By C. Kihm Richardson Walking from Strykersville ... - Fulton History

APRIL 1978
THOUGHTS ON
PIONEER LIVING
AND THE ROLE OF THE
PIONEER WOMAN
...By Robert M. French
PROLOGUE
For many years I have marvelled at the hardships
suffered by the early settlers, and particularly
at the work demanded of their wives and daughters
in the early days of Pike and the Holland
Purchase area. One New England author, Alice
Morse Earle, in her "HOME LIFE IN COLONIAL
DAYS" gives us many interesting details of pioneer
living in the places where our settlers originated;
other accounts I relate have come from John
Minard of Hume, an Allegany county surveyor, and
from Julia Tarbell Merrill's "RUSHFORD CEN-
TENNIAL." I also rely on personal recollections
of stories told by my grandparents.
What the historian Earle recounts, however, is
predicated on a colonial way of life as it was in
Massachusetts about a hundred years after the
arrival of the pilgrims. The soil there had been
cleared around the cabin many years before, so
that in most cases each home had a garden patch
well cultivated for their needs.
EARLY PIKE FAMILIES
Not so for the first settlers of the Holland Purchase.
They had virgin soil to tame, and it was
conceded to be the work of the housewife to do it.
The first housewife in Pike was the wife of
Asahel Newcomb. The Newcombs had at least two
grown children when they arrived, Asahel Jr. and
Susannah. Susannah soon married another early
settler, Eli Griffith. Eli built a log cabin on the
site of Pike's first town hall. Griffith started one
of the first saw mills and also a grist mill. Perhaps
the first in the Holland Purchase. Many were
built about the same time.
The Newcombs lived nearby in a "shanty." (Our
first Pike historian, Carlos Stebbins sketched it
about 1835. This sketch has been mounted and can
be seen in the Pike Library).
FIRST FRAME HOUSE
Perhaps the first Griffith child was born in the
cabin, but Griffith with the aid of his saw mill
erected one of the first planked frame houses in
PAGE 93
Wyoming County Pioneer House built around 1808
by Eli Griffith located at Wyoming County Fair
Grounds. Now in process of restoration.
the Holland Purchase, which still rests on its original
site. This house, being gradually reconstructed
by the Wyoming Fair Association, is now the gateway
to the Wyoming County Fairgrounds. It is a
showplace to recreate pioneer living for the benefit
of thousands of fairgoers every summer. Eli
Griffith later became one of the first judges in
Allegany County. (Pike was in Allegany Co. until
1846).
According to Minard, v "the first settlers in Hume
walked five miles every week to get their bread."
They were bachelors, and had to go to the Griffith
house where Susannah did the baking. It is futile
to speculate whether she could have used a yeast
starter or made salt rising bread. In the absence
of a local brewery, either one required the same
labor. It is probable that it was part rye and part
cornmeal bread. Early wheat plantings did not
always ripen well.
Without doubt the pioneers brought with them
from New. England various seeds and probably
seed potatoes. These when planted the first season
insured food for the year ahead also. The settlers
might be thirty miles or more from a store or
civilization. After the seeds were planted the
family must wait three months or more for harvest,
meanwhile living on fish and game, Indian
fashion.
The garden was in a clearing close to the house.
Women, as a rule, had a minor role in clearing
the land, but my great grandmother, Clarissa Lord
Thornton, often pulled one end of a two-man
cross-cut saw when other males were unavailable.
There were "log-rollings" often at one farm or
another, at which time neighborhood women got
together for chats and served communal meals.
Kettles were hung on cranes in the open fireplace,
such as the one you can see at Fair-time
in the old Griffith house. When apples were avail-
(continued on page 94)