Earnest Sisters - Pioneer Women of Sangamon County, Illinois

 ©  Kathy Duncan, 2022

Many of the questions that a lot of new researchers ask in online discussion groups focus on whether and to what extent they should include information about siblings and siblings' families in their data. Many express the desire to trim their family trees to eliminate the "clutter" of siblings and siblings' families. Remarkably, "experienced" researchers brag about reducing their trees to just their direct line and urge rookie researchers to follow suit.

This minimalist approach both bemuses and baffles me. In genealogy research, more is more. And more is always better. 

Knowing your ancestor's siblings almost always leads to valuable information that would otherwise be overlooked because it may be unrecognizable. The best information, of course, takes us beyond names, dates, and places, and into actual family lore, which happens to be the most difficult information to find. 

This is the case with two sisters named Sarah King and Mrs. James Parkinson of Sangamon, Illinois. Because I've spent a lot of time analyzing the branches of my husband's family, I recognize them as Sarah (Earnest) King and Mahala (Earnest) Parkinson, who were also the sisters of my husband's ancestor, Rachel (Earnest) Brown. 

In 1879, Rev. R. W. Diller asked for surviving pioneer women of Sangamon County to send him their memories of early life in the county. Sisters Sarah King and Mahala Parkinson answered the call, penning a joint letter to him. Their recollection never names their parents, Jacob Earnest and Elizabeth Sims, nor does it name their other seven siblings. I have to know who those people are through my research and to realize that my husband's 3x great-grandmother is also a daughter in that household. One portion of the sisters' letter recalls how they braved the danger of wolves and panthers in their trek to school by walking with the oldest children in the front and back with the youngest in-between. Rachael might have been one of the younger girls, trudging through the snow, sandwiched between older siblings, prodding her to hurry along while they kept a terrified lookout for hungry wolves and panthers. If I had taken the minimalist approach by pruning my family tree down to the trunk, this rich account of the family's life in early Sangamon County would be lost to me. 

I was alerted to the existence of the sisters' letter when I searched the Sangamon County History blog. That blog entry also informed me that Rev. R. W. Diller had the letters included in the History of Sangamon County, which was published in 1881. The link to the original publication was important to me because the Sangamon County History blog omitted part of the letter, and I was interested in the whole letter because more is more.

Transcript:

Pioneer Women

At the annual meeting of the Pioneers' Society, held in 1879, R. W. Diller read a number of letters received from pioneer women of the county. The following were among the number:

Mrs. James Parkinson and Mrs. Sarah King, of Curran

"Friend Diller - In response to your request that you would like to hear from the women portion of the old settlers of Sangamon county, we will give you some of our experience. Our father moved from Kentucky to St. Clair county, Illinois, in the year 1816 or 1817 - lived there till the fall of 1819; then moved to what was then called the Sangamo country, and settled on Spring creek, ten miles west of where Springfield was afterwards located. Our father built a camp, which we lived in until winter, - considerable snow and very cold, - then built a cabin; had to thaw the snow and ice off the boards to lay the roof; then put poles on to hold the boards down. That done, they make puncheons and laid part of the floor, and put up bedsteads of some kind; then had to make beds under the bedsteads for us children to sleep on, there being nine children and three grown persons. The cabin where there was no floor, we used for hearth and fire-place, leaving a hole in the roof for the smoke to go out at. This way we lived the first winter. After that we done a little better; built a pen at one end of the house for the sheep, to keep the wolves from killing them, and the wolves serenaded us nearly every night. The principal part of the provender for our stock was elm and lin brush. Our men would cut down trees for the stock to eat the branches and bark off. Our breadstuffs had to be brought from near St. Louis, about one hundred miles. It was principally corn bread made up with cold water and baked in a skillet or oven - was commonly called corn-dodger. Our meat was in abundance, we had venison, turkey and prairie chicken and wild honey for all that was out. Had coffee about once a week, generally of a Sunday morning, the balance of the time, milk and water mixed. This was for the first season, after that we had enough milk without mixing it with water. As for our clothes, we had to raise, pick, spin and weave cotton to make clothes for winter and summer; we also made linsey. The fist indigo we had, we raised; used that shumach berries, white walnut bark and other barks for coloring.

"Now for the cotton picking. Mother would every night fill a pint cup full of cotton in the seed for each one of us, and lay it down before the fire and tell us when we picked it we could go to bed, and we had it to do. Then we pitched in and warmed our cotton, and the warmer we made it, the better it picked, so we would take a good sweat. The next day that had to be carded and spun, so we would soap the cotton some card and some spin, and when we would get enough spun and colored to make a dress apiece, we would put it in the loom and weave it. It did not take fifteen or twenty yards to make a dress, nor thirty or forty days to make one, althought [sic] they were made by hand. Now, to give you a more perfect idea of the cloth and fashion of our dresses at that time, we will here show you a sample of one of our mother's dresses, which she wore about fifty-five years ago - not only mother, but some of the rest of us young ladies. This is the only one we have saved, it being our mother's. We have often thought and talked of exhibiting this dress before to old settlers' meetings, but have failed to do it, but when our friend Diller gave us such a pressing invitation to take a part in contributing to the entertainment, we could resist no longer, so we thought we would give a little sketch of our doings for the first two or three years in this county. Now for our calico dresses. We cannot show you a sample, as we have not saved one for prosperity, but it would be something similar to the cotton, one in number of years and make. Before we could get one we had to make jeans and swap for calico, or else dig ginseng and smat. We had a neighbor woman who had a small baby, and had no cradle, and she conceived the idea of substituting her apron for a cradle; tie the baby in it, then the apron around her neck, and spun on the big wheel in order to make clothing for her family. As for schooling, that was not very much. Our first school we went to after we came here was four miles, taught by a man named Andrew. Four or five of us went by turns. The youngest was nine years old. Went on foot, and the road was a path through the high grass and woods, and the stars were often shining when we got home, and there were wolves and panthers plenty. They were frequently seen, and you can well imagine how we felt when the stars began to shine. The oldest ones would form a front and read guard, and put the smallest in the middle, and hurry them along, all scared nearly to death. Our school house was a log cabin; the windows were big cracks, with paper pasted over and greased to give light. Our seats were split logs, with legs, and about four miles from us. It was a Methodist church, and when we had company we went on foot, one behind the other in the path.

Mrs. James Parkinson

Mrs. Sarah King"