Page 146, 147
For summer wear, homespun linen was the style and to get an idea of the quality and wear of this goods, imagine a suit made of the grain sacks of today. Flax was raised for this purpose rather than for seed. It was pulled by hand and tied in bundles after which it was laid in the creeks to rot the straw. It was then taken out and dried, then put through a flax brake to break the straw sheave or inside into short pieces. Then it was skutched over the end of a board with a wooden blade about like a corn knife. This was to get the sheave out and leave the fiber or outside bark. Then it was drawn through a hackle or comb to get all the loose sheave out and to split the fiber into fine threads. It was then spun on a low spinning wheel into thread and woven into cloth, without any coloring. The cloth was a full yard wide and no unnecessary frills, tucks, and trains were allowed in dresses. A suit made for the oldest child passed on down as each child grew to it, as there was no wear out to it. The oldest boy got a new suit made out of his "daddy's" old one. The coarse woolen shirts required no underwear and they were terrible scratchers. Some boys claimed they caught the itch so they could enjoy the scratching of the woolen shirts.
Before the days of the stove, which appeared about 1850, the homes were heated by wide open fireplaces, and the cooking was done in pots hung to chains suspended from a rod in the chimney. Meat, potatoes and cabbage were all cooked together in the same vessel and called a "biled" dinner. The bread was baked in an iron vessel called an oven which was covered with hot coals and ashes. The bread was called a "corn poan." Another was baked on a board and called "Johnny cake"; another baked on a hoe was called a "hoecake." Biscuits were baked on a tin reflector set slanting before a hot fire. These old open fireplaces devoured lots of wood and we remember distinctly of having to spend our Saturdays and hours after school preparing wood for the coming days. We enjoyed sitting before these bright cheerful fires during the long winter evenings and listen to grandmother, Mary Heath, tell stories of the pioneer days and learn to spell a long word which she said was in her speller when she went to school in N. C. This was the word. See if you can pronounce it. Abewayconecopenhagennicodemusanabaptistdamaduthaobediah. After we had several hundred trials at the word we got it down "pat" as the boys say. Grandmother said the only reader they had in the school she attended was the New Testament and they had to complete the speller before taking the Testament. Girls, in her day, didn't study arithmetic, grammar, geography nor history. With our modern methods and conveniences, we can live more in ten years than they lived in a whole life time; but do we appreciate our advantages?