Harrison County, Missouri - Chapter 10: Early Day Customs, 1921

THE PRINCIPAL CONCERN OF THE PIONEER - IMMIGRANTS - FIRST SETTLEMENTS ALONG STREAMS - CLEARING A HOME SITE - BUILDING THE PIONEER LOG CABIN - PLAN OF CONSTRUCTION - WOMEN'S WORK - INSTINCT OF THE PIONEER - HOME - SOCIAL AND MORAL STATUS - NEIGHBORLY SPIRITPRESENT DAY CONTRAST - THE LOG HOUSE - IMPLEMENTS AND UTENSILS.

The principal concern in the new country was to provide bread. There wis wild game for meat and hollow trees often contained honey. The pioneers fed om corn dodgers, honey and venison were healthy, happy and wise. A man could have all the land he wanted, that is, he could claim all he desired, and the settlers usually regarded each other's rights and would not settle when or where there were any objections by the prior settlers.

The immigrants generally brought with them some stock, such as horses, cattle and sometimes sheep and a few hogs. They also brought some breadstuff and a scant amount of household goods, as bedding, dishes and something in the furniture line.

The first settlements were made along the streams and in the edge of the timber. Thereby they were near wood and water. It saved them digging wells, and they were near the trees for hunting bee trees, for honey and beeswax was a principal industry. The prairie sod was so tough it required a team of four or five yoke of cattle to "break" it, and it was so much easier there to erect their cabins.

The first thing after selecting a location was to cut down trees, cut off logs the proper length and then invite the neighbors to come and help raise his house. The neighbors were those who lived in a radius of ten or twelve miles. When such invitation was given it was the custom to drop all other matters and all turned out to assist. Not to do so was an act of incivility, unknown among the pioneers.

The top of each log was scored off to receive the next log, and the next one had a notch cut in it called the "rider" or "saddle" to fit upon the one beneath it, and the ends were then cut off smooth. The owner or his help would cut out places for the doors, windows and a fireplace. Trees were cut down and split into puncheons out of which the floors the doors were made and short boards called "clapboards" were split for the roof; logs were laid at proper distances to receive these clapboards and other logs were laid upon them to hold them down.

The fireplace and chimney were made of suitable timbers but plastered with mud to prevent their burning. Thus the entire house would be made ready for occupancy without any metal about it. The windows were usually left open for air holes in summer and were covered with cloths or greased paper in cold weather. It is said that Judge Aseph M. Butler was the first settler in the county to use window glass in his house, and for this he was regarded by his neighbors as putting on entirely too much style for these new settlements.

As soon as the cabin was completed the settler moved in and then all hands went to work to open out a little farm; the women helping in the necessary work as well as in their household duties.

The women of the frontier knew how to work and were always ready to take a hand at it. Mothers then taught their daughters to play on the spinning wheel and loom instead of the organ and piano. The music was more profitable, if less melodious. The men wore flax shirts and home-made woolen pants, and the women wore linsey-woolsey dresses. All the work of manufacturing the material and the making of which was done by them. Occasionally some of the more wealthy ladies would have a calico dress, and then she was said to be fixed up.

The settlers who blazed the way through the wilderness for us and advancing civilization, have builded wiser than they knew. They were experienced pioneers with hearts of gold. With ruddy health and hardy sinews they coped with and conquered the wilds. They despised the coddling ease of luxury and the wintry winds, sleets and snows had no terrors for them. They determined the time by the shadows, and guided their paths at night by the stars. They knew the approaching storm. The sky was to them an open book. Schooled in wood-craft and learned in Indian lore, they tracked their game and followed the trail of the savage. They read the story of the broken twig and fallen leaves. Their vision was piercing, and their hearing acute. Accountered with rifle, (5)

The one-legged bedstead, now a piece of furniture of the past, was made by cutting a stick the proper length, boring holes at one end one and a half inches in diameter at right angles, and the same sized holes corresponding with those in the logs of the cabin the length and breadth for the bed, in which were inserted poles.

Those pioneers were home builders, the very foundation of a nation, the true root of patriotism and love of country. They appreciated the fruits of their own industry, and manufactured or made most of their own utensils.

A person not many years ago in contrasting the social and moral status of his latter years with those of his early pioneer days, said, "Then if a house was to be raised, every man turned out, often the women too, while the men piled up the logs and fashioned the primitive dwellingplace, the women prepared the dinner. Sometimes it was cooked over big fires near the site where the cabin was built. In other cases it was prepared at the nearest cabin, and at the proper hour was carried to where the men were at work. If one man in the neighborhood killed a beef, a pig, or a deer, every other family in the neighborhood was sure to receive a piece. We were all on an equality. Aristocratic feelings were unknown, and would not have been tolerated. What one had, we all had, and that was the happiest period of our lives. But today, if you lean against a neighbor's shade tree, he will charge you for it. If you are poor and palsied, you may lie and suffer unnoticed and almost unattended, and will probably go to the poorhouse, while just as likely as not, the man who reports you to the authorities as a subject of county care, charges the county for making the report."

Thus our early settlers, burdened with what we deem today, untold hardships and deep privations, looked back, in the latter days of their lives, to the good old days ; and even in our own generation we may find many who decry the great progress of the present and long for other days. It is ever thus, and ever vdll be. Even the reader, should he search his memory, will recall as a pleasing recollection some trial or danger or experience through which he has successfully passed and even our failures are not necessarily unpleasant to recall.

Much has been written regarding the log house of the early pioneer. It furnished an inexpensive and convenient shelter, and around it cluster many pleasant recollections that are even yet dear to those of us who had the good fortune to have been reared within its sacred portals. Unpretentious, uniform in size and architecture, the log house of the early pioneer was the greatest democratizing agent of the early day. No social lines could be drawn based on the grandeur of dwelling places, and consequently each and every one was valued at their true worth, determined solely by their every day Hfe and character. The era of the log house is a space of time as distinct from others in its peculiar customs as is the Paleozoic or the Stone Age. There is a song which ends, after trailing through innumerable verses reciting the trials of the log house bachelor, which runs as follows:

The farming implements of the pioneers were crude affairs, adapted, however, to the conditions that surrounded them and to their circumstances. The bull-plough, the mould-board of which was generally of wood, was adapted to the fields abounding in stumps and roots. Occasionally the mould-board was part iron, and possessor of such a bull-plough was looked upon as real progressive.

Other implements and utensils were of like character. When the clothes the settlers brought with them began to wear out, the wild nettle furnished them a substitute material. This, by process of drying and stripping, they would weave into a cloth, sufficient for their needs until the coming of the wintry blast. Then the furs of the wild animals were requisitioned with which the pioneers braved the snows and sleets in the coldest weather.

The prairies were not often settled until after the first pioneer period, therefore the forests of the timbered lands in small tracts were cleared, leaving the fields prolific in stumps and roots. Hence the cradle and the bull-plough were well suited to the cultivation thereof.