Annals of our ancestors; one hundred and fifty years of history in the ...

i8 ANNALS OF OUR ANCESTORS
in the bulbous roots of the bear-grass, which they washed and
dried and then pounded into powder, making a kind of flour for
their bread.
One of the first improvements our grandparents found
necessary was the digging of a well, for the delightful waters of
Deer Lick Spring were in the woods across a field. Happily
they found a vein of clear, cold, limestone water, and in it they
swung from a windlass an oaken bucket which, when I saw it,
was "the old oaken bucket, the iron-bound bucket, the mosscovered
bucket that hung in the well." The water sprang
from a cleft in the rock at the bottom of the well and was ever
cold, clear, and unfailing; other wells dried up or ran low, but
never "grandfather's well." Grandmother hung a longhandled
gourd dipper on the well, and water, they declared,
never tasted so good from any other drinking cup, though the
next generation decided a bright tin cup was the superior.
After the land was cleared, corn and flax were planted, often
among logs not yet removed, and our thrifty ancestors were
soon cultivating the garden spot and all the places between
the felled trees where they could put in seed. Our greatgrandmother,
Rachel Badgely, brought apple seeds in a snuffbox
over the mountains to plant in the new land. I do not
know whether she lived long enough to eat of the fruit, but I
do know that her descendants did, and blessed her name for
her thoughtfulness. The garden south of that old home was
always connected in our minds with the primitive garden of
the first parents of all, because of the abundance of fruit trees
there; it seemed only to lack the flowing rivers to become an
ideal Eden to our child eyes.
As each homestead was to furnish its holders with all they
considered necessary, upon every frontier farm were the means
of making nearly everything they used there. Our ancestors
tanned hides in vats of their own construction, which furnished
leather for the family's shoes. The vats were usually placed
close under some window, so the owners could prevent wild
animals from carrying off the hides. The shoemaker was an
itinerant, who came in the fall to make shoes for the family
from the leather prepared on the place.