Memories of Alethea Warren Shaw

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One Christmas we all went to the Christmas party at the Georgia Baptist Church where mother taught Sunday School before she became a Christian Scientist.   There was a big tree lighted with candles (pails of water were always kept behind the Christmas trees.).   Names were called out and child after child would go to the platform to get his or her gift as the name was called.   When " Alta Warren " was called, I hid my head in Grandmother ' s lap and refused to go up, even for the doll which was held up.   " Lulu " got it for me.   Little did we know then that in about 20 years or less, I would be speaking to an audience of several hundreds (thousands rather) in the Mother Church at Boston, Mass.!

Another entertainment given a few years later at this Baptist church required children dressed in the costumes of different countries.   Lulu and Statira were Chinese and Japanese.   I remember mother made their costumes and darkened eyebrows which slanted upward, and Stira (as I recall) made a very fetching Japanese girl with her black eyes and black hair -- the latter being piled high with a fan or ornament in it.   I wanted a pretty costume too.   Do you know what they wanted me to be?   A child bride of India, hair hanging uncombed, and bare feet, with a sheet or something for dress!   I was chagrined, humiliated, and disgraced, I felt.   I positively refused and no amount of persuasion or coaxing changed my mind.

At one such exhibition at this church, I remember Grandmother Wait stood on the platform carding wool.   This was no longer done in the homes, so it was interesting to many people.   Earlier in her life, she had not only made the wool cloth, but made the suits her father and brothers wore!   She and her family also raised flax, and made their own bed sheets from the linen they wove.   Many beautiful coverlets and quilts and bedspreads did the Bartlet girls, and their mother Larina, make.   Once these Bartlet girls were the envy of all the girls of the neighborhood.   Their father, Orson Bartlet, rode horseback to the city and brought back a whole bolt of   " sprigged muslin " .   Each girl had a new dress of this flowered material, and made theirselves new bonnets as well.    Imagine the sensation when they walked into the meeting on Sunday!   Do I hear the sighs from the girls who were wearing " linsey-woolsey " dresses?   When I was young, we wore long black cotton stockings with high button shoes, lined dresses, with stiffening in the bottom skirts, high choker collars, also stiffened, long sleeves.   Who owns a buttonhook now?   I do!   But in Grandmother ' s day they knitted their own stockings from their own wool, and a cobbler or shoe maker came around ever so often to repair and make shoes for the family.   There were no sewing machines then, and the girls had to make their elaborate dresses and the men ' s suits all by hand!   Grandmother Bartlet Wait had one of the first sewing machines in the town.   I saw it when I was a young girl -- it wasn ' t used any more and was stored in the " shop chamber " .   The shop chamber was a large room above grandfather ' s carpenter shop.   The machine was quite different, believe me, from the Singers of today, but what a wonderful help it was to women!

Among the old things I remember that were still kicking about, were " candle snuffers " , candle molds, wooden receptacle and " pestle " (mortar and pestle) as it was called, three-legged " spider " and spinning wheel.   The spider was of iron intended for cooking at the fire place of course -- when I knew it, it held water for the poultry at the barn.   The term " spider " can still be heard for frying pan in the backcountry of Vermont.

We in West Georgia used to have a Fourth of July picnic at Lake Champlain.   Everyone came and each brought what dish she was famed for.   Oh, Boy!   I can still taste Orsa Miner ' s maple sugar frosted cake, yum-yum!   It was our father ' s favorite of all cakes.   Mrs. Lottie Boyden brought her ripe cucumber pickles which she made each year and kept in a big crock.   Some brought big freezers of home made ice cream -- made from the rich cream of Jersey cows.   Some of the men would rent rowboats and go out on the water.    Mother loved going with them, but I was very afraid of the water and was petrified for fear mother would drown.

One time, perhaps before my birth, Lulu, Stira, and Bertha LaPoint were playing down at the brook opposite Grandpa Wait ' s house, and Stira fell in.   Lulu raced up the high steep bank for home; but Bertha LaPoint held on to Stira and kept her from drowning.   (Bertha LaPoint wasn ' t very bright -- a little older than Stira.   Her father lost her to a gaboree at a card game!).   I had heard this story and it made a deep impression on me.   I always eyed the brook with misgivings.   Once we had terrific rains -- the brook rose and rose until it swept away the planks from the little bridge leading to the pierce farm.   It happened that Mabel Pierce was not at home and when she wanted to go home -- no bridge!   Papa (always ready to help, and seemingly fearless) helped her across the boiling water, on the only remaining timbers of the bridge.   These were quite narrow timbers on which the planks had been nailed.

The Eliot Brothers, pioneers in Vermont, had originally built the old mill (which was for grinding grain) just below where Grandfather later built our ancestral home.   We are connected with one of the Eliot boys in our ancestry.   When I came along only two walls were standing.   Mother told me that when she was first married she heard cousin Charlie Loomis and our father plotting on dynamiting the remaining walls to celebrate 4th of July!   Mother persuaded them not to.   I am so glad they did not blow it up because lately I have painted it from photographs we made and from memory, and enjoy the one I kept.   I gave one to Sylvia.   A cousin, Eugenia Wait, at the request of us young girls made a poem about it.   That, and a photograph her brother Reuben made were printed in " The Vermonter " . (magazine) Grandfather Wait bought the mill in Civil War times -- I have the deed; but it did not pay, and he had to go through bankruptcy long before my time, probably during the hard times following the war.

Grandfather planted maples and a sweet apple tree in front of the house; at the side and back he had all sorts of garden plants, berries, a grape arbor, and an orchard.   Grapes also draped the hen house.   Oh, yes, I must not forget the corncrib set up from the ground, and built with air spaces between the wallboards.   When the corn was gone for a short time we girls used it for a playhouse.   We made shelves for our broken discarded dishes by pushing pieces of board between the wallboards.   We had great fun there, and hated to see it filled up with corn again.

Our cow barn was very high and was built on a steep bank.   We children used to climb up (by digging in our bare toes) to the ridgepole and then sliding down to the eaves.   It drove Grandma almost out of her wits.   As mother didn ' t heed her warnings, saying, " I want my children to be fearless " , Grandma, in desperation, told us, " If you children don ' t stop sliding on that roof, I ' ll seat your pants with leather! " .   That was too much, sliding ceased.   But we had wonderful apple trees to climb, and where grandma couldn ' t see, but we could go from one tree to the woodshed roof, leap across to the house roof and see a grand view.   Papa put strong ropes for a wonderful swing in the big maple tree in the yard; Grandfather fixed the swing board.    We got so we could go, what seemed to us, dangerously high -- it was a great thrill.

Grandfather was bothered by squirrels, and once got an old Civil War gun (or Revolutionary War?) and shot a squirrel that was in that same maple tree.   The gun kicked and Grandfather fell flat!   He cut off the squirrel ' s tail and gave it to me.   I was horrified -- couldn ' t have touched it -- Grandfather couldn ' t understand -- one minute the squirrel was happy running along a branch -- the next minute lying lifeless and bloody in the grass -- too much for a sensitive, kindhearted little girl.

The first school I attended was an old brick building with only one room, and homemade seats and desk.   Many generations of children had probably sat in those seats!    There were buildings (box like), roads and trees carved on the desktops.   These amused me while the teacher was busy with older pupils.   There was a big stove in the center of the room.   A water pail and dipper occupied a bench at the side front.   The teacher ' s desk was on a raised platform in front of the pupils. One man teacher just before my school days, smoked a pipe, and when he held a class, he stuck his pipe stem in holes between the bricks!   I would have been happy if my mother were the teacher; but alas, she wasn ' t.   I was so lonely and unhappy sitting on those hard seats that I hid under an upstairs bed until my sisters were gone to school, then crept out.   Mother took my hand and marched me to school -- I imagine I may have cried all the way.   School was hard on the little ones; the teacher had no time to entertain them -- she had to hear classes in geography, history, spelling, arithmetic, and reading from all ages.

One sympathetic teacher brought a toy horse, and colored chalks to amuse the little ones.   Wonderful!   Her youngest sister, Isabell Duffy, was teacher one or more terms.   She had a quick and terrific temper.   After an evening with her beau, with whom she often quarreled, she was worse than usual.   Once, I saw her pull Nelson Hitchcock from his seat by one ear lobe!   And she often hit him across the palm with a brass-edged ruler!   Lizzie Boyden and I sat together.   We dropped a pen or pencil (one of us did rather), we both stooped for it at once, bumping our heads together.    With tears of pain in our eyes, we laughed, or giggled.   It was that, or cry!   The teacher made us come and sit under her desk facing the whole school.   I felt disgraced for life.   That was the only time I was ever punished in school.

Conditions in schools were much worse in earlier days.   Great Aunt " Duck " Cull told me that when she went to school, a girl was made to stand on a chair with her arm extended straight up to the ceiling with her index finger touching a nail head.    She stood thus ' till she dropped to the floor unconscious!   Lucia was a brilliant pupil and soon was away ahead of other scholars in that school.   Someone gave her a small red covered dictionary.   She decided she would commit the book to memory.   She reeled off definition after definition to the teacher until she came to what she thought were some very embarrassing words -- that ended the dictionary recitations.   When she was 13, it was decided to send her to the old Academy at Georgia Center.   She roomed at Great Uncle (by marriage) Chas Loomis ' s home, but took her food and got her own meals.   She only came home weekends and it was only three miles!   But horses had to be busy at farm work, and farmers didn ' t have time to be driving six miles every day. After we moved to the Merrick place, Grandfather was always calling on papa to help him do this or that.    Finally, mother warned Grandpa   that papa was getting worried about paying for the place -- after that Grandpa paid when he called on father.

One winter Pa went off and stayed quite some time building house and barns somewhere -- he came home finally with a luxuriant brown beard!   We didn ' t feel at all familiar -- he didn ' t seem like our father.   I think Caroline was rather afraid of him.

There was an old woman who lived in a tiny house beyond the brook bridge when I was very young -- I don ' t know who she was, but have the impression that she was was the mother of Mr. or Mrs. Pearce who lived in the big, white house on the hill -- the Pearces owned the land her house was on.   She had a pet pig, and everytime she mopped her floor, she called the pig, threw the mop water over him, and scrubbed him with her broom.

Once mother found an egg that had been left by the Mother hen.   It was about to hatch, so our mother tucked it under her blouse (it was very cold outside).   When she got in the house, she found a big sewing box in the shape of a beechnut, put the egg inside and placed it on the high stone shelf.   The egg broke open and the chick came out.   We named it " Beechnut " .    Beechnut became a great brother.   She/he? Thought she was people.   She screeched every time we left her alone -- she followed us every where, even to the fields and that was her mistake -- she got killed following Papa about in the hay field. Once Papa was walking in the pasture and frightened a mother partridge with her flock of chicks.   As is a mother partridges habit, she feigned a broken wing, and her chicks scattered and hid.   One chick went under papa ' s foot just as he lifted it to take another step.   It was a darling little thing -- he brought it home to show to us, then carried it back. Grandfather Wait was always bringing home curiosities from the woods and fields for us children to see, and a book on Nature (which he received with a subscription) was fascinating to me.   I pored over it.   It had all kinds of bugs, insects, etc., etc. in it.

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