Down in the Hills o’ Brown County
~ by Frank M. Hohenberger
Excerpts from December 13, 1924 reprinted with permission from Scripps Howard.
At this season of the year, when the days seem so short and the nights long, there is the usual hurry and bustle among the hill folk. Long before daylight you can see the little lights flickering in the homes and dad is busying himself around the barn, while mother is preparing the breakfast and getting the children ready for school. Some of the men are engaged in the logging business, and that means that the grown folk jump out of a nice, warm bed at about 4 o’ clock in order that the teams may be on their way to the woods two hours later. Usually they return to the mill about 5 o’ clock in the evening and by the time the chores are finished and the evening meal is partaken of it’ s time for bed.
Early in the morning the boys hurry to the creek to inspect their traps, and not a small amount of pocket money is accumulated that goes a long ways toward furnishing their own clothes and buying their schoolbooks. The girls help mother all they can and in the evenings, after they have mastered their lessons, they enjoy the books that are being supplied by the public library, a somewhat recent innovation. Not being obliged to roll out in the mornings until
the house is comfortably heated, they burn just a little more oil than common, and the librarian tells me that the patronage at headquarters is increasing every week.
Most of the people have seen to it that the butchering is over, the kraut has been made and pumpkins are drying overhead, and the women folks are turning their attention to knitting woolen socks and mittens. Others have brought out the old quilting frames and tackin’ and quiltin’ parties are in order. But the days are over when this was one of the big events in Brown County. In some of the homes the frame was suspended from the ceiling and in other instances carpenter’ s horses or the backs of chairs were used. Wooden cog wheels or iron clamps kept the corners of the frames just where they belonged, and the best-lighted window in the house marked the spot where the work would be carried on. At times as many as six people would be working around a frame, especially when the tacking was being done, and invitations for a tackin’ and general good time included Bill Coffey,“ Doc” Genolin and Bill Kennedy, said to have been outdone in their experiences by only a few of the women folks. Next came the quilting. This was followed by a one grand meal supplemented at times with an old-fashioned dance. It took only a few minutes to put the frame in a corner or pull it to the ceiling, and then the fun was on.
Here and there we wee a frame pushed up against a window and the attractive patterns tempt you to step into a home to view the quilting process. I had heard of a place not far from the public square where mother and daughter have been busy for years at the quilting frame, and a display of inquisitiveness brought me an invitation to see a recently completed quilt for a Chicago woman. It was something similar to the old-fashioned pumpkin vine design and I was told that the workers had completed several of a like pattern for Illinois patrons during the year.
In connection with their household duties, these workers complete about fifteen quilts every year. Aside from the well-made quilting frame, the only“ tools” used are two cardboard patterns— a circle and a feather— a rule and a pencil, and of course the needle and thread. More thread is used on the high-grade work, and the charges are based on the number of yards that enter into any particular quilt.
A lot of visiting is done wherever something new in the way of a pattern is reported and sometimes the work of completion is delayed until late in the spring, but no one seems to worry, a policy that has held good ever since quilting was at its highest pitch, fifty years ago. •
Jan./ Feb. 2014 • Our Brown County 47