Dutchess County Historical Society Yearbook Vol 018 1933

ones back and a piazza in front. They are either shingled or boarded and 'commonly painted." (p. 144).

"We are very deficient in gardens for we have neither taste nor time and, besides, the labour is too dear." (p. 144).

Firewood. The wood costs nothing. "One year with another I burn seventy loads, this is pretty nearly so many cords. Judge of the time and trouble it requires to fell it in the woods; to haul it home, either in wagons or sleighs; besides recutting it at the wood-pile, fit for the length of each chimney." (p. 144).

"I had almost forgot to mention our smoke-houses; without them we could not live. Each family smokes fully one-half their meat, fish, eels; in short, every thing we intend to preserve. For, besides the advantage of preservation, it greatly adds to the flavour of our food; it saves it besides from the flies." (pp. 144, 145).

"We have another convenienceo preserve our roots and vegetables in the winter, which we commonly call a Dutch cellar. It is built at the foot of a rising ground, which is dug through about eighteen feet long and six feet high. It is walled up about seven feet from the ground; then strongly roofed and covered with sods. The door always faces the south. There it never freezes, being under the ground. In these places we keep our apples, our turnips, cabbages, potatoes and pumpkins. The cellars which are under the houses are appropriated for cider, milk and butter; meat and various necessaries." (p. 145).

"There are but few people who are at any considerable distance from grist-mills; and that is a very great advantage, considering the prodigious quantity of flour which we and our cattle consume annually, for we seldom give them any grain but what is previously ground. I know a miller who has not the command of a very large district who yearly receives fourteen-hundred bushels of all kinds of grain, yet his toll is but the twelfth part." (pp. 145, 146).

Travel in winter. "The vehicles fit for that season are of two kinds, very similar to one another. They are in some respects the same: the first is for the pleasure of the family; the other for heavy labour; the one called sleighs; the other sleds. On these latter I have often carried forty bushels of wheat or the biggest log that can be hauled out of the woods, three feet wide by eighteen long. When the snow is good these sleds cannot be too heavily loaded. . . . The pleasure-sleigh is accommodated 52