CHAPTER TWO
WOMEN HOME BUILDERS
One can picture the interior of the settler’s home. It was usually just one large room but even so, it was more than living quarters. It was in reality a workshop, a primitive factory. See it in the early evening, cold enough to justify a blazing fire. Fortunately, of logs for fuel there was rarely any lack. Pine knots add light, perhaps a primitive lamp—bears grease in a saucer, with a rag for a wick.
In one corner the head of the family is shaping a plow—for quite a time the plough share was just hard wood, later it was iron shod. In another corner little Johnny is busy with his corn grater, scraping meal for breakfast. Mother is spinning or carding or knitting or sewing, with a quick ear for the baby’s wail or perhaps for little Jackie’s A B Cs.
Bed-time is early. It comes at dusk, for warmth, when the cold of winter really begins to bite into the bones. The little factory is soon silent, except for the heavy breathing of its inmates. The air, though bitter cold, is very close.
It must have been a major challenge to the good housewife’s instinctive love of cleanliness and order, this cluttered room with its all too unwashed humanity. Well for her peace of mind that the gentle art of bathing was still practically in its infancy almost everywhere.
Still, there must have come moments when, spurred by innate instinct for their welfare and for her own, the mother must have thrust Johnny and Jackie and Mary and Elizabeth and perhaps even herself, by turns into the hollowed tree stump which constituted her washtub — and scrubbed their protesting bodies with grim determination.
The story is told in “Pioneer Women of the West” of an Indian alarm at Marietta, soon after the village was founded, which brought everybody running to the blockhouse, with Col. Ebenezer Sproat— surveyor — in his arms a boxful of papers for safe keeping, at the head. Hard behind was William Moultin, his leathern apron full of goldsmith’s tools— and tobacco — and his daughter Anna, clasping to her bosom the china tea pot, cups and saucers. Daughter Lydia came next, with the family Bible. But where was mother? Have the Indians got mother?
“No,” reassured daughter Lydia, “Mother said she just could not leave the house looking the way it did.” So, with redskins imminent, Mother stopped to put things to rights and presently pulled in safely, bringing with her the highly treasured mirror of her household and the equally important
knives and forks.
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