Norwich, 70 years ago, memories of George Denslow in 1906

Seventy Years Ago

Reminiscences of Early Days in Norwich Related by

George W. Denslow, Who was Ninety Years Old on Sept. 19, 1906

Compiled for the Union by Leonard W. Cogswell

Chenango Union, October 4, 1906

 

Perhaps many of the readers of the Union do not realize how much of the comfort and luxury of life has come about within my memory. When I was a boy stoves and furnaces were unknown;  all the cooking and heating being done by means of huge fireplaces with their "pot and trammel hooks."  There was no water in the houses, no turning of faucets and an unlimited supply of hot and cold water running into marble basins and porcelain bathtubs.  Water was obtained from a well by means of a bucket at the end of the old well-sweep, and then later by means of a wooden pump which was thought to be a great invention.  Hay was cut by hand with a scythe and raked by hand-rakes.  Now it is cut, turned, loaded and unloaded by horse-power, one man with two horses doing the work of a dozen men. Grain was reaped by sickle or grain-cradle, bound by hand, threshed by hand-flail with laborious slowness, winnowed by holding grain and chaff up to a strong breeze.  Now it is reaped and bound by horse-power as fast as horses walk.

 

The use of ice for cooling or refrigerating purposes was unknown.  Milk and butter were often hung at the end of a rope down in the big well where it kept sweet and cool.  Sometimes the bucket, in going down for water, would hit the pail, overturn it, and then we would have milk mixed with the water. Boys slept in unheated rooms where often-times the snow drifted onto the bed or pillows in the night, and the temperature of the room was but little higher than that outdoors.  But what did the boy care?  Snuggled in woolen sheets upon soft goose-feathers, he was as warm as toast with his lungs full of pure air.

 

There were no matches, all the light being obtained from the flint-and-steel and tinder, or from a coal from the ashes.  We used to blow ourselves red in the face trying to light a tallow candle from a coal held against the wick.

 

Meat was roasted in a tin kitchen which stood before the fireplace in which the meat revolved on an iron spit slowly before the heat, the gravy being caught at the bottom. These went out of use after stoves were invented, but we are slowly going back to it, for planked steak and shad are now luxurious tidbits in small hotels.

 

There were no fires in churches, and we used to nearly freeze to death in cold weather.  The pews were warmed a little by foot-stoves about a foot square, filled with coals.  But they only warmed the person who sat over them. The church seats were on hinges, and they were turned up when the congregation stood, and then when they sat down, the seats were let down with a slam that used to nearly deafen you.  I suspect the boys sometimes used unnecessary force in slamming down the seats. In those days of sermons an hour or two long, we welcomed any sort of a diversion.

 

What changes I have seen come about in every department of business and social life.  I have seen the railroad and steam engine succeed the stage-coach canal and rail boat, the invention of gas and electric lighting, when, at the turn of a little button, the whole house is flooded with light, the telegraph and telephone supplant the post boy and mail coach, and I expect, if my life is spared for a few more years, that flying machines will be as common as automobiles now are.

 

I came here [Norwich, Chenango Co., NY] in 1837 by means of the stage-coach and boat.  A few weeks ago I took my first ride in an automobile through the kindness of the editor of the Union.  It was a new experience.

 

I knew intimately the men who were the leaders in this county in 1838 and since then, and who played such an important part in the development of Norwich and vicinity.  A few of them are Drs. Mitchell and Harris, the three Hubbards, the Pellets, George Rider, Gen. Henry DeForest, the Chapmans, Abel Chandler, the Guernseys, Dea. Ralph Johnson, the Randalls and many others.  Down in Oxford I knew John Tracy, Lieut. Governor in 1832, Gen. Anson Cary, grandfather of Mrs. W.N. Mason, and the Mygatts. They were all of the best type of men, and came from that good old Connecticut stock which furnished so many men to build a beautiful settlement in this wilderness of 1780. Connecticut has played an important part in opening up, settling and developing new country in the last 100 years, and I am glad to have been born in the good Nutmeg state, but I have never regretted coming to Norwich, for I have spent many happy years here.  Here was where I was married in 1842, and where my children were born and have grown up.