Pioneers of Marion County by Wm. M. Donnel, 1872

Chapter III

Poverty - Settlements - Marking off Claims - Primitive Houses and their Furniture
First Crop - Grating Corn for Meal - Hominy - Samp

During the first year (1843) about seventy families from various parts of the east and south, settled in the county. These immigrants mostly came in companies, - families acquainted or connected, - and settled in neighborhoods that eventually formed the nucleus of what were called “settlements.” These settlements were mostly designated from names derived by some leading member thereof, or from their locality, such as the English settlement, the Tong settlement, the Buffington settlement, the White Breast settlement, and the Red Rock settlement. The first division of the county into election precincts, to be hereafter described, seems to have intended to accommodate these settlements, and will show their localities. These settlements were not only the result of the social tendency of mankind to drift into communities, but in a country so wild, and where mutual dependence on each other was so much felt, wisdom demanded such combinations. In time these settlements were so expanded by additions so as to unite with others, and thereby lost their distinction, but some of them are still known by their old names.

But these settlements were not always so compact as circumstances seemed to require. Settlers were disposed to suit themselves with a location, though it might be at a remote distance from neighbors, and families within two or three miles of each other were neighbors. Occasionally a lonely cabin was to be met with so far from any other as to be apparently out of range of any settlement.

The first business of a settler on reaching the place where he intended to settle, was to select his claim and mark it off as nearly as he could without a compass. This was done by stepping and staking or blazing the lines as he went. The absence of section lines rendered it necessary to take the sun at noon and at evening as a guide by which to run these claim lines. So many steps each way counted three hundred and twenty acres, more or less, the legal area of a claim. It may be readily supposed that these lines were far from correct, but they answered all necessary claim purposes, for it was understood among the settlers that when the lands came to be surveyed and entered, all inequalities should be righted. Thus, if a survey line should happen to run between adjoining claims, cutting off more or less of the one or the other, the fraction was to be added to whichever lot required equalizing, yet without robbing the one from which it was taken, for an equal amount would be added to it some other place.

The next important business of a settler was to build a house. Till this was done some had to camp on the ground or live in their wagons, perhaps the only shelter they had known for several weeks, so that the prospect of a house of some kind that could be called a home, produced a thrill of pleasure that could hardly be comprehended by those who have never suffered the same privation. To the home-loving unadventurous female, this thought must be specially applicable.

But such a home! The poor settler has neither the means nor the help to erect a palace. So far from it, the best he can do, in most instances, is to fix up the cheapest thing imaginable that could be called a house. Some of the most primitive constructions of the kind were half-faced, or, as they were sometimes called “cat-faced” sheds or “wickeups,” the Indian term for house or tent. But a claim cabin was a little more in the shape of human habitation, made of round logs light enough for two or three men to lay up; about fourteen feet square, perhaps a little larger or smaller, roofed with bark or clapboards, and floored with puncheons (logs split into slabs), or earth. For a fire-place, a wall of stone and earth - frequently the latter only when stone was not convenient - was made in the best practicable shape for the purpose, in an opening in one end of the building, extending outward, an planked on the outside by batts of wood notched together to stay it. Frequently a fire-place of this kind was made so capacious as to occupy nearly the whole width of the house. In cold weather, when much fuel was needed to keep the temperature of such a room above the freezing point, large logs were piled up in the yawning space. To protect the crumbling back wall against the effects of fire, two “back logs” were placed against it, one upon the other. Sometimes these back logs were so large as to require horse power to draw them into the house, the horse entering at one door and going out at the other, leaving the log where it could be rolled into the fire-place. For a chimney, any contrivance that would conduct the smoke upwards, would do. Some were made of sods plastered inside with clay, others - the more common perhaps - were the kind we occasionally see in use now, clay and sticks, or “cat in clay,” as they were sometimes called. For doors and windows, the most simple contrivances that would serve the purposes were brought into requisition. The door was not always immediately provided with a shutter, in which case a quilt or some other cloth might be spared to hang over it. As soon as convenient, however, some boards were split and put together for a shutter, hung upon wooden hinges, and held shut by a wooden pin inserted in an auger hole. As substitutes for window glass, greased paper pasted over sticks, crossed in the shape of a sash was sometimes used. It admitted the light and excluded the air, nearly equal to a glass window, but of course, lacked the transparency.

In regard to the furniture of such a house, our inventory must necessarily be as brief as our description of its architecture, unless in such instances where the settlers may have brought with them their old household supply, which, owing to the distance most of them had come, was very seldom. It may be readily understood by the reader that whatever articles could be made to substitute tables and chairs, were used for them. A table could be made as easily as a door shutter, and of the same kind of material. Indeed we have heard of instances of the door shutter taken down and used for a table, and re-hanged again after meals. Benches and stools supplied the place of chairs. But perhaps the most important of the few domestic comforts that could be crowded into so small a space, was a bedstead or two. Any family who had been bred to the customs and conveniences of civilization could hardly accommodate themselves to the simple mode of repose in use among the savages, that of stretching themselves upon the earth. Something softer than the bosom of mother earth, and a little more elevating, was deemed indispensable, if it could be obtained. Therefore the nearest approach to a real bedstead that could be extemporised in a hurry and with the fewest tools, was done in this wise: a forked stake was driven into the ground at a proper distance diagonally from the corner of the room, upon which poles, reaching from each wall, were laid. The wall ends of the poles may have rested in the openings between the logs or been driven into auger holes. Bark or boards were made to substitute cords. Upon this cheap article of furniture the pains-taking housewife could spread her bedding so as to hide every bit of its deformity; then hang up some sheets behind it, and thus give the sleeping corner of the homely habitation a tasty and wide-awake appearance. It was generally called the “prairie bedstead,” and by some, the “prairie rascal,” though for what reason the latter term was applied to it does not appear, for it is difficult to conceive of anything more honest in construction or use. Few of these houses yet remain as monuments of the past. The writer has seen two or three foundation logs of one of the first, where it stood. Their appearance is quite antiquarian, rotten and sunken into the earth, but still bearing some marks of their ancient use. One or two cabins of a somewhat later date, still stand, or did a year since, on the premises of J. M. Brous, an old settler in Perry township. They are in tolerable preservation, considering their age. But a majority of those old cabins have passed away, as well as some of their builders and original occupants; not, however, without first serving the purposes of stables, shed, cribs, &c., till at last too frail for even these uses, they have been reduced to fuel, and their ashes returned to the earth that first produced the living tree.

The next important duty of the settler was to prepare some ground and plant what he could at that advanced season for cropping. This was generally done in the edge of the timber, where most of the very early settlers located. Here the sod was easily broken, and not requiring the heavy teams and plows needed to break the prairie sod. Perhaps we might safely add, as another reason for first settling in and about the timber, convenience to fuel and building timber. It might be supposed that the timber afforded some protection against those terrible conflagrations that occasionally swept across the prairies. Though they often passed through the groves, it was not with the same destructive force. By these fires much of the younger timber was killed from time to time, and the forests kept thin and shrubless. Since these fires have been kept out, our timber lands have become thickly set with a new growth.

The first year’s farming generally consisted of a “truck patch” planted in corn, potatoes, turnips, &c. But one man in the county planted any considerable crop of “sod corn,” and this was Jas. Price, of summit township. He broke nine acres of prairie the first year, where he still lives, and from it produced considerable more corn than he needed for his own consumption. But, generally the first year’s crop fell far short of supplying even the most rigid economy of food. Most of the settlers had brought with them such provisions as were indispensable to frugal living for some time, such as flour or meal, bacon, and coffee or tea. But these supplies, unlike the poor widows barrel of meal and cruise of oil, were not inexhaustible. A long winter must come and go before another crop could be raised. At times game was plentiful, and the skillful huntsman could supply his table with venison. When corn could be obtained, the absence or inconvenience of mills for grinding it, forced the necessity of grating it on an implement made by punching small holes through a piece of tin or sheet iron and fastening it on a board in a concave shape, with the rough side out. Upon this implement the ear was rubbed to produce meal. But grating could not be done when the corn becomes so dry as to shell off when rubbed. Some even used a coffee mill for grinding corn. But a very common substitute for bread was hominy, a palatable and wholesome diet, made by boiling corn in weak lye till the hull or bran peals off, after which it was well washed to cleanse it of the lye, then boiled again to soften it, when it was ready for use as occasion required, by frying and seasoning it to suit the taste. Another mode of preparing hominy was by pesteling. A mortar was made by burning a bowl-shaped cavity in the even end of an upright block of wood. After thoroughly clearing it of the charcoal, the corn could be put in, hot water teemed upon it, and subject to a severe pesteling by a club of sufficient length and thickness, in the larger end of which was inserted an iron wedge banded to keep it there. Hot water would soften the corn and loosen the hull, and the pestle would crush it.

Another preparation of corn diet, called “samp,” was made by cracking the kernels in a tan-bark mill, then boiling it like rice.

Transcribed by Mary E. Boyer, 11/06, reformatted by Al Hibbard 12 Oct 2013.