(Before and After the Civil War)
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The Golden Years
A poem by Jared C.
| This poem is about Isaac Morrison
back in his younger days when school wasn't fun where things got done and it all started in the First Grade. The kids were together in one room where their actions were looked upon and possibly you were hit by a broom. The teachers were strict and were able to give you a "lickin'". My advice to them would be that the clock is ticking. |
|
Literacy and Spelling were their
main subjects. And their supplies? Well, those were classic, for reading and writing was the important thing especially since school went from Fall to Spring. Every day, he would walk to school or possibly ride a horse. But if you were late, the teachers would have no remorse about calling you a fool. Even though the students didn't care and the teacher seemed awful unfair, Isaac did this every day until he passed to the next grade. And the things he learned would slowly fade when he went off to high school. |
Pembroke Academy, sometime prior
to the Civil War
(Courtesy of Pembroke Academy) |
Pembroke Academy was his new place
now. He'd have to accomplish this someway, somehow. The rules were different; he had more choices. If only there weren't so many voices of all these people running around, talking, laughing, making tons of sound. This beautiful academy was a great place, with its own awesome grounds and gym with great space. |
Cover, Pembroke Academy's catalogue,
1846
(Courtesy of Pembroke Academy) |
| Some of the classes were expensive
for that day: Four dollars, even for standard classes (not counting Arts - Those would be more, to start). This is what he'd have to pay. The Academy started its exercises at eight-thirty. Isaac had to make sure not to be tardy. The day would start with a prayer and end with a prayer. They'd sing a song and push in their chairs. This is the life that Isaac Morrison lived in school each day. I'll say this: We're lucky for the school we go to everyday. |
Excerpt from Pembroke Academy's catalogue, 1848 (courtesy of Pembroke Academy) |
Bibliography:
- Annual Catalogues 1866, 1848 Literacy Institute and Gymnasium, printed by Morrill, Silsby and Co.
- http://www.cobleskill.edu/schools/mcs/csbest/school.htm, cited 18 April, 2003
Isaac Morrison's Life After the Civil War
Fiction by Catherine T.
Hi. My name is Isaac Morrison and I’m here to talk to you about what my life was like in Deerfield, New Hampshire after the Civil War. By the time I got out of war I was 35. I left because I was wounded in battle twice. I left two years before the war was over.
I lived with my lovely wife Susan and my mother who's a recent widow. We didn’t have any children. As for my job after the war I was a farmer and many other things. I also spent the rest of my life bugging the government for money. I thought that I was worth a pension because I was wounded in battle fighting for my country. After years of arguing, the govenerment gave me a pension, but not for much though.
Farming was tough in the days before the war when we were still fighting with the South about slavery. Since I lived in the North we didn’t believe in slavery and we had to do all our work by ourselves. The congress even went as far as making a stupid law all about this slavery thing. It was the compromise of 1850. But surprisingly it only lasted eleven years, until 1861. As if that wasn’t bad enough, when planting season came, we had so much trouble to plant because of all the gosh darn rocks. They don’t call us the Granite State for nothing. Once the season was over, we had to harvest everything that we had planted. It was tough back-breaking labor. We worked even harder that time of year. Everyone who owned a farm back then would to pretty much the same labor. We would work form daybreak till it got dark out, which was a good 12 hours, if not more.
Aside from being a farmer I was known quite well throughout the town of Deerfield. I was a town office clerk in 1863, the town legislator in the years in 1866 and then again in 1867 with James Bean, and the selectman in 1871 with S.A. Robinson and E.P. Chase. Each job was very different from one another. For example, the Towns’ Clerk was in charge of the records like the birth, marriage and death records. I was in charge of taking minutes and rescribing them, meaning taking brief notes in a meeting and then rewriting them so other people could read them. When I was the town legislator I was in charge of making the laws in my state. In my opinion, I felt like if someone messed up and we didn’t have a law for it, then it was my fault. When I was the town selectman I was pretty much like the sheriff. Everyone knew me and that I was one of the ones who ran the town. It was a little like I was the town mayor.
But if I was going to have to choose which job that I liked better would have to be the town legislator. That was the funniest job since I got to make the laws and got to well decide what people got to do. I could even make that everyone had a curfew except on special occasions. But I didn’t.
[Teacher's note - A State Legislator in the 1800s had limits to his power, just as legislators do today. Morrison was one of many representatives from all over New Hampshire, who met once a year in Concord to pass legislation. This required cooperation, so Morrison wouldn't have been able to pass laws on a whim.]
When I was alive, the population [of Deerfield] varied throughout the years. In 1830 it was 2,086 and in 1900 1,162. I don’t really know why the population went down but it did. After the war, you would think that the population would be different because a lot of the towns men were at war. But it really didn’t. In 1860 it was 2,066,1870 it was 1,786.
My life was really good and I loved the town of Deerfield. It was, and still is, such a cute town with all the woods surrounding almost every home. I wasn’t very rich, so my will was very short and a little depressing, but I knew that when I died, that there would be a lot of money for my funeral charges and some of the debt that I never paid off. So who ever I decide to leave my stuff will get some priceless materials that I own and a lot of dept. My lovely wife Susan died two years before me, so I left everything to my niece, Nellie. Susan died on November 6,1899. They said her cause of death was dilation of the heart. I missed her dearly. But we were reunited in heaven when I died on December 4,1901.
Questions and Answers
About Farming in Deerfield During the 1800s.
by Christina d.
by Christina d.
|
What types of food would a farmer
grow on his farm?
|
The types of crops that
he would grow in the town of Deerfield would be stuff like: Corn,
potatoes, beans and hay. They would make their own cider, syrup, butter,
bread, soap and cheese back in the 1800s. They would grow [their crops]
by mowing the fields with farming utensils and plant the seeds. |
Deerfield Farmer, circa 1906 (Courtesy of Deerfield Historical Society) |
Deerfield farmers, late 19th Century (Courtesy of Deerfield Historical Society) |
|
What types of animals would they
have on a farm?
|
The type of animals that a farm would have are:
horses, cows, calves, oxen, steers and heifers. They would use these
animals to help around the farm and they would breed them to have
more around to help and sell them if they needed money.
[Teacher's note - we know from Isaac Morrison's probate documents that he also kept chickens. See Below] |
|
What kind of farming utensils
did Isaac Morrison own?
|
The type of farming utensils that a farmer would
usually own were: mowing machine, ox-cart wheels, 2 plows, a wagon,
ox-yoke saws, a hay cut wheel, a harrow, a horse rake, harnesses,
chains and whiffletrees [wooden links between an ox's yoke and the
equipment it pulled] and a sleigh. This is what Isaac Morrison owned.
These types of things would help the farmer do his jobs right and
take care of his animals. [See below]
|
|
|
|
What types of jobs did a farmer
and his family have on a farm?
|
The types of jobs that men and
boys had were to do the plowing, sow the seeds, dig out stumps, clean
stalls, cut wood and stack it, build fences and butcher livestock. The types of jobs that women and girls would do was keeping the house clean, doing chores, making meals, milk the cows and feed the calves. They would wash the clothes and make the cloth that the clothes were made from. These are the types of jobs that a normal New England family would do. |
|
What did a farmhouse look like?
|
Farmhouses back in the 1800s usually
looked the same and they were kind of big [by modern standards] but
not small, either. They were usually made of wood. |
Not Isaac Morrison's house |
|
|
What was daily life on a farm like? |
Daily life on a farm is about what you would expect.
The farm labor and the farmer would get up early in the morning
to feed the animals and start a new day. The women would get up
and make breakfast for the farmers when they were out doing the
work outdoors. After breakfast, the men would go outside again
and clean the stalls and let the horses out to wake up before
they started plowing. The women would be in the house cleaning
and making clothes. After several hours of working, they would
go inside to eat a hardy meal called lunch.
After the meal, they would get right back to work and the women would be milking the cows and feeding the calves. The servant would be helping the wife with all the woman stuff (unless it was a man). |
|||||||||||||||
|
Who lived in Isaac Morrison's house? |
[According to census information from after the Civil War, these are the people who lived in Isaac Morrison's house:]
|
Bibliography:
- www.nelivestockalliance.org/history.shtml
- www.redbarnfarm.net/tools.htm
- www.osv.org/tour/farm.htm
- Schedule of real estate, Isaac Morrison's probate documents. Click here to see the entire document .
- www.rootsweb.com
![[An xray of a patient with Perecarditis Valval]](pcardis.jpg)
