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Young Jeff’s World

1816

Our log cabin stands on a wooded hill. Off to the west about 300 yards is the Green River of Kentucky. We are on the high side of the river. There is a good bank so that floods will not reach us. The lowlands across the river flood a lot, but we are always high and dry.

Two big white oaks stand in front of our cabin, giving shade and breeze on even the hottest days. Lots of folks cut down the trees close to their cabins for firewood, but my Pa wanted the shade. He picked this spot partly because of these two big old trees.

Pa built the cabin in the summer of 1799 when he and Ma and my Uncle Jim and Aunt Becky moved to the Green River country from Virginia. They came on foot and horseback through the Cumberland Gap along the pioneer trail. When they found the land they wanted, they marked it. Pa picked out a place that had three things: lots of tall timber, good sloping land with no swamps, and good water. Trees grow best on good land, and the rotted leaves make rich soil. Pa knew it was a fine place for a farm.

He made sure they had a good, legal deed to their land. A lot of the people who came to Kentucky got cheated out of land if they didn’t have good deeds. Ma and Pa named their farm The Home Place, and that’s what it is to me.

My name is Jeff Boyd. It’s really Thomas Jefferson Boyd. I was born in 1800, one year after my folks settled here on the Green River. It was also the year Mr. Thomas Jefferson got elected the third president of the United States. He was a Virginia farmer like my folks. They thought he was a great man.

We have a good life here. Our log cabin is not big, but it is strong, and it fills our needs. Pa and Uncle Jim chose tulip poplar logs for the cabin because they don’t rot and insects don’t get into them so bad.

A stream flows by our hill. It has lots of flat sandstone, so we have stone steps and a stone base under the logs to keep them from rotting. We can also store things under the cabin where it is dry.

Our chimney is built from the same river sandstone. At first we had a chimney made of twigs plastered with clay. That chimney broke apart in the big earthquake of 1811. Early in the morning of December 16, 1811, the ground began to shake something awful. We ran outside and watched that old chimney just fall away from the cabin. The quakes continued for weeks. Without a chimney we couldn’t build a fire. It was so cold that winter, and we didn’t have any heat. We tried to keep a little fire in the fireplace for cooking. It would have been too dangerous to have a big fire. We almost froze that winter, but we were lucky. It could have been worse. Nobody got hurt, and our new barn was not damaged.

That spring Pa decided to build a strong stone chimney. We got the stones from the creek, but they needed cement to hold them together. To make the cement Pa got mussel shells at the river and heated them in a fire. When they were hot, he smashed them into powder. He mixed the powder with water and sand to make a strong cement for the chimney. Now we can build a roaring fire and stay good and warm during winter.

Inside, our cabin has one big square room about 16 feet by 16 feet, with the fireplace along one side. The fireplace is wide enough to take four-foot logs with lots of room left over. We move the logs from one side to the other so we can clean out the ashes and still keep a fire all night in the winter. Fire is so hard to start with flint and steel that we never want it to go out. It’s a big job to cut enough wood to keep the fire going, but it’s worth it not to have to start a new one.

Inside the cabin we have some furniture made from wood. Ma and Pa have a rope bed made with a wooden frame with ropes tied across it to hold the cornshuck mattress. The ropes have to be made tight from time to time because they sag. We say “sleep tight” when the ropes are tight and the bed is most comfortable.

My brother and sister and I sleep up in a loft under the roof. My brother John is two years older than me. My sister Katie is four years younger. I’m 16 now, and my brother John is 18. He is planning to leave home and go west to the Missouri Territory where land is cheaper. Some folks down-river are moving to Missouri next spring. John may go with them. They have a girl he is sweet on, I think.

I’m big enough to do a man’s work on the farm, so it’s all right with the family if John leaves. The hardest work is already done, building the cabin and fences and clearing the first fields. Still, there is always plenty of work to do.

After Pa and Ma built the cabin, they needed to make some space for crops. They began the farm by killing many of the trees so that sunlight could get down to the ground. They cut through the bark into the wood all around the tree to kill it. We call this “girdling” the trees. Then they poked holes in the ground with a pointed stick and put in corn and bean seeds. This was the way they raised their first crops.

After a few years they cut down the dead trees and dug up the stumps. Then they had a field. It had to be worked with a plow to break up the ground. It also had to be weeded. Weeds and grass got started in the sunlight just like the crops did. It’s too bad we can’t grow the crops we want without having to fight weeds and grass. I guess nothing in life comes without work.

Every year they girdle more trees and cut some down for logs and fence rails. After a few years we had several acres cleared. Now we have lots of crop land.

We have a problem with deer coming into the fields. They are big pests because they eat our crops. We had to build rail fences up about six feet high to keep them out. Pa and Uncle Jim cut oak trees and split the trunks into rails to make the fences. We used flat foundation stones to keep the rails off the ground so they won’t rot. Our fences will last for many years. As we expand our fields, we have to keep building more fences.

We also have a fence around the pasture where we keep the cow. The cow is Ma’s pride and joy. Ma and Pa brought her with them from Virginia when she was just a calf. Now that she is old, she is like a family pet. We bred her to a neighbor’s bull, and we have two young cows, so we will have plenty of milk and cheese.

We trade our milk to Aunt Becky in return for her weaving. She has a loom and likes to make cloth. Ma grows some flax, and Aunt Becky weaves it into cloth for us. Ma then makes us britches and coats out of the linen cloth. She also grows a little cotton and spins some thread so Aunt Becky can weave cotton cloth for shirts and dresses.

Around here, we swap work and whatever we have. We all depend on each other because nobody can raise or make everything they need. We have to work together building cabins because the logs are much too heavy to handle without a lot of help. That’s just the way life is here in Kentucky. It’s “United we stand, divided we fall,” as people say around here.

Most of our farm is still in woods. There are several kinds of oak trees, especially white and black oaks, poplars, chestnuts, and walnuts. These trees provide a good place to hunt squirrels when we are in the mood for a big pot of burgoo. Burgoo is a stew we make out of meat and vegetables.

We eat a lot of wild food. We gather walnuts, hickory nuts, wild grapes, persimmons, and sweet pawpaws in the fall. Summer brings wild cherries, plums, and blackberries. In the spring we gather wild greens for the pot. We have poke, dock, lamb’s quarters, sheep sorrel, and dandelions. Ma makes us eat greens to thin our blood after the winter. She says they are healthy. I would rather have corn bread and bacon—that’s my favorite.

One of the best times of the year is in the early winter when we gather honey. Pa is good at tracking bees. He can always find a bee tree. He marks the tree in the summer when the bees are active. Then, when the weather starts to get cold, we rob the tree to get the honey. We never take it all, because the bees have to live too. We want them to make more honey for the next year.

We use honey as our sweetening all year. We also use the beeswax. We make candles for light and use the wax on our saw blades to make them cut smoother. We also rub beeswax on all sorts of leather things, such as boots and harnesses, to keep the leather from drying out and cracking.

The Green River has lots of fish, and it is great fun to go fishing. I like to fish with a pole. We have fish hooks that Pa brought from Virginia. Now that I am old enough, I can use them. I am proud when I can catch enough fish for the whole family for supper. Ma coats the fish with corn meal and fries them in hot lard. She always fries up a bunch of doughballs made with corn meal and chopped onion to go with the fish. We call them “hush puppies,” because the dogs stop whining around the table if we give them some when we are eating.

Sometimes Pa wades along the river bank feeling under the water for holes. When he finds one, he reaches in and often pulls out a big old catfish. We call that kind of fishing “noodling.” He has promised to teach me how to do it. I don’t know if I want to learn. I hate water snakes. If I reached into a hole and felt a big old snake, I’d just be scared to death. He says I don’t have to worry. He has been noodling for years and has never gotten snake-bit. Last year he went to the blacksmith in Evansville, Indiana, and had him make a noodling pole with a hook on the end. Maybe I will learn to noodle with that pole.

The most important wild food for us is deer meat. We eat lots of deer. They make good eating, even if they are pests. They’re always trying to get into our fields and garden, so they are easy to hunt. We tan deer hides and use them for all sorts of things such as winter coats and britches. We store extra hides to take to the settlement down-river at Evansville. There we trade for things we need.

Pa goes to town two or three times each year to get things we can’t grow or make. He buys gunpowder, lead for bullets, salt by the barrel, coffee, and needles and thread for Ma and Katie. Sometimes he gets a little sugar to make jam. He trades buckskins for these things, and the storekeeper always tells him the price. Salt is ten bucks for a barrel, so Pa knows how many deer hides he has to take to pay for the things he needs.

Pa made the big dugout canoe that we use to trade with along the river. He picked out the biggest, straightest poplar tree on the place and cut it down for the canoe. He shaped the ends with his axe and trimmed off the top side of the log. He built a fire on the top side and began slowly burning away the wood. After it burned a while, he scraped away the charred wood. By burning and scraping, he was able to hollow out the log. It took a long time.

The canoe is big enough to carry the things we need to trade most of the time. We can carry two barrels of salt in it if we’re careful. Two people can handle it downstream, but it is hard work to paddle it all the way back up the Green River from Evansville. It takes three or four days for the upstream trip. We camp along the bank. We always take a dog or two to guard the canoe while we sleep.

Salt is the most important thing we have to buy. We use it to preserve our hog meat. We raise a lot of hogs. They feed in the woods and live wild. We earmark them so we will know which ones are ours. We raise the hogs so we can sell the meat. There is always a market for pork.

Fall is hog-killing time. As soon as the weather gets good and cold we kill hogs. We invite folks around us to come and help, and we have a big feast on hog liver and loins. We also grind meat for sausage. Everyone takes home fresh meat for the next day. Hams, bacon, shoulder, and jowls are the best parts of the hog. We cure them with salt and smoke them in the smokehouse over a good hickory fire. When they are cured, they keep for a long time. Then we can sell the cured meat for money to pay our taxes.

The most useful part of the hog is the fat, which is cooked down for lard. We use lard all the time for cooking. Ma also mixes it with lye to make soap. We soak wood ashes in a big hollowed-out log to make lye. We fill up the log with ashes and then pour water into it. After the ashes soak a while and settle to the bottom, we can drain off the lye water. We cook lard in the lye water, cool it, and cut it into bars for soap.

We also use lye water to make one of my favorite foods, hominy. To make hominy we soak shelled corn in lye water for a day or two until the grains swell up and get soft. I like it cooked fresh, but it can also be dried and stored in sacks. Ma grinds the dried hominy into grits and cooks them for breakfast. Grits are really good with a little honey or with the gravy Ma makes with lard and milk.

We work hard in the summer putting up food for the winter. We grow lots of green beans in with our corn. We string the beans on long strings and hang them up under the roof to dry. They are called “leather britches,” and they taste pretty good in the winter. We also grow squash and pumpkins in with the corn. We slice them and hang them up to dry the same way.

Ma brought apple seeds with her from Virginia, so we have apple trees. There is nothing better than a hot fried apple pie on a cold winter day. We dry lots of apples and make cider out of the bad ones. Pa sometimes lets the cider get pretty hard. Ma gets mad at him because she doesn’t want us kids drinking it.

In July we plant a big patch of turnips to eat in the fall. They will stand in the field until we get really hard frosts. We also grow collards for fall greens. We have a cellar that Pa dug and lined with logs. We put carrots, beets, cabbage, turnips, and potatoes in there and cover them with leaves to protect them from the cold. They won’t freeze, and we can eat them all winter long.

In the winter we work hard making things to sell. In a swampy area across the river, we cut cypress trees to use to make shingles. We cut the cypress logs into two-foot sections and split out the shingles. Cypress wood makes good shingles because it does not rot and it ages to a pretty grey color.

We also cut hickory trees and whittle out all kinds of handles. We make handles for hoes, axes, mattocks, hammers, and other tools. Pa makes kegs out of oak, binding the wood together with willow hoops. He uses the kegs to hold the lard that he takes to market.

Our biggest market for trade is in New Orleans. Pa has made three trips to New Orleans. He and Uncle Jim and some other neighbors build flatboats. They float down the Green River to the Ohio, and then to the Mississippi. They load the boats with hams, lard, live hogs, wood handles and shingles, dried apples, barrels of corn—whatever we can spare.

When they get to Louisiana, there is always a market for our goods. Sometimes they sell in the city or at plantations along the river. Sometimes they sell to merchants who ship our goods on big ships to cities in the East. It makes me proud to think that the hams and bacon we raised on our farm might end up in a big city like Philadelphia or Charleston or New York.

Last year Pa heard all about General Andy Jackson and the big battle at New Orleans with the British. I’m glad that war is over and we are free to trade with anybody we want to. It’s hard for me to think about trade with other countries, but I know that it’s important.

They say that one day tobacco will be really big as a trade item. Pa always grows a little tobacco to make plug for our own use. He says now he is going to grow some to sell down the river, too.

When he was in New Orleans, Pa saw a boat that was run by steam power. It could move upstream against the current just as easy as pie. It sailed all the way up-river to Louisville.

Pa says it would be a wonder to be able to ride a steamboat back home after floating a flatboat down to New Orleans. Now he has to walk all the way back home along the Natchez Trace. He and Uncle Jim travel with a big group of men so they won’t get robbed by the highwaymen who travel along the Trace. It’s sad that people can’t walk home from New Orleans in safety without fear of being robbed. I don’t know what the country is coming to.

In the winter we kids have to study. Ma went to a Dame School back in Virginia. She learned how to read and write and cipher. There are no schools around here, so she teaches us when the weather is too bad to work outside. John and Katie and I can read and write, and we can cipher well enough to get by. We can figure how many acres are in a field, how many board feet of lumber are in a log, and how many bushels of corn are in a corn crib. We also can figure out money so that we won’t get cheated in dealing with other people. I don’t always like to study, but I know there are lots of things I need to learn. The world is always changing, so I guess I will keep at my studies.

We have a family Bible. We kids take turns reading out loud from it so our parents can see how well we are doing. We talk about what it says. There are no churches around here, but last year we went to a big camp meeting over on the Gasper River. There were more people there than I had ever seen in my life. I heard preaching all day and into the night. People had tents to sleep in, and some folks stayed for two weeks or more.

Lots of people got religion. Ma and Katie got baptized right in the river. I know that Ma would have been happy if Pa and John and I had gotten baptized, too. Pa said it was enough for him to be there while his farm was being neglected. John was too interested in the girls to pay attention to anything else.

I listened to some of the preachers. I guess what they said was true. But it seems to me that if a person is honest with his family and the people he knows and meets, does a full day’s work and isn’t lazy, and always tells the truth even if it hurts, that’s about all anyone can expect.

I noticed that some of the folks who talked most about how God loves everybody were people who owned slaves. That girl that John is so sweet on comes from a family of slave-holders. I don’t know how he can deal with that. It just doesn’t seem right for one person to be able to own another person, not right at all. At any rate, I sure didn’t get converted!

One of the preachers said something good, however. He was talking about Heaven and how beautiful it was. He tried to put it in words we could understand. Finally he said that Heaven was a Kentucky kind of place.

On summer evenings I like to sit on our front step and watch the sun disappear between the beautiful old oak trees. I can look down toward the river and see it shining like gold. I think about what that preacher said. I truly believe that there is no greater place than where I live and no more beautiful sight than sunset on the Green River.