Four Little Buckeyes: Grandmother Brown's Hundred, Years

I

MY stepfather took a notion to keep a tavern (said Grandmother Brown). There was an old-fashioned hotel in town called the Brice House, and at three different times he rented it. Back and forth between the Brice House and our old home we moved. Once we went to Somerset, once to Logan, to keep hotel.

After periods at the Brice House or in Logan or Somerset, we were always glad to get back to our own father’s dear old home. Nowhere else did we have the same conveniences. We did most of our work there in the summer kitchen. That was where we had the big brick oven. We used to fire it twice a week and do a sight o’ baking all at once. We’d make a hot fire in the oven, and then, when the bricks were thoroughly heated, we’d scrape out all the coals with a big iron scraper, dump the coals into the fireplace, and shove in the roasts and fowls, the pies and bread. At other times we’d use the open fireplace. It was n’t nearly so difficult to work by as people think. When we went to keeping house in 1845, Dan’l and I, he bought me a little iron stove, a new thing in those days. It was no good — would only bake things on one side. I soon went back to cooking at an open fireplace.

You know the look of andirons, crane, spit, reflectors. Our heavy iron vessels were swung from chains. When we wanted to lift the iron lids off, we’d have to reach in with a hook and swing them off. They had a flange around the edge. Many of our dishes were baked in Dutch ovens on the hearth. We used to bake Indian pone — that is, bread made of rye and corn meal — that way. We would set it off in a corner of the hearth covered with coals and ashes, and there it would bake slowly all night long. In the morning the crust would be thick but soft — oh, so good!

For roasting meat we had reflectors. Some joints we roasted in our big iron kettles with a bit of water. And others we put on three-legged gridirons which could be turned. These had a little fluted place for the gravy to run down. Chickens we would split down the back and lay on the gridiron with a plate and flatirons on top to hold them down. Oh, how different is everything now, encumbered with conveniences!

The difference between those who were naturally clean and orderly and those who were not was perhaps more marked in those days than it is now. It was so easy, for instance, since we had no screens, to let the flies spoil everything. My mother just would n’t have it so. We were n’t allowed to bring apples into the house in summer, because apples attract flies. If any of us dropped a speck of butter or cream on the floor, she had to run at once for a cloth to wipe it up. Our kitchen floor was of ash, and Ma was very proud of keeping it white. In the summer kitchen the floor was of brick, and it was expected to be spotless also. At mealtime someone stood and fanned to keep the flies away while the others ate. When Sister Libbie went to housekeeping, she had little round-topped screens for every dish on her table. That was considered quite stylish. Ma used to set some tall thing in the centre of her table, spread a cloth over it, and slip food under until we were ready to sit down. As soon as the meal was finished, all curtains had to be pulled down and the flies driven from the darkened room.

Our dishes for common use were white with blue edges. The finer ones were a figured blue. I remember, also, a large blue soup tureen with a cover and a blue, long-handled ladle, all very handsome.

Our forks were two-tined. They were n’t much good for holding some things. But if we used our knives for conveying food to our mouths it had to be done with the back of the knife towards the face. We had no napkins; we used our handkerchiefs. Tablecloths were made of cotton diaper especially woven for the purpose. The first white bedspread I ever had was made of two widths of that same cotton whitened on the grass.

In warm weather we washed outdoors under the quince bushes. We used our well water. It was so soft, it was perfect.

We’d draw a barrel of water, put one shovel of ashes into it, and it would just suds up like soft water, so white and clean. We used soft soap, of course. Our starch was of two kinds, either made from a dough of flour worked round and round until it was smooth and fine, or made from grated potato cooked to the right consistency.

If one wants light now, all one has to do is pull a string or push a button. Then, we had to pick up a coal with tongs, hold it against a candle, and blow. And one had to make the candles perhaps.

I remember the first matches that I ever saw. Someone handed me a little bunch of them, fastened together at the bottom in a solid block of wood about a half inch square. ‘Lucifer matches’ they called them. I tore one off and set the whole thing afire.

Some people had tinder boxes. Some kept a kind of punk which would give off a spark when struck with steel or knife. Generally speaking, people kept the fire on their hearthstones going year in and year out.

We did not make our candles at home, but got them usually from Uncle Dean, who made candles for the town. Occasionally we had some sperm candles made of fine whale tallow. Besides candles, people sometimes burned sperm or whale oil in little lamps that looked like square-topped candlesticks. In the square top was a place for a bowl that would hold perhaps a half pint of oil.

My mother used to spin. She made beautiful fine thread. She taught Sister Libbie how to spin, but decided, before my turn came, that spinning was doomed to become a lost art, and that I might be better employed in some other way. I used to love to watch her at the spinning wheel. She had two wheels, lovely big ones. She used a wheel boy to turn her wheel. I can just close my eyes and see Ma standing over there spinning a thread as far as from here to the bed — say, twelve feet long.

My mother and her sister had some beautiful woolen cloth of their own spinning and weaving. Part of the thread was made with the open, part with the crossed, band. They colored it with butternut bark, but the two kinds would never color alike, so that part of it was a light and part a dark brown. They wove it into a plaid and had it pressed, and then they made fine dresses out of it to wear to church. I remember too that my mother raised flax, spun it into linen, wove it into cloth, — colored blue in the yarn, — and made it up into a dress for me which she embroidered in white above the hem. I wish I had kept that dress to show my children the beautiful work of their grandmother.

Ma used to use Aunt Betsy’s loom sometimes. When I was eight years old she wove me a plaid dress of which I was very proud. I remember the pattern: eight threads of brown, then one of red, one of blue, one of red, then brown again, in both the warp and the woof. It made the prettiest flannel, and that dress lasted me for years.

Women made their own designs for cloth as well as for dresses in those days. If a woman had taste, she had a chance to show it in her weaving. But, oh, it was hard work! You never saw warping bars, did you? Clumsy things, long as a bed. On them work was prepared for the loom. You had to draw each thread through a reed. I used to love to watch my mother weaving, her shuttle holding the spool with yarn shooting through the warp, then back the other way. When she had woven as far as she could reach, she would bend below the loom and wind the woven cloth into a roll beneath. Blankets made at home used to last a long, long time. Homespun things were good.

We had all the things that were really necessary for our comfort in those days and we had quite as much leisure as people have now. Always, too, we had time to attend church and Sunday School. . . .

II

You see I had rather a severe course in Domestic Science, but the rest of my education did n’t amount to much. I must have been about ten years old when I quit going to Grandma Foster’s school. Well, my education was about completed. I’ve had to get along without anything more than the fundamentals.

It was always uncertain, even in our schooldays, whether we could be spared from work. Some days we could go to school, some days not.

I used to be able to knit and read at the same time. Not so fast, of course, as knitting with my eyes on the work. But once my mother spoke sharply to me when I was knitting with my eyes on a newspaper. She spoke twice, and I could hardly bring myself to hear her. At the third call, Mr. Hatch, my stepfather, snatched the paper from my lap and threw it into the fire. No wonder I never learned anything!

When we lived at Logan, I went for a while to Mr. Parsons’s school. I was thirteen years old then. I used to like the spelling matches we had there. I remember getting a ticket for perfect spelling. But I also remember having there the most unhappy experience of my school life.

Nowadays, when children show a talent for anything good, it is cultivated. I always liked to draw. One day I drew a cow upon my slate. Mr. Hatch — who, with all his faults, was generally kind enough to me — said: ‘Now make a picture of our cow.’ I did. ‘Let me show it to your mother!’ he said. ‘Why, it’s our cow!’ she exclaimed, and they were much surprised that I could make a picture of our particular bossy. Once, in later years on the farm, I amused myself one rainy Sunday drawing pictures of Andy Brown and James Mitchell as they sat talking together. ‘Why, Mother, you’re an artist!’ Dan’l said, when I showed him what I had done.

I think I could have made pictures. I was always wanting to try. I could draw animals and I wanted to make landscapes, too. I remember once, when walking in the country with my mother, the scenery was so beautiful that I just longed to make a picture of what I saw. I wanted to sit and look and look. I sat so long upon a fence looking at the scene that Ma came running back to find me and chided me for lingering. In recent years, at a meeting of my D. A. R. chapter, I won the prize for drawing from memory the best picture of George Washington. I was the oldest woman present, too.

Well, one day at Mr. Parsons’s school I drew on my slate a picture of a lace veil. I drew the string that went around the bonnet and showed the veil all puckered around the face with a heavy border at the bottom. I made it so pretty! But Mr. Parsons came up behind me and saw what I was doing. He took my slate, showed my picture to the school, and scolded me for wasting time on things like that. I never did again. I just wept. I thought I had committed a terrible sin. Mr. Parsons was a slender, tall man, but I can’t remember how he looked. I had a dread of him. He cured me of trying to make pictures. Well, no matter! I’ve got along this far without drawing pictures; I guess I can make it the rest of the way.

But, though I was not encouraged to be an artist, I’ve always tried to make anything I had to make as beautiful as I could make it. My pats of butter I made in pretty shapes. I’ve always liked to sew and embroider. I ’ve made some pretty things, if I do say it as should n’t. I learned once to make wax flowers and enjoyed doing that. I made them well, too. I know that once when Dr. Rix and his wife were calling on us here in Fort Madison he suddenly noticed a bunch of flowers that I had made and put into a basket, and he called to his wife to come and see. ‘Why, I thought they were real!’ he said. But wax flowers are perishable, and I’d rather do embroidery. That lasts longer.

What did I have to read when I was a girl? Well, I remember Pilgrim’s Progress. And there was Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained. I always enjoyed poetry. I liked to read Cowper’s poems. He was so fond of his mother.

Every week we had Sunday School books to read. They always had Christian teaching woven around the story of some boy or girl. I remember the first time I read the story of the Crucifixion. I read it through my tears. It was dreadful to my young mind. It is yet. In the first place, God created the first man out of the dust of the earth. The first one He created without any earthly parent. Then He created one out of the Virgin Mary. How terrible for her to see her son crucified!

A story I read as a child that interested me was a tale called Prairie Flower. It was the story of a pretty young girl who was stolen by the Indians. There was going to be an eclipse of the sun, a fact she knew. She told them that if they did so and so the sun would be darkened. Sure enough it was. From that time on, they feared her and did as she directed.

Yes, we had newspapers. The first one I remember was one called the Western Spectator, printed by a Mr. Maxon. Then came the Hocking Valley Gazette, which Nelson Van Vorhes, who married Sister Libbie, later made into the Athens Messenger.

Two books were presented to me when I was fourteen and sixteen years old that I set great store by. Nelson Van Vorhes, when he was courting Libbie, gave me twelve copies of Godey’s Lady’s Booh bound into one volume. When I was about sixteen, a Mr. Cook, who boarded with us, gave me a bound book of the Family Magazine. A careless person at the farm left those books out in the rain in later years and they were ruined. No money could have repaid me for them.

III

We had a good deal of attention, Libbie and I. When I married, at age eighteen, I accepted the third offer. We girls had plenty of opportunity to have a gay time with young men, because at that time Mr. Hatch was running the Brice House again, and many of the young men studying at the college boarded with us. Some of them were from the South, sons of rich planters, fine dressers and free with their money. But, although we waited on them at table, we never spoke to them.

In the dining room was a great coffee urn kept hot by a heated iron rod that ran down the middle. We used to draw the coffee from this urn and pass it to the boarders. Among them was a young man called ‘Cap’ Reed. ‘Why don’t you take those Foster girls out somewhere?’ he was asked one time. ‘ I ’d just as soon think of asking Queen Victoria for her company,’ he answered.

Later, he married my lovely cousin, Lucinda Dean. But his remark showed how we held ourselves aloof. I remember that years afterwards, when my mother visited me on the farm, she said: ‘Maria, you never gave me an anxious moment in my life and I never put you to a task that was n’t well done.’ Well, I am glad I never hurt her. She had hurt enough. . . .

Of course we went around with the Athens boys. We went to picnics and dances, to singing school and campaign rallies.

I remember going with other young people to see torchlight processions at times of political excitement. We were in the Logan campaign of ‘Tippecanoe and Tyler Too.’ Our Republican young men called themselves ‘The Log-Cabin Boys’ and they sang: —

They had a float with a live tame bear on it, also a log cabin in which was a cider barrel. This float moved slowly through the streets with young men marching before and after it, carrying lanterns and torchlights, and singing their log-cabin songs. ‘ We’ll beat little Van’ was the constant refrain. President Van Buren was very unpopular in that part of the country. It was the time of ‘shinplasters’ and financial distress of the sharpest kind.

In Athens our set would go out hunting wild flowers. There are so many pretty hills around there, and in the spring they were covered with dogwood blossoms and other lovely flowers. The grass was so soft and deep you’d think you were walking on top of a feather bed. We’d take along things to eat, things like pickled string beans and pickled peaches — the clings were our choice. After you’d eat one of those, my, but you could sing!

Our favorite amusement, I think, was singing. Everybody went to singing school in those days and learned to sing with the help of a tuning fork. I don’t like to hear accompaniments. Better the voice alone. Dan’l’s cousin, Perley Ward, had a song bird in her throat — I never heard such a voice.

I’ve no doubt it was equal to Jenny Lind’s. Dan’l himself taught singing school, and up to the last I loved to hear him throw out his chest in church and let out the Doxology. That was something worth hearing.

This was one of our favorites: —

I don’t like the sentiment of that very much. It sounds cruel, but that is what we used to sing.

Here’s a sad one — though the tune is nice — about a dying girl saying as she draws near her home: —

Then comes something I don’t remember. Afterwards, —

That was something to hold us down a little, so we should n’t get too gay.

We liked dancing, too. But most of my dancing was done at dancing school. When we lived in Logan, Mr. Saunders came from Lancaster once a week to teach us. In Athens I had lessons two terms from Mr. Crippen. The dancing school always met in the afternoon, girls and boys practising separately at first. When both had learned the steps, then we came together. We danced to the music of fiddles and they called off: ‘First lady forward! Seven hands round!’ There were no round dances. Our teachers taught us to take little steps, to move forward and back genteelly. With some pride and dignity! Why, I could do it now, if I were on my feet — one, two, three, four, five, then back again; six, seven, eight, nine, ten. That was the way to do it — so rhythmically and beautifully. Now they grab each other and go seesawing around. The contradances took in the whole room. It was lovely to see them do it, the girls so pretty and modest, in those days, their dresses ankle-length. When they honored the partner, they did n’t just squat that square way, but they must lean to one side gracefully.

When we were living on the farm I taught my children to dance. Afterward, when Lizzie first came to Fort Madison, she was complimented on her dancing. ‘My mother taught me,’ she said. A shout went up. They thought her a wicked mother, I suppose, who would teach her child to dance. But, if it were wicked to dance, it would say so in the Bible. If it had said, ‘Thou shalt not dance,’ I would not have done it, for I have kept all the Thou Shalt Nots. But it does say that when the Prodigal Son came home and fell on his father’s neck and kissed him the father put a ring on his finger and ordered music and dancing.

IV

Perhaps I should n’t have married quite so soon if my father had lived. But since I could n’t go to school any more, and living at home meant for Libbie and me simply working for a lazy stepfather whom we loved none too well, it was only natural that marriage should tempt me when nice young men proposed it. As I said before, I had three offers by the time I was eighteen. One of them was from a young man who was studying for the ministry. The second proposal came from one who had considerable money. He was a Catholic, but he wrote my mother that he’d become a Protestant if I’d have him. My mother and brother rather encouraged him, but I had no love for him. He liked to never give it up. He wrote to my brother and he asked a friend to intercede for him. How foolish! But then, that’s the way men do when they set about wanting a girl.

And the third suitor was Grandfather Brown. ‘Dan Brown’ nearly everybody else called him. But I always called him ‘Mister Brown’ until we were married, and then I called him ‘Dan’l.’

How long had I known him? Ever since I was born, in a way. You see, his sister Maria was my Uncle Hull’s second wife. When I was a new baby she came, bringing that little boy to see me. He was five years old. She used to tell me that she said to him, ‘Now this might be your wife some day!’ How true it’s come about!

I remember some years later watching that boy with the palm-leaf hat that had a narrow green ribbon round it. I never forgot that little white hat — it looked so clean and bright.

His folks lived in the country, a mile from the town of Albany. They had come there from Amesville a couple of years before Dan’l was born. Dan’l’s father, William Brown, was the second son of Captain Benjamin Brown, an officer of the Revolution, whose people had been prominent for several generations in Worcester County, Massachusetts, not very far from where my father’s grandparents had lived.

The farm at Albany was small and four sons rather overmanned it, I suppose; so when Dan’l was about thirteen he was apprenticed to Ezra Stewart and came to live in Athens. Dan’l was the youngest of eight. Let’s see: the others were Maria, Emma, Benjamin, Betsy, Lydia Ann, Austin, and Leonard.

Dan’l’s mother was a Brown, too, daughter of Esquire Samuel Brown, a nephew of Captain Benjamin’s Her name was Polly.

I could never get acquainted with Dan’l’s mother. There was a chilly atmosphere about her I could not penetrate. It seems to me that I never saw her smile. Her sister, Aunt Betsy Dickey, was just the opposite, always smiling. She was lovely. And I loved Dan’l’s sister, Lydy Ann, too. But, though Dan’l’s mother seemed cold to me, I realize that she was a very smart, capable woman. She taught Dan’l to spin when he was a little boy. He had to do his stint each day. She made the linen diaper called bird’s-eye, and made very beautiful linen sheets for the beds. She was a woman of strongly marked character. Her face showed that. She had what you might call advanced ideas and she was a great reader. Every afternoon she’d take her paper and lie down on the bed to read. She knew more about politics than any woman I ever met. She was an abolitionist in politics and a Universalist in religion. Not exactly popular causes. She rather courted argument on those subjects, and they used to say that she was hard to beat in discussion, for she read so much that she always had an answer that was pat. She was above the average woman all round.

From the time he was apprenticed at thirteen until he was twenty-one, Dan’l lived in Athens. Ezra Stewart had a general store and also conducted an extensive cattle business. He supplied the community with every kind of merchandise it needed. Codfish and molasses, iron and nails, pins and ploughs. He took his payment often in cattle and horses, hogs and sheep, selling them to the Eastern and Southern markets. At first Dan’l was just a long-legged little boy helping around the store and going back and forth to the homes of his sisters, Maria and Emma. When he grew older he used to go East with the men driving herds of cattle across the Alleghenies all the way, sometimes to Philadelphia. They always used to have one horse and two or three men going along with a drove of cattle, because often one of the steers would take a start in the wrong direction and it would be necessary then for the rider of the horse to head it off and get it going in the right direction. When Dan’l was twenty-one he went into business for himself at Amesville with Austin Dickey, whose mother, Aunt Betsy Dickey, was Dan’l’s mother’s sister. Dan’l had saved five hundred dollars in his seven years’ apprenticeship and ‘Aut’ Dickey’s father, a well-to-do farmer, gave him a like sum. They set up a general store and merchandising business under the firm name of Brown and Dickey.

After Dan’l began to pay attention to me 1 would never go to Stewart’s store, for fear folks would say I was going in there to hang over the counter with Dan Brown. But about that time he came to the Brice House to board. The first time I remember his ever noticing me was one day when everybody else was at dinner and I sat in the front room by the window. He came by and stopped to speak to me. We looked at each other. That was nothing, but I remember it. And I remember also getting a real love letter from him once when he had gone East with a drove of cattle for Stewart — a love letter with a leaf of wintergreen in it.

One night some of us were invited to a party at Uncle General’s. Uncle Dean drove us there — his girls and Libbie and me — in his fine carriage. He told us, as he set us down, that he’d come for us at a certain time and not to keep him waiting. At the party we got to playing ’Pon Honor. You know what that is? You make a pile of hands, then pull them out according to number and the one that’s left has to answer all questions asked him, truthfully, upon his honor. We all put our ring hands on the pile. There was no ring on my hand. Dan’l said, ‘I '11 lend you mine.’ Afterward, when Dan’l had gone into the hall, Uncle Dean came for us, hurrying us along in his quick way. ‘Oh, Mr. Brown, here’s your ring!’ I called. ‘Give it to me some other time,’ he answered. I did n’t want to keep it, and when I got home I woke Ma up to tell her I had Dan’l Brown’s ring. ‘Child, go to bed and don’t worry about it,’ she said. A few nights after that I went to singing school. Dan’l was there and I offered him his ring. ‘Just keep it awhile,’ he said, backing off when I held it out. ‘I’ll tell you: when you get tired of me, just hand me the ring!’

I never gave it back. Behold the result! Here I sit with one of his boys taking care of me — some eighty years after.

He asked my mother’s permission to marry me right before my face. She came in to where we were sitting and he suddenly said, ‘Mrs. Hatch, I have a boon to ask of you.’ ‘What’s that?’ ‘I want you to give me your daughter.’ I did n’t know he was going to say it then.

V

Libbie and I were married on the same day — the twenty-third day of October, 1845, at eleven o’clock in the morning in the best room of our old house, by the Reverend S. M. Aston, who was a friend. There were no bridesmaids, no presents. Those things had not come in fashion then. We did n’t set out to have a big wedding, but when we had assembled all the Fosters and the Van Vorheses and the Browns it made a big company. I know it took two turkeys for the wedding dinner.

What else was on the menu? Pound cake at that time took the lead. We had fruit and pickles, mince pie — a good fat dinner.

What did the brides wear? Oh, our dresses were alike, of course. Except in the sleeves. Libbie’s sleeves were short, mine were long. I never liked to show my arms. Why not? Oh, I just did n’t. There’s nothing wrong with them, either. Once a woman who worked for me, seeing my sleeves rolled up as I worked, said if she had arms like mine she’d never wear sleeves at all! Well, the dresses were white. They were made with tucks and lace. That fine, soft, switchy stuff. I forget what they called it. Oh yes — India mull! The skirts were plenty full. Girls look so much better with their skirts full enough across the back so that they don’t draw. Persons should make their clothes according to their figures. At least, that’s my taste! We wore white kid shoes and we had orange blossoms in our hair. At the time we were married, it was the fashion to part the hair on each side, pulling it straight back in the middle and gathering it behind each ear into a bunch of curls, which we held in place with side combs.

After the ceremony we young people had a round of parties. First we drove out to the country to Grandpa Brown’s. There were fourteen carriages of us. Much joking and laughter, of course. Some of it at the expense of Dan’l and me! The slope in front of our house was awfully steep and the buggy stood on a side hill. I got in first. Then Dan’l wont around on the other side to get in. When he put his foot on the step, the buggy tipped over with him. In a minute we should both have been in the dust, had I not sprung out and back to the step. I was pretty fleet of foot always.

Finally we were off, Libbie and Nelson at the head of the procession. But after a while there was a halt and a cry down the line. ‘The bride’s lost, her slipper!’ Swinging her foot over the side of the light buggy, Libbie had swung off her slipper.

We had laid off our white wedding gowns and put. on dresses of balzarine, an open-meshed, figured cotton goods with a pattern of fern leaves on a blue ground. Very pretty. Our dresses were made with pointed waists and full skirts. We wore bonnets of fine white braid lined with pink sarcenet. Our stockings were white, our slippers black. We looked very nice. When we passed the college, driving out to Albany, all the students came out and gave us three rousing cheers. Just to think! I am the only one now living of all that company.

The next day we drove back to Athens and had a party at Van Vorheses’, and the next day to Amesville, where Dan’l and I were to live. There was a party for us at the Ferris House, where Dan’l had been boarding — a big dance. There had been no dancing at our wedding. It seems to me out of place to have dancing at a wedding, but, when with Romans, do as Romans do. Dan’l was always so proud of my dancing. He did n’t dance, but he had his partner, Aut Dickey, lead off with me in the contradance. They asked what music I ’d like best and I chose ‘ Money Musk.’

Afterward Mr. Ferris’s little daughter came and leaned against my knee and whispered, ‘You were the prettiest dancer of all!’ The next day we drove to Uncle Dickey’s and had another party. That ended it. Our married life began. My happy childhood was over.

VI

(Amesville, or ‘Stringtown,’ as it was sometimes derisively called in honor of its one street, was a straggling village on the banks of Federal Creek when Daniel Truesdell Brown brought home his bride, Maria Foster, in the fall of 1845. When it rained hard, that one street was a sea of mire. ‘I remember parties at the little hotel in rainy weather,’ says Grandmother Brown, ‘when the girls had to be put on a horse and taken across the muddy street that way.’

But, rude as was the landscape, the Township of Ames was one of the most progressive of the early Ohio settlements. Nearly a half century had now elapsed since the first white settlers had cut their way thither from the banks of the Muskingum through twenty miles of virgin forest. Three hardy men they were who had thus adventured. One of them was Daniel’s grandsire, Captain Benjamin Brown of Massachusetts, an officer of the Revolution who had been attracted by the Ohio Company’s advertisements of lands for old soldiers. Coming to Waterford in the spring of 1797, he had made there the acquaintance of Ephraim Cutler of Connecticut—eldest son of our old friend, Dr. Manasseh Cutler — and of Lieutenant George Ewing of New Jersey, who, like himself, was an impecunious officer of the Revolution. Together these three fared into the wilderness. All were men of sterling quality.)

Yes, there were always refined and enterprising people in and around Ames (said Grandmother Brown), among Dan’l’s kin and in other families.

I liked his cousins, the Glaziers. And there were the Boyles and the Walkers, the Rices, the Ameses, the Wyatts, and so on. I suppose that even in the earliest days they got together for good times. I’ve often heard about the logrollings, house raisings, corn huskings, and quilting bees that they used to have. By the time Dan’l and I came to live there nearly a half century had passed since Dan’l’s grandfather had chopped his way through the wilderness. The land had been cleared by that time. Farms had been developed, a village established. It was a prosperous countryside, but Dan’l and I were both so busy those years that we stuck pretty close to home and did n’t do much visiting, except for occasional drives over to Athens.

I was held down by my housework and babies, and Dan’l had a full life in the store, with exciting trips South to New Orleans to sell produce and East to Philadelphia to buy goods. Dan’l always liked to keep a store. Many of the young men of that day were interested in hunting and fishing. He never was. He used to say that men who toted a gun never amounted to much. I think that one reason he liked being a merchant was because, in those days, the village store was a meeting place for everybody who came to town. People talked things over there. And Dan’l was always interested in politics. He liked to argue about public questions. He was like his mother in that respect — always reading the papers. He never took any part in public life, never held an office, but he followed the activities of government with interest and knew what was going on. His mother died about three years after we were married, so I did n’t have much chance to hear her arguing with Dan’l.

Our home in Ames was n’t much to brag of. We began with two rooms and a porch in a house which stood a little distance up the hill from the store. Across the run, or creek, which we had to cross to reach the store lay an old gunwale of poplar. It had been intended for the side of a flat boat and had floated down there in some spring freshet. When the spring rains were heavy, the water rose almost to the gunwale.

Though I had n’t much house, I had heavy housework from the first. Aut Dickey and two men who worked with him and Dan’l in the store boarded with us. Four hearty men to cook and wash for is all the work one young girl needs to keep her occupied. But I was ambitious to help get ahead in the world. And I was conscientious and used to working hard. So I put my shoulder to the wheel without complaint.

After a while we built a house near the store. But, oh dear, oh dear, it was n’t at all what I wanted, nor what it might so easily have been. There was no upstairs, and no way of getting up into the attic space. Six rooms we had, and seven outside doors. And not a bedroom in it that could be swept properly. It was n’t the plan I wanted. In time Dan’l came to advise people to have me draw their plans. I made over Sister Anne’s house once so as to accommodate two families. Yes, at the end Dan’l got so he thought I knew it all. He told Lizzie once that her mother was about the best manager he ever saw. But it took a long time for him to realize it, and there was n’t much to manage by the time he was convinced. That first house was one of his mistakes.

And now about the coming of my family. Well, my dear, I was always one to take things hard. Life has always meant so much to me. So you would n’t expect me to have an important thing like a baby without some fuss. The pangs of childbirth! I once knew a woman who said it cost her no pain to have a child, but that was not my experience. In the Bible, whenever there is need to illustrate the utmost agony, comparison is made to the ‘woman in travail.’

We were married in October and the next October Willie was here. I had grown up among babies and cared for them when only a child myself, and yet I was hardly prepared for the ordeal that awaited me. Even my baby clothes did n’t seem to be quite right. Ma laughed when I showed them to her. ‘Why, my dear, did you measure the cat?’ she exclaimed. ‘They are so tiny.’

And Willie was a big bouncing boy who nearly killed me as he tore his way into life. Ma was not with me then — only an aunt of Dan’l’s and his cousin’s wife. The doctor who attended me was a bad man, and drunken. First, he bled me — think of it! Then, after he had taken a pint of my blood, he gave me a cup of ergot to hasten labor. I was young and strong and he was anxious to be off. When my agony could go no further, I lost consciousness. All I remember is seeing my hands drawing up in front of my eyqs. ‘Oh, if they’ll just drop me down, down into that black hole! Oh, if they only will,’ I agonized, ‘it will be all right.’ When I came to, I heard a baby cry. ‘Your beautiful baby!’ they told me.

Twenty months later Charlie came. He was a nice-looking baby, too. My mother was there that time. When he was born, I said, ‘Is that all?’ ‘My dear child, I should think that was enough,’ Ma said. It was really a very happy day. Amesville was having a temperance rally and Charlie was born in the midst of the picnic, you might say. ‘So I’ve been a Prohibitionist ever since,’ he always says when reminded of the incidents connected with his birth, and it’s true that he has never tasted strong drink or tobacco. You see, it was this way: Tables for the picnic were set in the old orchard next to our place. My mother and the girl we had to help had baked things for the picnic. The Amesville people had prepared a fine dinner, and Libbie’s husband, Nelson Van Vorhes, was to be the speaker. Ma had been teasing me right along, saying, ‘I guess you’re waiting for the rally day, Maria. Then you will rally, sure enough!’ Well, I was sitting by the window looking out on the picnic grounds when I saw the big band wagon from Athens come driving over the bridge. It was a fine large red wagon, and the band boys wore red jackets and white pants with red strips down their legs. Brother John was leader of the band. I wanted to see him and visit with him that day, but instead I called, ‘Ma, you’ll have to fix my bed.’ All through my labor I could hear the music, and I think it helped to dull my pains. Well, my boy Charlie’s been wonderful fond of music ever since; he could always sing — could imitate a horn, too, so that you would n’t know the difference. When the news of his arrival was taken to John he said to the members of the band, ‘At noon we’ll go serenade my sister and her new baby.’ They played all my favorite tunes, Brother John knowing my choice.

When Charlie was four years old Lizzie was born. She was a big strong baby with lots of hair.

Two years later came Gus. He was so good-natured and smiling, the loveliest baby! He’s a good boy yet. None of my babies was hard to get along with except Lizzie. She wanted me to hold her in my arms all the time. Gus was so fat that when I tied a ribbon around his wrist you couldn’t see anything but the bow. I had to be so careful of him to keep him from being chafed or chapped all the time. Such creases in his legs! Such dimples in his back! We had no talcum powder in those days. My mother used to scorch flour, holding it on a shovel over the fire, and rub it on the babies, and I would tear old handkerchiefs into strips and lay them in the creases of Gussie’s fat little body. We had no safety pins! It was necessary to be so careful in the dressing of little children.

These were my four little Buckeyes, all born in Ohio before I was twentyeight. Later, in Iowa, I had four little Hawkeyes. The last one, your Herbert, was born two months before my forty-third birthday.

(Grandmother Brown’s next chapter will be ‘Growing Up with Iowa’)