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!

Hunting for Homesteads

Yesterday we decided it would be interesting to go hunting for some homesteads.  We had the BLM descriptions for 2 homesteads taken from the BLM website.  The first site we looked at we thought must be near Wilford, Idaho.  If you look for Wilford on your GPS, you will not find it.  I suppose that is because it is an unincorporated area.

 It is approximately between Teton, Sugar City and St. Anthony, Idaho, so we headed out with a map which showed the section lines in the area.  We had a bit of trouble finding a reference point, so we decided it would be easier to start from the Wilford Cemetery which is about 2 miles from the homestead location.  The owner of the homestead, Coriantumr Stephens, was buried in the Wilford cemetery along with his wife, so we first looked for the headstone.  We drove in on a little access road in the middle of the cemetery and then tried to decide where we should look.  In looking just left of the car, at the first headstone he saw, the woodcarver immediately announced he had found it! Sadly, the headstone records a sad story as you can see that three of the children died within four days of each other in 1896 in a diphtheria epidemic.  They have separate little headstones next to their parents.

A story recorded in the personal history of Grant Stephens, a son of Coriantumr, tells of a neighboring family, the Kershaws, who also lost multiple children to diphtheria.  Their grave is nearby in the same section.

From the cemetery we were able to take the map showing the section lines to determine where the Coriantumr Stephens homestead was located.  Only a couple of modern houses are on the property now along with flat fields.  The road that goes from Rexburg to Yellowstone runs through the property.

I am sure they were all sorry to leave that place, but their own family needs and tragedies prevented them from staying.

From the pile of old wood in the corner of the top homestead picture, the woodworker found a likely branch that he brought home to see what could be done with it.  Here is the result:

Next we headed for another homestead which was filed on by my grandfather, Grant Stephens. We knew when we started out that we would be unable to find the exact location of this homestead as the BLM map shows it right in the middle of the Palisades Reservoir..under water since completion of the Palisades Dam about 1957.

It must have been a lovely place for a homestead, near the Snake River for water and rich bottom land for the crops.  In his older years he painted a picture of how he remembered that homestead.

On our way home we passed through various towns where family members lived or worked in days gone by....Alpine, Etna, Bedford and Freedom.  We did not stop at Etna to find the homestead of Joseph J. Clark as we didn't have the location at the time, but we will leave that for another day.