Although Wayne County, Illinois, (in the southeastern part of the state) was created March 26, 1819, the townships were not organized until June 3, 1860. Although settlements were made in this territory prior to that time, it was then that Leech Township came into being, the township in the extreme southeastern part of Wayne, bordered on the east by Edwards County and on the south by White County. It is nine miles north and south and six miles east and west and is crossed from the northwest part to the southeast corner by the meandering Little Wabash River, the only river of Wayne. In the early days it furnished the means of transportation, a way to float lumber and meat products down to the Big Wabash and the Ohio and on down the Mississippi to New Orleans.

The people who lived here before the township was formed had established certain ways of life. Since the first home by white man in Wayne was in Leech, the first white child born in the county was in Leech, the first teacher in the county was in Leech, and the first corn of the county was harvested in Leech, it seems appropriate to begin a study of Leech Township by telling what those early homes were like, the provisions the pioneers had, the tools and utensils they had, and the way they worked and lived.  **   Wayne County History. All this story of the Harris family was told by the daughter, Betsy Harris Goodwin.

Isaac Harris and his wife and family (His daughter Betsy was then ten years old) came to Leech to make a permanent home in 1814.

However, he and his brother Gilham had driven a drove of hogs to the area just west of the Little Wabash, later known as Pond creek, from White County in 1812 to feed on “mast.” Since they knew the mast was plentiful, it is fair to assume that they had been here before, likely to hunt and had selected the spot as a likely one to feed their hogs. They camped in this region while the hogs fed in the woods. It was then they decided to return to make a permanent settlement.

The Isaac Harris family made their home on a bluff at the west edge of the Little Wabash bottoms, on the place later known as the Atteberry farm (now Charlie Harris farm). The house had only one room; the space between the logs was daubed with clay which served as a sort of mortar. There was no floor, just dirt. The roof was covered with clapboards made by hand. There were no nails, just wooden pegs to hold boards or pieces of lumber in place. There were no glass windows; the doors were made of planks, hewn by hand. There were no metal hinges. The house had to be strong and durable for it was a stronghold as well as a shelter. Although there were no Indian settlements in Wayne at that time, Indians did often go through this territory and did make camps along the Little Wabash. The feeling between the white and the red men was not always friendly. There were also wild animals in the woods. No one went alone into the woods without protection. At first one person always stayed on guard in the house, especially all night. The cabin was covered by four bear skins which made a soft carpet over the dirt floor.

The clothes were made from deer hides; sometimes the skins, after being tanned, were dyed red or yellow. The women knew how to make dyes from herbs in the forest. When tanned properly, the skin was soft and pliable. Women wore narrow deer skin skirts and deer skin blouses. Men wore deer skin blouses and breeches of buckskin. The moccasins were made of bear hide, the fur turned inward in the winter.

There was plenty to eat: wild animals, nuts, berries, and honey. Isaac Harris sometimes killed four or five bears in a week, and so bear meat was plentiful at the cabin. For a larder a forked limb from a tree served as a good place to hang the meat. Venison was also plentiful. When corn was raised, corn meal and hominy was added to the diet of bear meat, venison, squirrel, berries, nuts, and honey. A beverage was made from the root of the sassafras. When in the woods, Harris often killed a deer, skinned it, filled the skin with honey, tied the four ends together and carried the sweetness home. A whole barrel of honey was a common possession in the pioneer home.

Every morning the corn was ground for the day's food. The finer part was sifted and called meal and the coarser part hominy. Sieves were made from horse hair. Corn was ground in a mortar. It was made from a stump and a wooden maul attached to a spring pole which served as a pestle. The pioneer children did that grinding each morning. There was no trouble on the part of the busy pioneer woman to entertain her children. They were kept busy. Corn meal was always an ordinary food product of the pioneers.

Later the water mills on the Little Wabash made the grinding work lighter. All that had to be done was to load a couple sacks of corn on a horse and take it to a mill, often several miles away, through wooded uninhabited regions.

At first there were no lights in the cabin except that given by the fire place. Very soon, however, the mother made candles, but first there had to be cattle. It is likely she made the first candles from bear grease.

The fireplace was a huge affair, the only means of heating the cabin, and the only means of cooking. Dutch ovens and heavy iron pots were the utensils used for cooking; the dishes were pewter. There were no matches, but flint and tinder were available to make a fire. So the fire was kept burning all the time, the fire being kept alive the whole year. If one neighbor happened to be so unfortunate as to let his fire die out, he went to a neighbor, if he had one, to borrow some coals to restart his fire.

There were no cupboards at first for the dishes, just a shelf on the wall held there by two wooden pegs. At first the stools were cut-off blocks from small logs.  Later chairs were made, the bottoms being split-bottoms, so-called because split strands of hickory were laced back and forth to fill in the bottom of the chair. Certainly there were no rockers. The very first beds were made by having one post fastened down in the corner of the room. From that post pieces of timber extended to the log walls, the ends sticking through the chinks between the logs. When that rectangle was formed, wooden slats were placed across it and then a mattress of corn husks placed on top. Later the four-poster beds added much comfort and beauty to the room. They were strung with ropes, a great improvement over the hard wooden slats.

The drop-leaf table was a boon; the leaves could be dropped when the table was not in use so that there was more room left in the cabin.

The early cabins were nearly always near a supply of water, a running stream or a fresh spring. There were no sinks or pumps. The women carried all the water up the hill to the cabin. Later when wells were dug, the site was located by a water witch. With the aid of a forked peach limb, he held the two ends in his hands in front of his face, the V of the limb upward. As he walked over the ground, he felt the peach limb pull downward when he approached a water vein. He stepped back and forth and approached the spot where the pull was strongest. In that way he estimated the depth to the water and the strength of the water supply.

The very first pumps were wooden affairs turned by hand, but they were rare. More important in those early years were the small tools which made it possible to live in a wilderness far from a source of supplies. The most used tools were: an axe, a saw, an adz, a hoe, and sometimes an auger. With those implements the man conquered the wilderness.

The pioneer woman was very resourceful; her cabin was bare but clean. She needed water, but she also needed soap, and she made her own. Each home had an ash hopper, a wooden affair made of boards shaped like a V about five feet long and five feet across the top. A wooden trough was along that V to catch the precious liquid when it drained. All winter the wood ashes were emptied into that ash hopper, not just any ashes but those of hickory or white oak. The top was covered loosely with boards to keep out the winter rain and snow. In the spring the ashes were soaked well with rain water. A stone or wooden vessel was placed under the trough to catch the lye as it formed. It was the duty of the pioneer child to watch the ash hopper to see when it began to run. It was a proud moment when he could announce that fact to his mother.

All winter she had saved all meat grease and tallow. She could render old pieces of side meat to secure more grease. When the soap was to be made some warm spring day, she built a fire out doors under a large iron kettle. If she made soft soap she used three gallons of liquid to five pounds of grease.   The lye had to be strong enough to hold up an egg. If it were too strong, water was added. She cooked that grease and lye water, stirring all the time with a large wooden paddle. She tested that liquid in somewhat the same way a modern woman tests her jelly. Just as she lifts that with a spoon and lets it drop back into the kettle to test it, so did the pioneer lift that liquid with the wooden paddle and let it drip back into the kettle. When it began to thicken, she pulled the fire away from the kettle and let the liquid cool before she poured it into the soft soap barrel. If she had intended to make hard soap, she used less liquid. She also permitted the concoction to cool in the kettle until she could cut it into squares. It was then removed and stored on shelves or boards for future use. If she had wanted to make soap for the hands, she made a small amount, used less lye, and added sassafras root to give it a delightful odor.    **  Sarah Pettigrew and Lillie Clark told me the soap making method and the amount of material to use.   **  Lillie Clark still makes her own soap

A little later when flour was available, the pioneer woman made her own yeast.  From it she made her own light bread. If the family were large, she made a “batch” of bread each day. To make the yeast she used hops she had collected in the woods. From them she made a strong tea. A cake of yeast was added to the liquid. (Yeast had to be kept each time to add to the new yeast batch) often a mashed potato, some sugar, and then thickened with meal. It was made into a stiff, gritty dough and permitted to set a while to rise. Then it was pinched off into small amounts and spread out to dry. That would remain fresh for several weeks before it was necessary to make more yeast.    **  Lillie Clark still makes her own yeast.

The pioneer arts that were useful from the very first were spinning and weaving, also candle making. The farmer raised sheep, and on some hot day in the late spring he sheared his sheep, often lifting a door from its hinges and using it on which to do the shearing to keep the wool clean. After clipping the wool from the animal, he wrapped it into a tight bundle and tied it tight. He sold it later or his wife used it to make bed covers and clothing for the family.

The wool she used had to be washed to remove the grease. The home-made soap was very useful for that. The washed wool was spread on the grass to dry. When dry it could be stuffed into large sacks and hung up for future use when she did her spinning and weaving.

First, she carded the wool by putting small amounts on one hand card, and then holding a card in each hand, worked the wool back and forth from one card to the other until a soft fleecy roll was the result. Those rolls of wool were piled high to be spun into yarn or thread. When it was spun, she wound it into a bail by hooking one end of the loop of yarn over a post of a chair, the other end over another post, and then by taking off one strand at a time she wound her ball. Sometimes she pressed a member of the family into service, having him hold the yarn loops over his two arms while she wound the ball.

If she intended to make a natural colored blanket she used the yarn as it was, but if she wanted a colored coverlet, she dyed the yarn before weaving. Most of the dye materials she collected in the woods. Blue was a common color used, also red, green, brown, and yellow. Many of the coverlet patterns used here were brought or sent from Europe, but some are American products.   **  Susan Allison used this dye recipe.

To make blue dye, she bought indigo on one of her rare visits to town. She used the plant aniline to make a red dye; madder made a dark dull red. The cocoon root, the flower that blooms early in the spring whose stem is bloody when plucked, was used to make black dye. Walnut hulls made brown dye. Corn husks made a yellowish green color. In order to make a light or deep color, she used different amounts.

This is a receipt used to make blue dye that colored yarn for the blue coverlets: to color three pounds yarn, use one ounce indigo, four ounces sulfuric acid, and one half ounce pearlash. Put in a bowl. Pulverize the indigo and add a bit at a time to the acid; stir well. Add pearlash and let stand 48 hours. Add enough water to the mixture to cover the yarn. Put all in a kettle and boil ten minutes. Remove yarn and hang it up to dry.  If cotton is to be dyed, add cotton to dye material and let stand 24 hours. If a deep blue is wanted, add more mixture. When the yarn hanks were dry, they were colorfast.

The spinning wheel was a necessary piece of furniture in every cabin. If there was a young daughter, she was taught to spin and weave at an early age, even when a platform had to be built for her to walk on.

If she were going to make clothes for the family, she might use plain cloth, but she also had her methods of adding figures to the cloth. She often took small beans and tied them tight at various places in the cloth and then dyed it. When the cloth was dry she removed the strings from around the beans. The result was that a white ring was left in the cloth. That was surely one way to show ingenuity and inventive power on the part of the pioneer woman.   **  Mary Ann Bunting told me how to make figures in cloth.

She spent many long hours making coverlets, even the manufactured ones were coveted. She would take two home made ones and trade them for a factory-made one. Some coverlet patterns she used were: rose of sharon, cart wheel, and flower of the mountain.

Every cabin had its candle molds. They were often about ten inches long consisting of four brass tubes. After weaving cotton wicks of strings or linen wicks, she strung them through the tubes, holding them tight at both ends by tying them to a stick. She kept the wick taut so that it would remain in the center of the mold. Into those four molds she poured melted fallow, letting the tubes stand up-right for the candles to set.  When they were firm, she untied the stick, immersed the candles in warm water for a minute to loosen them and then slid the candles from the mold.  Then she repeated the process until she had finished her candle making for the year. In those days when one neighbor met another in the autumn her question was not about clubs or home bureau; she had a pertinent question, "Have you made your candles for winter yet?”.  In the winter she could keep the candles very well, but when spring came she buried them to prevent them from melting and removed them only as she needed them for use. **] Sophronia McKibben  showed me the candle making process.

The pioneer woman was clever and resourceful.  In no way did she show it more than in caring for the sick.  Often a doctor was not near. Certainly there were no hospitals nor nursing homes. The ailing ones were cared for within the home, and the woman acted as doctor-nurse, and house maid. She learned remedies to use on her own family. If a neighbor woman were ill, she went to the sick home and took charge. She prepared her own remedies nursed the sick, washed, iron, cooked, scrubbed, and cared for the children.  Sometimes she stayed a week or two. She was not paid, nor did she expect pay. Her services were given out of the goodness of her heart.

Although the pioneer woman early learned to make her own muslin as well as to card wool and make heavy cloth. That muslin in the native state was what is now referred to as “natural” in color; it was cream-white or tan white, not, white. The woman was not daunted; she bleached her muslin white. Here is a bleach used in western Leech by the early women settlers.

"To bleach muslin use chloride of lime one cents worth for a yard of material. Dissolve the lime in a kettle and set over night. Drain off. Strain. Put in a tub and add enough water to cover the cloth. Soak one hour. Stir with a stick (Clever way of saying not to use metal). Rinse and boil. Cloth will be white."   **  Marie Taylor furnished this information from a scrap book of her grandmother who was a descendant of Betsy Harris Goodwin.

The same people were apt at dyeing yellow material too. ‘To dye 5 pounds of goods, dissolve 1 pound sugar of lead in water and 1/2 pound biucloride of potash in a different vessel using same amount of water. Dip goods alternately in both vessels until you get the color desired. Rinse and dry. If orange is wanted dip rags into hot lime water before rinsing.”

The same people had their cures too. “To prevent typhoid fever use 3 oz. fine coffee in granulized kettle. Pour one pint cold water over it and set over night. Next morning heat to boiling point. Drink, hot or cold.   Guaranteed to prevent typhoid fever, cholera, erysipelas, and malaria. Do not use sugar or cream in drink.”

In the earlier days before the women had muslin or other goods to dye or bleach, they depended on the animals of the forests to furnish clothing material. Doe skin was soft and pliable when properly treated, but those women did tire of skin dresses. It was a happy day when enough tanned deer skins were saved to float down the Little Wabash to a trading center to trade for cloth. When that first calico was brought home after one of those trading trips down the river the women were as happy as queens: they had material for a calico dress.  **    Wayne County History as told by Betsy Harris Goodwin

Most pioneers knew that tea leaves bound on a burn would give relief. Later swabs of cotton were used by doctors, each time the dressing was changed the cotton fibers tearing the wound open again. One doctor recently said. “The Chinese. knew tea leaves would ease a burn. It took science about 2,000 years to catch up".  The pioneer woman knew the use of tea.   **   My mother saw her mother and her mother-in-law use these remedies.

She had other cures too. She knew that in case of pneumonia that the patient should be kept away from drafts. She added her onion poultice to the chest. She used it on the throat for colds. For soreness of muscles such as is felt in the joints she used mullen poultice. She gave boneset tea to relieve high temperature. For a cold she gave pennyroyal tea or sage tea. She dried watermelon seeds and used them to make a tea to give to one suffering kidney trouble. Hoarhound tea was good to check a cough. That tired-run-down feeling that came in the spring she knew was caused by lack of proper winter diet; she had no means of preserving many raw foods needed. She did have a remedy. She made a tonic of white oak bark, wild cherry bark, or the cherries and burdock root mixed with some whisky.  **

All year she collected herbs to he used for medical purposes. In winter they hung to the rafters or in the attic.

Perhaps one way she served the community best was her delivery of the new babies. Often one woman in a community went from home to home to perform that service as needed, even at the time she was bearing her own children.  Mid-wife was a name seldom used. She was more likely called “granny.” Even years later when a doctor did make calls at the home to deliever a child, a woman of the neighborhood was the nurse.
When the roads were bad and the doctor late, she often had the baby taken care of when he arrived.   **  Mary Hallam was the woman who was present at nearly all births in the region south of Scottsville from 1883 until 1912.

The work of the pioneer man was not done on an hour basis either. He was not a specialists in that he did only one piece of work; he had to know how to do many things. He had to know how to clear the land, build his home, farm with crude tools, shear his sheep, brand his stock, for they ran loose in the woods, make his own wooden feeding troughs, mend his harness, keep the wood supply at the cabin, hunt for wild meat, or butcher his own animals, and sometimes make the shoes for the family. He did have wooden shoes lasts on which he half-soled all boots. He also put patches on shoes. In fact, there was nothing in home making that he did not know about.

As his cabin making process has been told, we shall not repeat that. He did keep a stack of hand made clapboards in the woods to use whenever needed. He killed large trees, cut them, had log rollings at which all neighbors helped, piled them in large heaps and burned them. The women and children came too on such days, helping prepare a big dinner; the women quilted in the afternoon. At night on such days they often had a party or a dance.

The man plowed with a one-horse plow. Sometimes he used a yoke of oxen. At corn planting time the whole family helped. The children could drop corn and cover it with a hoe. Later someone devised a better method for covering the corn. A large sand rock, flat in nature, had a hole bored through it. Through that hole a rope or chain made it possible to drag that flat rock down the row of dropped corn to cover it. A small boy could ride a gentle old horse to do that task. That saved backache and time. The corn was cultivated, with a hoe too; sprouts sprang up all over the field and had to be cut out.  At harvest time all corn shucking was done by hand.   **  Chet Woods told me how the corn was covered with a rock.

When wheat was planted it was harvested with a cradle, all that back breaking swing being done by hand.  After cutting the wheat he gathered arm loads together and bound it into bundles. At first he threshed by flailing the grain on the barn floor. Later he stacked his wheat in stacks until fall and then had it threshed by the first threshing machines. The machine was pulled from home to home by oxen or horses The horses then supplied the power, tramping, tramping, to thresh the grain.

Those threshing dinners are a thing of the past but they were so wide spread that they deserve mention. That will be done later.

The pioneer always had a rifle, and he was an expert using it. He could snuff a candle with his gun without putting out the light. He used his gun to supply the home with meat, to kill wild beats that harmed his crops, and sometimes to fight Indians. He was an expert and never gave excuse for lack of meat to eat.  First it was bear or deer, later squirrel or wild turkey.  The rifle had a prominent place in the home. Often it rested on wooden pegs above the door.

In winter he often made great wooden rafts and floated logs down to Carmi. That gave him a little cash and rid his land of trees.

When stock ran outside each man had his own brand, often a slash in one ear, or a slash in both, or an underbit in one. No man copied the brand of his neighbor. In order to entice his animals home in the fall, he often fed them corn at a certain place. It is true that other animals also ate the corn.  It made it easier to collect his own, penning them to be shipped to Cincinnati. The woods did furnish much free feed in those days, nuts for hogs, wild grass for cattle. He had small fields fenced; he had to, to protect his crops. Even if he penned his stock, other stock was running wild in the woods. Carpenter's work, butcher's work, farming, woodsman work all were his, but that did not end the toil. He had little to read at night. He had work to do anyhow, mend harness or mend shoes. Just as the woman had to know how to do everything to operate the household, so he had to know how to do everything to farm. It was team work on the part of both that helped build this region from a wilderness to a settled community.

A custom, not confined to Leech, was the use of water witches to locate underground water streams. They have been mentioned, but a specific case that has been publicized should be included. The Parks family lived near Scottstation. There had been difficulty in getting a well that furnished water to use, both at the house and at the barn. The farmer hauled water three years from the Little Wabash.  That was tiresome work.  Finally his wife reached the point where she could no longer tolerate not having water. She called the water witch, Jed Perkins, to locate a suitable site for water supply. With his forked peach limb he walked back and forth on the Parks premises. He located water near the house, right where the lady ‘lowed it was’ and where it would be convenient for her use. Perkins told the farmer to dig twenty-five feet and he would find a good supply of water.  He also found a vein near the barn, and told the farmer to dig there twenty-five feet and he would get a good supply of water, all he'd need. The farmer was disgusted with the witching, or divining, idea, but he was tired of hauling water. He dug a cistern at the house at the spot named and ran into rock. He dug a well at the spot named at the barn and at twenty feet ran into rock, which might reach to China, he thought. He was more than ever disgusted with water witches; he began hauling water again. Much trash was thrown into the well hole near the barn. The well hole at the house was used as a cistern. In the meantime the farmer used dynamite to blast out stumps on his farm; he had a supply of sticks stored in a building. His son helped the father use the dynamite and knew its power. One day while the elders were at church a neighbor boy came to visit the son. Both had known how Perkins witched for water and decided to try. When they approached the water hole with trash at the barn, the sticks began to twist and turn downward. They stepped back and counted the distance. They decided that Perkins was right; water was there but twenty-five feet down. The neighbor lad suggested they clear the trash from the hole, use some dynamite,  blast out that rock at twenty feet, and bring in water. Before doing that work, they tried the water hole at the house, but that cistern had water in it, and the peach sticks did not twist downward. Not daunted, the boys returned to the barn, cleared the dry water well, snitched a stick of dynamite and were going to make use of it when the farmer returned. Knowing boys, he guessed what they were doing. He told them that if they brought in water in that well, he would give each ten dollars. If they did not, they had to refill the well for nothing.   **  Story was printed in April, 1954, FATE. It was also told me by Bill Woods .

They used the dynamite but it did not throw as much rock upward as they expected. It seemed a failure. They decided to throw the trash back the next morning. When morning came, the well had an ample supply of water; the blast had broken the rock downward and a lasting supply of water came through. The farmer paid each the promised ten dollars. That success made them also blast the house cistern, where the peach sticks would not work over a water supply. The same result happened there, a full well of water.

Aunt India Locke (who died a few years ago) recalled that in the early days the farmers did not raise so much corn as the coons and other animals destroyed it. Then there were many more wooded regions for the animals to harbor in. It is a far different condition from that of to-day when tractors roll over many acres of farm land to plant large fields of corn and the corn picker in the autumn does the work of harvesting the corn that was once done by hand.

She recalled that their crops were mostly tobacco and flax. Of course the flax was ever used in the early days for weaving; all coverlets being woven on the linen thread, the wool yarn being used as wool, the linen as warp. But tobacco in Leech to-day is unknown, not in the growing state. Caster beans were also raised.  **   Marie Taylor gave this information

These tax receipts over a period of years on about 280 acres (receipts from L. H. Harris papers) show conditions regarding the increasing tax rates. For the year 1846, tax $5.69; 1848, tax $6.01; 1857, tax $26.02. (This included state, county, and school, likely the first tax for schools); 1866, tax $45.42, includes town tax; 1871, tax $65.24, includes state, county, town, school, road, railroad, county special, dog, and back tax; 1874, tax $61.14; 1877, tax $56.19, includes corporation and interest.

Today's red tape for loans may not be new. The same source of material revealed an application for a $500 loan, 11-13-1875. It was a questionnaire. These questions were asked: How much land? What improvement? How far to railroad station? Quality of land? Kind of soil? How much crop land? Water supply? Healthfulness? The answer to that was “Had no chills this year.” Buildings?  Fruit? Answer to that was 'About 80 trees, apple, peach, and cherry bearing.” It is notarized by C. C. Boggs and signed by two witnesses who appraised the land and stated applicant was over twenty-one and of sound mind.

Jim and Lizzie West lived several years on the hill a short distance west of the Allison School house. They reared a large family there. After his death, she lived south of Chandler School. The descendants of her daughter still live there. Her daughter, Melissa, married Herman Fisher. Their sons were Roy who married Bessie Pope; they had one daughter who married Carl Kimbrell; she lives in the neighborhood. Arley married Leta Pettigrew; they have one daughter and they live in that neighborhood, as does Arley's daughter, Carmen O'Daniel, and her daughters. Naaman married Eunice Johnson; they live in the same neighborhood. Mervin Fisher married Wreatha St. Ledger; they live on the home place with the father.  The mother is dead.

A brother of Herman, Rude Fisher, lives in the same vicinity. He married Melinda Bell, and after her death he married her sister, Maud Bell.  **  Ethel Jones told me this. Her mother had told her.

According to old beliefs, the child who was born after its father's death had the power to cure rash on babies. Aunt Lizzie West practiced that cure by blowing in the mouth of the infant and repeating the correct words. She also drew fire from a burn, so that the burn soon ceased to burn and smart, if she could get to the burn soon enough after the accident.

The huckster wagon was not a product of the earliest days, but it is now a thing of the past. The huckster wagon was drawn by two horses over the dusty roads in summer. The man planned his routes and made each route once a week. In those days before the day of the car the coming of the huckster was an event in the lives of many country people. The children were told to gather the eggs for the huckster. They watched for him eagerly. If their mother did not want anything except some groceries, that was a disappointment to the youngsters. That meant that only the little door at the side of the wagon would be opened. The men would reach in to find the wanted commodity. It was only a minute of getting a glimpse of the interior of that wagon. It was a great event if the mother wanted some drygoods, some calico or muslin, or some thread. Then the drop door at the back end of the wagon was let down, and the children eyed with wonder the marvels of the interior of that wagon. He always carried at least three bolts of blue calico and one or two of red.

In the early days there were no radio reports on that weather conditions to warn the farmer. There were no daily papers to give a brief report on the weather, but the people had their own signs which they observed.  They watched the sun set to see if it went down behind a bank. If it did, they expected rain the next day, or snow, depending on the temperature. If the smoke came down from the chimney, they expected precipitation within a few days. If the horses ran about wildly in the lot in the fall, they expected much colder weather by morning. If the corn shucks were tight to the ear at shucking time in the autumn, they expected a severe winter; if shucks were loose, they expected a mild winter.

Aunt Rhoda Smith of western Leech had her own method of predicting the amount of moisture to expect for a year. On New Year's Day she took twelve onions and cut a slice from the top of each. She placed the twelve in a row, letting the onions represent the months in of the coming year. She put salt on the cut top of each onion. If the onion brought out moisture, the month the represented by that onion would be wet. If the onion eyes absorbed most of the moisture, the month would be dry.

Because the Little Wabash River played so large a part as a means of transportation in the early days we include this tribute to the river, a poem accepted for publication in a National Anthology of American Verse.