This is so interesting. The lady who wrote these letters went into such detail about the people and places she saw on her stagecoach ride in 1833. Gives insight into what our ancestors' lives were like in those days. It's awfully long, though, so I'll divide it and send the first part today and the next tomorrow. (That way, maybe the Rootsweb police won't notice..... :-) Nancy 1833 letters describe area domestic characteristics By FARRIS CADLE In the late 1800s an eclectic monthly magazine called The Old Homestead was published in Savannah. The April, 1891 issue carried the transcript of a series of letters that had been written more than half a century earlier by twenty-year-old Mrs. James Hine, to her mother. Little is known about Mrs. Hine. She was from New York City, and sailed to Savannah. From there she took a stage to Dublin to visit her brother. This route took her through the middle of Emanuel County. It is difficult to determine which parts of the narrative deal specifically with Emanuel County, but her comments are representative for the entire region. Mrs. Hine was mesmerized by the coarseness and simplicity of the people she met. Her descriptions are of particular interest for the great detail they provide about domestic life. During this period there were few hotels or public livery stables in the countryside. As a result, stage lines had formal arrangements for their passengers and horses to stay overnight at private homes. Dublin, Laurens County, December 20 [1833].-- [My Dear Mother,] I feel as if I had so much to say I scarcely know where to begin--so much that is new to me meets me at every step. We left Savannah on the 8th.... When we got to Norwoods, where we were to spend the first night, evening was closing in around us, but there was still sufficient light to see the size and general appearance of the house. As we approached it I saw that it was of logs, a single story in height, presenting but one window and one door, the window unglazed and a ponderous wooden shutter used to close it. I supposed the building to be the barn, and in my own mind pronounced upon the unthriftiness of the man who had no better outhouses. What was my astonishment upon finding that it was the dwelling--the house of the family with whom we were to stay. This is the stage road which we have taken, and there is very little travel over it, and it passes through a very barren and desolate section of country--as poor perhaps, if not poorer, than any land in the state. Dublin is, I think, about one hundred and thirty miles from Savannah, and there is not a single public house the whole distance; yet everybody's house is open to you, and they give you a generous welcome and the best of everything they have. Some of them will accept payment for the food and shelter which they give you, while others utterly decline it, claiming they have received sufficient compensation in the pleasure your society has afforded them. This house where we stayed contained three rooms--one large one, into which the door opened, with a huge chimney at the end almost the width of the room, constructed of sticks piled upon each other, after the fashion of the corn-cob houses I used to make in childhood. It was built outside of the house; the side where the chimney joined on to the house was left open, and the logs sawed out to make the fireplace. The interstices between the sticks were filled with clay, with which also the whole thing was daubed outside and in. This room was used as hall, parlor, dining-room, and bedroom. On the side of this was a bedroom of a fair size, and behind it a piazza, on one end of which another very small bedroom was partitioned off. The furniture of the room into which we were shown was a large pine table and a half-dozen chairs of country make--turned legs and splint bottoms. The family had retired for the night when we got there, but the man and his wife got up and "made a light," as he expressed it. He set fire to some pieces of resinous pine and put them in the chimney, which I found was their substitute for a lamp, and when we sat down to the supper prepared, which was bountiful and well cooked, Mr. Norwood took two of the burning sticks from the fireplace and held the blazing, smoking torch above our heads to give us light to eat by. He was a coarse, rough-looking man, with no clothes on but shirt and trousers of the coarsest kind of homespun, not even a shoe or stocking, and with his bloused head of long and bushy hair and unshorn beard, and that flaming torch about his head, wearied as I was with travel and my nerves unstrung with the fright of the evening, I could compare him in my mind to nothing but an imp of darkness; and his wife, who came in from the kitchen (which was a small log building back of the house) to preside at the table, ! was almost equally repulsive in dress and appearance. She had on her head all the evening--not only as she was going back and forth to the kitchen to attend to supper arrangements, but as she sat at the head of the table pouring the coffee--one of those long cracker bonnets ... which, when the head is bent, effectually conceals the face, as the capes which they have sewed on them, varying in width from six inches to half a yard, conceals the neck and shoulders. They are the most disfiguring article of dress I have ever seen a woman wear. After the supper was finished I sought quarters for the night, and they showed me into the little room on the end of the piazza. It was barely large enough to hold a small bedstead and have a space of about two feet on one side of it. There was no space for the door to open; it had to open outside. There was no article of furniture in the room but the bedstead and one chair--not even a table to hold a light, but that of course was quite unnecessary, as I had no light to put on it and was expected to go to bed by such light as came in through the open door, for there was no window to the room, or else satisfy myself with such light as came in through the cracks between the planks which formed the walls. The bedstead was a rough specimen of home manufacture, and the bed, professedly of feathers, though there were not enough feathers in it to have made a decent pair of pillows, while the dimensions of the pillows given me were about twelve by eighteen inches in size, with barel! y feathers enough in them to show the purpose they were intended to serve. There was no mattress, but a dried cowhide laid upon the cords to prevent what feathers there were in the bed from sinking down between them. With the door to my room opening as it did out-doors, and no fastening on it--it simply closed with a wooden latch which was lifted with a string--with no water for bathing purposes, such sleeping appointments as I have described, and the vision of that large, uncouth-looking man with his flaming torch continually before me, I leave you to judge how much repose I found. I felt very much as if I had got on the extreme border of civilization but one remove from savage life. I have read much of frontier life, but I never pictured to myself anything so wild as this. Indeed, I thought I had seen something of life in the woods and primitive habitats in western New York, but what I saw there was high toned civilization and culture compared with this. I was greatly relieved when the streaks of daylight found their way through the chinks in the walls. I arose and performed toilet operations without water, and throwing open the door of my room went out on the piazza, where I found a pail of water and gourd, and a wash-pan placed there for family use, and a towel for everybody's use. How differently did the man appear to me in the morning of whom I was so ready to make a demon in the night. True he was one of earth's plodders, with scarcely an idea in his head, perfectly ignorant himself, but his wife, he said, had some "larnin"--she could read, but not write. He manifested a fund of kindly feeling and hearty good will for us, pointed out the difficulties of the way; said the causeway was all washed up at "Yam Grandy" and the water deep, "and if the critter was inclined to be 'skeary' we might have difficulty." He brought out some pieces of blanket and wrapped skilfully about the harness in different places to prevent the horse from being "galded" in his warm and weary way. January 16, 1834--... I was not sorry when we were once more alone together on the road. The day passed pleasantly in social converse and in comments upon the rustic life everywhere displaying itself in rude fences and ruder barns, the latter in some instances being only pens made of fence rails of extra length piled up high, and the ears of corn thrown in until they were full, when they were left uncovered. In some places there were a number of these improvised barns, and then again one or two would hold all the corn the owner had. My heart sunk at nightfall as we approached the little log hut where we were to stay all night, but found it far more convenient and comfortable than the one where we had slept the preceding night. The supper was good and well served, and we had a candle on the table to give us light, and servants standing around to wait upon us. I asked one of them to hand me a glass of water. She brought me a gourd full from the bucket, and after I had drank took it away again and hung up the gourd. They called the drinking cup a gourd, but it looked like a long-necked squash with a hole cut in the bowl end and hollowed out until there was nothing but the shell left. This held the water, and the long neck served as a handle. Our wayside accommodations were very simple all the way, and the unique features of life as presented to me in these squatters' cabins were a perfect study to me. They were so different from any phase of life which had ever before come under my notice--though we had no second experience as rough as the first night developed. We did not stop for dinner even when we passed (as we occasionally did) an attractive-looking place which gave promise of a good dinner, judging from the looks of hogs rooting about, plenty of chickens of all sizes and ages, and calves in the pen, denoting an abundance of milk and butter.... On two occasions when night overtook us we found ourselves at stage stands where the drivers of public stages changed their horses and drivers and passengers took supper or breakfast. These were much more pretentious than the wayside homes which had hitherto served as abiding places for us when our day's travel was completed. The houses were more spacious and had a sprinkling of city comforts, procured probably through the drivers as they passed back and forth from Savannah to Macon. The buildings, though, are almost universally made of logs; that is, the body of them. The larger houses here are what they term "double pen" log houses, that is two separate cabins made of logs and notched and fitted into each other at the corners, and sometimes hewn on all four sides. These are placed some little distance from each other, perhaps ten or fifteen feet apart, and connected by rafters overhead, and one long roof stretched from end to end of the two buildings, covering the open space as well, which is floored, and serves as a hall or passageway to the house, and is the main entrance, a door opening into each of these two log rooms, on the right and left hand respectively. Then there are piazzas built back and front, extending the whole length of the cabins and the passageway, which sometimes embraces forty or fifty feet. At either end of these piazzas small bedrooms are boarded in, called shed rooms, and as they are small they have a long stretch of piazza between them. The front piazza is general sitting-room about nine months of the year, and the back one (overlooking the kitchen, which is always a separate building, though generally in close proximity to the houses) is used as a dining-room.