Franklin County, Nebraska

For Another Day

My better judgment tells me to not leave the people across the creek until I am done with all I have to say about them.

So, for a few more issues, I will write the memories of Mary A. Sigman. She was the mother of Alva Bixby and Sarah Johnson. Mary wrote of her early life in Ohio, Illinois, and Nebraska. Her memories of the Civil War will tell us what that time period was like from her personal point of view. This woman was brave and courageous as you will read when we get to her experiences of the wartime. It was not so unlike many other women of that era, whose husbands had gone off to fight for their cause. The following is from Mary Sigman Butterfield Hublitz's recollection:

"My name is Mary A. Sigman. I was born in Guernsey County, Ohio in 1835 and was raised in the back woods. The country was all big timber and it took lots of work to get a farm ready to raise anything. The first crop was tobacco and if the ones who chew it knew how long and tedious a job it was to get it raised and cured, they would know why it is so good.

"I want to tell the young people of today of the old times, and what a difference there is in those and now. We did not ride in cars or visit with our neighbors over the phone, but we went to meeting on foot, horse back or wagon, and most everyone kept the Sabbath, even if they did not belong to any church.

"When I got big enough to help, I was father's 'boy' and was always at his heels. Before I was 12, I could harness and hitch up a team, but when I was a little past 12, my mother died and left five little girls, and then I had to stay in the house and do the work. Well, I had never done anything but then baby or wash dishes so you may guess what sort of housekeeper I was. I did the best I could and wove a web out the loom that mother was weaving to make dresses for us girls.

" Father hired and man and his wife to help us out, but the war broke out between Texas and the US and the man enlisted. Soon after, father married again. He married a young girl only seven years older than I was, but she was the best woman and I loved her as my own mother. I wouldn't advise a girl to marry a man with a lot of children, for it is mostly a very thankless job.

"About this time the gold fever broke out, everyone wanted to go. Four of my father's brothers went, and he wanted to also go, too, but he couldn't get off. Everyone that could get the price of the journey went. Lots of our neighbors went. They all got back with some gold, but they had to work for it. Two of my uncles stayed and settled down. The men would go around with a bag of ten or twenty dollar gold pieces and would show them to anyone. Imagine if they would do that now, they wouldn't have it long. But money was very scarce in those days and they were proud of the gold and did not bank it like they do now.

"When we wanted anything we make out of muslin these days, we would have to raise flax, pull it, pound the seeds off, spread it on the grass until the stalk would rot. Then break it, hatchel it, spin it and weave it. They made shirts and pants out of the tow that was the coarsest part of the flax. The boys would come out on Sunday morning, all in flax, collars, pants and shirts. It was easily washed and wore well. I have a fine flax hatchel that my father made in 1840. I have shown it to a many great many Nebraskans, but none of them knew what it was for.

" It was the same way for winter clothes. Every farmer kept sheep and they had to shear them, wash the wool, pick the dirt out, and card it by hand until about 1848, when a carding machine came in. The women were glad, for it was a long tedious job to card it by hand, then spin it, color it, weave it and make it into dresses.

"Of course, against I had come to 14 years of age there were a good many settlers in the country and first settlers were getting well fixed. There was a good town by this time within five miles, and no railroad, but one came in a year or so. The men had to cut their grain with a cradle, bind it by hand, pound it out with a flail and clean it with a fanning mill. About the year 1849 or '50, the first threshing machine came in. It was called a 'bob' because it had no separator. I drove the first time we threshed. It had eight horses on it. The men fed it and tended the straw. After it was threshed, we had to clean it with a fanning mill and that was no fun. There was no law to keep children from work and that job generally fell to them—I mean turning the fanning mill.

"Our hogs ran in the timber all summer and lived on beach nuts and acorns. A short time before we butchered, we could get them up and feed them on corn to make them solid. What we did not want for our use, we sold after they were killed.

"When my father killed a beef or had a hide of any kind, he took it to the tan yard and had it tanned on the knives. Then in the fall, when he got his corn picked—and it wouldn't be a very big job, two hundred bushels or so, he would make our shoes. Then, the rest of the winter, he would be busy making sleds, sleighs, grain cradles, or anything that the neighbors would want. Against that time it would be time to tap the sugar trees and make sugar and molasses."

("Against?" it must be a phrase that was used to mean "about that time.")

"We always raised buckwheat, and I don't think of all the new dishes they have these days, any of them are as good as buckwheat cakes and maple molasses. It was hard work, but I was always glad when sugar making came on. I wish we could make some maple sugar here. We made some in Illinois, but they have cut all of the trees down, now. People would never go to a doctor if possible, and in the spring, if they felt bad, they would get bled. My father had a spring lance and people would come and get a pint of blood drawn from their arm. That was their spring tonic. There was a man came and told father that he had epileptic fits, and someone had told him to have a pint of blood drawn and drink it right down and it would cure him. I was a little girl and I thought that would be an awful dose, so I grabbed and tin and ran to the spring, and by the tine he had it down, I was there with the water. It didn't cure him. No one thought it would. I don't see how anyone could believe that bleeding would help, but if anyone got hurt and fainted they had them bled; and I have seen men bled and start for home and faint and fall in the road. I remember the first message that ever went over the telegraph cable to the king; "What Hath God Wrought." From that time until now, they have been inventing bigger and more wonderful things. They try to make something that God cannot destroy. They thought the titanic was so big it couldn't be hurt, and see how soon she went to the bottom." (I wonder what she would have thought to know our modern world has found it lying on the bottom of the ocean?)

"We left Ohio in 1856 for Illinois and we thought that we were coming right into Indian country, but I never saw an Indian until I came to North Bend and they were tame Indians. We came to Nebraska in 1870 and moved to Dodge County in 1890, have lived here ever since.

Now, I want to you all to think of how many things you have these days, and the difference that time had made, even in one life. Good-bye. Mary Hublitz.

These thoughts from Mary were written in 1917 for the North Bend Eagle. (The volume and number are not known)

I have five of these writings in my possessions. If there were more we have lost out, by not being able to read them. For a minute or more, we have been able to see the 1850's through someone's memory. I encourage everyone to write down your memories. I guarantee that sometime in the future, someone will treasure your stories.

Put your trust in vinegar; Molasses catches flies.

Rena Donovan, For Another Day.

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