Hi Christina, I have tried to record my Great Grandmother's (Mary Florence Seckman Jones b: 1859) description of the crops in Tyler and Pleasants Counties. After moving to Webster Co. sometime in the early 1900's, she was never satisfied with what she grew. She always considered her harvest inferior to what her family reaped in the rich and fertile soils which blessed the "River Settlers." She said that seed could be scattered on untilled soil, left to sun and rain, and still produce an abundant harvest of flavorable fruits and vegetables. I have heard my Aunts and Uncles rave about how tall the corn grew and how it was more delicious than any other, especially corn grown on the Jones farm, with the Ohio river bordering the back of the farm. Grandma said her parents(Benjamin Franklin Seckman(b: 1834 Greene Co., Pa.) and Sarah Jane Coen b:1838 Oh Co. Va)) and Grandparents(Phillip Seckman and Sarah "Sallie" Custer) moved to Tyler County(which later became Pleasants) because it was so beautiful with mountains and rivers. The timber was unspoiled and thick with wild game. The soil was rich and her people raised beef, horses and sheep. The railroad came through and made travel pleasurable. Grandma enjoyed talking about her family, and held them in high esteem. On Sunday afternoon, she wrote letters to her sisters, her brother, and other family members still living in Tyler and Pleasants. I wonder if anyone on the list has ever found a reference to sheep being kept in Tyler and Pleasants Counties? I have not, but know the Seckman's had a spinning wheel and Grandma knew how to spin. I am puzzled that no one else talks about their families keeping sheep. Glad you mentioned the "Hardiness Zone" theory, Christina. Think it's a very logical clue for those having problems tracing the movings of their people. During the past week I've thought a lot about the Thanksgiving's my ancestors must have had. I imagine they had wild turkey with feather light dumplings, picked their own wild cranberries, and both kinds of potatoes, pickled corn from the stone jar in the cellar, hard boiled eggs pickled in beet juice, cole slaw with home made dressing, turnips, green beans, parsnips and squash. Large fluffy biscuits cut out with a tin cup, the ingredients unmeasured. Fresh churned butter, real whipped cream on the pumpkin pie that came from their own good garden. Hot fruit pies, a big pan of gingerbread, a plum cake. These are the things Gr-Grandma cooked so I surmize her skills came from her family and were traditional foods. With every meal there was cinnamon flavored applebutter which had been cooked in a big copper lined kettle, over a slow wood fire in the back yard. It was cooked all day and family members took turns stirring with a wooden crafted, long handled "apple butter stir." The end piece was long enough to reach all the way to the bottom of the kettle, preventing the bubbling apples from scorching. For many years our family carried on this tradition of making apple butter the old fashioned way. Everybody peeled and cored apples the entire day before the cooking took place.Great Grandma was always the charge person, adding the right amounts of sugar and the careful drops of cinnamin, after determining the apple butter was cooked to the right thickness. The aroma freshened the entire neighborhood. You could tell when someone was cooking apple butter, and count on your neighbor to show up around supper time with a fresh jar of warm apple butter, staying just long enough for our mother to "test a spoon" to see if it needed more sugar or cinnamin. According to Great Grandma, it took a lot of "know how" and years of practise to get apple butter right. Her people in Tyler and Pleasants County were highly regarded as the best of cooks. She often said she had tasted lots of apple butter over the years and nobody in Webster County could make apple butter as good as "hers." Grandma made her last kettle of apple butter in the summer of 1943 when she was 84 years old. During the winter she had a stroke and was bedfast until Nov 20, 1944 when she passed away. Making apple butter was never as exciting without Grandma's special skill and direction. It became more of a chore rather than an annual joyous event, turning out apple butter that didn't taste anything like Grandma's. So that proved Grandma was right. With World War ll and the sugar shortage, we had a patriotic reason to stop making apple butter. I still have her apple butter stir and her 3 legged black iron pot which produced delicacies I've never been able to duplicate. Happy Thanksgiving! Lenore