Editor’s Note: This is an ongoing series which runs each Thursday morning titled the Richland Chronicles by author Paul Lintern. It is set in 1831 and tells the story of Richland County through the eyes of a young girl.
Amelia woke up to an aroma that was foreign to her, but not unpleasant. Its warm aroma was enticing, like a vegetable soup on a chilly day, but she could not identify which vegetables.
It seemed to have a sweet smell of caramel, like someone boiling sorghum to make sugar, but not quite. She pulled herself out of bed and strolled outside, where the three sisters — Peggy, Katherine and Elizabeth — were huddled around a kettle, working on some mysterious concoction.
“Breakfast smells good. What is it?” Amelia asked.
“Blue, we hope,” said Elizabeth. “Maybe red, black and green, too.”
Katherine and Peggy held back a smile as they kept stirring.
“Unless you have the same taste as ol’ Chestnut over there, you’ll want something different for breakfast,” she added.
“We’re making dye, for fabrics,” Peggy said.
“You can do that?” Amelia asked.
“Someone has to, although we haven’t tried this way, yet. We read about it in the newspaper. It involves buckwheat. We dried it, took out the husks, then soaked in and left it to decompose. That’s when it became blue. See?” Peggy said.
Amelia saw some small bricks of dried straw, and they were blue.
“We dried them over the winter, and kept them until we needed the dye. Just by boiling it now, the water will turn blue and become a dye.”
“Do you have red or green bricks, too?” Amelia asked.
“Apparently, if we mix it with alkali, it becomes red, and if we put in gall nuts, it becomes a light shade of black,” Peggy said.
“Bruised gall nuts,” Elizabeth said.
“How do you bruise them,” Amelia asked.
“The same way you bruise anything, I suppose,” Elizabeth smiled, then started hitting some of the nuts with a mallet.
“The green comes when you let the water evaporate away,” Peggy said.
Amelia thought how she had been to fabric stores many times, but never once thought about how they were made or dyed. She guessed someone had to do it somewhere.
“May I watch?” she asked.
“You may help,” Peggy said, handing her the long wooden spoon.
“You stir, and I’ll make breakfast, if you don’t want buckwheat.”
“Sounds fair,” Amelia said, while Elizabeth and Katherine sat down to sew some repairs on a couple of shirts.
“Where is Uncle Jacob?”
“He and John are taking down a couple of trees that were damaged in the straight wind last month. The limbs are hanging dangerously over the livestock,” Elizabeth said.
“I don’t even want to think about it,” Katherine said.
Amelia gave a puzzled look. Elizabeth explained.
“Katherine’s first husband, Isaac’s father, was killed by a falling tree, when he was clearing a field about 10 years ago. We all get the willies when any of that is done.
“When these fields are first cleared, the farmers just cut a ring around the base of the tree, about an inch into the wood. The flow of water in the tree just stops, and the tree dies. Even the biggest old tree can die if it is cut just that deep. The trees stay standing for years, but without the leaves, and so we plant seeds around the trees, because enough sun can still get to the plants. It makes for ugly fields, but it is a quick way to start planting, and that’s what’s important.”
“Eventually, the trees fall over, but usually the farmer tries to clear them a few at a time. It’s just so dangerous.”
“After David died, Katherine had a farm mortgage and no way to pay it. Jacob helped, but then his brother came by, and, well, it seemed a good arrangement — Katherine gets a husband, Isaac gets a father and John gets a farm to work,” Elizabeth said.
“The Lord can bring life out of death,” Katherine said.
“What about your husband, Elizabeth?” Amelia asked. “
I knew that was coming, precious girl. My Patrick was one of the first in this county, before it was even was Richland County. He homesteaded a farm, then brought me here, soon after Mansfield was started, about 1810.
“We had more than 40 acres cleared, with those dead trees, like I said, when the War of 1812 broke out. We were at the very edge of the war, because just north of us were Indian lands, all the way to Lake Erie, and, of course, on the other side is British land in Canada.
“He responded to General Hull’s call for militia to go and fight the British at Fort Detroit. There were 2,500 men that walked with him through the thick, swampy forests of northwest Ohio up to Detroit.
“That fool of a General marched right to the fort, then panicked and surrendered the whole army to the British with hardly a shot, even though he outnumbered them,” Elizabeth said.
“Did your husband get shot?”
“No, most casualties of war are not by bullets but by disease. When they released the militia to return home, after promising they wouldn’t fight, Patrick caught the consumption in the Black Swamp, south of the Maumee. He never made it home.
“I was left with a 2-year-old and a farm that had to be worked or it would be lost. Thankfully, Jacob and Peggy moved up here with me, and Jacob ran the farm.”
“This farm?” Amelia asked.
“No, we still lost that farm in the bank collapse of ‘18, but Jacob doesn’t give up. He bought this a few years later and has been building it up ever since,” Elizabeth said.
She and Katherine remained quiet. Amelia was reluctant to ask but wanted to know.
“And your son?”
“Hmm? Oh, he is fine, 20 years old now, and just moved to Brinkhaven to buy a farm, there in Knox County, because he says the canal is going to go there and it will soon be a booming city,” Elizabeth said.
“Goodness, child, you have a way of getting a lot of information in a short time. Now, if your arm’s not too tired, let’s see if we can make blue,” Katherine said, then noticing Peggy coming out the kitchen, she added, “Maybe after breakfast.”
