and mysterious way of filling his mouth with pegs, then with hammer in his right hand and awl in his left, he would juggle the pegs with swift passes of his hands rhythmically from his lips to the shoes, meantime keeping up a "rat atat tat and tit a tat too" without losing a beat.