<\/p>\n
Alan Hilton of the Proctor & Bowie Company has allowed me to examine what I call a unique diary. Imagine anyone keeping a diary through the most critical year of the Civil War and never mentioning that war. Imagine the father of several children never recording in that diary the name of a single child. Imagine such a diary never saying a single word about town meeting, state elections, or any activity of the church.<\/p>\n
If the diary were concerned solely with business transactions and the diarist’s daily employment, we could understand the omissions. But it does have other references — the relatives and friends who visited, especially for Sunday dinner; the wife’s confinement and subsequent illness, though no mention of the child; the various hired girls; the driving to town for a doctor. Just because the diary does contain several such intimate details, it is all the more surprising that it says not one word about the raging war.<\/p>\n
Nevertheless I am sure this diary depicts clearly the narrow, relatively isolated life led by many a farm family of Maine in the 1860’s. In the entire year covered by this diary there is no reference to any place farther away from Winslow than Albion.<\/p>\n
The diarist was James Furber, who not only tilled a Winslow farm, but also dealt in cattle and sheep, sometimes on his own, sometimes with Albert Hodges, and for a brief period in a triangular partnership with Hodges and Jerome Clark. It is possible Hodges and Furber were related by marriage, for there were frequent Sunday visits back and forth, Hodges and his wife often at the Furber’s in Winslow, and the Furbers often visiting the Hodges in Benton.<\/p>\n
The Furbers seem not to have been church people — neither the Winslow Congregational Church nor any other is mentioned in the diary. Each Sunday the entry is like this: “We stayed at home all day. Albert Hodges and wife came in afternoon and stayed to supper.” “Went to Benton to have dinner with the Hodges.” On just one Sunday during the entire year Furber was inside a church. He records for Sunday, March 15, 1863: “Went to the Baptist meeting house to a funeral, and carried my wife and Maud Burkett.” Sunday, Dec. 27: “We stayed at home most of the day. Moses Cain and wife called for a few moments. Wife and I went for a short ride.”<\/p>\n
Like most farmers of those days, Furber was somewhat of a carpenter and a mason. On January 5th he recorded: “Worked making an ox yoke for Vose Reynolds most of the day.” For three days in May he worked with a neighbor repairing the line fence. June 30: “I went to fix the bridge near G.H. Furber’s and charged 25 cents.” November 12: “Made hay hoops and took them to Clinton to Jerome Clark. He paid me one dollar.” February 12: “Made a hand sled for my girl.”<\/p>\n
One big project of Furber’s was moving his barn to make room for a bigger one. On January 12 he wrote: “Went to Sullivan Abbott’s and then to Benton to look for some shoes to move barn.” I am not sure what the diarist meant by shoes. The method then used to move large buildings was on rollers, but it is possible a building was sometimes moved on pieces that many yokes of oxen could pullover the ground, as they did the old stone floats that in my boyhood were always called drags. Six weeks later on March 2, Furber was still preparing to move the barn: “Went to Foss Mill to get a log and hauled it home “to make a shoe to move my barn.” The diary does not make clear just when he moved that barn, but in late July he refers to putting hay into the new barn.<\/p>\n
An important enterprise in which James Furber engaged was pressing hay. I had naively supposed that hay was pressed as it was harvested, just as the new balers now do it, though I did of course know that the old bales of hay, even half a century ago, were much larger, sometimes weighing more than 150 pounds. I knew also that, even in my boyhood, bales of hay were bound by wires and I recall now careful we were when cutting that wire, lest a severed strand spring up and strike one in the face. In the 1860’s hay was baled by the use of rope and wooden hoops, much as staves were fastened into barrels. So Furber was constantly making baling hoops and braiding baling ropes.<\/p>\n
At that time the baling, or what folks then called the pressing, season was in winter and spring. The hay press, owned by an individual or by a small group of partners, was taken from farm to farm and moved on to the barn floor. Then loose hay was pitched down from the mows and fed into the press. The first reference in the Furber diary to hay pressing is dated January 29, 1863: “Went to John Drummond’s and took hay press to Charles Taylor’s.” Then, with various helpers, each working a day or two at a time, Furber pressed hay all over Winslow and Benton and China. When he finished at Taylor’s he moved the press to George Buffam’s, then to Alpheus Chapman’s, then to Alfred Bliss’, then to Francis’ farm in China, and so on around the countryside. It was on May 5 that Furber finished pressing hay. Of course he did not work every day at that job between January and May, but it was his chief employment.<\/p>\n
Like all farmers of the time, Furber did a lot of trading by barter. Sometimes it was in Winslow at the Fort, sometimes in North Vassalboro, and quite often in Waterville. The entry for January 19 shows not only how he did his trading, but reveals the low prices that then prevailed, even in wartime: “Went to Waterville and sold to Derocher 81t pounds of turkeys at 11 cents, total $8.96. For purchases I paid Marshall 30 cents, Blunt 20 cents, C.K. Mathews 3 cents, J.R. Alden 5 cents, Blair the jeweler 94 cents, and Blumenthal for cloth and garments $4.32. Paid Mr. Harris 25 cents for extracting two teeth.”<\/p>\n
The next day Furber went to Gardiner’s store in North Vassalboro, where he sold thirty pounds of butter at 20 cents a pound. He bought of Gardiner a broom for 25 cents, half a gallon of oil for 40 cents, and a sieve for 30 cents.<\/p>\n
How long it took Furber to make an ox yoke we do not know, but his financial compensation was small. He made one for Vase Reynolds for 75 cents, and the largest amount he records ever receiving for a yoke was $1.25.<\/p>\n
It was on February 26 that Furber entered a partnership with two other men to trade in cattle and sheep. Here is the way he tells it: “Went to Waterville with Albert Hodges and Jerome Clark. We hired $500 at the Peoples Bank on four months note. I took $189.55, and they took $300.” That transaction reveals that the bank collected $11.45 discount on the note.<\/p>\n
At once Furber started briskly into the business. February 28: “Paid William Morrill $50 for a pair of red two-year-old steers, then went to Clinton to look at a yoke of oxen.” On May 9 Furber made $10 on the red steers, for he then sold them to H.D. Littlefield for $60.<\/p>\n
On March 15 Furber paid a year’s toll for use of Ticonic Bridge, and that very receipt is still tucked into a small pocket of the diary. The receipt reads: “Mr. J.B. Furber and family, with the horses and carriages driven by them in their ordinary business, are permitted to pass Ticonic Bridge from the first day of January, 1863 to the first day of January, 1864, for the sum of two dollars and fifty cents, paid in advance. Signed, Samuel Doolittle, R.H. Green, Directors.”<\/p>\n
In the fall business was brisk. September 21: “Went with Burgess to look for stock. We hired $100 from S. Nichols. Paid Deacon Weeks $9 for a sheep and Al Priest $10. Paid William Hodge $4 for a buck. Bought two bucks from Cheston Drummond for $5.” September 24: “Went to China after sheep and cattle. Bought one sheep and a heifer from James Abbott, and 20 sheep and lambs from Joseph Morrison.” September 30: “Went to Vassalboro looking for cattle, but did not find any worth buying.”<\/p>\n
The growing season of 1863 was apparently bad for crops. On May 15 Furber wrote in the diary: “We had a snowstorm that lasted all day, so bad that I stayed in the house.” On May 21 Furber managed to plow a small piece, but the next day the ground froze. It was June 5 before he could do any planting at all. Then he began to put in potatoes. It was June 10 before his corn was in. When it came haying time, the weather was again bad. Instead of beginning to get in his hay about the Fourth of July, as was usual, it was July 20 before he could cut his first grass. All went fairly well for three days. Then the diary tells us: “We mowed in the forenoon, but it rained before we could get it in.”<\/p>\n
The rain continued all the next day, nearly ruining the hay that was down. July 27: “I mowed and spread hay, but it was soaked in a thunder shower before I could get it in.” July 29: “Mowed in the forenoon. Got in one load, but heavy shower came before we could get in the rest.” The same luck pursued him on August 3 and August 6. When Furber finished haying on August 10, he turned to his barley and his oats. Like the hay, those crops were below average. On August 21 he was able to dig his first early potatoes.<\/p>\n
Like most of his neighbors, James Furber worked out his town taxes. June 12: “Worked on the highway five hours with my oxen and cart.” June 13: “Worked on highway four hours with oxen, cart and plow.” The reason Furber enumerates those items is because each rated a certain amount. A man received one amount per day or hour for his own labor, another amount for use of his oxen, a third for his cart, and a fourth for his plow.<\/p>\n
As I have already said, the diary is almost devoid of personal items of home life, but not entirely so. A number of consecutive items tells an interesting story. September 13: “Went to Cross Hill after a girl to help my wife about the house.” By October 2 it was obvious that better help was needed. So Furber let the girl go, paying her $3.00 for three weeks’ work. The next day he wrote: “Went to John Brimmers and got Mrs. Whipple to help my wife.” Then the entry for October 9 tells us what it was all about: “Went to Waterville after a doctor. My wife was confined.” Not a word about the sex of the child or its name.<\/p>\n
Absence of any mention of the Civil War is not the only omission from the diary. There is not a word about Thanksgiving, and the entry for December 25 reads: “I butchered my heifer and had G.H. Furber to help me. I paid him 35 cents.” Not a single word about the day being Christmas.<\/p>\n
Anyhow that is the way a Winslow farmer led a provincial, unexciting life in the midst of the great Civil War. And with that we must say goodbye until next week.<\/p>\n
Year: 1967<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Read the script for “Little Talks” program #736, Broadcast on October 1, 1967<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":405,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[752,35296],"tags":[],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8737"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/405"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8737"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8737\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}