Many folks who landed in this area came from Kentucky or the foothills of West Virginia and Virginia. Can you imagine what it was like to travel in those days of old? Horrible thought.
Once they got here the whole day was taken up with hard physical labor. Clearing trees, cutting logs for cabins, chopping wood for heat, plowing the fields with a horse, planting crops .... and at first maybe the plowing was totally by hand if no pull type plow was available. Crop gathering in the fall by hand. The women also in the fields and then in the house to clean, sew, cook, for child bearing, child rearing, and the home schooling of the children. Life wasn't easy back then.
Life definitely wasn't just sitting around and shooting the bull and chawin tabacky that the folks brought with them from the tobacco fields of Kentucky. Although they may have had a big wad of tabacky in their cheek most of the day. The Hooka Tooka album might have asked if your momma chawed tobacca, but I have a feeling that the respected women who landed in our area, didn't chaw much tabacky. I might be wrong, but I somehow think that my women relatives didn't. Although a little later, these women relatives might have had a few swigs of some traveling medicine show elixer...just to try it out to assure herself that her family would be safe using it....and she might have liked it so well, she had more than one swig to test it. She was testing the snake oil claims of the traveling salesman to disprove any fraudulent medical practice claims!! How fun to her to get some cure all other than her homemade remedies she had up her sleeve for just about any type of ailment.
Can you imagine how the bodies of the menfolk ached after a strenuous day of physical labor? The traveling salesmen probably sold lots of liniment....or the women folk must have spent hours mixing up various ingredients to come up with a homemade liniment. Remember the study and practice of medicine wasn't as it is today.....a pill for every ailment so that you feel as if you own the pharmacy. Back in the very early days, the doctors might not have been available. When reading the documented history, this locale seems to have been pretty lucky with a fairly large number of physicians locating to this area.
But the hard life continued for years for our ancestors in this area. We sure need to be proud of these folks.....and if it weren't for them, many of us wouldn't be here. So count your blessings that some of the men had time to sit and relax and chaw tabacky, and rest their weary bones .... then went to bed happy and ready to procreate so that life could continue in these there parts. Displaced from the tabacky fields of the east to Central Illinois....the land of humidity and heat in the summer and extreme cold of the winter. It must have been hard with no electricity and no air conditioners.
Would our generation of people have been able to tolerate this period in time? hmmmm
Case steam engine - Case Sattley Engine
Gang Plow....Springfield factory
By this time the men folk had it easier.
Sattley Bros. Plow Ad....based in Springfield
The Sattley Plow Works factory - Springfield 1903
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2 comments:
I often wondered hoe I would have survived back then. You know, I've never had to be real cold, other than in the Army. I've never been real hungry, and have never had to provide my own food or fuel, I think over-all, my generation and maybe the one before us have not had it too bad.
Rick Setzer
Rick...just think of back in those days the winters were horrible....and the shelters left much to be desired....summers were hot and humid also and the work in the fields must have literally taken days and days. Horrible thought that our ancestors had to go through that.....but think ahead....in a hundred years our future relatives will think we really had it bad.....I can't imagine what they will have or if the earth will even still be here.
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