Part 2: Sarah Stillman Ransom's Memories of 19th Century Colebrook

The following is a continuation of last week’s transcript of an interview with Sarah Stillman Ransom, born 1873, which took place in the 1950s:

“I forgot to say that in 1882, Annie M. McAlpine taught the Beech Hill School and then in the spring married my father, Ensign Stillman. My grandmother’s meals were simple, but delicious, for she was a wonderful cook. She always used sour cream and butter for shortening. It was a case of ‘a feast or a famine,’ as we never had fresh meat in the summer. I did not know the taste of beefsteak or hamburg and never heard of frankfurters.

“Grandma always depended on her barrel of salt pork, her dried beef (which she had cured the winter before), codfish and a kit of salt mackerel. We never had many eggs to eat. She only kept 12 hens.

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“In those days she never cooked cereal for breakfast, but kept a little oatmeal on hand, which required two hours for cooking. For breakfast, which was at six or seven a.m., she often had crisp, fried pork and cream gravy (very lumpy); flour wasn’t stirred very smooth with the milk or cream, but we liked it that way. We also had warmed up potatoes, chopped fine.

“She never made coffee. They always drank tea for dinner, which was exactly at twelve o’clock, noon. Grandma sometimes served, for meat, a big ‘hunk’ of boiled pork and dandelion, milkweed or cowslip greens with some big slices of rock turnips. She would have a steamed, Indian meal pudding with milk and cream. Maple sugar was stirred into it and a lot more maple sugar to add as a topper, or sometimes she served a cottage pudding with sauce.

“For supper at six o’clock p.m., Grandma might serve hot biscuit, made with sour cream or buttermilk and soda instead of baking powder, which made lovely biscuits. The cold victuals from the dinner were set out for the men folks, with maybe a custard pie. Big slices of her homemade cheese (sometimes cottage cheese) and her preserved grapes or plum sauce and piccalilli. We never heard of potato salad in those days. She often had a plain loaf of sour cream cake or sour cream cookies, sweetened with maple sugar and sometimes had citron preserves.

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“Grandma made a great many short-cakes when berries were in season. She never knew how to make layer cake, but made raised loaf-cake, ginger bread and wonderful crullers with buttermilk; also chicken pie, pork cake in the winter and raised doughnuts. When she expected company, she would make gold and silver cakes, made from the egg whites (silver) and gold from the yokes; two separate loaves, and frost them. No other cake was ever frosted. She made the usual baked beans occasionally.

“Grandpa’s favorite was ‘hasty pudding’ and milk, but Grandma hated to wash the dish afterwards, so he didn’t get it very often.

“In the winter we fared better for meat, as they always butchered a good pig that weighed about 350 pounds and a beef cow, so we always had a barrel of corned beef. They also made about 50 pounds of lovely sausage.

“They always had a wonderful garden and the cellar was well supplied with vegetables and apples. A few carrots were kept in reserve to give to the horse. Grandma said that some people put a few in soup, but she never cooked them. When in doubt what to cook, she made an Irish stew, with slices of salt pork, potatoes and onions (sliced) and made dumplings for the top. The last thing, she added some milk and a big lump of butter to the broth. It was very appetizing.

“After the pig was butchered, she used everything except the brains and the squeal. She made ‘souse,’ a sticky mess like glue from the ears, feet, etc. She usually baked the head, after the brains, eyes and jawbone were removed. She would have it for supper, calling it the ‘minister’s face.’ One afternoon the minister from the North Colebrook Baptist Church called and Grandma invited him to supper and told him she had the ‘minister’s face’ for supper. He stayed and enjoyed it very much. This minister was the Rev. William Goodwin. He was a weather prophet.

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“Grandma was quite witty. One time she was eating sausage for supper and put the hot grease, fried out of the sausage, on her bread and boiled potatoes. I told her it went against my stomach to see her eat that greasy gravy. ‘Humph! I love to have it go against mine,’ she replied. Another time she and her mother-in-law bo ught a broom about the same time. Her mother-in-law said to her, ‘My broom is almost as good as new.’ Grandma said to her, ‘So would mine be if I never used it!’

“Grandpa made droll remarks also. He’d say such and such a person’s eyes ‘shone like a piece of cambric.’ Another remark was, ‘That woman is so homely, I shouldn’t think victuals would taste good to her.’ Grandpa raised pears and plums. They never bought any fruit. I didn’t know what an orange or banana tasted like while I lived there.

“Grandma usually had several pieces of beef (after staying in brine just so long) hanging up in the kitchen to dry and saved for use in the summer. She dipped candles or ran them into molds. One gallon of kerosene would last her a month in the winter, only using one lamp to read by in the evening, part of the time. We usually retired about nine p.m.

“As near as I can recall, some of the prices of those times were: butter, 18 cents to 25 cents per pound, eggs, 18 cents a dozen, sometimes a little more, potatoes 50 cents per bushel, apples $1 to $1.25 per barrel. Flour was cheap. Good yellow cornmeal was 75 cents per hundred pounds.

“Grandma always made soft soap in the spring. I never heard of macaroni or spaghetti in those days. We all were in good health. My grandmother weighed over 200 pounds; Grandpa, about 99 pounds or less, and my weight was 112 pounds when 12 years of age.

“Grandma Stillman believed in the usual weather signs: ‘Evening red and morning gray bids fair for another day,’ ‘Thunder in the morning, sailors take warning.’ And the hens would preen and oil their feathers just before a rain. If the water boiled out of the pot, and the potatoes burned on, it was the surest sign of rain. ‘Rainbow at night, sailor’s delight.’

“She believed in some of the superstitious signs of the old days. One funny one was that if a cat started running all around, as if in a fit, and waving her tail furiously, that the wind was going to blow hard. And it used to prove true. If she dropped her dishcloth, it was a sure sign of company. It was a bad sign to watch anyone out of sight; you would never see them again.�

Bob Grigg is the town historian in Colebrook.