Furnishing.The.Home.Breckinridge.HISTORY-OtherFrom: KyArchives [Archives@genrecords.org] Sent: Sunday, September 17, 2006 3:18 PM To: Ky-Footsteps Subject: Furnishing.The.Home.Breckinridge.HISTORY-Other Furnishing The Home Breckinridge County KyArchives History Other Book Title: A Glimpse Of The Past After the building was completed, much more had to be done before it was "Home Sweet Home". Furnishing was a problem. After bringing all they possessed, the early Kentuckians begged, borrowed or made enough to furnish all the rooms. Beds were solid wood posters or high-back panel type, with holes bored in the railings, through which, ropes of heavy cords were interlaced as a base on which straw or shuck mattresses were placed. Large feather beds were placed over these, making a warm comfortable place to sleep and rest. Dressers, bureaus, cupboards, tables and chairs were made by hand; chairs, rockers and settees were framed and the seats woven from strips of hickory bark or white-oak splints. These are now collector items. EArly American furniture, now popular in most homes, is reproductions of that designed and made by our forefathers. Beds were in every room to furnish enough sleeping places for the family. With no parlors, courting took place before the prying eyes of Mother and Dad. Petting and kissing had to wait for another place and time. It took the whole family to keep the home fires burning, leaving little time for social activities. "Early to bed and early to rise" was their motto, and this motto proved its value. The house being furnished and occupied attention was focused on outbuildings for housing livestock and fowls and storing of crops. The same methods were used in these buildings as were related in house raising, but they were built in a more careless manner. Logs were left round and less care was used in their fitting. Cracks wer closed in grain-bins, stalls for livestock and fowls; others were left open. The same public workins as that used in the building of the home were necessary. The big feast, which was a part of every working, was an incentive for coming, but to help a neighbor in time of need was most important. The need for friendship and willingness to help one-another was necessary in every rural community, and if this had been lacking among early settlers, Kentuckians and citizens of other states, would be struggling individually, rather than collectively. Money was scare among rural families, but their integrity was overflowing with respect and honesty toward one another. When a person needed financial help, someone would come to his aid. Their word was their bond and very few forfeited it. The ash hopper was one thing that was badly needed. Lye water was needed for soap. Powder was needed and lye water was needed to make powder and was also used in the preparation of hominy. The ash hopper was like a house roof turned upside down. It was made entirely of forked sticks and rived boards with a hollowed log at the bottom to catch the drippings. All fitted together with neither peg nor nail, the whole lined with grass or wheat straw. The lining no small art, for the leaching must drop down into the log instead of out between the boards. The ash hopper was only the beginning; settling housewives needed all the woodenware they had left behind. Piggens, pails, churns, wash tubs and sugar boxes were commonly of rived cedar made with the froe, shaped with the drawing knofe, set into grooved cirles, and usually held with oak or hickory ties. There had to be a big keeler for washing dishes, but the bread tray, sometimes as big as a baby's cradle and shaped like a shallow trough, was made usually of gouged buckeye. The length of hollowed-out wood assumed an almost endless variety of sizes and uses. Up-ended and of oak, hollowed against the grain with the other end sharpened and stuck into the ground, it became the corn pounder, more commonly known as the hominy block. Hogs were scaled, rain and sugar water collected in smaller versions of the poplar dugout. When barrels were not to be had, then meat was put to soak in much the same kind of trough, though shorter and wider, when possible, and with bungholes in the bottom so that they might drain. Some families used wooden platters and bowls for tableware. Devices of wood from the length of saplins halved and gouged out were used as gutters to carry rain water into the trough. The first harvest of flax, wool or cotton would have kept the farmer or his help busy making a flax brake and other large wooden pieces needed in the preparation of cloth that could not be easily carried by pack horse. Farm life could not be lived without baskets, much more important that they are today. The baskets were usually made of white oak splits; the same material with which the pioneer bottomed his chairs, though in spring when it could be peeled he often used hickory bark. One could go on with a long list of home need such as brooms and brushes, made from material taken from the woods. A stable needed all manner of barn furniture from feed boxes and water troughs to wooden latches for the stable doors and poplar shovels for moving manure. Farming demanded continual working in wood, for many mend shaped their own hames, swingle and doubletrees, and the expensive plow-points had to be fitted onto wooden frames. The pioneers firs harrow might be nothing more than a length of brush, but when he got time he might make one with spike teeth and this too was of all wood as were his rakes and pitch forks. All farmers whittled like generations before them, they never got caught up with their whittling. They whittled handles for tools; dashers for the churns, spinning sticks, powder funners and intricate things such as wooden door locks, complete with turning key. A corncob with a cane handle was fine for a pipe. A man in INdian-filled country had to make do with what he could get. Submitted by: Dana Brown http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00005.html#0001067 This file has been created by a form at http://www.genrecords.org/kyfiles/