September 12 thru 15, 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. Additional information can be checked out with the links to the right.

Sunday - September 12, 1886 -- Elder Hibbard is staying with them, and they take him to meeting. Omar and Jen are in Prattsburgh visiting - Jen stays over, and Omar returns home and goes to visit "his Hattie". (Hattie Warren whom he will marry in a couple of years) Henry goes to meeting in the evening. Bart has returned home. (He is working for Leicester Fox) Bart is very sick - "threatened with diarhea (sic) of a billious type".

Monday - September 13, 1886 -- Bart has been sick all night, and they have stayed up with him. "He vomits and purges like Cholera Morbus". ( A once popular name for an acute gastroenteritis with diarrhea, cramps, and vomiting, occurring in the summer or autumn. Also called summer cholera or summer complaint - this term does not refer to the cholera we normally think of.) Henry takes Elder Hibbard to Bloods in the morning to the train, and while there he gets 1 ounce Carbonate Ammonia at Dr. Carpenter's for Bart. Dr. Carpenter had a pharmacy in North Cohocton. (Ammonium carbonate is used when crushed as a smelling salt. It can be crushed when needed in order to revive someone who has fainted. It is also known as "baker's ammonia" and was a forerunner to the more modern leavening agents baking soda and baking powder.) Mills and Cad bury a calf that has died, and Omar is helping the threshing crew which has moved on down the road a bit to Mrs. Lawyer's place. Henry and Mills dig some potatoes to clear a roadway to get to another field so they can draw some hay. Even semi-level land is at a premium, so it appears they use every inch, and plan so they can harvest one crop first and then pass through that area to another. Sarah does some washing - Mills also helps with that. Even in a time when I'm sure they didn't change clothes as often as we do, laundry for 11 people must have been quite a chore with no washers and dryers? Drying would have been hanging the clothes out on a line outside. They might have had a washer like my grandmother Drake had - a wooden tub arrangement with a hand lever that rotated an agitator back and forth, and a hand crank wringer? Something like the one below would have been a luxury.

Today, believe it or not, there is an ordinance against hanging out clothes to dry in the village of Cohocton!Tuesday - September 14, 1886 -- They spend the day going to a Grange picnic at Linden Wood. I'm not sure where that is, but it is a 2 hour trip by horse and buggy. They hear a good speech by somebody. Linden Wood must be in the Wayland, Cohocton, Bloods direction because they stop at Slattery's and barter some eggs for their worth in sugar. They get back home around 6PM.

Wednesday - September 15th, 1886 -- Henry draws some hay. Henry also puts up a grist and takes it to the mill in Naples. Omar works for the Nickles all day cutting buckwheat, in exchange for the time Mr. Nickles worked on their threshing crew? Mills works at cleaning out the strawberry beds, and Sarah is canning fruit. Fall is upon us --- the temperature has been in 40's and 50's the past few days!

September 8 thru 11, 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. Additional information can be checked out with the links to the right.

Wednesday - September 8, 1886 - Leicester Fox stops by to pick up 4 bushels of wheat for James Avery. Henry goes to Bloods, and gets 710 pounds of coal from VanWie for $1.24 - about $3.70 per ton! I would have thought they would have heated entirely with wood which would be "free" on their land, but coal would have been better for a longer lasting fire with less care. Sarah goes to Naples and gets molasses, kerosene oil, and something else I'm not sure of? D.D.Clark buys 2 bushels of Peaches at 75 cents a bushel, 20 pounds of butter, and he pays off the balance owed on the berries from last month. Henry also sells a half bushel of peaches to William Borden and wife.

Don's note: I noticed in the ledger pages that Henry sent his brother Robert $10 in currency as balance due on a watch and chain, on the 7th. According to the ledger, he bought a watch and chain, and some gold spectacles from Robert for $25 - a goodly sum. He also paid Charles Olney (his nephew) 89 cents for a gold pen while in Mansfield last week.

Thursday - September 9, 1886 -- They clear out the barn to get ready for the threshing crew to come, and then go to the Weld Family reunion at W.E. Welds place. Henry reports fair attendance, and "all seemed to enjoy themselves". This would be sort of a beginning of our current day Hill Reunion..... Weld being Sarah's mother's family, and the Hill reunion is descendants of Sarah Hill Olney. They see Foster Roberts and his wife Huldah - Huldah is Sarah's aunt - her mother's sister. They see a "goodly number of other relatives". Remarks were made by Augustus Weld - Sarah's uncle -- younger brother of Sarah's mother, and brother of Huldah.

Friday - September 10, 1886 -- They do some more preparation for the threshing crew, and they arrive around noon, and thresh grain all afternoon. A bunch of folks come to visit.... Charles Conley brings Uncle Foster Roberts and Hulda to visit. Julia Drake brings a cousin to visit - Iness Hubbell, and Hannah Conley comes by and towards evening Eber and Ellen Weld (Ellen is Henry's younger sister) come by. While all this was going on, the threshing crew got out 230 bushels of barley.

Saturday - September 11, 1886 -- Henry checks the clover hay, and finds it a bit wet, but not too bad. The corn is ripening "nicely", and the pumpkins are also doing well. Henry takes Uncle Roberts and Huldah and their daughter to Bloods, and while there, picks up Elder Hibbard at the train. The threshing crew finishes their work and leaves after dinner (noon meal). They end up with 336 bushels of Barley, 225 bushels of Oats, and 83 bushels of wheat.