Wednesday, April 29, 2009

April 29 thru May 2, 1886

As always, click on the picture to enlarge for easier reading of original. Feel free to contact me with corrections, additional information, or comments. Click on the map link to the right of this entry to see more about where places are. Other information can be checked out with the links to the right, including a great family picture of everybody circa 1886!

Thursday - Omar drills some oats. David Strong and his wife come to visit, and Henry gives them some Kentucky variety Strawberry plants, and some Gregg raspberries. (Gregg raspberries were probably what we know today as Black Raspberries --- they used to grow very abundantly on my grandparents place just up the road from where Henry and Sarah lived! I remember well the damage caused to my skin as I picked them, and the delicious taste of the ones that didn't make it back to the house!)Friday - Omar finishes plowing the barley field, and then goes to plow on the 6 acres they rented from Henry Terney for oats. Henry finishes to stone boat ready to clear stones from the barley field. Will and Charles arrive from Mansfield on their "wheels". Will, age 24, and Charles, age 19, are Henry's nephews - sons of his older brother Robert. Wheels would have been "bicycles" similar to the one in the picture below. "Safety" bicycles as we know them are a later invention. While a 70 mile trip on a "pennyfarthing" seems very difficult, people did do long rides on them.

"In 1884 Thomas Stevens struck out across the country, carrying socks, a spare shirt and a slicker that doubled as tent and bedroll. Leaving San Francisco at 8 o'clock on April 22, 1884, he traveled eastward, reaching Boston after 3700 wagon trail miles, to complete the first transcontinental bicycle ride on August 4, 1884." Another side note --- the pneumatic tire was invented in 1888 -- two years in the future as of 1886! Thomas Stevens wrote about his trip here.
Mills is still sick.

Saturday - May 1st. -- Omar takes grist to Naples. Cad and Henry draw stones and roots (stumps) off the barley field. Omar plows some more on the Terney land in the afternoon. In the afternoon, Henry and Sarah to to fellowship meeting, and have Tea with the family of Brother T. Simmons, and then go to Grange in the evening.

Sunday -- Omar, Will, and Charles go to visit Hattie Warren. Henry and Sarah go to church. Henry "calls" Dr. Fulkereson and he comes to see Mills who is worse today. Dr. Fulkerson leaves some medicine. Omar, Will, and Charles report all is well at the Warrens. Omar goes out in the evening. Bart goes to Ingleside. Will and Charles to to Ingleside on their wheels --- quite a feat -- Wyatt and I drove up that hill on Saturday, and it is quite a climb!

Note - It looks like Henry may have used a phone to "call" Dr. Fulkerson? According to a little note in the Neopolitan Record, they were considering extending the phone line from Ingleside to Prattsburg in 1886, so somebody in Ingleside had a phone.... don't know if the Olneys had a phone? Henry might have called the doctor from somewhere in Ingleside after church?