West Virginia. Otis K. Rice

West Virginia - Otis K. Rice


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and the difficulties in setting the plow to the land appear to have attracted to West Virginia a disproportionate number of the class of settlers that Frederick Jackson Turner, the great frontier historian, called “pioneer farmers.” These restless souls seldom remained in one place more than a few years. They lived chiefly by hunting and raising rangy cattle and razorback hogs, which they turned loose to feed upon natural grasses and the mast of the forests. They limited their agricultural production chiefly to corn and a few garden vegetables. They sought only the usufruct of the land and were prodigal of its seemingly unlimited resources.

      The Permanent Settler. The casual observer often failed to distinguish between the “pioneer farmer” and the permanent farmer. The former usually left his wilderness home after a few years for greener pastures. The permanent settler had hopes of taming the wilderness and gazing upon his own teeming fields and hardy flocks and herds.

      The first abode of the pioneer family, a crude cabin of unhewn logs, was a testimonial to the alliance between family and forest. The pioneer chinked the cracks of his dwelling with grass and mud, laid on a roof of clapboards held in place by heavy poles laid crosswise, and constructed a “cat and clay” chimney of stones held together with clay, sticks, and the down from cattails. Most cabins consisted of only one room and a loft, which was reached by means of a ladder and served as sleeping quarters for the children. Later the ambitious settler replaced the cabin with a house of neatly hewn logs, puncheon floors, a cut stone fireplace and chimney, glass windowpanes, and a neatly shingled roof.

      Although many pioneer families long relied upon forests and streams for food, even to considering the breast of the wild turkey and venison as substitutes for bread, most turned increasingly to the produce of their lands. The very first year the pioneer cleared a plot for a cornfield by girdling trees, which he later cut, and removing the undergrowth. Even before he grubbed out the stumps, which might require two or three years, he planted a crop of corn. The very staff of pioneer life, corn was ground into meal for bread, including corn pone and journeycakes, and served as roasting ears, hominy, mush, and dozens of other dishes. It provided food for livestock and was the base of the common “hog and hominy” diet. The planting of wheat had to wait until stumps had been removed and the soil had lost some of the nutrients that caused the grain to mature without forming a head. Oats, rye, and buckwheat, the latter grown chiefly in Preston and Greenbrier counties, were other common grains. Potatoes, beans, squash, pumpkins, and other garden vegetables relieved some of the monotony of mealtime fare.

      Pioneer dress was at first simple and unadorned. Men wore hunting shirts, breeches, coonskin caps, and moccasins. The hunting shirt, made of deerskin or linsey-woolsey, a homespun fabric, reached nearly to the knees and bloused over a belt to form a pocket for carrying food and other articles. Moccasins of deerskin were well suited to dry weather but were uncomfortable in rain and snow. Women made their dresses of linsey-woolsey, a material prized for durability rather than beauty. They ordinarily wore sunbonnets throughout the year, and in summer they frequently were barefoot. Children's attire was very much like that of their elders.

      An Expanding Economy. Pioneers bore the hardships and privations of frontier life with considerable equanimity, but they aspired to leave behind the most primitive conditions and return to more sophisticated and comfortable ways as soon as possible. With industry and good fortune, their farms could be made to produce a variety of articles that might be sold for cash or traded for needed supplies or even luxuries. Bulky or perishable products could not be transported by packhorse or flatboats and canoes to distant towns, but corn and rye could be made into whiskey, peaches into brandy, and apples into cider. Ready markets existed for all of these, as well as for tallow, furs, hides, saltpeter, ginseng, and many native roots. Moreover, within a few years western residents annually began to drive thousands of livestock, chiefly cattle and hogs, to eastern markets such as Baltimore and Philadelphia.

      Cash crops and various native products enabled the pioneer to acquire gunpowder, rifles, salt, and bar iron, the raw material of the blacksmith, but they also provided him and his family with their first luxuries. The records of an unidentified merchant in the Greenbrier Valley in 1784, only fifteen years after settlements were reestablished there after the French and Indian War, are instructive. To his customers the merchant provided fine linen, calico, holland, silk for bonnets, cambric, velvet, broadcloth, check, durant, stock mohair, scarlet cloaks, and apron strings; buttons, needles, and thread; salt, pepper, chocolate, ginger, and coffee; teapots, coffeepots, cruets, soup plates, cups and saucers, knives, tumblers, and pepper boxes; and guns, barlows, jackknives, padlocks, and saddles. The merchant took ginseng for seventy percent of his sales and farm and forest products for most of the remainder. His cash income amounted to only two percent of his sales.1

      Folkways. Frontier isolation subtly merged into rural life patterns that had an enduring effect upon the outlook and customs of the people. Lonely families welcomed social gatherings and visits from strangers who occasionally passed their way. Normal interest in other people sometimes took the form of excessive curiosity, and the unwary visitor was bombarded with questions about his or her personal circumstances, family, and reasons for travel. Travelers from that day to this, however, have commented upon the friendliness of the people of West Virginia.

      Weddings were favorite social occasions. Very often they were held at the house of the bride's parents, who provided a feast as sumptuous as farm and forest could afford, with beef, pork, fowl, bear, venison, and fruits and vegetables that were in season. Some West Virginians indulged in the customs of stealing the bride's shoe or “running for the bottle.” A dance often climaxed activities and lasted through the night despite tired, aching feet and a weary fiddler. The infare, held by the bridegroom's parents the following day, continued the festivities.

      Most social occasions combined pleasure with work best done through group effort. A prime example was the house-raising. Once the site for a dwelling had been selected, a “fatigue party” cut down trees, hauled the logs to a designated spot, made clapboards for the roof, and hewed puncheons for the floor. A knowledgeable and industrious work force could have the foundations laid before the end of the first day. The next morning four skilled cornermen notched and laid up the logs, while other men laid the floor and built the chimney. By the end of the third day, workers had the structure under roof and ready for occupancy. Churches and schoolhouses were commonly built by the same cooperative endeavor. The women ordinarily prepared meals and refreshments at such times.

      Logrollings were common spring events. In preparation, the landowner felled the trees, cut off the branches, notched the trunks at about eight-or ten-foot intervals, and for several days burned dry limbs at each notch until the trunk had been reduced to manageable lengths. On the day of the logrolling, men with handspikes moved the logs to a large heap, where they burned them. Again women provided the meals, which often featured burgoo, a kind of potpie of vegetables and wild meats never reduced to a specific recipe.

      Pioneers also relieved the tedium of life with corn shuckings, molasses making, quilting parties, and other common endeavors. Equally exciting were court days, when men gathered to hear both civil and criminal cases, transact necessary business at the county seat, and engage in such tests of dexterity as marksmanship, throwing the tomahawk, and wrestling with no holds barred. Funerals also had their social aspects, with friends and neighbors participating in the “wake” and accompanying the departed to the grave.

      Ailments and Their Treatment. A common assumption invests pioneer men and women with robust health and great physical vigor. Actually, they suffered acutely from privation, exposure, disease, and debilitating seasonal ailments. Often without access to doctors and lacking scientific knowledge of anatomy, they relied upon experimentation, the advice of others who had borne similar afflictions, and superstition in the treatment of their ailments. Their folk remedies leaned heavily toward specifics, and they combed the hills and valleys for roots, barks, and herbs, the major ingredients of their medicines. Some proved efficacious, but as Joseph Doddridge, himself a pioneer physician, observed, others did wonders in all cases in which there was nothing to be done.

      Fevers and rheumatism caused untold suffering. Treatment of fevers, commonly classified as intermittent, remittent, and ague, consisted of an assortment of drinks, particularly those made from cherry, dogwood,


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