May 31 thru June 3, 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, and NEW -picture of the whole family circa 1900-1910???

Monday - Henry takes a grist to Naples, and also buys paint and oil at Jordan Brothers to paint the barn. Jordan Brothers was pretty much a full service hardware type place with most everything needed on a working farm? See ad from The Neopolitan Record below.
Omar plants some Snowflake potatoes - see picture below... they are a large variety of potato with only about 20 required to make a bushel! Individual potatoes could weigh up to 5 pounds!

Don's Note --- The Snowflake Potato was developed by famous American botanist Cyrus Guernsey Pringle in 1870. He was also one of three Vermont Quaker pacifists who were imprisoned and tortured during the civil war for refusing to serve in the Union army, and were later released on orders of President Lincoln! I presume his name was used for the now even more famous potato product, though I can't confirm that.

Omar also plants some beet seed and draws some manure to the fields. Sarah goes to bed with a sore eye.

Tuesday - Omar draws manure all day. Jen is visiting the Charles Conley's. Mills took her there yesterday with the horse and buggy. Henry washes the buggy, and starts painting the barn. Mills and Henry cultivate the garden with Old Moll - one of the horses. Mills also hoes in the garden, and they also take down a fence along the road south of the house. The present day road runs pretty much East/West, so I'm wondering if the house might have been on the North side of the road instead of on the South as we have been thinking? Correction from Dad - the house was on the North side of the road - I've had it wrong in my head - just assuming that the current little cabin there was in the same location as the original.

Wednesday - Omar mulches the peach trees (evidently pretty much all peach trees in NY were wiped out by a major frost in the 1930's), and then goes to Naples to Lyons & Woodruff with a load of wheat, along with a grist of feed for the animals, and 4 bushels of wheat for family food use. Henry goes to Ingleside to get some seed corn from Mart Drake, and Sarah goes to Bloods to Slatterys with 4 tubs of butter - 56 pounds at 16 cents a pound. $8.96.

Thursday - Henry and Sarah go to Naples to Granbys --- Henry gets a pair of pants, and Sarah gets a shawl. They also go to Reed & Tobeys and get a suit of clothes for Cad - $4.50 , a pair of shoes for Bart - $3.25 , and two hats - one for Mills - $1.75, and one for Cad for $0.75. They also get a hat for Jen, and some ribbon at Mrs. Miner's for $3.50. They then go to Storeys for shoes for Cad - $1.70. Quite a spending spree! No amount noted here, or in the ledger pages for the pants and shawl at Granbys.

May 27 thru May 30, 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 - Belle Pulver and Vern (?) Drake come to visit on the way to Naples. Omar and Mills clean about 30 bushels of wheat. Henry hoes the grapes between rain showers, and they also set cabbages and cauliflower plants in the late afternoon. The language would indicate that they had some way of starting plants in some sort of hot house?

Friday - Henry and the boys mulch the berries with straw, and Omar draws manure out to the fields. Mills and Henry plant some corn. Sarah goes with Belle Pulver to visit the Conleys. C. Waddamus comes to visit, and brings a "bonnet" for Sarah. The bonnet costs $3.25 - a goodly sum for the time! Henry comments that "it becomes her well - all but the price".

Saturday - Waddamus and Henry do some trading - leaving Henry owing Waddamus $1.19. Omar plows some more land to plant corn. Henry Terney comes by and purchases all of Henry's remaining corn. Henry pays Omar $5.00 for his work, and also pays $1.81 in Grange dues. He (and Sarah?) go to choir "school" in the evening. Henry washes the Democrat buggy!

Sunday - Henry and Sarah to to church today, and go to visit George and Belle Pulver and Mart and Julia Drake after church, and then stop to see Frank Simmons and family on the way back to church for the evening. Sarah has a sore eye?

May 23 thru May 26, 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!

Sunday -- Omar brought Susie (Conley?) home last night, and she and Jen are going to go visit Hattie in Wayland later in the day. Sarah and Henry went to choir practice last night - Henry calls it "singing school". I think this is the first mention of music at church. Note - I keep thinking I'll run out of interesting or new things, but I guess not! Sarah, Henry, Omar, Bart, and Mills all to to church - Mills must be feeling better! Elder Hibbard preaches. Sarah stays to dinner at Mrs. Polmateer's. I'm thinking maybe she is the wife of George Polmateer who passed away back in Janaury? He mentions Aunt Abbie - probably Abigail Polmateer - daughter of Henry Polmateer. She got married back in March... no mention of her new last name?

Monday - Omar goes to Bloods with a load of 17 bushels of potatoes, and picks up a load of plaster that he then sows in the afternoon on the oat and barley fields. Plaster is a source of lime to adjust the pH of the acidic soil. Sarah and Mills are painting and whitewashing in the house. Whitewash is a sort of low cost "paint" made of slaked lime (calcium hydroxide) and chalk. A chemical reaction with carbon dioxide from the air, forms calcium carbonate which protects wood and other building materials and has some antimicrobial properties. I remember whitewashing various surfaces in the barn when I was a kid.

Tuesday - Omar spreads plaster on barley and corn fields - about 300 pounds! They also mulch the berries with oat straw. Sarah is still on the decorating detail, and paints the kitchen floor, and papers the sitting room. Frank Marsh comes to visit in the evening.

Wednesday - Omar cleans out the cellar, and goes to Nickleses to get some wood. Henry makes a "splatter board" for the well sink. I'm thinking some sort of sink in the kitchen with a hand pump? It seems like an outdoor sink would not have needed a "splatter board"? My grandparents had a sink in the kitchen with a handpump... the well was directly under the kitchen. An electric pump was added many years later! Henry works on the Delaware grapes. Grapes vines are attached to wires strung between posts. In the spring the posts and the wires are checked for damage, and repaired as necessary, and then the vines are "tied" to the wires with smaller wires. Spring is the best time for this before the foliage makes seeing what you are doing difficult. Sarah continues fixing up the house - she went to Naples in the forenoon to get wallpaper border for the sitting room. She also picked up some wire for the grape tying process. I remember my grandpa Drake working for other farmers around the Naples area tying grapes. Nate Polmateer drops by to visit. Picture of grapes trained along wires and posts below.It looks like one of the younger kids may have gotten to these pages to do some scribbling?

May 19 thru May 22, 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!

Wednesday - They plant potatoes all day... the person Henry hired is evidently Salem Marsh (son of Frank Marsh?) Willie Polmateer helps too, and they get "nearly done" dropping potatoes. D. Weld (not sure if this is the potato dealer from North Cohocton?) brings by 12 bushels of potatoes for planting, and trades for 12 bushels of "Comforts" - a variety of potatoes grown in the area.

Thursday - Omar covers the potatoes with some sort of implement borrowed from W.E. Weld. He gets done about 4PM, goes to Ingleside to return the "coverer" to Mr. Weld along with 2 bushels of corn for Mr. Weld to plant. He gets a total of 5 shoes set on two horses - John and Molly. Henry finishes up dropping potatoes and covering around stumps, and at the "headlands" -- the area at the end of the field where the horses can't maneuver to cover the turn around cleanly.

Friday - Henry takes "Aggie" to the Blodgetts - Aggie is one of their cows? She had a calf back on April 5th - about 6 weeks ago. Maybe he took Aggie to Blodgetts for breeding for a new calf? Omar takes the rest of the potatoes out of the cellar for the season. Sarah goes to Naples. Henry pays Salem's dad - Frank Marsh - for his day's work dropping potatoes. Like Bart, Dad gets the money, not the boy! Omar cultivates berries, and Henry rolls the barley field. It is a very busy season with lots of preparing land for planting, and planting. Henry "finds some pigs this morning" - not sure what this means.

Saturday - Omar goes to Naples to Lyons and Woodruff with 25 bushels plus 48 pounds of wheat. Henry works in the grapes. Omar finishes rolling the barley and oat fields. Henry and Sarah take tub butter to Slattery & Company in Bloods to barter, and get 4 more tins to fill with butter. Henry sells the remaining potatoes from yesterday for 35 cents a bushel. They also pay off the balance on the horse they bought from A. Addams back in April - $35 - just over a month ago.... a month early on the 60 day note Henry signed.

May 15 thru May 18, 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!

Saturday - Omar and Henry borrow two corn row markers from Frank Marsh, and mark the ground in a field for planting corn in regular rows. They both mark with Molly and Kit - two of the family horses - Molly is usually used for pulling the buggy. I suspect that pulling the corn row markers was not heavy work? Then with the help of neighbor Willie Polmateer, they plant corn for 5 hours till it starts to rain about 3PM.

An old corn row marker ... the large wooden implement with 4 vertical
posts on the wall - the triangular piece below is probably the draw bar
for hooking it up to a horse? . Drug both ways behind the stock this would
mark the rows of corn for planting. Then the farmer would go back
over those same marked rows with a planter to plant his corn seed.

Sunday they go to church and Sabbath school - I think this is the first time I've seen him use the term "Sabbath school". His sister Prudence, and her husband Fowler come to visit Sunday afternoon. Omar and Jen go to meeting in the evening.

Monday morning they wake to a frost in low places, and "nearly a freeze" but not much damage to early crops. Sarah and Jen clean house, and do the washing. Prudie and Fowler have stayed over night, and leave to visit W. E. Weld. As I recall, Henry's sister is married to one of Sarah's cousins? Omar and Henry low in the marsh land. Later Henry plants some corn with a corn planter that the Frank Marsh has sent over for Henry to try. Omar takes "Old Moll" - one of their horses - to Horse in Ingleside. Some discussion with Dad about a similar entry coming up on June 7th, we concluded that the mare was taken to be bred with a stallion owned by somebody in Ingleside? There are 3 weeks between the two attempts at breeding.

Tuesday Omar prepares a potato field, including marking rows. Henry finishes up the corn planting and returns the corn planter to Frank Marsh. Charles Conley and his wife come by to visit, and to get some corn seed for planting. Henry "engages a hand to drop potatoes" tomorrow. Potatoes are propagated from pieces of potato cut to insure that each piece has at least one "eye" -- the spot where they sprout if you leave them in the basement too long. This is the first time Henry has mentioned hiring anyone outside the family -- he does pay Omar, but Omar is the oldest son. I'm not sure if he just needs to get the potatoes in quicker than the family can get it done, or if potato planting is particularly hard work? It does seem like there would be a lot of bending over involved!

May 11 thru May 14, 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!

Tuesday - Henry and Omar finish up the 6 acres of oats on the rented land at Terneys..... a total of 16 bushels of oats planted! Sarah goes to Naples to get oil, and some fabric. Henry sells some seed corn to Mr. Tyler. One of their heifers has a calf around 6PM. Henry notes that "Mills is hungry all the time" , but is evidently still not well .... he "sits up a little" on Wednesday.

Wednesday - Henry and Omar clear stones off a field for corn and potatoes - not sure if they plant them together? Omar prepares the field, and Henry sends some potatoes to Henry Polmateer, and Richard Smith drops by to buy a half a ton of hay at $10/ton. ( this is a higher price than others have paid earlier in the year) He also gets 10 bushels of oats at 36 cents a bushel to be paid later - maybe when he harvests the oats in the fall? Henry plants some sweet corn in the garden.

Thursday - Omar prepares some land for planting corn, and Henry fixes the fence between their place and Levi Strong's place. I think this is the first time he has mentioned their direct neighbor. Omar and Henry clean the 10 bushels of oats for Richard Smith, and also clean about 37 bushels of wheat. He mentions that they run through the wheat -- maybe some sort of mechanical device - a fanning mill or winnowing machine? Omar plows the berry patch, and Richard Smith stops by to get his oats and pays for them $3.60

The fanning mill is a square or rectangular shaped box with a crank handle that is used to clean small grains like oats prior to planting. When the handle is cranked, the paddle wheel rotates, creating an artificial breeze while the sieves rock from side to side. Grain is dumped into the fanning mill from the top and the chaff is blown out the front by the artificial breeze created by the paddle wheel. The grain works through the sieves and comes out of the machine into a bucket on the ground. Many farmers used thresher-separators by 1875 to thresh and clean grain, but kept fanning mills to “super clean” the grain before planting.
Friday -- Sarah goes to Bloods with the money due on the spring drag they purchased earlier in the year - $20. Omar plows some of the marsh land with Kitt and John. Henry buys a corn planter from Frank Marsh. Evidently Mr. Marsh owed Henry some money, so they settle accounts with Mr. Marsh giving Henry 50 cents to balance things. Sarah and Jen clean house.

May 7 thru May 10, 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!

Friday - Jen goes to Naples to get medicine or other stuff for Mills, who is feeling better, but obviously still not well. Darwin Tyler sends his two sons (?) Fred and Howard over to get a heifer and a calf for which they pay $25.50 as agreed. This was probably arranged when Fred was here yesterday? Fred and Howard drive them home -- sort of a mini cattle drive. A heifer is a female cow - usually under a year old - who has not yet had a calf.

They move Mills to a different bed, and it "don't seem to make him worse". The Terneys had stayed over night Thursday night.

Saturday --- Omar goes on working on the oat field at Terneys. Mills is "a great deal better" today. Henry Terney brings Hattie home. Frank Simmons and family, and Elder Hibbard visit. Stephen Stanton buys 4 bushels of wheat. Mr. Sturdevant and wife also visit. A very busy day! Omar goes to Naples for more stuff for Mills, so he is not totally well yet?

Sunday - They have a light frost! Mills continues to improve. Harmon Ingram and Hattie, and granddaughter Florence staid over night last night, and Omar and Harm go to meeting. I assume Elder Hibbard is the guest speaker at Ingleside church. He and somebody named Borden come by about 5PM. More visitors - William Blodgett and wife, Julia Marsh, and somebody else (?). Harm and Hattie take Henry and Sarah's daughter Stella (5 yr. old) back to Wayland with them.... a very busy weekend. I'm guessing everyone came to hear Elder Hibbard speak at church.

Monday - Omar and Henry start sowing oats on the Terney land, but they get rained out. Omar takes John the horse to the blacksmith to have a couple of shoes fixed. Omar plows the berry patch after supper, and Dr. Fulkerson comes again in the evening to see Mills. This is quite a bout of sickness for Mills - I think this is the 4th time Dr. Fulkerson has made a house call. Henry sends a "postal" to Robert - his brother in Mansfield, PA.

May 3 thru May 6, 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!

Monday - Omar goes on preparing the barley field - using a roller (see picture below). Nephews Will and Charles head for Naples, and on to Canandaigua on their high wheel "bicycles". Mills seems to be doing better, but gets worse later in the day... Henry sends for the Doctor again.Tuesday - Omar finishes rolling the barley field, and starts drilling the barley seed. Henry's brother Robert comes around dinner time, expecting to find his sons Will and Charles, but they have left for Canandaigua. Dr. Fulkerson comes by to see Mills. Henry goes to Naples and sells his remaining extra wheat to Woodruff and Lyon for 88 cents a bushel.

Wednesday - Henry sends Omar to Naples with the wheat for Woodruff and Lyon. Henry's brother goes with him. Mills gets even worse, and Henry stops giving him Quinine. I can't find any information about Quinine as a treatment for anything other than malaria, and leg cramps. I'm guessing that Doctors may have thought that it would treat other ailments that caused chills, etc. similar to malaria. Henry treats Mills with hot "applications" - compresses?, and an "injection". A little research revealed that "injection" was the 1886 term for emema. The tool used for this looked much like a big syringe. See below -- sorry -- I couldn't resist!
Henry takes his brother Robert to see the Welds, and then part way to Bloods.

Thursday -- Omar is plowing the oat field they've rented from Terneys. Henry takes Omar his lunch, and trades out John for Old Kitt for the afternoon plowing. Mills continues to be sick, and Henry applies flax seed poultices ( Topical application of crushed flax seed poultice can be beneficial in the treatment of chronic coughs, in treating problems such as bronchitis, in patients), and gives him "injections" every three hours! Dr. Fulkerson stops by again, and replenishes their supply of medicine. Frank Marsh stops by and gets a bushel of corn for seed.

Note: Medicine in 1886 is clearly not very advanced. One source says for example that during the Civil war - only 20 years earlier - 75% of bullet wounds were treated by amputation - without any anesthetic, and without benefit of even rudimentary cleaning of the instruments or the wound! On the other hand, other than the "convenience" of throwing it out afterwards, the "injection" appears to have not changed much? I wonder how much landfill space would be saved by nice brass and ivory implements instead of disposable plastic?