Historical Wyoming County Jan 1980 - Old Fulton History

JANUARY 1980 PAGE 59
(The Warners Cont.)
to go to the neighbors to get a brand.
Hardly had Milo began his struggles with
the frontier when he was ordered as one of
the militia in Sept. 1814, and sent to Canada.
He left at home a young wife, a son only a month
old and no neighbors nearer than three miles
except her sister and brother-in-law (The
Pauls) were living with them at that time.
Fortunately he was gone but a month but
came back with rheumatism and could do little
with but great pain for two years thereafter.
LOST BOY
Milo had brought a nephew, Omri Fuller,
son of his sister Chloe, whose husband had
died. The boy was then but nine years old
and rather odd and later as a man he never
married and seldom said anything about himself
or anyone else. Since Milo was unable to
walk, he sent the boy Omri to fetch the cows
from the woods. About dark the cows came
home but the boy did not. Believing the boy
had lost his way, Milo blew the horn several
times to attract him home but he did not come.
Neighbors three and four miles away heard
the horn and came to find out what was the
matter. They were anxious about the boy
and thought he would be running through the
woods in fright. Milo, however, thought he
would more likely crawl under a log and go
to sleep. It began to rain and the neighbors
started out with horns and lanterns to look
for him and tramped through the forest all
night. They did not find the lad. Shortly after
daybreak the boy came home dry. He had
found the cows but could not make them go the
way he thought was home. When he found he
was lost and could not tell which way to go,
he crawled into a hollow log. Asked if he
were afraid of wolves, he said, "Didn't see
any; thought I heard them howl." It is believed
he heard the horns and thought it was
wolves howling.
Money was very scarce; about the only way
to get any was from furs, but Milo was not
hunter or trapper. He leached lye from ashes
from the burned trees and boiled it down into
potash and hauled it to Albany. It took three or
four weeks to make the trip and then the expenses
left very little. As late as 1850, one of
the leaches he used could be seen near the
brook north of the frame house, then on the
site.
EARLY FARM BUILDINGS
J.K. Warner, a son, who remembered the
log cabin, said there was an outside well, the
ash-pen, a cheese house, and the smoke tub
which alternately served the purpose of a smoke
house and a goose nest. About the yard and
adjacent shop were the log cheese press, the
grindstone, the scythe and bush-hook hanging
from the projecting logs of the shop. Sometimes
a honey bee colony would make a hive
in the hollow of a log and fill the space with
treasured sweets. The front door was made
of two and a half hemlock boards in the rough,
fastened with cleats nailed on the inside. There
was a hole in the center through which the
children might peep upon coming home from
school to see if Ma had any visitors and
whether you might enter with the accustomed
noise and frolic, just as you did when there
was nobody there but "our folks". It was said
that this hole was made by the discharge of a
gun, fired for the purpose of awakening a lone
corporal on the morning of "training day".
The wooden latch was pulled up by a string
through a gimlet hole a few inches above,
just as in the days of Abraham. J.K., one of
the older children, recalled the Sundays when
he had to stay at home with the younger ones
while the parents went to meeting. He would,
in imagination, create robbers, savage Indians
and mad dogs so you pulled the string that
you might feel a little safer. There was a cathole
in the corner of the door with its door
swinging on leather hinges which old Tom
understood so well how to open. The sound
of the door crying for grease as it swung on
its great wooden hinges was never forgotten.
The familiar old door served other purposes
after the cabin was replaced and was finally
consigned to flames under a kettle of soap.
The logs of the original cabin were not
even rough-hewed except for a few in the
southwest corner where the shelves were.
Some of the logs there were hewed and a
sheet served as papering and as a covering
to screen the chinaware from the dust that
shifted through the great cracks above. Chinaware
consisted of old brown bowls and iron
spoons and tin basins from which you ate
pudding and milk; the pewter plates and the
"big pewter plate" which always held the
mush at night, pot, victuals at noon, and held
the cold victuals the next day. The red potatoes
they raised were especially tasty.
CABIN FURNISHINGS
There was an old looking glass on the parlor
side of the cabin, always with an inclination
forwards -at an angle of 45 degrees, thus
giving the shortest as well as the tallest
an opportunity to see his "phiz" and also
furnished a convenient place for knitting work,
combs, patches and the like. Ma's bed was
in the northwest corner and the trundle bed
under it where all the children slept at one
time or another, sometimes three or four at
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