Frontier Culture Museum - Staunton, Virginia 2008

This is a post delayed 5 years in the writing.

We are living history fans, so when we were near the Frontier Culture Museum we decided we must stop to see what they were doing...rather a busman's holiday.  It seems like most living history museums choose a period or area to portray.  The Frontier Culture Museum shows farm life in the Shenandoah Valley in the frontier time period. The premise of the museum is that the valley is a place where much of American culture was born.  It was settled by farmers from England, Ireland (Scots-Irish) and Germany.  They started with a short film narrated by David McCulloch, a well-known  historical writer.  He showed the reasons people left these areas to settle in Virginia and how their farming ways influenced how Americans eventually farmed.

At the time we visited, German, English and Irish farms were portrayed with exhibits on African-American and Native American farming practices under construction but not yet open.  In order to  be accurate they went to England, Germany and Ireland to find period appropriate farmhouses from the 1600-1700s which could be purchased.  Once suitable houses were found, they were numbered and dismantled so they could be reassembled on the site of the museum.

The weekend we visited, they were showing cloth production.

We first visited the English farm where they were washing wool to prepare it for spinning. The house was a half-timbered sort of building also called a daub and wattle building. As one acquaintance would have said, "It's so pastoral!"

This picture, taken from the inside shows what the walls look like between the timbers before it is plastered or covered with clay.  Branches are woven between pieces of wood to fill in the space.   This is the daub and wattle.

The kitchen featured a large, open fireplace for cooking and heating.

Bed curtains were used both for warmth and for privacy.

Our guide offered a pretend dinner party in the dining room, using the plates, etc there.

Next we visited the Irish farm with its rock walls.

This is where they were preparing flax for spinning.  The portion of the flax that is used is a fiber inside a woody stem, so this lady is using a flax brake to crush and break up the woody parts to gain access to the fibers inside.  The usable flax looks like blond hair when properly prepared.  A hunk of prepared flax is called a 'tow'.  This is where we get the term tow head for a blond haired child.  Sometimes such a hair color is also called 'flaxen haired'.

The next site we visited was the German farm where they were spinning the flax.  When flax is spun, the fabric is called linen.  It was common on the frontier to make a sturdy fabric called linsey-woolsey which was a combination of linen and wool.

The kitchen had a raised hearth which seemed much less back breaking to me.

After the spinning was done, weaving was done in a sunny room.

The German farm interpreter had on a laced bodice over a chemise.  One of the men in the group kept nattering about it...wondering about it.  She nicely and tactfully told him several times that is was sort of like an under garment but was worn over the chemise and had boning in it.  The man just would not quit with the questions until finally his wife poked  him and said, "It's like a bra!"  Then he shut up.

The last stop was the America farm which combined features and practices from all the other sites which were found to work best on that part of the American frontier.

It was an enjoyable trip and we learned a lot.

When the Wind Blows

When we left on December 19th for our planned Christmas vacation in Colorado, we commented on the lovely driving weather.  Our trip across Wyoming was pleasant and uneventful.

After visiting with family over Christmas we decided to head back home on January 5th.  Although snow had fallen during our stay in Colorado, the forecast for the 5th seemed like it would be a good weather day to travel.  Thus, we set off, bright and early, stopping for breakfast in nearby Loveland.  After breakfast, we headed north towards Cheyenne, still enjoying our drive.

After turning west at Cheyenne, the weather started to change.  Although it was not actively snowing, blowing snow made the visibility very poor.  We couldn't even see the side of the road, so we focused on the flashing tail lights of the truck in front of us to make our way.  The gusts of wind grew increasingly vicious.  Soon we began to see semis parking along the side of the road.  In spite of the weather and slowed traffic, some drivers drove on as if the road were in perfect condition.  One that I recall was a pickup truck pulling a long horse trailer.  A couple of semis had been caught by the wind and turned over.  The emergency traffic broadcast on the radio gave warnings especially to vehicles with light, high loads.  I noticed a few on ramps were blocked so the freeway couldn't be entered from these points.

Our plan was to drive as far as Laramie and then fill up with gas so we could make it the rest of the way across Wyoming.  When we got to exit 310 at Laramie we headed off the freeway to get our gas, noticing at the same time that the gates had been closed on the west side of Laramie.  The road in front of us was closed...and so was the road behind us.  While we were filling up with gas, Roger talked with some eastbound truckers who said road conditions to the west were terrible.  They were sure the road would be closed all day and maybe more.  That is when we noticed that the sides of the road were filled with parked semis.  The 2 truck stops there were filled with semis.  Every vacant lot was filled with parked semis.  I have never in my life seen so many semis parked in one place.

They are difficult to see in the picture but they are lined up on the side of the road from the on ramp for maybe half a mile.  They are visible behind the Super 8 sign.

We debated what to do and then decided to check into the Best Western motel that was right there rather than sit in the car all day waiting for the road to open.  Then we found a local grocery store and found food for lunch and dinner.   After a refreshing nap, we headed to the local movie theater to watch the newest Hobbit  movie.

By the time we woke up the next morning, the freeway was open and traffic was moving again, so we ate breakfast and finished our journey home.  We noticed a total of 13 vehicles which had blown over and off the road.  Eleven of them were semis which had turned over or jack-knifed or both.  One was a 5th wheeler...and one was the horse trailer we saw speeding by the previous day, destroying both the trailer and the truck.

Brigham City - a day of nostalgia

For Mom's 91st birthday this year we took her to Brigham City so she could show us various sites of interest to our family. Before starting we fortified ourselves with a visit to Maddox, a business which was started by Mom's distant cousins, Irv and Wilma (Kotter) Maddox.  It has become a destination restaurant now.  After dinner, our tour began.

It was about 1903-4 that the family of George Richard and Euphemia Jane Freeman came to Brigham City.  The two oldest boys left England first, with the rest of the family following a year later.  George Richard Freeman's family were shopkeepers and shoemakers for the most part.

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Bert, Ernest, Wilford, Alf, Ida

Annie, George R., Euphemia Jane, Harry

Their first home in Brigham was a rental south of the Tabernacle.

The employment they were hoping for in Brigham City didn't work out, but they were offered a chance to buy a farm just east of town.  The house on the farm wasn't much more than a shack that has long since disappeared.  Farming was a new experience for the family. They had no farm implements at first but eventually bought an old horse and wagon and learned to plow and milk a cow.

 

 Hillside Farm -about 1935

Today the old shack is gone and the farm that was out of town is now a neighborhood on Orchard Place.  The modern home is on the site of the old shack.  There used to be a pond above the house on the mountainside.

 Several of the children and grandchildren of George R. and Euphemia Jane lived in Brigham after they grew up. Most of their homes have now been modernized, so look a bit different than they did in the old days. 

Wilford Freeman home.  It has no carport in the old days.

Alf Freeman home

When Ernest and Ruby Freeman were first married, they lived with Ruby's mother.  Later, they bought the home of Ernest's parents on 2nd North and 2nd East.

Rather than irrigating with sprinklers, the stream of water came to the lot twice a week for a certain period of time.  The gates for the water were under metal covers.  When it was time for the water turn, Ernest would open the metal cover and put his hoe down into the hole to pull the gate cover off one pipe so the water would then run into his garden.

 Dean Freeman home

The Kotter family arrived in Brigham City earlier than the Freemans, in the 1860s.  Henry Kotter had a farm north of town which he gave to his sons to run after his first wife died.  In 1893 he married Minnie Erickson and built a house in town.  He died in 1916, but she lived in that house for 20 more years.

 Kotter Family

 Ruby, Herman, Etta, Victor,

Elmer, Wendell,

Gertrude, Minnie, Norma, Homer

Ernest's children fondly remember visiting their Grandma Kotter.

Dean's aunt, Norma Kotter Hodson, bought the house next to him.  Her father, Henry Kotter, was a brickmaker.  The walls of the original part of this house were very thick because they were built of adobe bricks made by Henry Kotter.  Even without air conditioning, this house was cool in the summer because of the thick walls.

Kids in Brigham City attended seminary in the old seminary building which is still there.

 The old Relief Society granary building is also still standing.

Another enterprise important in Brigham City history was Baron Woolen Mills which is still standing though it has been destroyed by fire.

It was fun to drive around and reminisce with Mom and hear her stories about the old days in Brigham City.

Amelia's Magic Box

Amelia and her great-grandma came to stay at our house for a few days.  Shortly after Great-grandma went shopping, Amelia discovered a magic box.  It looked like an ordinary box of Peanut M&Ms, but when Amelia opened the box, only one piece of candy was there, so she ate it.  Later she found the box on a chair and picked it up.  It rattled!  Something was inside!  It was another piece of candy! So, she ate it.  A few hours later she found the box on the table, so she picked it up again...and it rattled again, so she opened it up and ate it.  This happened several times during the day.  That magic box kept refilling itself with candy!

This morning when Amelia woke up, she found the previously empty magic box..and guess what?  A candy was inside.

I would very much like to have a box like this!

Grandma Wore an Apron

    Grandma wore an apron, though if you tried to prove it by looking for a picture of her wearing her apron, you would never believe it. It was clear the apron was used to keep her clothing clean and was certainly NOT meant to show up in something as important as a picture! 
    It wasn’t until I was older that I wondered why aprons were so important. They have even crept into idioms like 'tied to his mother’s apron strings', or 'cut the apron strings'.
    Grandma had a lot of aprons and made even more of them for various occasions.  Frilly little half aprons were meant for girls serving at wedding receptions.  Bib aprons and full aprons were for cooking, canning and washing. When I spent my twelfth summer with her, she helped me sew cobbler aprons for my little sisters.  When I was older, she helped me make full aprons for me and my sisters.
    At some point, she went through a phase of decorating gingham aprons with chicken scratch embroidery.  Her embroidery patterns were little scraps of gingham with the various motifs on them.  It took careful math to make sure the pattern came out even on the apron.
    I don’t know when aprons went out of vogue, but I grew up donning old clothes
for dirty tasks rather than wearing an apron.  The mint green and white checked drawstring apron I made in 7th grade home ec class is still as pristine as the day I made it. Maybe it was the washing machine that caused their demise by making laundry so much easier that we began to think nothing of putting on fresh clothing every day or so rather than making them last a week.
   When I started working at the living history farm, I fell in love with aprons.  I never realized what handy things they were!  When little girls showed up to help in the kitchen, they had to wash their hands.  Then they bemoaned the fact they had no towel to dry their hands.  Silly girls!  What did they think an apron was for! 
   In the garden our beans were planted on tall tripods.  With the ends of my apron skirt tied together, I could use both hands to pick the beans, using my apron as the bucket which moved right along with me as I picked.  They worked for bringing in produce from the garden and eggs from the chicken house.  When baby chicks or ducklings needed transport to another location, the apron was ready.
   Aprons were also handy for tear wiping, nose wiping, face washing.  By bringing one end of the apron around back and over the shoulder to tie to the other corner of the apron, it made a dandy  baby carrier as well.
   Do you need to shoo away a fly or herd the animals somewhere?  Simply flap that apron at them and watch them go.  Are you trying to get the attention of someone in the distance?  Wave that apron like a flag.
    You can also use an apron to socialize kittens by carrying them in the bib like a kangaroo.
   

    Aprons have changed over the years.  In the mid-1800s  women wore pinnies or pinners which were long half aprons with a bib, held up not by straps, but by straight pins.  They did not usually have pockets attached to the aprons then, but often wore a separate ‘pocket’ tied around the waist and hidden under the apron. By the early 1900s, aprons had straps to hold them up and frequently had large pockets.  By the 1950s aprons had become more frilly and decorative rather than useful.

Chesterfield - a ghost town

Yesterday we decided to go visit Chesterfield, Idaho....a ghost town with a unique story.  Due to a number of factors, the town was pretty much abandoned about 40-50 years after it was settled.  The buildings that were still visible by the 1980s were just foundations and fallen down piles of boards.  The town was settled by various family members of the founder as well as his friends and neighbors which probably resulted in a fair amount of intermarrying.  As time went on, with a desire to preserve their heritage, some of these families decided to restore their old family homes in Chesterfield and furnish them with period furnishings.  Today there are about 20 buildings there which have been restored.  Volunteers take visitors on free guided tours and tell stories about the various buildings and the people who used to live there.  Today there is a foundation which helps to provide some of the funding for the renovations taking place.  We probably spent 3 1/2 hours there and really enjoyed it.

This first building is the Amusement Hall...home of plays, musicals, dances and such for the community.  Chesterfield is on a somewhat high piece of ground, so we heard the story of one fellow struck by lightning getting blasted about 20 feet off the steps of this building.  He survived and came to 4-5 days later.

This little house was the home of the founder of the town, Chester Call.  It is much larger inside than it looks from the outside.  The guide told us that the floors of the house were mopped every day...not just to keep them clean, but also to keep the wood in the floors a bit damp so they would stay somewhat swollen so they wouldn't squeak.  Clearly someone has NOT been mopping the floors because they squeaked a lot.

This is the sacrament trays from the church.

The church was leased to the DUP for 50 years as a museum, but that lease is now up so it was given to the Chesterfield Foundation provided they would restore it as it once was.

The pump organ in the church still works just fine.  I know this as I had a chance to test it out.  Pumping the organ while playing is tricky...sort of like rubbing your tummy and patting your head at the same time.  If you forget to pump, there is suddenly no sound!

This is the amusement hall from a distance showing how it sort of sits on a hilltop...waiting for lightning bolts to hit.  We were told that all of the restored buildings now have lightning rods.

Here we have the Ruger dugout.  It was originally a cave that the Ruger family moved in to.  Later the top was put on as sleeping quarters for the children.  The two levels were connected via a ladder from the downstairs through a small opening between the floors.

This monument was put up by the DUP to commemorate the Oregon Trail which passed through the town. We were surprised to hear that wagons were still using the Oregon Trail into the 1900s.

There was a variety of old equipment here and there around the town.  This one is an old hay derrick.

This is the home of Denmark Jensen.  It was a saltbox style house decorated in bright Scandinavian colors.  It also had a ladder up to the 2nd floor bedrooms.

Here we have the Tithing Office.  It was used for folks to drop off their 'in kind' tithing...10% of whatever they had...eggs, milk, hay...to be used to help poorer families.

This is the exterior of the Denmark Jensen home.  You can see the 'washing machine' on the back step.

This strange piece of equipment is a Fresno...used to scoop dirt and move it.

The Amusement Hall is now full of quilts.  This one in particular struck my fancy.  Each block has a different age of the little girl embroidered on it.  Then the block for each age is made of scraps from a dress the little girl wore at that age.

This house was called 'The Mansion" and was clearly the largest and fanciest house in town.

Our tour guide said he had parents, grandparents and all but one great-grandparent who lived in Chesterfield.  If you like a bit of history, I recommend this site which is open from Memorial Day to Labor Day every year....and it's free!