George Thomas was interviewed in the spring of 1936, when he was living at the Clark County Poor Farm. At that time the fieldworker was looking for “old songs,” not narratives of former slaves, but she gathered the following information from George, thinking it might be needed “later on.” It was fortunate that she asked him about his life, for after “the 1937 flood had subsided he was found drowned near his little shack in Jeffersonville.” Most of the information she gathered was about early folklife in Clark County when George came there, and not about George’s life as a slave. Supposedly, all this material came from George.
George was the slave of Jim Thomas, who gave him to George Thomas, his son. They lived near New Castle, Kentucky. George said that as a slave he helped turn the spinning wheel, and he knitted stockings after working all day. When his master caught slaves who had gone to sleep over their work, he whipped them, but George claimed that he never got a whipping he did not deserve. According to the fieldworker, George’s attitude toward his former owners was kindly and respectful, as was his attitude toward all white people. George was about nine years old when the slaves were freed. Catching the spirit of many of the freed blacks, he ran away from home when he was around fourteen. Deciding to travel, he lived in seven different states, but most of the time he lived in Indiana.
When George came to Clark County, there were abundant forests, and many of the homes were log houses, which usually were erected at house raisings. At a house raising, families gathered at a designated place to construct a log house. The logs already had been hewn and dragged to the place where the house was to be built. While the men built the house, their wives cooked dinner, and everyone had a good time. The social function of the house raising was important, for there was no commercial entertainment then. Home building was carried on even more enthusiastically if the house was to be occupied by newlyweds. The pioneers were accustomed to hard work, and one day was all that was needed to build a log house.
Log rollings were still held in Clark County when George arrived, and George took part in some of them. When an owner of a plot of ground decided to cultivate the land, he first had to clear the trees. After the trees had been felled, a day would be scheduled for the men of the community to gather with their ox teams to drag away the logs. The logs usually were burned or rolled down a hill to rot. As with the custom of house raising, women came to the log rolling and cooked a big dinner.
At that time, some people still cooked food at a fireplace. Cornbread, for example, was baked at the fireplace and called ash bread. Cornmeal dough was made into a cake and placed on a clean hearthstone and covered with hot ashes until it was thoroughly baked. Cornmeal was ground on a gristmill that was driven by waterpower; it was not the sifted meal that one buys today. In the sifting process today, the husks of the grain are removed, but meal from the gristmill was ground whole, which required much sifting by housewives. George took corn to the Tunnel Mill near Charlestown to be ground.
Play parties were the usual form of amusement in Clark County. There were not any musical instruments at play parties. People sang songs to accompany the games they played. The guests in wagons or on horseback gathered at the host’s home by sundown. Young men generally brought their sweethearts behind them on a plow horse, and husbands brought their wives and children in a wagon. Soon after arriving, the children went to sleep on the bed where the coats were laid. Then both young and old played “Skip to My Lou,” “Weevily Wheat,” and such games until about twelve o’clock, when it was time to go home. Later, in German Catholic settlements around St. Joe, square dances were held.
People had to preserve food for winter. Some fruit, such as apples and peaches, was dried. Corn also was dried. Cabbage, potatoes, turnips, and apples were buried in straw in the ground. Several shocks of fodder were placed over the mound of dirt covering the vegetables, and a ditch was dug around the mound. This kept the food from freezing even in the severest winter.
Making maple syrup was another pioneer industry in Clark County. In the spring of the year as the sap began to rise in the maple trees, a hole was bored through the bark and the cambium layer of the trees with an auger. The pith was removed from an alder stalk, and the stalk was placed in the hole in the maple tree to serve as a trough for the sap. Each morning the buckets of sap were gathered from the trees that were tapped, and the sap was boiled to a syrup.
Elliptically shaped iron griddles were used by Clark County housewives to fry chicken, but, according to George, that was not the use for which they were intended. He said that the griddles fit on top of the first step of a step stove after two lids were removed. Stove irons were set on the thin griddles, placing the irons closer to the fire.