muff

A muff is a warm covering for receiving the hands, usually made of fur or dressed skins. (Webster, 1882) Sometimes, muffs are made out of the fur coat your husband gave you for Christmas a quarter of a century ago. (Cyberbessie, 2008)

For years, I would look at that fur coat hanging in my closet and dream of cutting it up and making it into a muff (yes, for me) and a nice assortment of tippet, cape, and muff Christmas ornaments. This week, I took the plunge and finally did the cutting - tactfully waiting until Marse Grover was at work, of course - and I had a friend show me how to sew fur, since I never had and I think that fear was probably part of what was holding me back.

In the "Little House" books, you'll find a muff mentioned in On the Banks of Plum Creek. Nellie wears a fur cape to church, Laura wants one, and lo-and-behold if one isn't hanging on the Christmas tree for her that year. And with a matching muff! Reverend Alden puts the cord of the muff around Laura's neck and her hands go inside the silky muff. It comes far up her wrists and hides the shortness of her coat sleeves. Nellie stares, while "Laura walks by with her hands snuggled deep in the soft muff. Her cape was prettier than Nellie's, and Nellie had no muff." (Chapter 31, "Surprise")

In the handwritten Pioneer Girl manuscript, though, it's neither a muff nor cape that Laura receives that Christmas, but a tippet:

People had given each other presents of things that were needed. There was a washboard on that tree: and new shoes and boots and mittens and calico for dresses and shirts, besides dolls and handsleds. Some church in the east had sent a barrel of toys and clothing to our Sunday school and my present from this barrel was a little fur collar or tippet, to keep my throat warm. I was so pleased I could hardly speak and just managed to say 'Thank You' to Rev. Alden when Ma told me to.

The top picture has nothing to do with "Little House," unless you consider the fact that years later, the girl in the photo (Maud Hart) cooked a chicken for Rose Wilder Lane while they were both living in New York City. Or that maybe, just maybe, Lovelace had Rose in mind when she created the character of Mrs. Main-Whittaker for one of her books. But when I first saw the picture of Gennie Masters and her fur muff (shown above), I immediately thought of the picture of Maud with hers, which was taken at around the same time. It took me a while to make the Laura connection, and suddenly I realized that it was time to be making some furs of my own. (And, wow, those feet do look big to me!)
- posted by pioneergirl at 11:40 PM

 
do these look big to you?

In her handwritten Pioneer Girl manuscript, Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote that she had one violent quarrel with Genevieve Masters during their De Smet school days:

She called attention to my being fat and made fun of my clothes. In return for which I explained to her about the size of her feet, they were very large, and said that at least my clothes were my own and not my aunt's and cousins cast off garments sent to me because I was a poor relation. Mrs. Masters and Nannie at Walnut Grove did send Mrs. Sam Masters their old clothes and she made them over, which explained the fine, beautiful materials of Genieve's dresses.

For your viewing pleasure, I give you Genevieve's feet.
- posted by pioneergirl at 11:51 PM

 
map

...The great, dark trees of the Big Woods stood all around the house, and beyond them were other trees and beyond them were more trees. As far as a man could go to the north in a day, or a week, or a whole month, there was nothing but trees. -Laura Ingalls Wilder, Little House in the Big Woods, Chapter 1.

You can print survey maps for Pepin County from the Bureau of Land Management, General Land Office Records site at glorecords.blm.gov. Many survey notes haven't yet been scanned and made available online. I printed out Pepin County's survey notes at the Archives of the Wisconsin Historical Society in Madison.

General notes for the township state that the land was very thinly timbered with oak. Undergrowth was oak, aspen, red root, fern, prairie willow, vines, etc. Soil was second rate.

Here's what Samuel Durkam, Deputy Surveyor, had to say about the area where Henry Quiner and Charles Ingalls would later call home:

This is a very rough, hilly, and broken township of land. On many of the ridges there is good oak timber. But in the aggregate it is thinly timbered and covered with brush. In some places the brush is very thick and in others so scattering but very little timber that it is almost entitled to the name of prairie - perhaps the term "brushy prairie" would convey the best idea of a portion of it. There are no settlers here yet and apparently but little inducement for them.
- posted by pioneergirl at 11:22 PM

 
clear to new ulm

"At the time of the Sioux outbreak in Minnesota, in August 1863, I was living with my parents seven miles below Yellow Medicine agency... I will state when the outbreak occurred the Ingalls family consisted of Mr. J. H. Ingalls, a widower, and his four children, living on the same side of the river and about a mile above our home. All of these children were taken into captivity by the Lower Sioux, on the next day after the outbreak, and subsequently the morning of the 19th when old Porter Rouillard escaped from the murderous attack upon the stores at Yellow Medicine and fled down along the river towards my home he passed the Ingallses' place shouting: 'Indians, Indians killing everybody at Yellow Medicine!' Mr. Ingalls heard the voice as he lay in bed partly awake and quickly aroused the children and sent Jennie and Amanda down to Brown's to find out what the trouble was, telling them to hurry back. When the girls reached our place they found everything in utter confusion and everybody excited. The neighbors had gathered there and were getting into wagons and going off and the girls jumping into one of the wagons went along. They were a few hours afterwards taken into captivity alone with our family and carried off to Little Crow's camp, and remained with the Indians until the general delivery at Camp Release. While Jennie and Amanda were being carried off by Cut Nose and his miserable crew the rest of the Indians went on up the Minnesota valley killing and plundering as they went until they reached the Ingallses' place. After killing Mr. Ingalls they took Melvina and George prisoners and also carried them to Little Crow's. Jennie, Amanda, and George were delivered at Camp Release but Melvina was carried off across the prairies by the Lower Sioux who fled immediately after the battle of Wood Lake. I heard nothing of Melvina after that until when I was at Crow Creek news came that she had been delivered to her friends in Minnesota. In looking over some old papers I find that my father was administrator of the estate of J.H. Ingalls, and that as such administrator he recovered in 1864 some money due the estate from the government and that he paid it over to the children. I have heard nothing of them for forty years." -- South Dakota Historical Collections, Volume 5, 1910

J.H. Ingalls and Charles Ingalls were first cousins.
- posted by pioneergirl at 10:50 PM

 
albanian gypsy

It took me quite a while to track down this book after first hearing about it years ago. An Albanian Gypsy Along Smooth Trails: Rose Wilder Lane is a collection of historically-based poems written by Jayne Vondrak.

During a 2000 Iowa Writing Project workshop on writing from historical documents, Vondrak studied Rose Wilder Lane's letters and journals at Herbert Hoover Presidential Library, concentrating mainly on those pertaining to Rose's years in Albania. Each of the fifty poems in the book was inspired by a single letter or diary entry found in the Hoover collection, and many are accompanied by photographs from the collection.

After reading Vondrak's book from cover to cover, I found myself going through my own files to locate the letters and journal entries Vondrak cites (thank you thank you thank you for including that information). This, of course, led me back to the poems. What a great way to spend an evening!
- posted by pioneergirl at 9:26 PM

 
enter murderers

As we have the average morbid taste for reading about crime, we read Enter Murderers by Edward Hale Bierstadt, and found it satisfactory except for the omission of the Bender family... They are, on the whole, the most memorable of all American specialists in homicide, to our mind... May Lamberton Becker says they were, too sordid; but it's their technique that strikes our imagination... They used to induce their victims to sit down to dinner in a tent and then one of the Benders - there were a log of them, so the temporary absence of one was not noticed - went around outside the tent with a mallet... You can easily figure out the subsequent proceedings... - Oakland (California) Tribune, October 14, 1934

"Rose Wilder Lane writes to correct us on the habits of the celebrated Bender family... Someone else also gave us the facts, but we lost the letter.

"'I beg your pardon,' she says, 'the Bender family did not commit their murders in a tent. Or at least did not earn their deserved reputation in that way. Kate Bender lived in an ordinary house of the times, midway between Independence, Kan., and my grandfather's log cabin on the Verdigris in Indian Territory. My grandfather often stopped there, but though he had a good team, a wagon and (on the return trip) a load of supplies amply justifying his murder, he never could afford to buy a meal from the Benders, but frugally ate by his own campfire.

"'The Bender house, completely conventional, had a canvas curtain across the middle dividing sleeping and living quarters. A bench stood against this curtain, and a table before the bench. Prosperous travelers who could afford to pay for Kate Bender's good home cooking sat on the bench to eat it... My grandfather was one of the volunteer posse that pursued the fleeing Benders. Darkly, he said little about what happened... The ultimate fate of the Bender family is usually reported as shrouded in mystery... But there really was no tent. Kate Bender was the dominant force in that family, and was there ever a woman who could live in a tent if she could help it?'" - January 6, 1935

Rose finished working on her mother's High Prairie manuscript in June 1934. Little House on the Prairie was released prior to the holiday season the following year.
- posted by pioneergirl at 10:16 PM

 
ouch


I had begun wearing corsets the first spring we were in De Smet, but I refused to wear them at any time except when I was dressed up and never would wear them as tight as the other girls did or as Ma thought I ought to, if I were to have a pretty waist. -Laura Ingalls Wilder, Pioneer Girl manuscript

Although clearly Laura had been wearing corsets for years, they aren't mentioned as an item of fashion torment in the "Little House" books until Little Town on the Prairie, where Laura makes sure the reader knows how she feels about them! Corsets do appear in Little House in the Big Woods, but Laura is too little in that book to give them any thought.

One thing you'll find plenty of in old magazines and newspapers is advertisements for corsets, braces, bands, supports, and belts meant to hold it all in. I counted seven different corset ads in the 1881 magazine I flipped through tonight.

Corsets were once thought of as a medical necessity. Women (the "weaker sex") were supposedly so fragile that they needed something to hold them together. Ma seems to have turned out okay, but no doubt Laura's hatred of the restricting undergarment was part of the reason she stayed strong as a little French horse from the first book to the last.
- posted by pioneergirl at 11:25 PM

 
mrs. bradley writes about the early days

"George and I were married in 1878 and George immediately went west to Minnesota, as he had an aunt there who had always urged him to come west. He worked in a drug store there and Gene was born there. In the apartment next to ours lived John Carroll, who was a professor in the schools. He came in evenings urging George to go to Dakota with him. He was appointed postmaster and land agent in De Smet and we decided to go. So they formed a partnership and George was to be assistant postmaster and Deputy Land Agent and have a drug store combined with it all, with the understanding that at the end of a year if George thought he could manage his part alone they would dissolve the partnership. They opened up in a little room joining the Sturgeon Hotel on the south and in two months I joined them, with Gene in my arms.

"At the end of the year George bought the building the Fuller boys had built, the one on the corner where the Mallery Drug Store is, and found it wasn't large enough so George bought it and moved it on the next lot, and moved into it.

"The first Fourth of July we celebrated, the program was in the unfinished store of Fullers and we had a speaker and a quartet, and Mr. Couse and I sang in it.

"Gene would have been the first baby in De Smet, but the railroad camp was at De Smet when we came, and a baby was born in it, and it was a Masters baby. The rails were laid to De Smet and they had turned a box car around and it was the depot, and a big box was the platform. The morning I came Mr. Tinkham was down to the train to meet us, George having gone to Volga to meet me. Mr. Woodsworth was the agent. We came in a box car and sat on a plank across two kegs."
- posted by pioneergirl at 11:42 PM

 
the tangent that wouldn't die

In which other blocks of buildings enter the picture, and nansie refuses to try to figure out what and where they all were, and when.

From the De Smet News, January 27, 1922:
Recent Fire Removed Buildings Erected in Early Days of De Smet

The recent fire in De Smet destroyed four buildings that were landmarks of the city, one of them dating back to the very early days. The history of these buildings is of interest to people who know De Smet.

The fire, which occurred the morning of Friday, December 23, entirely wiped out the Cummins barber shop, Cosy Theatre, Robinson hardware store with I.O.O.F. hall above, and practically destroyed the Storts cream station. Of these four buildings, the one occupied by W.D. Storts is the oldest, according to C.H. Tinkham, who remembers well the growth of De Smet from its earliest days. This story and a half building was erected in the summer of 1882 by Geo. Ferguson, who stocked it with dry goods and millinery. Later it was used by Wilmarth & Jewell for a grocery store. In recent years it has been owned by G. Del Vecchio, formerly of De Smet, but now of Sioux Falls. The building had fallen into a poor state. Altho not entirely destroyed by the fire its removal will follow.

The barber shop was built in 1883 by Peirson & Cooley for a meat market. It passed thru several ownerships but continued to be used as a market until recent years. For many years Chas. Rehfeld conducted the shop. Art Back bought the building several years ago.

The lot occupied by the Cozy theatre was in the early days the location of a wagon scale owned by Peirson & Cooley, but used by everybody. Chas. Rehfeld built the two story structure that was used by Frank Harthorn for a general merchandise store and the Rehfeld family lived in the rooms over the store and their market, next door. When adapted for a theatre the second floor was torn out.

Hanson & Root built the store occupied by W.M. Robinson, the Odd Fellows building the second story for a lodge hall. After Mr. Root retired from the partnership A.C. Hanson continued in the general merchandise business until Robinson company bought the store for a hardware business, W.M. Robinson taking it over on the dissolution of the firm. The hall above, known often as Society hall, was used by various lodges.

The four buildings were all of wood with metal siding. The Cozy theatre had been recently remodeled and the front stuccoed.

There were not many buildings on the street back in 1882, when the oldest of these structures was erected. Across the street, of course, was the C.H. Tinkham furniture store, the building that was torn down a year ago to make room for the new W.E. White building. Mr. Tinkham describes the other buildings as he recalls them. On the National bank corner was the little yellow building (note: this was the Ingalls building) that stood on Second street in the rear of the bank for many years and was torn down about two years ago to make room for the O'Hara building. Where the cafe and bakery is now was then a machinery lot, the business operated by the late L.E. Fellows.

Across the street, on the corner, was the wooden Fuller building now used by Geo. Mallery for an ice house. It was sold by Fullers to Geo. Bradley and used for a drug store, later moved back when the present drug store was built by Mallery & White. In the location of the Sanitary Market was Thos. Power's tailor shop. On the Sasse lot Geo. Scofield soon after this built the present Enderby shop used then for a grocery store but later moved to the south end of the street. The combined residence and shoe store of S.B. Owen, of that day, is still a shoe store and a residence, John Andrews conducting the store and Mr. and Mrs. Aubrey Schultz occupying the residence. The Smith building dates back to about 1880 also, erected by Mr. Doner for a residence. On the lot where the Golden Rule stands in the early days was the little print and newspaper shop of Jake Hopp, where the News was started. Up on the corner of Third street was the Thos. Ruth bank, in a wooden structure that was later made a part of the present F.M. Andrews residence. Another building of these early days was the Couse store, which stood on the present Miller location. It was a wooden building of two stories and a half, and here Mr. and Mrs. E.H. Couse made their home for a year or so. The building is now part of the residence just south of the city plant.

Look! It's Fuller's Hardware Store, on the other side of Calumet!
- posted by pioneergirl at 11:41 PM

 
the golden rule

About 1908, Fred Brewer opened a variety store in De Smet, on the same lot where Mr. Power's tailor shop had once been located on the west side of Calumet. Tay Pay had sold his town property in 1886 and left for Ireland, perhaps in a huff over Mrs. Power's decision to build a house on Second Street and live in it. After a few months, however, Mr. Power returned to both De Smet and tailoring (and, one assumes, to Mrs. Power); he died in 1901.

Brewer's variety store was called The Golden Rule, and it is shown left of center in the above 1911 photograph. Brewer's name and the store name appear on the sign (trust me). To the right is the office of Dr. E. Gomer Davies (the one with the large light-colored awning), then a bit of the Loftus Store. To the left, you can see Charles Tinkham's furniture store, with the living quarters above. It was here that Laura Ingalls and Mary Power attended their first church sociable (see Little Town on the Prairie, Chapter 17).

Today, there are vacant lots where the furniture store and tailor shop once were. De Smet Flowers and Gifts is where the doctor's office was; the Loftus Store is still standing.

Was the tailor shop torn down prior to the above photo, or was The Golden Rule housed in the building from the 1880s?

If you look carefully at the photo above (you can really zoom in if you download the first biggie panoramic photograph of De Smet town buildings at the American Memory collection from the Library of Congress HERE; search for "De Smet, South Dakota"), you can see that the variety store seems to have quite the interesting facade. I haven't been able to draw it to make sense to me. It's almost like an optical illusion, it confuses me so. Where exactly was the door? The front wall? Are those stairs I see? Or was there merchandise on display out front that blocks part of the one step up to the door?


The only other place I can detect a funky facade along that part of Calumet is in the 1883 bird's-eye view of De Smet, a bit of which is shown above. The entire view can be found in John Miller's Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little Town, pages 20-21. Of course, we all know that drawing isn't all that accurate, and even Miller mentions the period newspaper article complaining that it left out piles of trash and a dead cow, among other things, but it was drawn remarkably well to have been done without benefit of flying over and taking a picture. Is that facade (I colored it yellow) all on the Power lot or the one next door? Is it supposed to represent two buildings on one lot? HERE is something else I saved while fooling around with it.

Maybe it's just a case of bad drafting, or maybe J.J. Stoner figured the funky tailor shop entrance would never be noticed on a trotting horse, but I've spent way too many hours of too many days wondering if the Brewer building and the Power building might be one and the same. It's definitely time for me to move on to the next tangent.
- posted by pioneergirl at 6:16 PM