HISTORICAL SKETCHES

CANE CREEK BAPTIST CHURCH

Number 13: DECEMBER 2005 www.canecreek.org 6901 Orange Grove Road., Hillsborough, NC 27278

OLD DAYS AROUND CANE CREEK

In sketch #11, I wrote about James Cheek’s description of church life in the 1880s. I now poke around in his autobiography, Footprints of a Human Life, for descriptions of daily life in that era. Following are some quotes.

“When I was two years old, we moved to Grandfather Cheek’s place. We could hear the baying of foxhounds, the blowing of fox horns, and the noise of coon hunters along the creek. This creek ran about three quarters of a mile through our farm. Along its banks lived the opossum, raccoon, muskrat, and mink. In the creek were perch, hornyhead and other small fish. Our neighbors would go along the creek with their seines and catch fish that way, but we children fished with hook and line. (p13)

“We used to go bee hunting. There was an art in locating bee trees. A good hunter would go along a watercourse and see on which side of the water the bees were drinking. Then he would watch them rise. If the tree were nearby, they would not fly high, but if it were quite a way off, they would rise high in the air, and the hunter could get their course and follow them. Before the honey could be removed from the tree, it was necessary to smoke the bees so they would not sting. (p14)

“When I was growing up, there were many moonshine establishments hidden away up the little streams and in other secluded places. Some of them were most crudely built. One moonshiner lived close to Mebane. It seemed he was determined to make whiskey. He would be caught and jailed and as soon as he got out of jail, he would go right back to his whiskey making. (p18)

“One day mother did something which displeased me. I was standing beside Grandpa’s chimney at the lightening rod and I said ‘Ma is mean.’ I do not know how she heard about it so quickly, but she came out with a switch and when she was through with me I was completely cured. Somehow, I got completely turned against talking that way. (p25)

“Very often, our mothers would have quiltings and the neighbor women were invited to help. The quilt would be stretched on frames ready for quilting when the crowd gathered and in the meantime a big dinner was prepared. The quilts made then would last a lifetime or longer. (p34)

‘When we killed hogs, which took place when the weather began to get cold, we would invite several of the neighbors to help us, and then everybody would be given fresh meat if they had none at home. The same rule was carried out in wheat threshing, the people of the neighborhood helping each other. In those days, the threshing was done by horse power, but about the time I was grown they began to use the steam engine. We also had corn shuckings. Before inviting the neighbors, we would haul up our corn and put it in long piles. All would gather around the pile, and have a great time while they worked. Sometimes when we wanted to clear land we would invite neighbors to bring axes and saws and come to help us cut down trees, which we called clearing up a new ground. We children greatly enjoyed these occasions, especially the good dinners. The girls and boys who were of marrying age would go out in the evening after supper and do a little ‘sparking.’ (p34)

“In those days, we did not pay much attention to fertilizing the land as people do today, nor planting cover crops. We kept right on raising the same crops year after year, until the land was worn out. Then it naturally grew up in broom sage, scrub pine, and red cedar. (p35)

“Our mothers used to bake in an oven on the hearth. They would draw out coals from the fire, set the skillet or oven over them, put their corn pone or biscuits in and cover with the lid on which coals were heaped. Potatoes and corn ashcake were often baked in the hot ashes. Boiled foods were cooked in pots swung over the fire on a crane. This was back-breaking work, but they were always glad to have a crowd of the neighbors come in and eat with them. [I remember aunt Nan’s old kitchen and the fireplace in it, which was at least seven feet wide. On a cold morning, I have seen a boy sitting on each end of the log while the fire blazed in the middle. P52] Before I was grown up, stoves and steel ranges were used throughout the country.

“I have heard Grandpa tell about primitive living conditions in his early manhood. Summer clothes were made from flax and there was hardly any wearout to them. … The loom on which the flax thread was woven into cloth covered about sixty square feet of floor space. Winter clothing was made of wool clipped from sheep and made into thread on a wheel about four times larger than the flax wheel, then woven into cloth.

“They had what they called coulter plows, which they made from a bent tree, on which handles were bolted and to which was attached a long piece of iron about one by two by twenty inches. These were used in breaking new ground. (p44)

“Grandpa said that in the early days, after coming from Virginia, they would let their horses run through the woods at night to graze, then go after them in the morning for farm work. They did not have threshing machines, but would flail the wheat and also have the horses tramp upon it… It was winnowed by pouring it on a big cloth on a windy day, or some similar way. Later, fans were invented, through which they could run the wheat to separate it from the chaff. Still later they improved the threshing process until they had what they called the ‘ground hog’ threshing machine.

“There were plenty of deer in Orange County at that time and grandpa told us a fanciful tale about an inexperienced man on a deer hunt. This man had been told to stay where the deer runs crossed and shoot the deer as they came along. Finally a deer with big antlers approached, but the man did not shoot. Then the other man asked him if he saw a deer. He replied, ‘No, I didn’t see a deer, but saw a man coming along with a chair on his head.’(p44)

Ed Johnson