February 18, 1976
Page 3548
MRS. NETTIE MITCHELL
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, I had the good fortune to meet Mrs. Nettie Mitchell of Fayette, Maine, during a recent visit to my home State. She is a lively 89 years old, and is a regular columnist for the Livermore Falls Advertiser. In a recent interview with the Maine Sunday Telegram, however, she reflected on life in rural Maine when she was growing up. In order to share with my colleagues her recipe for frog ointment and her cure for hiccups, among other things, I ask unanimous consent that the article by Lynn Franklin in the Maine Sunday Telegram of February 1, 1976, be printed in the RECORD.
There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:
MAINE PROFILES: SOME RECOLLECTIONS OF LIFE IN RURAL 19TH CENTURY MAINE
(By Lynn Franklin)
(Nettie Mitchell is 89 and lives at Fayette. A teacher for much of her life, she is still a regular — and celebrated — columnist for the Livermore Falls Advertiser for which she writes on sports events and the Moose Hill Church. She is among people from across the nation who will be appearing on a new series of NBC Bicentennial commercials, "An American Album," sponsored by Mobil.)
I was lost in the woods for nearly 24 hours when I was eight, but I wasn't frightened. My grandmother had told me if I asked Jesus for anything, if it was right, he would give it to me. So I kept saying, "Please let me go home and see my baby sister." And I came home to see my baby sister.
I found my own way out although they had shut down the mills and more than 500 people were around the woods searching for me. They found pieces of my clothing at the edge of a quicksand way up in Chesterville, more than 10 miles from home. I had tramped up there, turned right at the edge of the quicksand and come back. My clothing was all stripped off me before I got back. I almost didn't and it was quite an event.
But I found my way. I followed a flock of sheep and they took me home. I heard the sheep bell — I was so lonely and I heard the bell — and I went with them. With my going along they went right towards home.
My paternal grandfather Joseph Plant and his friends used to gather at our house almost every Saturday evening and tell Civil War stories. Children were to be seen and not heard in those days, you know, and we sat very interested just to listen.
I think some of the tales were a bit fanciful but others were dreadfully realistic. I know my grandfather was wounded in the battle of the Wilderness. He told about the ball and chain shot used to cut down the trees where soldiers were taking cover, and I found out a man here in Fayette invented that terrible device.
Grandfather said for a hospital they used a mansion deserted by the occupants and they wheeled in the grand piano and used it as the operating table. Of course, they had no anesthetics, and they sawed off the legs of the dreadfully wounded while holding down the men. I think grandfather must have been a medical orderly, although I'm not sure.
We were terribly frightened just to listen to his stories.
Let me recite you a poem about my grandfather. I have it here as I wrote it, in my book.
MY GRANDAD
My grandad was a woodsman
And I am proud to state
That among the workmen of his time
He was accounted great.
No chainsaw was invented
Nor even a doublebit
But brawny muscles were the force
The logs to cut and split.
No six or eight hour day he knew,
From dawning until dark
He plied his mighty, honest trade
Twas labor grim and stark!
He was accounted topmost man
And always led the crew.
"Four cords of wood, all split and piled"
Was the slogan that he knew.
I always loved my grandad
And honored him as well
I loved to hear the well-worn tales
Of war and peace he'd tell.
Now after years I find it
In the Book of Psalms, if you please
"A man is famous according as he has
Lifted axes among the thick trees."
I was born in Fayette over on Moose Hill not too far from the church. My father was a farmer. I was born on March 23 in 1886.
My husband was a mill worker in his later years, but he began work at six, in a bobbin mill. In those days, you see, children worked. Later he went aboard ship for many years as a stoker. And then he worked in the woods in Virginia.
He came home to his father's funeral when his father was killed by a train, and that's when we met. He stayed home and we married later.
After we married he worked in the mill at Chisolm. They had a very serious strike at that mill one summer and all summer long he earned only $15, but we lived on what I could raise here on our farm and we managed. They got a little raise, not what they asked for, but a compromise.
He worked 11 and 13 hours a day and the biggest pay check he ever brought home was $26.
We had ten children and seven of them lived to grow up and also we took in children, you know, so we were supporting more than just our family most of the time.
In the past 25 years I have taken care of a great many children. One man called it The Refuge. They's just walk in and say, 'May I stay?' Every one of them respected me and men or women either. That's been a great blessing to me.
When I was five I had the responsibility of taking care of a family and I could not go to school until seven because of my responsibilities at home. I had to do the cooking and cleaning.
But when I did finally get to school I think I did very well. I went quickly to the most advanced reader. You see my father and mother both were very much interested in schooling. And in learning.
My father hadn't had the advantages my mother had and I think he cherished them even more. He would take me up on the bed beside him when he was lying down and I'd learn my ABC's and how to count before I was two. I began to read.
Believe it or not, when I was two a very personable lady with a long Southern drawl brought me a copy of Gullivers Travels and I started to read it. She was delighted to see I could begin to read it and she said to my mother, "I tell you, Lizzy, that girl is going to be a teacher."
I always remembered it and I wanted to be a teacher. I couldn't rest until I learned to read that book. And so I learned a great many things very early in life and it was to my advantage.
Before I was four I was reading the newspaper.
At 19 I did start to teach and I loved it. I earned $6 a week and paid $2 of that for board. I taught at Jay and at Bing's Corner and at Blaisdell, Bethel, Canton and Gilbertville. In those days they hired a teacher one term at a time, term by term. Sometimes a request would come from some other place that heard of you, 'Will you come?'
My grandfather, Roger Ela was a circuit rider. He and his father and mother had migrated from New Hampshire to New Sharon, Maine. He was only seven but he drove the cattle all the way. His mother rode a horse carrying her baby in her arms. His father drove the oxcart with their goods.
They stayed here in Maine and he became a minister. In Maine in those days religion was more marked than today, more emphasized in family life. He had a family of nine children and his wife died.
As a circuit rider, he'd carry his Bible in his saddle bags and ride about to preach in five churches a week, travelling a great many miles to do it. He was paid 75 cents a week for the five churches. That was, I believe a good sum for those days.
He met my grandmother when he came to preach at Moose Hill about 1830. She had come back home to the Wadsworth place after her husband and little daughter died. She was a Wadsworth of Moose Hill.
They married and he dragged the timbers out of the woods on his back and built a house and they lived in it and my mother was born there.
He finally was stricken. They didn't realize what was wrong except that he didn't feel well. He kept having bad spells, as they called them. Finally, while he was preaching a sermon, he was stricken and died a few hours after. They found he had cancer.
My grandmother was a small woman and both of her husbands could stretch their arms out straight and she could walk under them without bowing. She married two big men. One was a sea captain, Columbus Warren, the other was the circuit rider.
The children today would have to go to a circus to see as many interesting things as we did in our everyday living.
Of course we raised our own pork and our own beef and milk, butter, cheese and eggs and grain. Everything was produced from the land and the children had to help do it. We pulled weeds and brought in the wood and the kindling and the older boys sawed up and split for us.
We tended the fires — oh, we had a lot of work.
At the time I didn't consider it too much fun, but as I look back I think it was much better than most of the entertainment they have today.
At school at recess we played Around the Green Carpet and I'm on the King's Landing, Scootch Tag and many more games.
We also had Old Mother Witch and Going To The Store. That was a marvelous game.
The children sat in rows. One was an old witch outside, one was the mother and one was the storekeeper. The mother said to the children,
I'm giving you so much work to do
Needle, thread and thimble too.
If you get it done 'fore I get back
I'll give you five nuts to crack,
But if you don't get it done 'fore I get back
I'll give you a crack on the back.
Now I'm going to the store.
So she went to the store and she said to the storekeeper,
'I want a box of matches.'
Then all the children behind her sang out,
'I want a box of matches.'
Everything she asked for they repeated.
Suddenly, she'd say, 'I want a stick to lick my children with!'
When she said that they all would run back and the last one to run she could catch to take her place.
Then the old witch would come and the children were named by colors.
She would say, ‘O, I love the color blue.' Then the blue child would get up and she'd take it with her while the mother was out doing something else.
And the witch would come back and say, 'Red is my favorite color.' And the child who was red would go with the witch, and she would hide all the children.
The mother would come back and no child to be seen.
The old witch would appear and say, 'I want to invite you over to my house for dinner.' She had the children all in a row back where she'd hidden them.
So, the mother followed her and they sat down to dinner. The mother tasted one of the dishes and said to the old witch, 'What's this?'
'That's cabbage. Do you like cabbage?
'That tastes like one of my children,' would scream the mother. 'Go home quick!'
Then she tasted another dish.
'What's this?'
'That's potato,' said the old witch. 'Do you like potato?'
'It tastes like one of my children,' screamed the mother. 'Go home quick!'
"And they would all start for home, the whole bunch of them and the mother running with them and the old witch charging after the whole crowd.
The one the witch caught had to be witch again, and the one the mother caught had to take her place.
Oh, there were a lot of those games we used to play and I think they were a lot more fun than hobby horses and things like that. Anyway, we didn't have any mechanical things and I think we were just as well without them, maybe better.
It was pitiful in those days for most of the aged and poor. But our neighborhood was like a family and everybody helped.
There was no Social Security, and there wasn't any when my husband died so I didn't get any either. But I did earn a little later myself, so I have the minimum.
There was no provision and it was over the hill to the poor house if people couldn't support themselves. The poorhouse — that was a workhouse for those able to do anything, and it was pitiful.
Children in a family that couldn't support them were bound out and a bound child really suffered in most cases. It was a desperate condition.
But for the most part there was a kindly spirit. I remember when my father would come home singing. And maybe he'd worked 16 hours and got a whole dollar for his day's work.
He was 6 feet 2 and rugged and had fine common sense.
I remember my father bought the first mowing machine in this part of the country and people came from miles around to see it. Everyone was mowing with a hand scythe, you see.
My grandfather's sermons came straight from the Bible. He believed literally everything that was in the Bible and he preached to people to live by its tenets. I think the spirit of Christ is just as important today. Why, today the Book of Revelations and the newspaper seem to go along together.
As I say, when I was in the woods lost I wasn't frightened. I knew what my grandfather told me, to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and I believed it.
Grandmother was a tiny woman but she wove great webs of cloth. I remember her sitting at her spinning wheel all day long. She was patient with everything you see, and she had a fundamental understanding of living of her own and a love in her heart for everybody. She had a forgiveness for anything she didn't agree with. She was very gentle.
She was a Wadsworth, like I said. They were an illustrious family. I recall an account in one of the old agriculture papers about the Maine State Fair held in Wayne. The reference was to Squire Wadsworth with his gentlemanly bulls and ladylike cows; the Squire wore his tall beaver hat as usual, it said.
To build his house he employed 16 men at one time or another over eight years. Of course the house had 28 rooms in it.
The house came right out of the farm. The bricks were made there and the logs cut out of the woods and the boards were all sawed there with an up-and-down saw, one man in the pit, another man on top with a big saw pushing it up and down. The Squire Wadsworth house had to be something special.
He had the first country store in this part of the country and that was just as soon as a road was built to Hallowell. Before the road everything had to be brought in saddlebags. When the road was built, I remember an old lady telling — she was around 90 and I was a little girl — she told me she remembered watching Squire Wadsworth driving his team toward Hallowell, wearing his tall hat and, she said, chewing "those wooden false teeth."
You might be interested in some of our medicines. We prepared them quite seriously and I think we benefitted from them too. We weren't always hobbling off to the doctor.
Here's one for example, a basic one that can be adapted for a lot of things. It's frog ointment.
The last of June, the first of July before dog days come in, is the most proper time of the year to prepare this ointment. You should catch your green water frogs overnight and the next morning put them to ice. Then stun them and put them in a stew pan, adding an equal weight of fresh butter.
Stew them half a day or until they're all of a crump, but you must not stir them nor break them to pieces. This is prevented by keeping coals on the lid of the pan. Drain off the ointment and secure it in glass.
Now to prepare the frog ointment add as much red precipitate as will make it as red as burnt brick and in some urgent cases an ounce may be added to half a pound of the ointment.
Now if you have canker, this is what you do with it. Add to the pound of frog ointment one ounce of mashed rosemary root, mountain flax root one ounce, white buck's root half an ounce, crow's bill root half an ounce and what is called red or canker root one half-ounce and pulverize or cut these roots fine and simmer them in the ointment until they are crispy, but don't burn it. Strain it off and preserve it in glass.
Now if you might possibly need a venereal salve of any kind, take a measure of frog ointment, sweet oil, the liver oil of cod or rusk, sunfish oil, bees wax, bayberry tallow, mutton tallow and hog's fat and to a pound of each of these ingredients add mashed rosemary root, adders tongue, scurvy grass. Simmer them all together one hour.
Filter this through a nest of tow or fine horsehair and secure it in glass.
Oh, there are many cures you can effect with frog ointment.
If you have rheumatism you might need it this way: Take equal parts of the frog ointment, rattlesnake grease, sunfish oil, sea turtle's grease — that's called sea tartars — woodchuck grease, pole cat's grease, called skunk, the oil of angleworm called earth and fish worms, the marrow of a healthy horse's bones, neatsfoot oil, the oil of codfish liver and otter grease if it can be obtained.
To four ounces of each of these additives, add the following:
Take one gill of clear spirits of turpentine and add to the gill on ounce of the best of camphor and when dissolved add one ounce of the very best of opium. Of course, that's illegal now, but it didn't used to be. Dissolve in as little hot water as will dissolve it and add all these ingredients together over a gentle heat. Cork this ointment tight in a glass vessel.
May it tell you how to cure the hiccups? In case of common hiccups, give vinegar and salt. But he that has brought the rum hiccups upon himself by the use of added spirits must first remove the cause. I have stopped such hiccups with the use of cramp weed and the false tongue of a colt steeped together.
But in order to remove the cause or kill the poison, give diuretic pills.