Abrams, Mary Isabella Recollections

From Lane Co Oregon

Mary Isabella Abrams, Agnes' great-niece: Recollections

I think my grandmother, Elizabeth Stewart [sister of Agnes Stewart Warner], must have taught at home. I think people did teach their children at home, p.3

Grandfather and Grandmother Warner both had their own money and property separate. This was true of all the daughters of John and Janet Stewart except possibly Helen, p.3

My father was used to Scotch cookery, with hot biscuits or pancakes. We never had "light bread," except on special occasions... my mother would send me up for a start of yeast to make light bread, p.9

The school at Fall Creek was a one-room hewn-log building, with a puncheon floor [heavy slab of roughly dressed timber used as a floor] and small pane windows with shutters outside. The desks were homemade. There was a race to get there on the first day of school, to get the good desks. We had to buy our own books; I still have my 5th grade reader. Jennie Sims [one of the teachers] boarded at our house, and gave us three girls music lessons on the organ. We even went to school when we were through with our books, you know. We loved to go to school! We always changed our dresses when we got home from school. I wore one dress all three months before itw as washed. IT was a dark plaid outing flannel, p. 13-4.

My mother always put bear grease on our hair after it was washed. And always with a feather, p. 16.

We had running water on our back porch. Fir saplings were cut, and a groove was hewn down on the upper side. The water flowed down the groove. It was my job to "sweep down the trough." Green moss formed and almost stopped the flow. The moss would break loose, too and be in the drinking water. It was also my job in hot weather to go up to the spring for cool water at meal time, p. 16.

By about 1904 or 05 there was a general store in Fall Creek, and we had a daily mail. We had a post office, too. My Grandmother Warner gave the land to the school and the post office. We always had church in the schoolhouses in those days. There was a church at Jasper, but at Fall Creek we had Sunday School and church in the schoolhouse. We always went to Sunday School! We walked up to Unity to go to Sunday School, the Methodist Church. Father and Mother didn't go, but we wanted to go, p. 20.

It was when we lived in Wendling that women first got the right to vote. I cast my first vote in Wendling, around 1921, p.20.

In Fall Creek we grew hay and wheat, oats and barley. The hay was fed to the milk cows and work horses. We would sell the grain we couldn't use to the mill. We got our flour by taking the wheat to the mill in Springfield to be ground. Part of our income came from the sale of cattle, p. 22.

My Grandmother Warner always named the animals after the current heroes [in the Spanish American War, April-August, 1898] There were Aganaldo the Rooster, Kruger the Cat, and Sampson the Bull... We had Sherman, Herman, and Therman- all roosters. We kept Herman until he died of old age. Sherman and Therman turned out to be hens! p. 24-5.