Defying the Frost King: Pioneer Life in Fact and Fiction

Pa Ingalls, frontier pioneer,  as illustrated by Garth Williams
for the Little House series.

I recently read a book that apparently has been astonishingly popular with a certain breed of woman.  No, not that book--I'm talking about Wendy McClure's The Wilder Life:  My Adventures in the Lost World of Little House on the Prairie.  It really took me back--I remember reading every one of the Little House books, some more than once (and also watching some of the television series later on) and while I don't really remember too many plot points, I am left with certain images--cozy log cabins with crackling fires, skating on frozen lakes, Pa playing his fiddle while the girls drift off to sleep in their nest-like loft. I do remember that Pa got lost in a blizzard right before Christmas at one point and ate the two oranges which were supposed to be Laura and Mary's Christmas treats.  After that I developed a thing for getting an orange in my Christmas stocking.  Wendy McClure found--and still finds, as an adult--these elegaic books so compelling that for some time she made a project of living, as she puts it, La Vida Laura--in other words, trying to recreate some of Laura's pioneer experiences, like churning her own butter, or baking bread with wheat she had ground by hand.  Chores as entertainment! She also makes a kind of pilgrimage with her very patient fiance, visiting all sorts of Laura-associated sites and events, like Laurapalooza (really, I'm not kidding), and a museum which has a photographic portrait of the real Charles Ingalls which left one visitor visibly shaken and squawking with disbelief (she was expecting someone more Michael Landon-esque).  At one point, McClure visits one of the Ingall's homes, an earthen dugout that was "smaller than a freight elevator", and muses that "the actual past and the Little House world had different properties."

Pa  "Beefcake" Ingalls on TV,  played  by Michael Landon 

Pa playing his iconic fiddle in the stage version of
"Little House on the Prairie".  The day's chores are
done, it's time to dance!

The real Ma and Pa Ingalls--Charles Ingalls and Caroline (Quiner) Ingalls.
Get a load of that beard!  Or is it a moustache?

After I read The Wilder Life, I went on to read Memoirs of a Prairie Bitch by Alison Arngrim. She played the villain Nellie Oleson in the TV show, and she has many hilarious stories to tell about people confusing the show with reality--for example, once she and the actress who played her mother visited a school to promote the series and were actually attacked by the schoolkids.  Also, she and Melissa Gilbert, who played Laura, became friends and when they were out together people would try to warn Melissa that Nellie Oleson was nearby.  This is when they were wearing regular clothing, not pioneer garb. And some of these people were grown adults!

Mean old Nellie Oleson has her say. 

Books like Little House that romanticize the frontier/pioneer experience have had a tremendous influence on how we think of "pioneer life".  Just for fun, I thought I'd look into the Ontario pioneer lifestyle which the Davis family would have lived.  It's described in a book called Historical Sketches of the County of Elgin, published by "The Elgin Historical and Scientific Institute" in St. Thomas, Ontario, in 1895.  It quotes an anonymous old-timer on the subject of pioneer life in Elgin County.  The William Davis family arrived from New York around 1809-1810, during the time this passage discusses.  I'm quoting here from pages 12-15.

"The first improvement of this settlement...was in 1810. In 1812 the Americans declared war against Great Britain, and Canada was the theatre of their operations:  so that improvement in the settlement was suspended for three years, which was a trying time for empty purses and lonely women, while the husbands were on duty to protect a home that was yet in embryo...The first act of a settler was with axe in hand to select a spot on which to erect a shanty;  then felling the huge trees...then the timber had to be cut piled and burned to form a starting point for further improvement.  The shanties were uniformly built of logs with elm bark for roof and floor. Then came the furniture which was invariably of home manufacture.  The bedstead was made of poles with bark taken off and basswood bark for bedcord, and the tools for its construction were an axe and an auger.  The table leaf was made from a piece of wood two inches thick, split from the centre of a large log, and holes made from a two inch auger to receive the legs;  the seats were tripods, the material and workmanship the same as the table.  Then cradles were ready for use by putting rockers to a sap-trough.  I knew one family where the same sap-trough served to rock four of their babies in succession."  

An illustration of a log shanty with bark roof. Notice there
are no windows.  A typical shanty would have only one room. 

Photograph of a log shanty with bark roof.  Notice the size
in relation to the family.  Notice also the catch hanging from the roof.
Typically mud would be used for caulking.   It doesn't seem to have a chimney...
I can't see it keeping out either cold or mosquitoes. 

"The mortar was indispensable in each family.  This article was made by cutting a log three feet long and 15 inches in diameter.  The log then stood on end and a fire kept burning in the centre till it formed a bowl-shaped concavity to hold ten or twelve quarts.  Into this a quart of corn was put and with a heavy wooden pestle pounded to the required degree of fineness, which process had to be repeated morning noon and night--or go without the indispensable johnny cake."

A "johnny cake" was a cornmeal flatbread.  Apparently the Little House Cookbook includes a recipe for this pioneer staple!

But back to our historical sketches.  The effect of the War of 1812 on shopping and provisions is described:

"'During the war', we are told, nearly all the settlers had to go to Port Ryerse for their salt, pay $12.00 a bushel for it and carry it home on their backs.  In the winter of 1813 I went to long point and paid $6.00 for 28 pounds, a neighbour offering to take it home in his sleigh.  He staid over night on the road, but left his load exposed, so that a cow destroyed the salt, killed herself, and caused me to return to replace the loss.  This necessitated 200 miles of travel on foot, and $12.00 in cash, to realize 28 pounds of salt.  During an unusual scarcity a pedlar came with a horse load.  I took 14 pounds for which I paid $8.00.  Two of my neighbours...went to Hamilton and paid $75.00 for a barrel, and allowing for their time, expense and team, it cost them $100.00.  But a few days after peace was proclaimed, and in a short time salt could be had at Port Ryerse for $12.00 a barrel."

Port Ryerse, in case you don't know,  is on Lake Erie, in Norfolk county, just west of Port Dover.  It's 36 miles west of Aylmer, 46 miles west of St. Thomas, "as the crow flies".  That's a painfully long walk with a bushel of salt on your back.

Perpetuating what I suspect is the Myth of the Happy Pioneer, Historical Sketches of Elgin County  assures us that early settlers, despite their lack of creature comforts,  had sunshiny temperaments: .

"The hardships, the privations, the discomforts of those earliest and even later days were very great and real,  though borne with great cheerfulness.  Bad roads, or none at all, scarcity of everything, except fuel and perhaps game, poor clothing, rude huts, rather than houses, the wolf literally at the door, or howling near it, every night--such seem to have been the common lot of all the first settlers... sheep were unknown in the Talbot settlement for the first ten or twenty years [perhaps because of the wolves],  flax forming the staple material for clothing.  The climate was quite as rigorous...then as now,--yet the hardy settlers battled with the forest and defied the frost king, despite the lack of woollen garments and other things accounted luxuries then--necessaries now." 

With all that hunting, though, wouldn't they have made themselves winter clothes out of animal fur?

To me, all this seems like a tremendously challenging undertaking, one that, if you lived through once, you wouldn't want to try again.  But with more of a sense of adventure than I have, one of William Davis's sons,  Edwin E. Davis (who was, obviously, also Adoniram Davis's brother and Minnie (Davis) Scott's uncle), moved to the Dakota frontier in the 1800s in search of land.  The Ingalls family lived in Dakota for a few years in the 1860s--we missed them by a measly two decades!

A Dollar and an Ax: The Davis Family, Pioneers in Elgin County

House of Andrus Davis, brother of William Davis and Pioneer in Orwell, Ontario. 

It hasn't been easy finding information about the Davis family of Elgin County.  I have very few vital records for them, Davis is a common name, and from census records it's hard to tell who is related and in what way.  In a previous post I talked about how I tried to connect the dots on this group of people using secondary records and family names.  Sims History of Elgin County, Volume II by Hugh Joffree Sims (published by The Aylmer Express Limited, 1986) fortunately gives us some information about this elusive family.

Here's what Sims has to say about William Davis, one of the pioneers of Elgin County:

Orwell (Temperanceville--Catfish Corners):

"Catfish Corners [an early name for Orwell] was just a stake in the earth when Deacon William Davis and his wife settled there after a lengthy journey from his home on Schohario, New York, in 1809.  In this locality he obtained a large tract of land from the Crown and established the first gristmill.  It was a stump mill made out of a hollowed out buttonwood stump. This type of mill was in use by many early settlers throughout Elgin County;  it was replaced by the hand-mill or quern, which was made of field stones. The daily output of a stump mill was twenty bushels.  William Davis was followed by his brothers Andrus, Daniel, Simeon, and Joel, and his sisters Hannah, Polly and the one that became Mrs. Brown in 1811.  Deacon Davis lived on his farm until his death in 1865 at the age of seventy-nine.  During his lifetime he helped clear a road through the woods to the site of St. Thomas and on eastward to Aylmer.  He became a deacon in his church and organized the first Baptist church in the township and built the first school near Orwell.  When Davis first arrived here in 1809, all he had to his name was $1.00 and an axe.  At his death he left behind nine hundred acres of cleared land in Yarmouth and Malahide Townships.  He served in the War of 1812.  David F. Davis, his son, was born in Orwell in 1822.  He married Mary Birdsall, and became a magistrate.  He lived on the homestead until he moved to Aylmer.  

Deacon Davis married twice.  His first wife was Miss Leek [Temperance Leek--they married in the United States] and by this marriage he had five children:  Richard, Hempstead, Warren, Septimus, and Mathatible (sic).  By his second marriage to Mary Sibley he had eight children:  Betsy Jane, Temperance, David F., Joel M., Adoniram J., Ursula, John, and Edwin E.  Edwin moved to Dakota in 1881 and became part of the history of the Old West.  The son of Warren Davis, William Andrew, sought his livelihood in Dakota where he died in 1908 at fifty-eight.  His brother, George P. Davis, ended his days as a farmer in Watertown, Dakota....Joel Davis settled on four hundred acres east of Sparta around the year 1837.  Joel Davis farmed for a short time, but hearing of the great tracts of land that were available in Illinois, he left and got 1,000 acres there.  He then returned to Sparta to complete the closing of his estate.  He fell ill at Fingal and died suddenly at twenty-seven years of age.  His body was conveyed to Aylmer and buried.  One of Joel Davis's sisters married John Brown who, along with William Andrew Davis, had the first saw and gristmill on Catfish Creek at Orwell in 1817...The old Andrus Davis house was a large frame house with four fireplaces and a huge hall on the upper floor which served as a ballroom on many occasions.  The old Simeon Davis hotel that was located east of Roger's Corners was of similar architecture. The old house was built in 1830..."

A stump mill was a hollowed-out stump with an oversized pestle to grind grain
by hand.  It was hard work.  I can't believe William got 20 bushels a day from this!

Quern or hand mill to grind wheat and other grains.

This is great stuff--now I know which people were William's siblings and which ones were his children.  I also know where he came from, and that he fought in the War of 1812.  I find that interesting, considering that he had just immigrated from the United States a few years earlier.  Doug and I both feel that the comment about the dollar and the ax is probably rhetorical--he brought his wife and some children along with him, so I'm imagining they had clothes, blankets, kitchen ware, and perhaps a horse and wagon or cart.  However, the point that he arrived with very little and built a great deal is well taken.

  

Oliphant Family History in "Here and There in Eramosa"

Again, a local history book found online proves a great source for information about past family members.  The book in question is Here and There in Eramosa:  an Historical Sketch of the Early Years, and of the People and Events Contributing to the Growth and Development of the Township.  The author, Frank Day, self-published this book in 1953.  The Oliphant family is included in the section on Everton.   

David Oliphant was born in St. Andrews, Scotland, in 1772. He came to this country in 1822 to seek relief from asthma.  He brought his eldest son, Alexander, with him and settled in Dundas until the rest of his family joined him, then they moved to Eramosa, taking up Lot 12, Concession 7, the 200 acres between the village of Everton and the Guelph Road.  Both the church and the cemetery are on this lot.  There were four children:  Alexander, Mary, William and David. [note: Mary is the child our line descends through.]  Alexander died young in 1834.  David Sr. died in 1841 and his widow Sophia Watt, deeded the property to her children.  David, the younger, sold his share and went to Bethany College, Virginia, becoming a preacher, writer and editor.  Mary married William Elliot and moved to Dundas and later to Toronto.  William remained in Everton, marrying Ann Stewart.  William was cut off in 1856 at the age of 42 in the middle of a promising career.  As mentioned elsewhere, he had resigned as Township Clerk in January, 1856, after holding that office since the inauguration of township councils in 1850.  The old Oliphant house, still standing in Everton (1950), must have been built in the 1830s and housed the original David and Sophia Oliphant and their son William and his family.  Now the Everton Post Office, occupied by Col. W.M. Head;  it is full of historic associations, particularly in association with the large part the Oliphants played in the formation and furtherance of the Disciples of Christ and in connection with the Mackenzie rebellion.   From "Early Life in Upper Canada" by Edwin C. Guillet, we learn that is the house where Samuel Lount and Edward Kennedy were given shelter by an Oliphant sympathizer.  After William's death, his widow's brother, Peter Stewart, came to live with her and some farm trading was done between the Oliphants and the Stewarts so that both farms were operated from the old Oliphant home for some years until the brother and sister moved to Guelph in the 1880s.  The Everton farm was then rented and later sold to Adam Weatherston.  The Oliphant farm on the next line was inherited after the death of William's widow by her son, David, and was sold by him some years later.  The only two surviving members of the family bearing the Oliphant name are Miss Mary Oliphant of Detroit, daughter of David Oliphant, preacher;  and Miss Florence Oliphant of Meaford, granddaughter of William Oliphant.

A manuscript in the Oliphant family history file at the Wellington County Museum and Archives shows that the source for this information is Edith Kilgour Bain, granddaughter of David and Sophia Oliphant.