A Bit of Family History

I've not put the entire 4 pages in here. This was written by my Great-Aunt, Millie Coleman. It was written for her nieces and nephews, one of which is my mother. It helps explain the Coleman history as best she knew. What I find interesting is the oral history of what life was like after the Civil War...

Of course you know that Great-Grandpa Coleman, Benjamin Jackson Coleman that is, came from Orange County, NY an orphan and Uncle Ben Drake took care of him until he grew up. There are still relatives in Goshen, NY, but probably several times removed. I have heard that at the time he came, it was be toll road and they put up at the blockhouses.

Now, in the old days, the road that goes up from Barton on the East side of the bridge was called Coleman Road. The reason being that several Colemans, and I believe they were brothers and cousins, about 8 or 10 of them, lived on that road and that is where your Grandfather, Curtis Joseph was born. In one of those houses.

Now, your great-grandmother Jane Anne Coleman was born a Catlin and she was also brought up by a relative, called Aunt Clyminnie. Her father, Joseph Catlin, was married three times and had three families. I guess it got a little too much for him, so he allowed some of them to go to live with less fortunate relatives.

Aunt Clyminnie was probably very good to her except that she was not allowed to where her shoes to and from church, just in church and she always had to carry chip dirt from the woodpile to put around the currant bushes. Grandma said that Aunt Clyminnie always had very nice currants.

Now, I don’t know how Great Grandma and Great Grandpa met, but probably at a square dance or a raising or husking bee. I don’t think they had roller skating rinks in those days. But anyway, they were married and at the horning bee, someone fired a gun in front of the window where they were standing and scared Grandma in a “fit” and for the rest of her life she was afflicted with these spells. In fact they felt that when she died she had had one and fallen into a pool of water at the foot of the cellar stairs where Uncle Jed, her son, found her when he came from doing the morning chores.

When they were first married, they went to live in a small house on Coleman Road, the first house up from the corner where the Ross Hill Rd comes out on the Barton or Coleman Rd. When your grandfather, Curtis, was about 8 years old, they moved over on the ‘crick” in Beaver Meadows on the Halsey Valley Rd. They cleared the land and built the house and barn. I remember Grandpa Curt telling about the snow blowing in on their beds the first winter because the house wasn’t finished. When I was complaining about the way the old houses were laid out one time, Grandpa remarked that they were considered quite an improvement on the log cabins.
For Christmas, the boys always received a pair of leather boots, which had to last them for the next year. If anything happened to the boots, they just had to wait until the next Christmas for another pair. When they went for the cows, they would get the cows up from where they had been lying during the night and stand where they had been to warm their feet.

Great Grandma made all their clothes, raised sheep for wool to knit socks and stockings and mittens for the family of 10 children. Picked and preserved berries and fruit as that was before Mason jars come along, dried apples and corn to provide food for winter. Part of their income was from butter which she churned and packed in wooden tubs or firkins, a cloth and a layer of salt over it to preserve it and sold it in Waverly. She claimed that the butter made in June was the best. There was a dog and a treadle to do the churning.

Geese were raised to be plucked at certain intervals (times of the moon) to provide pillows and feather beds. She also made maple sugar and sold it and once she exchanged maple for store sugar at the rate of five pounds of maple to one pound of store sugar, and later when Great Grandpa went to the store in Halsey Valley, he discovered that the storekeeper had melted it and moulded it into small moulds and was making a pretty penny profit from it.

Twice a year, once in the spring and again in the fall, a trip was made to Owego by horse and wagon to buy necessary articles of clothing and unbleached muslin was bought by the yard-wide bolt for sheets and pillow cases which were hand sewed, two widths to a sheet and were washed and hung outdoors to bleach when the apple trees were in blossom. Part of the winter’s busy work was the overcast these seams firmly in addition to cutting and sewing carpet rags for the rag rugs to cover the floors. These were woven either in striped pattern or “hit and miss” in thirty-six inch widths which had to be sewed together with linen thread.

Another winter chore was piecing quilts, Lincoln logs, toad in a holler or frog in a puddle – these two were the same pattern, or steps to the White House. No waste of calico in these patterns, they were squares and half squares and long rectangular pieces. She also made her own dyes for her yarns from butternuts, sumac and the like which she dyed after she had spun the yarn, the carding she hired done.

In those days, instead of having a deep freeze, she made pumpkin, apple and mince pies, which she froze out of doors and when she needed pie, just brought one in and thawed it out.

Sunday night supper in wintertime was always mush and milk, the cornmeal being ground from corn they had raised themselves. There was also a dish made from buttermilk called buttermilk pop, buttermilk thickened with flour and eaten with sugar on it.

Blackberries were pickled in a crock with cinnamon and cloves for seasoning. This was one of Grandpa Curt’s favorite dishes. In those days, blackberries could be picked by the milk-pail full, large black and juicy and a big batch was made all at once and put in a crock for winter.

Sweet apples were also made into pickles in a crock. Back when orchards were set in those days, a pound’s sweet was always set with northern spies for cross pollination.

She also made her own candles from tallow from farm animals and waste fat and wood ashes were saved to leach the lye from to make soft soap for washing.

She also did most of the family doctoring, gathering and drying herbs for medicines and also did a lot of midwifery around the neighborhood. Take it all around, Great Grandma was quite a handy gal.