Saga of the Knowles 1878-1972

Fanny Knowles Heacock

Fanny Knowles Heacock

 

 

The house built by Grandpa Knowles on the old farm four miles from Port Byron, IL, had 12" square hand hewed oak beams. Grandpa Knowles died there. Grandma, Aunt Cynthia, Aunt Ella, Uncle Frank and Uncle Fred left it (tho first spending time in Moline) to live in California. Uncle Leveritt, Aunt Fanny Cumfrons, Aunt Mary Entrikin were married and living in Moline, Ill. 

Papa and Mama lived in that house when first married and Clara, Eva, Charlie, Fanny, George, and Harry were born there. I don't know if Frank was born in that house or in the house in Port Byron where we lived a while when Papa was making the big change from the farm to the hardware and implement in Kingsley, IA.

Of life on the farm, I remember a few objects and activities: The apple orchard with russetts near the fence, and Snow apples farther away, the big crab apple trees in the corner by the road leading to the town road. The granary with the 36' wide siding boards to hold the wheat or corn. The barn with wide oak boards with wooden pegged flooring. The stone smoke house and the rattly shavings on the floor under the big work bench.

The narrow back porch with pump and wash stand with basin and towel handy for workers use in cleaning up before meals.

Kitty Gray, the hard working Irish girl, upon whom many tricks were perpetuated by Charlie, Clara and Eva (I was too small!) But one day Kitty asked me to go up to her room and bring her a pair of shoes. I brot down a missmatched pair and when she didn't like it, I said "that the other pair upstairs were just like that."

Our nearest neighbors the Wells's who lived on the other side of our orchard and with whom we played or visited little.

Fred Filmore, the young German boy fleeing from required military duty who sat by the heater on winter evenings knitting coarse white wool socks. Dad gave him work.

Mama's bout with head lice putting us all to bed one night with kerosene applications and topped with pillow cases -- such a disgrace.

The pile of logs near the house where George and I played, each trying to strike a small hatchet into the top log to see if the other could pull it out. We were straddling the top log and facing each other and when it was my turn with the hatchet, George leaned forward at the time the hatchet was on the way down and it struck his head. I thot I had killed him and could eat no dinner. Mama always seemed to be equal to dealing with such mishaps. When Charlie cut off the end of his finger, she replaced it, wrapped it up and it grew back on. What was it she used, kerosene or turpentine?

Clara must have been ten years old when we left the farm but I can't seem to remember any one going to school tho they probably did.

Life in Port Byron

It must have been fall for I remember the raking of huge piles of fallen leaves and playing in them. Of the white-whiskered preacher/teacher named Harper who stopped in walking past and talked and laughed with us as we played.

The week mama baked twenty-eight apple pies and we had cream from Old Roany for topping.

 

Then winter came and Charlie and I coasted down a steep side street hill, crossed the main road and on down onto the ice on the Mississippi River.

One time a team with bobsled arrived at our crossing place at an inopportune time and we actually scooted beneath the horses and on untouched. But the driver went to the house to report to mama and such coasting was strictly prohibited henceforth. Following the Thanksgiving turkey dinner, we tried out using the breast bones for skates with poor success.

The heavy snows made possible the wonderful sleigh ride the church people gave for all the children on Christmas. Several bobsleds, hay lined and buffalo robed were filled with many happy coated, hooded and mittened laughing, children and the teams jingle-belled for a ride which even went out onto the river ice. On returning to the church there were tables set and steaming with hot food for the hungry riders.

Grandma Dodge lived up the street and I remember doing a good job of dusting a small marble-topped table and the carved legs and the red velvet covered chairs in the same room. The tiny scrub board in the kitchen and the snowy tea towels scrubbed after the dishes were done. The privy down a path from the house had well-carpentered lids to the seats and all painted white.

One night several of Papa's brothers, sisters and friends came from Moline and spent the evening with us in Port Byron and mostly sitting on the porch singing old songs: Billy McGee, (and they all flapped their wings and cried "Caw, Caw, Caw, Caw, Billy McGee McGaw!"  Those Golden Slippers, Old Black Joe, Tenting Tonight, Juanita, Been listening all the night long, Been listening all the day, Been listening all the night long for to hear some sinner pray.

Train Trip to Kingsley, IA

Of that trip on the train from Port Byron to Kingsley, my brightest memories were of Mama getting out the large basket of food whenever she thought we six children (Charlie was already in Kingsley with Papa) were really in need of nourishment. Frank at that time must have been six or seven months old if it was in the early spring of 1884, tho Charlie says 1882. But Frank wasn't born then and Ellen was the first baby born in Iowa, as I recall. She was born in the old Butler house Aug. 31, '81. She being a new baby sister after we had three brothers was such a delight to me that I made the heady promise to Mama that I would wash all her diapers."  Perhaps I did and there always did seem to be a pail full waiting to be washed.

That house was on the edge of town and we just had to go up the long hill to get to the four-room schoolhouse at the summit. That winter I remember that John Herron brot the family a big sack of fruit and candy for Christmas, that Santa Claus was a myth; that mama used broken pieces of bread to fill up the skillet with the fried potatoes; that we received a box from Grandma Dodge at Christmas time and it contained four or five beautifully dressed chickens -- and Mama cried. 

 

Life was puzzling.

 

I was taught to make "hasty pudding, heat the milk in a skillet, stir in flour“ a few lumps were alright, serve in sauce dishes, pass the cream pitcher which was already sweetened. We must have taken Old Roany to Iowa, I remember no milkman.

One day we all dressed in our best. I had on a wool dress, white apron, a lace collar tied with a red ribbon, and went down to the "Gallery" to have a family picture taken. Just the eight children, Clara solemnly held Ellen; tiny baby with her long white dress, Harry and George sat on the tiny sofa, Frank sat on Eva's lap, Charlie and I stood up behind. I still have a copy. Mama said I could go barefoot when the grass got green. One day I lifted up a board in the backyard and there were a few springs of sickly yellow grass and I called Mama to come and see and "could I take off now?" No, not yet. Spring was so long coming.

Over on the South Hill

The house was just across the road from the Bundy's and Maude became my dear friend. The house was small with four or five small rooms, ? new with the white calamined walls but it was infested with bedbugs and what a time we had to get rid of them.  It was no disgrace to have them but it was to keep them. So every morning before we went to school we girls had to thoroughly look everywhere and treat and go over all those old wooden bed frames, hat pins and some yellow smelly powder in a squirt can till the happy days when we found no more.

Just north of the house was a ten-acre pasture where we could keep an old gray horse and ride him on Saturdays “ sitting like a flock of birds on top of the wide wooden gate for our turn to ride down the road just to that post, then turn and come back.

When the pasture was plowed up leaving the long rows of sod solid with the virgin grassroots, we spent many hours cutting the sod into strips which we could handle and building a house for the chickens. Tho it never received a roof nor housed any hens, it was fun to build. There was a corn crib too and one day we received permission to sleep in it that night and spent time carrying out bedding and making the place look livable. But after we went to bed the rats began running around and we vacated the place to them.

From this house it was about a mile to school and that year I received a lovely red leather scrapbook from my teacher (Mrs. Frank Martland) for perfect attendance.

Do you remember Papa's big old wooly buffalo robe? One nice warm spring day I took it out and spread it on the blooming white clover, then brot the baby, it must have been Ellen, out with me and plumped her down on that robe. She promptly went into hysterics as she evidently thot it was a dog or something else of a vicious character. I was even as frightened as she at the effects of my inventiveness.

The really big event on the south hill was that Ralph was born there. The little old English lady, Mrs. Coatsworth left her nine children on their farm north of Kingsley and came to wait on Mama and her ninth child. He was born just a week after I was nine years old. The baby was fine but Harry had bronchitis and one night in high fever he wanted some doughnuts and Mrs. Coatsworth got up out of bed and made him some. Of course, he didn't eat any.

One of the delights during those years was the day a group of girls met with Mrs. Tripp for our Reading Circle.  Bessie and Matie Clark were there and Ruth Foster, Myrtie Tibbetts, Lottie Ingalls, Myrtie Grier, Queenie Robinson and I. We read Little Women, Joe's Boys, Under the Lilacs, The Lamplighter and perhaps some of Dickens and sometimes dramatize them. The pansy was our flower and Mrs. Tripp always had a bed of them under the window in Spring. No refreshments that I remember just a good time together.

The Gray House

There were three rooms upstairs and three downstairs --  L shaped with a "stoop" at the front door and porches on two sides of the kitchen L. There was a dirt cellar and a cistern with pump just off the kitchen. I know there was a cellar because when we moved in I was rapidly opening doors to get the lay of the house and on opening one door and stepping ahead I fell down the cellar stairs. It seems like there was a small walk thru pantry with shelves on three sides, between the kitchen and the living room. But the use of the rooms was changed in the five or six years we lived there. After Papa built a 12 X 16? foot separate house* for a kitchen we used the old kitchen for a dining room, used the small room off the hall for a bedroom and the large room that had a bay window became the living room and to it came one day a new piano! I must have been thirteen or fourteen and shy about taking up a new skill, that of learning to play the piano for there were always so many people around. 

* This kitchen was moved onto the new location across town when the big square house was built and was used for a coal and woodshed -- and tools perhaps -- also the "rag bag" the lucky child was privileged to fill and sell to the rag man for Fourth of July money. Earning perhaps 15 or 20 cents!

 

But the other girls took lessons and Ellen and Charlotte became good musicians. I can remember Mama sitting on the piano bench helping them with their practice and they were counting 1-2-3-4 and keeping their fingers moving, the tears were perhaps dropping because they had to practice.

*The gray house must have been poorly constructed for that severe winter climate, because under the rag carpet was hay, or straw or papers for extra warmth and what a dusty job it was to sweep and twice a year to take up the hundreds of tacks to change the whole mess for another six months wear.

 

By this time there were twelve children tho Arthur lived only three months. Had the doctors known then what they do now a simple operation would have corrected the malfunctioning stomach I believe. I remember the day of his funeral and the solemn faces of neighbors and friends and schoolmates who filled our rooms.

* I remember one morning a fat Indian woman walked in the dining room door and calmly seated herself and just sat there, saying nothing, tho expecting a handout. Mama and we girls were still at the table tho Papa and the boys had gone into the other room. They knew what was going on and presently Papa coughed or made some vocal sound and the Indian sensing a man in the house arose quickly from her chair and left the premises. 

Another time there was a blind piano tuner working on the piano and when meal time came Papa asked him to stay to supper which he did and we children could hardly eat our meal for watching with fascination how the blind man managed to find the food on his plate and convey it safely to his mouth. There wasn't much conversation.

What a blind person can do was again brought to our attention when Papa's sister Cynthia visited us in the Gray House. As soon as she became familiar with the location of rooms and furniture she walked with assurance and very little fumbling and always with a smile on her face and a quickly spoken greeting to a recognized voice. It surprised me every night when all we girls went to bed and she said "just turn out the lamp" and she undressed in the dark. I think there were three double beds in the east room.

It was when we used that bedroom that I walked in my sleep a few times. One time I wakened to find myself sitting up on that high black walnut dresser and finally knew where I was for when I felt around I touched the brush and comb and one of the two small drawers on top of the dresser. Once I walked downstairs and into the living room, Papa said: "don't wake her up."  But I had already wakened.

Fred and Charlotte were born in the Gray house. Fred was about two years old when he crossed the hall one Sunday morning while everyone else was still asleep, took the bottle from Charlotte's bed and came back to our room carrying the bottle in his mouth, stumbled in his long nightgown as he crossed the threshold and fell breaking the wide flat bottle and badly cutting his cheek. What an emergency that was. Which doctor was it that time, Dr. Wolcutt or Dr. Wildev? Remember that sticky, gooey tape that was in use those days? It had to be warmed for use. No clamps, no stitches.

 

Another emergency was when Ellen swallowed the jack stone and it stuck in her throat. Again someone slapped a hat on my head and said "run and get the doctor". I ran. He gave her an emetic and up it came and rattled into the white china washbowl Eva held.  "There it is!“ Ellen said happily.

 

Tho the house had screened doors and the lower half of the window openings had mosquito netting tacked on them, flies were a pest. When we ate a meal, especially at noontime each dish of food had a wire cover (if possible) and someone stood up waving a small branch of boxelder to keep the flies moving. After the dishes were washed came chasing the flies time. Which meant that Clara, Eva & I each took an apron or towel and chased the flies to the sunny screen door. All the windows and the other door being darkened for that purpose. Then quickly open the screen and shoo them outdoors, back in and repeat the process over and over till the room was almost free of flies.

Then pieces of sticky fly paper were laid in strategic places to be retrieved and burned when black with the trapped flies. And lucky if the papers hadn't been blown over and landed stickily on floor or curtain. Also, a Daisy fly killer or two were bait and poison for flies.

One evening we children were in the dining room playing charades. Wils Heacock was visiting us that evening. When he was to illustrate Mt. Lookout he climbed on a chair and looked out a window with such vigor that his head broke the window pane, for which he later paid. Wils often came to play with Charlie and George. Wils lived down at the Mill on the West Fork and there were attractions there, fishing, boating and swimming for boys only. Wils and Charlie made a marvelous collection of birds eggs, to which they added for years by wandering over in The Hills. The hills were also productive of wild violets, Dutchmen's Breeches, honeysuckle, gooseberries, elderberries and strawberries. Always it was a treat to go over to the hills, stopping at the mill to watch the machinery make flour from wheat or cornmeal from corn thru the large stone burrs, or pull up the net to see if there were any fish caught there. And always get a hand full of wheat to chew up into wheat gum. 

*Later there was the canoe, but that is another story.

In the backyard at the Gray House there was a small barn, a shed, the privy and a pig pen. Not far from the kitchen door was the "swill barrel" into which went all table scraps and dishwater and from which buckets were filled morning and night and stirred thick with bran or shorts for nourishing meals for the pig. There was a cow too, to be taken to pasture with the other town cows each morning and brot back at night and turned into a central corral from which each owner drove his cow home for milking.

One summer Charlie, George and Harry brot a huge snapping turtle home from the river. All they had to do was let it clamp its powerful jaws onto a short tree limb and each boy hold onto the end of the limb and carry it home. Like the Spies carrying back the grapes from the Promised Land. They put it in the swill barrel where it thrived for weeks. It was so strong that it could walk off with one boy on its back. But the boys were very careful not to carelessly be in reach of its jaws.

Someone ingeniously made a hammock from barrel staves. Two holes were bored in each end of each stave and ropes laced thru and fastened thru loops at the ends for hanging. The hammock hung at the east side of the house over a cinder path and I received a badly skinned face and hands one day when I stood up in the hammock showing off and it scooted me along those hard, rough cinders.

The picket fence around the yard brings to mind the high stilts the boys made and we all became expert in their use. We even walked right over the picket fence.

Across the road west of the Gray House was farmland or at least no houses and there we played baseball. Once in a while when there were not enough boys for a team, I was allowed to play, but mostly I kept score either with a pencil or knife and stick.

One summer Mama went on the train back to Port Byron for a visit. I know she took a baby and she took me, perhaps she took one of the other children too, but I can't recall which one if any. The reason I remember taking a baby was because when we got to Carrol, there was quite a waiting time and Mama looked across the tracks and saw a man milking a cow and she sent me over there to bring back some milk for the baby, which I did. It must have been in August of 1888 perhaps, and Fred would have been three months old, I would have been ten, just right for running errands. It couldn't have been that it was Charlotte who was the baby on the trip, for she was born August 17, 1889 and Mama wouldn't have kept anyone out of school to take care of the others while she went on a trip in September. If it was '88 that would have left Eva and Clara home to keep house and look after the other children. Eva being fourteen and Clara fifteen, Charlie twelve, George nine, Harry seven, Frank five, Ellen three and Ralph one and a half. But Clara and Eva were equal to the task, I'm sure. Of course Charlie and perhaps George spent most of their time at the hardware with Papa. Eva has since told me of forcibly holding Frank until he gave her his promise he wouldn't do it anymore, just what dangerous thing it was I don't recall, but seems like it was hanging on to passing wagons. He kept his promise tho he was but five years old.

How long we stayed on our visit to Port Byron I don't remember but I do know that I was left with a terrible upset stomach one afternoon following an impromptu tea party with several little cousins when we ate currants and water -- a lot of both.

Those five or six years we spent in the Gray House were wonderful years and are vividly remembered. The last year or two there began much talk of building a house of our own.

Mama and Eva really worked out the final plans and it was built. There was a cellar and a bricked-up storm cellar with shelves for canned fruit, five rooms downstairs and five upstairs with one small room downstairs for the future bathroom. Until that time came there was wash bowl and pitcher and chamber pot in each of the six bedrooms. The week (two girls alternating did meals and dishes) of upstairs work included carrying a kettle of hot water in one hand and slop bucket in the other to care for the pots. There were "anti-clinkers" on the pot lids, hand crocheted, for noise stoppers.

In preparation for the move into larger and more numerous rooms, there was a lot of carpet rag cutting, sewing and taking to the weavers. In the boy's bedroom at least I remember a whole new rag carpet. There were Axminster carpets in the living room and parlor. The dining room and kitchen were bare. The hall had a hard maple wood floor and every other board was stained dark giving it a striped look.

The house was heated by two coal stoves -- a six-hole range soft coal range with a water reservoir in the kitchen and a tall isinglass top -- fed hard coal stove in the "sitting room".  In all, I think there were three different lighting systems used. First kerosene lamps, then 2 gas lights, but most satisfactory were the electric lights.

As long as I was home I think we never had an electric washing machine. All we had were worked by hand  -- back and forth, usually by one of the boys. And the ironing (every Tuesday!) was a long hot job with the range covered with different kinds of irons -- all of them heavy and frequently changed  a hot one for a cool one. There were at least two linen table cloths each three yards and a half long to iron each week. And linen napkins. When did the paper ones come in?

We did use paper napkins at parties. I remember taking them home for souvenirs. One party especially I remember was one Grandma Minthorn gave for May Hoover in the little house across the street south from the Methodist Church. Just a few girlfriends were there and for refreshments, we had not the traditional cake but pumpkin pie, which at the time seemed odd to me. May and I corresponded quite a while after they moved away and she often referred to "Bertie" as she call her brother Herbert.

The dining room was used for dining, tho being in the center of the house was also used as a hall to get from the front rooms to the kitchen or to Papa's and Mama's bedroom. All the furniture in the dining room was the long table down the center and with thirteen chairs set against three wainscotted walls. On the east side between the hall door and the door to the bedroom was the built-in china closet with drawers below for silver and linens. One drawer for all the napkin rings used daily.

In that room there were three good meals put on the table every day with the exception of Sunday nights when each person had bread and milk for supper when and where he wanted to eat it. But there was always plenty of homemade bread down cellar in the big copper boiler and wrapped in a cotton tablecloth and milk in the shallow pans on the hanging shelves.

Each girl learned to put a meal on the table by being entirely responsible for getting and serving supper. At five o'clock Mama would say "Its time to start supper so get the fire started." If cornbread was to be baked the fire had to be started earlier to get the big range oven hot. A simple supper would be a skillet of potatoes fried (they having been boiled while getting dinner, a large pan of thick yellow cornbread, two plates of good sweet butter, a sauce dish of canned fruit at each place, hot tea for Papa and Mama and a glass of milk for the children, perhaps dishes of honey or syrup as extra sweet with the cornbread.

We learned to make bread by gradually learning the different operations week by week, putting the yeast to soak or using the potato water and some mashed potatoes in the brown crock and thickening it with some flour. When cool adding a cup of the liquid yeast starter --  later molding it up stiff with flour, salt, a little sugar, and some shortening  -- all set to rise then make into four large loaves of bread and bake.  Never were we without bread and never threw any broken pieces away.

 
Sometimes an accumulation was toasted (on top of the range) then piled onto the largest platter and covered with a lightly thickened creamy milk as "creamed toast" for breakfast. Sometimes the scraps were used in bread pudding, if the pieces were rather dry sometimes they were steamed slightly and served hot, covered with a napkin. And lucky the person who got the crusty end pieces of freshly baked warm bread to tax with butter and brown sugar! And do you remember the maple sugar Grandma Dodge would sometimes share with us from her annual gifts from Vermont? It was doled out to us as candy.

Fanny Knowles Heacock

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Note: Aunt Mary Hunter claimed that Grandma Fanny Heacock planned to write more, but somehow didn't get around to it, so the story stops here. The copy of this story has been available in Grandma's own handwriting. I had a very difficult time explaining to Aunt Mary that I needed to type it into a computer text format so it could be sent by email.  "I think you should send copies in her own handwriting", she suggested.

"Too much work to copy and send this story by snail mail to all family members",  I countered. Besides, the old hand-written copy is very difficult to read and interpret “typed should be easier."

Anyway, hope you enjoy this important bit of family history and that my interpretations of Grandma's writing are correct. If you really prefer to have a hand-written copy, maybe Aunt Mary will send you one, if not, I might be able to find it again. Hopefully, many of you already have a copy because I am not a great fan of "snail mail."

Winfield Sterling