The true northerner. [volume] (Paw Paw, Mich.) 1855-1920, 1871-07-07

be exhausted and announcer lOao OF shingles
ready for the distant market. Do not
imagine reader that the women were
idle all this time, for between taking
care of babies and doing house work,
they had very little leisure for recrea.
ton and reading.
At the end of two years Mr.. Bridges
bought farm two miles south of the
old working beehive, in which there
was never drone, and they went to
work by themselves. They got provis-
ions for the first summer after going on
to the farm, by picking cranberries near
Saddle Lake, five miles north of their
new home. Their cranberry hunt lasted
two days; Mr.. and Mrs. Bridges and
an adopted son fifteen years old, picked
nine bushels in that time, which they
exchanged at Prairie Ronde for eighteen
bushels of wheat. The marsh where
the cranberries were gathered, was COW
cred with water from six inches to a
foot deep. They made little bower
of pine and hemlock boughs on an is
land, or bog of dry grass, and staid in a
heavy rain all night. This was in the
month of March, when the cranberry
crop is always under water.
After the land in the township was
cleared up to some extent, every farmer
kept some cows. One year Mrs.
Knowles made eleven hundred pounds
of cheese and FIVE hundred pounds of
butter from FIVE COWS. The hardest
work of all, was to take care of the
cheese as it accumulated, having no con-
venient place to keep it. For the edi 8.
fcation of modern house.keepers who do
really have a hard time to live in their
multiplicity of cares, We will recite a
portion of Mrs. Knowles's labors, during
her pioneer life. When her small pan
try was filed with cheese to overflow
ing, and it was necessary to move it,
Mrs. Knowles carried them with her
own hands up stairs, and some of them,
the accumulation of three days milk,
weighed over thirty pounds. That place
was so warm that the cheese melted
from the heat of the sun through the
roof, and in few days Mrs. Knowles
carried it all from the chamber to the
cellar; there the dampness covered it
all over with mould then shanty was
built near the house for temporary
dairy room, and the rats made sad havoc
with it. The water used for the family
was in a spring on the river bank, which
had to be reached by fight of steps.
Washing days for the large family,
which included hired men, Mrs. Knowles
has many times brought over thirty
pals full of water up the steep steps,
Between getting the meals and taking
care of children, it took till ten o'clock
at night to finish. washing and get the
clothes out. After that, and the chill
dren abed she would have to wash the
supper dishes and sweep the floor. All
the time for rest was in the small hours
of the night for early on the following
morning another days work must com
mence, and so the days, months and
years passed. She is now past sixty
years of age, but has competence Of
this world goods, and lives alone.--
Her husband has gone cover the river
of death, and several of her children.
The living children have all homes of
their own, and the aged widow looks
back to the past for all her happy aud
sad membranes, and the present is
but dim speck between it and the un
known future.
One of the prospered places of bust
ness in this, now enterprislng village
IS Robert Bakers dry goods, grocery
and drug store. His constant gain in
trade, Is only the natural result of in.
dustry, perseverance, temp aud
good management BY way OF encour.
agement to young men about to embark
IN similar business enterprises, we will
here state that four years ago Robert
Bakers capital was but four hundred
dollars. AS his business increased, how
ever, he added to the capital two or
three thousand dollars, by the sale of
his farm, and at the same time brought
10 other branches Of trade, until the past
year his sales amounted to sixteen thous.
and dollars, and the present year it will
reach over twenty thousand dollars -
With his small beginning and the small
place, without the advantages of Rail
Road transportation, until very recently,
bis progress has been truly remarkable
considering also, that others are 10 the
same branches of business in the it'll
but growing town. The places favor
able for gaining in any business are the
GROWING places. no matter how unpre