From the time of settlement until late in 1800 the home was the center of social, economic and religious life. The material needs were created and supplied in the home.

The tools used in early times would be considered crude now and hard to handle. The kitchen fire place was large for the cooking was done on the fire place the year 'round. The crane held hooks for the iron kettles and pots. The broad hearth held the ovens for baking. The iron forks and ladles stirred the brew and the pewter teapot served the rare tea occasionally brought in or tea made from sassafras root and other herbs. Coffee was often made from parched grains and parched sweet potatoes.

The wooden churn was long used for butter making - also the barrel churn. Both were made by hand.

Through all these years water was brought from springs in large gourds and wooden buckets that were hand made from sassafras. Later they dug wells.

The early settlers had a unique way of sterilizing vessels. A post cut from a small tree with limbs left eight or ten inches long stood outside the kitchen door. Crocks, buckets, gourds, etc. were hung on that to sun.

Saturday was a busy day. The week's ironing must be done, yards swept, and baking cake, pie and yeast bread for Sunday. Floors, tables, chairs, buckets, piggins and dough trays, etc. were scrubbed with white sand dug from a bank and lye soap to clean. For sweeping they used the sedge broom, later brooms were made from broom corn grown on the farm. This was wrapped and bound to the broom stick with an oak split. For scrubbing they used a mop made by drawing shucks through large bored holes in a board. A long handle was attached to this board. Crude were these tools but the women wielded them so expertly they did the work well.

Pewter and tin were metals used much used for making utensils. Another important home industry was making soap. The ash hopper was to be found at every home. Lye was leached from the oak ashes from the winter fires. This lye was used with the waste fat and me~t scraps to make a brown jelly like soap. If it was allowed to stand m barrels or crocks for several months before using it was very mild.

To do the family wash was a hard day's work and we would hear the call early, "Children fill up the tubs with water" for the washing was done at the spring or later at the well. The tubs were large wooden of one half of a barrel sawed off, a large iron pot or brass kettle was used for boiling and there must be a battling bench and a battling stick. Soft brown soap made from lye of the ash hopper was used. When this soap was rubbed on wet dirty clothes they were laid on the bench and beaten with the battling stick to loosen the dirt. This forced water and soap through the clothes. They were then boiled , rinsed and hung in the sun on the garden picket fence to dry.

The lye too, was used to make hominy from whole grain corn. We still make hominy by this method. The commercial hominy has never been able to approach the home-made hominy in taste and flavor.

The making of the winter's supply of candles was the special autumnal household duty and a hard one too for the iron kettles were heavy to handle. Every particle of tallow as well as deer and bear grease was saved for this purpose. First candles were made by dipping string in melted tallow and let harden then continued dipping until the candle was the desired size. Later candles were made in pewter or tin moulds.

The pine torch was much used to give light for working at night. Another duty of the women was picking geese. Most every family had a flock of geese for feather beds were needed to make straw beds more comfortable, too, they needed feather pillows. My part of this job when a child was holding the goose's head to keep it from biting. I seldom got through without a blue spot or two on my arm made by a gander's bill.

Another task in our home was making beer, wine, and light drinks from locust, persimmon, elderberry, blackberries, sassafras root and spice wood. Older people all seem to know the jingle:

O we can make liquors to sweeten our lips
From pumpkins, from parsnips, and walnut tree chips

Apple butter was made and fruits and berries preserved with honey and sor-gum , Before glass jars came into use these were stored in crocks. They were all so rich there was no fear of souring or moulding.

The women and girls took great pride in quilt making, cutting'the pieces right and setting the stitches straight and small and even. This art has remained with us. Our women make beautiful quilts. Through these years the girls were taught by mothers to be skillful in all these home industries. Shoes had to be made byhand but first leather had to be prepared. A trough was dug from a yellow poplar tree with an adz. In this trough animal skins, cow hide, deer skins and even dog skins were soaked in a red oak bark solution to remove the hair. The skins were then ready for tanning. Wooden lasts were used for shaping the shoes, maple wood pegs were used to fasten soles to the uppers - flax (linen) thread was used for sewing the leather. Often a band of brass was added to the toe of children's shoes to protect the leather from scuffing. The year around work was making cloth for there must be clothes, bed linens , blankets, counterpanes, quilts, shawls, socks and stockings, and tailor-made suits. For many years the two materials used for this work were wool and f'la x. Many farmers had flocks of sheep and clipped the wool. This job was dreaded by children who had to hold the head. If the child grew tired and jumped from the platform an old ram was standing with head held ready to strike. Mutton was much used for food. The wool was washed and dried. It was then carded into little rolls and spun into thread on the large spinning wheel. This thread was reeled in hanks (skeins) so it could be washed and dyed. The Clock Reel on which this was done, would click after making 40 rounds. Father enjoyed giving the following ditty about the reeling.

"A lad went a courtin' on a moonlit night The maid sat reeling by the dim firelight
He seemed quite jolly a nd the fire he kicked
And he kissed mistress Molly when the clockreel ticked."

Then came the quilling. The quill was a small river cane about 3~ inches long. This could be put on the spindle of the large wheel and filled with thread. A broom straw was run through the cane and it fitted into a homemade shuttle. This shuttle was sent back and forth through the warp to make the cloth.

For growing flax they needed new ground with trees, stumps and rocks removed. A field or patch of flax was sown. The seed was broadcast on the ground in May and it ripened in late July or August. It was cut with a reap hook (sickle). Flax is a graceful plant with drooping blue flowers. Preparing flax for spinning was a long hard process. First was ripping (removing seed) then soaking in the steep pot to rot the leaves and bark and condition the stalk for hackling. Then pounding came _ the hackling - (beating on iron spiked board) to tear and break to pieces. This had to be repeated many times. After the first hackle, six other fine hackles were often used. There was so little left after all the hackling even from a large amount of raw material. It was surprising to see how much linen thread could be spun from the small amount of prepared flax. The small Priscilla (pedal) wheel was used for spinning flax. (This process was given to me by my father, Matthew Hendricks. He hackled flax when a boy.)

When cotton growing was started in this area it was found to be much easier to' prepare than flax and soon became the material most used for making cloth. At first small patches, just enough for family use, was grown. The seed had to be separated from the lint by hand. This was usually done by slaves and a slave could only separate one pound of lint a day. This lint was carded and formed into little rolls that could be spun into thread on the large spinning wheel.

Uncle Matt Keith had old man Jim Friddle's father make him a gin. This was a log about four feet long filled with iron spikes. It was turned with a crank. The cotton was pushed down a chute onto these spikes and the whirling tore the cotton apart so the seed fell out. Of interest to us today is the fact that they placed this machine over a creek so the seed would wash away lest the cattle might eat them and be poisoned. This machine could separate several pounds a day. I don't know if Mr. Keith got his gin idea from Eli Whitney or if it was original with him. We were far removed and news didn't travel fast in those days.

There was a wonderful spirit of neighborly helpfulness and cooperation before this machine age. When a new ground was to be cleared the trees were cut and the neighbors came for the log rolling. The logs were either rolled into piles and burned or rolled to the edge of a field to rot. But the job required several men, and neighbors gladly helped one another without charge. There was always a feast prepared by the women. When the corn was harvested it was piled outside and neighbors wcre invited to a corn shucking and a jolly good time together as they worked. Some farmers placed a small jug of corn liquor in the center and piled the corn on top. They would shuck until they uncovered the jug then the whole group gave a whoop and each fellow got a drink. Now it was time for the feast at the house. The women often enjoyed a Quilting Bee at a home and a good meal together. In the evening the men were invited in for a square dance or it might have been the minuet with the elite.

These were years of such quiet, peace and contentment. I am reminded of these lines on homely contentment from Whittier's "Snow Bound":

"Shut in from all the world without
We sat the clean winged hearth about
Content to let the North wind blow
In baffled rage at pane and door
And for the winter's fireside meat
Between the andirons straggling feet
The mug of cidar simmered slow
And apples sputtered in a row
And close at hand the basket stood
With nuts from brown October's woods
What matters how the night behaved
What matters how the North wind raved
Blow high! Blow low!
Not all the snow
Could quench our hearthside's ruddy glow"