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

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ANNALS OF OUR ANCESTORS
history. Her love of learning fitted her for a teacher when she
became a young woman, though she had had so little of training
in the schoolroom. I do not know how long our mother
taught, but she was a schoolmistress for a time.
Our Keeler grandparents lived on a small farm and their
children were trained from earliest childhood to work. Their
first labor was to gather the small boulders from their stony
field and place them in beds six feet long or pile them in mounds
where they remain to this day. The girls were early taught to
spin flax, as the cloth of their time was mostly woven from flax
or wool. Our mother knew the whole process of making linen
from the sowing of the flax in the early spring till the hatcheled
fibers, looking like a mat of iron gray hair, were placed upon
the distaff to spin into thread for the loom. The next step,
weaving, was an art she well understood. In the forest our
mothers dug roots and gathered bark to make dye stuffs with
which to color their dress and apron materials. They took
great delight in having pretty stripes and checks of their own
designing. Sheets, table hnen and towels were spread out to
bleach as soon as taken from the loom. Some women were
experts in weaving fine table Hnen and made handsome plaids
and figures of artistic design.
Wool was picked, oiled, carded and spun by our mother and
grandmother and then woven into blankets or flannel. The
finer flannel was for dress materials while the coarser was sent
off to the fuller to be fulled for men 's wear. Coverlids of handsome
design were made. I remember a quilt which had belonged
to a great aunt of our mother and which was perhaps
a hundred years old. It was made from wool; the center was
dark blue, the border which was about six inches wide was
madder red. It was stuffed with black sheep's wool and had
very fine quilting on it. The center was in diamond and the
border was of beautiful feather-vine work — very fine, neat
quilting.
Our maternal grandmother, Abigail Skeels Keeler, cooked,
as did Grandmother Rachel Watkins, in kettles hung from the
crane over the open fireplace. Some of the exquisite housekeepers
of those days kept pothooks scoured bright and clean
with sand and then wrapped in cloth and laid away to do duty