Amongst the early settlers there were very few who could afford to hire assistance of any kind.  Those that could pay found it easy to get men as labourers; but women servants, unless by mere chance, were not to be had.

The native American women would not and will not, even at the present day, go out to service, although almost any of the other neighbours’ daughters would be glad to go as helps, doing the same work and eating at the table with their mistress.

My father, for many years, used occasionally to take the head of the table with his labourers, to show them he was not too proud to eat with them.  My mother was exempt from this, but the help ate at her table, which was considered a sufficient proof of her humility.

Many of those helps of early days have since become the wives of squires, captains, majors and colonels of Militia, and are owners of large properties, and they and their descendants drive in their own carriages.

In the summer of 1800 my mother had a very nice help as nurse.  Jenny Decow had been apprenticed to a relative, and, at the age of eighteen, she received her bed, her cow, and two or three suits of clothing (those articles it was customary to give to a bound girl), and was considered legally of age, with the right to earn her own living as best she could.

My mother soon discovered that Jenny had a wooer.  On Sunday afternoon young Daniel McCall made his appearance, with that peculiar, happy, awkward look that young lads have when they are "keeping company," as it is called.

At that time, when a young man wanted a wife, he looked out for some young girl whom he thought would be a good help-mate, and, watching his opportunity, with an awkward bow and blush he would ask her to give him her company the ensuing Sunday evening.

Her refusal was called "giving the mitten," and great was the laugh against any young man if it was known that he had "got the mitten," as all hopes in that quarter would be at an end.

But young Daniel McCall had not got "the mitten," and it was customary on those occasions, when the family retired to bed, for the young man to get up and quietly put out the candles, and cover the fire, if any; then take a seat by the side of his lady-love, and talk as other lovers do, I suppose, until twelve o’clock, when he would either take his leave and a walk of miles to his home, that he might be early at work, or he would lie down for an hour or two with some of the boys, and then be away before daylight.

Those weekly visits would sometimes continue for months, until all was ready for marriage.  But they did not always end in matrimony.  Sometimes those children of the woods were gay Lotharios in their way, as well as in more refined society, and it would be discovered that a favourite Adonis was keeping company with two or three young girls at the same time, and vice versa with some of the young coquettes.

But such unprincipled conduct would furnish gossip for a whole neighbourhood, and be discountenanced by all.  Nor must you for a moment imagine that there was anything wrong with this system of wooing.  It was the custom of the country in an early day, and I think it is still continued in settlements remote from towns.

But the lives of hundreds of estimable wives and mothers have borne testimony to the purity of their conduct.

When Jenny had been with my mother about six months, young McCall made his appearance in the middle of the week, and my father and some visitors commenced bantering him why he did not marry at once.  Why did he spend his time and wear out his shoes in the way he was doing?

He said he would go and talk to Jenny, and hear what she said.  He returned in a few minutes and said they would be married.  In an hour afterwards they were man and wife.

They married in their working dresses — he in his buckskin trowsers, and she in her homespun.  She tied up her bundle of clothes, received her wages, and away they walked to their log-house in the woods.

Thirty years afterwards they used to show me some little articles that had been purchased with Jenny’s wages; and they appeared to look back at that time with pleasure.

They became rich; he was colonel of militia, and some of their descendants are worth thousands.

During their early struggles, Mrs. McCall was in the field with her husband, pulling flax, when she felt what she thought was a severe blow on her foot.  A rattlesnake had bitten her.

Her husband killed the snake; vulgar prejudice thought that, by killing the snake, the poison would be less severe.  Then he put his lips to the wound, sucked it, and, taking her in his arms, carried her to the house.

Before he reached it, her foot had swollen and burst.

They applied an Indian remedy, a peculiar kind of plantain, which relieved her, but she was years before she perfectly recovered from the effects of the poison.  Two children that were born during that time turned spotted, became sore and died; but her third child was strong and healthy, and is still living.

These reptiles, that are now almost unknown in the country, were then plentiful.  They had a den at the mouth of the Grand River, and there was another at the Falls. For many years the boatmen going up and down Lake Erie used to stop at the mouth of the Grand for an hour or two’s sport, killing rattlesnakes.  My father and boat’s crew, on one of these occasions, killed seventy.  The oil of the rattlesnake was thought to possess great medicinal virtues.

Continued... >

Copyright 1994-2014 John Cardiff and Port Ryerse Environmental and Historical Society

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