Summer Theme: Yankee Thrift
The smell of apple
blossoms and lilac-could there be anything sweeter? It’s a reminder that the
Museum will soon be opening for the summer season and so planning is underway
for activities at the Cavendish Historical Society (CHS) Museum. This summer’s theme is Yankee Thrift-Use it
up, wear it out, make it do, or do without.” The serialization of Philip
Tiemann’s memoirs of Cavendish in 1933, see article below, has been a good
reminder of ways we can adopt the depression era approach to reduce waste, save
money and live a simpler but satisfying life. That said, a quick trip through
the Museum’s laundry day exhibit makes us grateful for electricity and washing
machines.
Upcoming CHS Events
• May 31
(Sunday): Opening day of the Cavendish Historical Society Museum. The
museum will be open every Sunday from 2-4 pm until Columbus weekend.
• June 14 (Sunday):
2-4 pm Yankee Thrift Workshop-No Sew T-shirt Totes and other items. Please
bring an old T-shirt and scissors.
• June 27
(Saturday): Annual plant sale at the Museum grounds.
• July 12
(Sunday): 2-4 pm Yankee Thrift Workshop-Housekeeping, Make It Yourself .
Learn to make your own clothes detergent and cleaning supplies.
• July 25
(Saturday): Fifth Annual
Cavendish Town Wide Tag Sale
• Sept. 13 (Sunday):
Annual Phineas Gage Talk and Walk, 2 pm at the CHS Museum.
For more information about these and other events, please
use the contact information listed above.
Coming to Vermont (Cavendish): Memoirs of Philip
Tiemann
Philip Tiemann was
born in New Jersey in 1900. He moved to Brook Road in Cavendish, VT from
Chatham, New Jersey with his wife Isabel (Carr), and
three children Wyeth, Ann and Joyce in 1933. Naming the property Windy Hill,
Tiemann wrote about the family’s experiences “Memoirs of Coming into Vermont (Cavendish)”
during the height of the Depression,” in 1966, after his wife had died (1958)
and just a few years before his own death in 1969.
As part of the process of applying to have Windy Hill
listed in the National Registry of Historic Places, the current owners of the
property, Mary Anne Butler and Peter J. Von Bartheld, obtained a copy of
Tiemann’s Memories and provided the Cavendish Historical Society with a copy.
In order to share this fascinating piece of Cavendish history, CHS is
serializing the Memoirs by chapter, each week on their blog. After
each chapter, CHS provides an aspect of Cavendish history that Tiemann touches
on, covering such topics as what Cavendish was like in the 1930s, Hawks
Mountain, keeping house etc.
These were not easy
times for the family, as they were learning how to farm, and living without any
of the luxuries they may have had in New Jersey. It wouldn’t be until 1947 that
the house was wired for electricity, so a wood stove was required for making
meals and weekly laundry would have been extremely labor intensive.
Cavendish in the 1930s
To help put
Tiemann’s Memoirs in perspective, it’s helpful to understand what the 1930s
were like in Cavendish.
The Stock Market
Crash in 1929 did not have an immediate impact on Cavendish. Few people had
investments to lose, and for the Gay Brothers Woolen Mill, 1929 was the best
year, financially, in the history of their business. It took several years
before the depression was felt. Cash was scarce, but for many farmers, that had
always been the case. Frugality was part of the Depression, but it wasn’t
caused by it.
With a population of
1,418 people Cavendish was a farming community but also had a number of small
businesses, many of which were able to weather the Depression. There were two
woolen Mills, Gay Brothers in Cavendish village and Black Bear, which replaced
Proctor Mill, in Proctorsville. In 1937, the latter mill, though profitable,
closed, most likely due to union strikes the year before. The building was sold
to the village of Proctorsville and
never used for textiles again. It burned in the 1980s and today is now the
Proctorsville Green.
In 1933, a Civilian
Conservation Corps camp was established in the Proctor-Piper Forest in Proctorsville.
It was located on Bailey Hill above the Hillcrest Cemetery. One hundred twenty
five unmarried men, between the ages of 18-25, came from New York to join local
men in clearing trails for horse back riding and hiking and to create a
recreational area. In 1935, the CCC completed its Proctorsville project and the
group moved on to New Jersey.
Besides the
Duttonsville School in Cavendish Village and the Proctorsville school on Main
Street, there were still four rural schools-Center Road, where the Tiemann
children went, Tarbell Hill, Wheeler and Gilchrist. The latter two were on
Twenty Mile Stream Road.
The Opera House in
Proctorsville had a pool table and two bowling lanes. Dances were frequently
held there as well as the screening of silent movies. There were also boxing
matches and minstrel shows. Sophie Snarski, who played fiddle for dances, said
that between the dances in various locations-including the “kitchen hops,”
where farmers would take turns hosting a dance-there was a very active theater
group. In fact, she was playing almost every night of the week as well as the
weekends.
The New England
Hurricane of 1938 struck on Sept. 21. Strong winds blew down thousands of trees
while heavy rain caused flooding again in the river valleys.
By the mid 1930s,
the Proctorsville Gulf Road south to
Gassetts in Chester (Route 103) and then east on Route 10 to Springfield had
been paved. This made it easier for Cavendish men to work in the machine shops
of Springfield. While work was slow at the height of the Depression, before the
end of the decade, with the war heating up in Europe, jobs were available and
many men were commuting daily to Springfield for work.
Reference: Chubb Hill Farm and Cavendish, Vermont: A
Family and Town History 1876-1960 by Barbara B. Kingsbury
Washday 1930s
While much of
Tiemann’s Memoirs deal with farm work, what about Mrs. Tiemann’s
responsibilities?
In 1933, if you lived in one of the areas of
town with electricity, and had the funds for an electric washer, you still had
to run your clothes through a ringer before you hung them out to dry. It
wouldn’t be until 1937 that Bendix introduced what we view today as the
automatic washing machine that combined washing, rinsing and spinning.
In many households,
Monday was washday. Clothes were sorted, pretreated, soaked in large tubs and
agitated using a “dolly stick” or something similar. Particularly dirty clothes
were then scrubbed on a washboard. Many homes had a system where the washtub
would be set in cement or brickwork, with a firebox underneath and chimney to
take away the smoke from the burnt wood.
Washing soda (sodium
carbonate) was used to clean clothes that had stains or grease or oil on them. Because
of the coarse nature of the crystals, they were rather harsh on clothes, to say
nothing of being hard on skin.
Depending on how dirty the clothes were, they may need to go through the
washing cycle twice before heading to the rinsing tub. Lifted by a stick, clothes would be rinsed
with cold water until clean. Either using their hands or a “wringer,” also
called a “mangle,” the clothes were rung out and hung on lines to dry.
Whites would have
been done in separate tubs and a bluing solution added to help whiten them.
If a family could
afford it, there were rotating drum devices that could be operated by hand,
which were more effective than the dolly stick and scrub board. These initially
were wooden drums but as the technology improved, metal drums, that could be
heated, replaced the wooden drums. Stop by the Cavendish Historical Society
Museum (open Sundays 2-4 pm from Memorial Day to Columbus weekend) to see an
example of a drum cleaner and many other laundry devices used throughout the
years.
Washing clothes was
an all day affair, so clean clothes were often ironed the next day. Flatirons were filled with hot coals, and
when hot, ironed out the wrinkles. Another way was to heat up “irons.” Because
these would quickly cool off, the 1930s housewife would have 2-4 irons on their
stove or fireplace to help speed the process.
Household laundry starch was added to the washing process not only to
stiffen clothing collars, shirt-cuffs and women’s undergarments, but starch
also protected the clothes from stains and sweat. Dirt sticks to the starch,
not the fabric and therefore washed off more easily when the clothes went
through that exhaustive wash-cycle again.
While large houses would have had a special room for the laundry called the
“scullery,” for many homes, the kitchen would do double duty as the laundry
room.
Because it took so long to clean them, people wore clothes much longer than
people do today. It wasn’t uncommon for men to wear their shirts for one week,
two weeks or even up to a month, before having them washed.
How to Dispose of a Bible
Heavily damaged as well as discarded bibles can be a
concern for descendants. What to do with them? Is there a proper way of
disposing of them?
In Judaism, a Torah scroll that is damaged beyond
repair should be buried in a Jewish cemetery. However, there is no proper or
biblical requirement for how to proceed with the disposal of a Christian Bible.
According to the American Bible Society, the best thing to do with it is to recycle it. "It should be
remembered that a Bible is a book. It may be helpful to think of the ways we
discard books. It would be a good thing to make it useful, and one way to do
that is to recycle it. Recycling is an honorable act and that is fitting for a
book such as a Bible."
While it’s helpful to remember it’s the words, not the
paper and ink that have the significance and meaning, if a much loved
grandmother read her bible every day to the point that it’s being held together
with a rubber band, it’s hard to just toss it out once she has died.
Please consider the following if you are wondering
what to do with a Bible:
• Dispose of it in a manner that is appropriate
to the religious domination you and/or the owner participate(d) in.
• If the Bible can be repaired, or is in good
shape, donate to an organization, such as a church, prison ministry, or charity,
who can re distribute.
• Save for descendants if there is interest
and/or it contains important family information, such as a genealogy tree that
has been filled out for multiple generations.
• Burying the bible and/or cremating and then
burial.
• Burying with a loved one
• Recycle them as a sign of good stewardship. Note
that leather or hard covers need to be removed before recycling them at the
Cavendish transfer station
• Upcycle by taking pages and using them in
various art projects such as framing favorite passages.
The Cavendish Historical Society does not accept
bibles unless they have significant historical value.
Cavendish Historical Society
Board: Dan Churchill,
Jen Harper, Bruce McEnaney, Kem Phillips, Gail Woods. Coordinator: Margo
Caulfield
BECOME A MEMBER, RENEW YOUR
MEMBERSHIP, DONATE
If
you have not joined the Cavendish Historical Society, need to renew your
membership, and/or would like to be a volunteer, please complete the form below
and sending a check, payable to CHS, to CHS, PO Box 472, Cavendish, VT 05142.
All contributions are tax deductible.
Name: _______________________________________
Address: _______________________________________________
Phone Number: _____________________ E-Mail:
____________________________
Membership
Level
__
Individual Member $10 ___ Senior
Member 65+ $5 ___ Sustaining Member $500
__
Household Member $15 ___ Contributing
Member $250
Volunteer
___
I would be interested in serving, as a volunteer .I would be interested in
serving on the following committee(s):__ Program Planning __ Fundraising __ Building (Museum)
__Archives _ Budget –– Cemetery __ Hands on History
Donations are always welcome and can be
designated as follows:
__ For
general purposes __ Educational Programs __Publications
__
Archaeological Activities _
Museum & Archival __
Special Events
__
Rankin Fund __
Williams Fund __ Hands on History
__
Other (please specify) __ Cemetery Restoration
No comments:
Post a Comment