In the year of 1856, Mary Dorff (now Mrs. Mary Willavize) came from
Philadelphia with her parents to seek a new home in Illinois. They came from
Philadelphia through Chicago to La Salle by train. They brought all their things
with them. At La Salle they hitched a team of horses to a wagon and came to
Magnolia, through mud axle deep, and settled two miles west of the village.
This country at that time was prairie and timber, with many swamps. Game was
plentiful. There were fish of all kinds in the streams. It was nothing new to
find your roof covered with quail and prairie chickens in the morning. It often
happened that deer would get stuck in the marshes. Men would go and help them
out. They would not kill them because they could get one whenever they wanted
it. The small children would not be left outside to play because the wolves were
hiding near to get them.
They had no money to buy matches. They put old
rags into a box and charred them. They had a flint and a piece of steel. These
they struck together until a spark fell in the box of burnt rags and they
started to burn. They got their light from this to start fires and light their
candles. Their only fuel was wood, but it was plentiful.
Here in
Illinois they met with many hardships. They brought all their horses with them.
The change in Philadelphia's sandy soil to Illinois' black mud caused a disease
in the horses feet. This caused their feet to swell and legs to well to a very
large size. Of that disease they lost all but one horse. A kind neighbor loaned
them a horse and cow.
They got so hard up for shoes that they cut up the
gun cases and made shoes of the leather. Just before they came to Illinois, Mrs.
Dorff made some new quilts. The children needed clothes so bad that Mrs. Dorff
cut up some of these quilts and made clothes out of them.
At this time
eggs were worth only two or three cents a dozen and sometimes you could not sell
them. They fed them to the pigs. At the same time a spool of thread cost
twenty-five cents. They used the threads of cloth or pieces of string from the
twin for thread.
In case of sickness they used home remedies. Some were
made from the roots of different things, some of herbs and vegetables.
They had a small variety of vegetables and had small gardens. They did not buy
their seeds, but kept their own to plant. Even the cabbage, turnip, beet, and
carrot they kept to plant next year to get seed.
They did not have large
orchards or a few fruit trees. They got their fruits from the timber. They got
wild crabs, cherries, mulberries and wild grapes. If fruit was plentiful they
would dry it for winter use, for they knew nothing of canning.
They had
no corn planters so they used something like a bob-sled. With this they went up
and down the field and then crosswise. This is what they called "checking."
Several persons went with hoes and made holes where these lines crossed. The
children would follow with a small sack of shelled corn and put a certain number
of kernels in each hill. Several persons would follow and cover the seed. They
could plant a fair-sized piece in a day. They gathered the corn when it was
ripe. During the winter months they shelled the corn by hand. After they shelled
it they put it in sacks.
The oats and wheat were sowed by hand. It was
cut by a cradle, something like a sickle. Men followed and tied it in bundles.
Then they made a large wooden platform. They put the oat bundles or wheat
bundles on this and beat them with long poles called "flails," until the grain
fell out. In later years they stacked the oat or wheat bundles. Then they put
the threshing machine near this and threshed the grain. This was done early in
the spring.
The people in those days went to town in wagons drawn by
horses or oxen. They had yokes and tugs on the oxen, but no lines. They were
guided by "Gee" and "Haw."
The first train, or "iron horse," as it was
called, came through Varna. When people thought it was time for the train to
come they got on top of the cabins and in trees to see it.
Extracted 08 Nov 2018 by Norma Hass from Stories of Pioneer Days in La Salle County, Illinois, by Grammar Grade Pupils, published in 1932, page 110.
| Lee | DeKalb | Kane |
| Bureau |
 |
Kendall |
| Putnam | Grundy | |
| Marshall | Woodford | Livingston |
