\nThis first Little Talk of 1974, as we face shortage of energy, and possibly even of certain foods, and as prices rise higher and higher, may appropriately deal with the American standard of living long ago, when our nation was young.<\/p>\n
A careful consideration of the way our people once lived may well remind us that the heralded improvements in living during the past century have not been entirely gain. Now, as we enter the year 1974, human greed, so much intensified by the stream of new inventions, has begun to catch up with nature’s supply, which for years we have so lavishly wasted.<\/p>\n
Right here in Kennebec County, in 1770, just one year before the town of Winslow was incorporated, several local families saw their oats and corn give out and had to subsist on boiled beech leaves until they could get a fresh supply of meal. One family was literally saved from starvation when a relative, from 40 miles away showed up with a little moose meat and turnip greens. A woman whose husband had been injured and could not leave the house bent a pin for a hook, fastened it to a bit of twine, tied it to an alder stick, dug a few worms near the well, walked two miles to the brook, with her baby on her back, and caught a dozen trout. On her way home she saw a racoon in a tree. Leaving the trout in the house, she grabbed her husband’s shotgun, loaded it, went back and shot the coon. By similar means she managed to keep the house in food until the man could get on his feet again.<\/p>\n
Good crops were carefully tended and watched. A girl in Winthrop, about 200 years ago, kept counting the apples in her father’s orchard until picking time. She wanted to make sure they were all there, because those were the first apples in the new settlement then called Pond Town. Two years later her father crushed apples by hand in a wooden sap-trough, and squeezed out the juice in a cheese press, thus making Winthrop’s first cider. It took a full century after that before Winthrop became one of Maine’s leading apple towns.<\/p>\n
The pioneer Maine farm was very nearly self-sustaining. It was much as a English historian described the British manor communities of the 15th century – completely self-sustaining except for two articles – millstones and salt. In fact Maine did not have to import millstones. There was plenty of granite in the Maine hills. It only had to be fashioned.<\/p>\n
In the 1780’s, when the Plymouth Company carried on a vigorous campaign to put settlers on their Kennebec lands, an enterprising young man could get a lot almost for the asking. If he would live on the place for five years, build a cabin 20 feet square, and clear enough land to raise a crop in the second year, and expand it in each following year, he could get, without cost, a clear deed to his 200 acres.<\/p>\n
William Allen, the historian of Norridgewock, describes how the new settler fulfilled his obligations. First he cut down trees on 5 or 6 acres, burned the fallen trees and as much of the stumps as would burn, and planted oats. The huge pile of ashes became his first cash crop, as he took them to the nearest potash kiln, sometimes many miles away. In 1790, for instance, the settlers at Old Canaan, between what are now the villages of Fairfield and Skowhegan, brought their ashes by raft or boat down the Kennebec to Jacob Southwick’s potash kiln at Vassalboro. The first crop the settler raised was oats, because they were the easiest grown and needed no tending. Meanwhile, living on the place alone or perhaps with a teenage boy, the settler built a cabin and in the spring moved his family into it. That was just what Elihu Bowerman did in North Fairfield while his wife stayed with a family at Ticonic Falls. Then, in addition to oats, the settler planted corn, all the time gradually clearing more land. In the third year he added Wheat, put up a barn, got one or two cows and a yoke of oxen. By that time he had a field ready for hay. When he had land under cultivation, a hay field, and a good pasture, he was really going.<\/p>\n
On pioneer farms horses were considered too quick and impulsive and too nervous to be good farm animals. The settlers much preferred the more reliable oxen, slow and plodding though they were. On those farms there were no machines. Axes, hoes, rakes, flails, scythes and sickles were the common tools, all wielded by hand.<\/p>\n
Primitive also was the way the settler put up his house. It was no haphazard affair, but required skillful planning. The strength of the cabin depended upon the accuracy of the fitted notches at the corners. As the walls rose in height, so did the labor of lifting the heavy logs into place. The builder squared the logs, mortised every joint, and fastened them with pegs. Building a frame house required help of neighbors. Thus arose the custom of house raisings and barn raisings. Those words meant exactly what they implied, literally raising a house, not putting it up timber by timber and board by board upright. A whole side of the house was built flat on the ground, then by combined manpower was raised upright into place. The old accounts make it clear that the owner usually offered inducement for the helpers to assemble. He furnished plenty
\nof rum. Everybody did that, regardless of his status or his religious belief. The Rev. Jeremiah Chaplin, first president of what is now Colby College, saw to it that the trustees furnished plenty of rum when his house was raised on the old Colby Campus in 1819.<\/p>\n
The pioneer family bought few clothes, or even the cloth to make them. It is true that the early general stores, set up as soon as a settlement achieved any appreciable size, sold calicos and some other imported cloth, and for the few who could afford it the cherished broadcloth. But many an early settler bought no cloth at all. He kept sheep enough to supply all the wool the family needed. At first it had to be carded tediously by hand, but one of the first factories a pioneer village had, after the sawmill and the gristmill, was a carding mill to which the wool was sent and returned to the home in rolls. Then came the spinning, on the big wheels still to be seen in museums. The resulting yarn then went to the home looms. As soon as there was anywhere nearby a fulling mill, the cloth went there for finishing. Then at home it was colored by vegetable dyes. Finally it was fashioned into pants, coats and dresses.<\/p>\n
Before the coming of cotton mills, summer wear was usually made of linen. Much flax was raised on the farms. At my mother’s birthplace in West Gorham, I saw many years ago a tied bundle of dried flax standing beside an old flail in the barn loft. My mother could remember well her own grandmother’s spinning of flax from the Gorham farm. Besides summer clothes for go-to-church wear, the flax, spun into strong thread, was used to make table cloths, sheets and towels.<\/p>\n
One of the earliest itinerant artisans to go from settlement to settlement was the shoemaker. Versatile as were the Maine pioneers, few of them could make shoes, except of the crudest kind. For footwear they became dependent upon the traveling shoemaker. Carrying bench and tools on a cart drawn by a single horse, he made his rounds over the countryside, often staying two or three days in a pioneer home to make shoes for the whole family. Most of the family needed shoes only in cold weather.<\/p>\n
Everyone – men, women and children – often went barefoot all summer. In remote rural areas, some of them still do. Only last summer, 200 years after the beginning of many Maine settlements, I saw both a man and a woman working barefoot in their garden in Central Maine. The itinerant shoemaker’s work for men was principally the making of high, cowhide boots, and he made high boots of more dressy appearance for women. But he also made shoes for women and children. This is testified to by the exhibition of old shoe lasts and forms preserved in our Maine museums.<\/p>\n
Pioneer men had memorable hunting experiences. A man in Livermore, in the winter of 1792, was one day hunting moose. At that time moose were plentiful in Maine, much more numerous than deer. The man sighted three moose, two bucks and a doe. He followed them into the hills. The snow crust was strong enough to bear the man’s weight, but the moose broke through. That gave the man a chance to catch up with the animals. The largest buck turned on the hunter, who quickly slipped behind a tree. The moose rose on his hind legs to strike the man down with his fore feet. The tree was so small that the moose brushed the man’s arms as the feet thrashed. But the man was not hurt and the moose turned to rejoin the other two animals. All that time the moose had been so close that the man had no chance to discharge his gun, but only to look out for himself. But as the moose turned away, the hunter shot him. By the time the man had reloaded his gun, the smaller buck came at him but was felled by another shot. Then the hunter soon dispatched the doe. He cut open all three moose, filled them with snow to prevent spoilage, and returned home. Next day he offered to give one of the carcasses to a neighbor if the neighbor would help him get the three dead moose out of the woods. The neighbor agreed, and by night the meat was safely stored in the two homes.<\/p>\n
On another occasion a Readfield man was on a winter hunt with his 12 year old son. They killed a moose late in the afternoon, but the day was so far gone the man did not dare to try to get home in the dark. So he cut some brush and kindled a fire. It was bitter cold. The man wrapped the boy in the skin of the slaughtered moose, and himself stayed awake all night to keep the fire burning. In the morning the moose skin was frozen so stiff that the father had difficulty extracting the boy from it. At the risk of losing the meat to other animals, they had to leave the moose carcass where it lay, and tediously make their way home. The next day, with other help, they were able to retrieve the meat, fortunately unharmed.<\/p>\n
Sometimes a pioneer family had to wait a long time to get needed farm animals. A family in Belgrade, about 1800, went several years without a pig, until the wife sold enough of her spun flax to buy a small pig, which of course turned into a fat
\nhog before winter.<\/p>\n
Such were some instances of pioneer life in Maine long ago. We owe a lot to those hardy settlers of Maine lands. Without their perseverance and their tough endurance, Maine could never have become the state it is today.<\/p>\n
Year: 1974<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Read the script for “Little Talks” program #995, Broadcast on January 6, 1974<\/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":[1203,35296],"tags":[],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9413"}],"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=9413"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9413\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9413"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}