A 'Soft Sunday Hush, the Distant Humming of Bees, the Sleepy Twitter of Birds' — Sunday Mornings at Church, 1892

Sarah Eva Howe recalls the beauty of the recently renovated Carrollton Methodist Episcopal Church South (1891-1892), where her parents, uncles, aunts, and grandparents contributed much time and considerable resources over the years. Her description of a typical Sunday service includes words and rituals still in use today at Methodist churches today.

 ***********************

The church was all done over around this time ... This is as good a place as any to tell about how beautiful it looked. The organ, that first year we were there ... was in the back part of the church up against the window, where the entry is now. There

was a door on each side, and through those doors decorously passed the members, divided into two groups, those who went up to the left side and those who went up the right side. That is where that cleavage started, which continued with us children even when both doors emptied into the same entry. Still, like the lemmings in Norway, we turned to the two staircases, just the same, tho we couldn’t go thru the wall, where the doors had been bricked up.

If the doors as they are now are typical ... the other way was also typical of the intense

One of the windows installed in 1891-1892

sectarianism of the time, for “never the twain should meet.” Many of the members upstairs had not been on the other side of the auditorium from theirs for many a day. The Howes always sat on the side next to our house, the east, and were rather peeved when this window¹ was placed on the west side (tho they said nothing, but I used to sit and look at it and wonder about it). 

There is a beautiful window in the tower that no one ever sees now; it is never lighted from the inside at night, and of course no one looks at it from inside by day. In those days, tho, the tower door was open more often than not, so we could see it. I have stood by the bell rope (which went on downstairs when Frank Whitehead, the colored sexton — you remember him — rang the bell at 8:30, at 9:00, at 10:30, at 10:45 and a few daps at 10:55 and so on for all services on Sunday. ... The [wall]paper was brown (so as not to show dirt I imagine) and it worried me because there was a false alcove on the flat wall behind the pulpit; that is, there was the shaded appearance of one in the pattern of the plain paper. I have traced that alcove hundreds of times with my eyes, wishing that just once I could step inside it. I have now, for the organ and the rooms behind it have been put there, so that when I go in, I have a sort of “Back of the North Wind” feeling.

Before the organ was moved up there, the church was very square and flat, with rows of seats on each side making the “Amen Corner” where older people, slightly deaf or extra devout, would sit. When the organ was put there after the revolutionary door closing at the rear, all that was changed was that instead of two amen corners, there was just one — the choir sat facing the preacher sideways, on a slightly raised platform, on three or four benches set one behind the other. (No one ever sat on the front one unless there was a revival and an extra big choir.) 

Carrollton Methodist Episcopal Church circa 1895

You don’t remember the organ, which is now in the Ghent church, but it was a Pilcher organ and had a lovely tone when Mama played it! Mr. Pilcher supervised its “moving up,” and Mama became acquainted with him, as she was just taking over the organ then. (I am pretty sure now this was in 1891.) He showed Mama a little about the pedals, which so thrilled her; she was always trying them out after that — but always afraid she would step on the wrong one!

The floor was bare, but there was a strip of Brussels carpet up each aisle. One pew, I forget whose, had a strip of red carpet under it and a cushion on it; the lady there had said she was cold! We regarded this as the height of effeminacy, tho we didn’t consciously call it that. As to kneeling benches, of course, we had none; all except the sick, the hardened, strangers, or the fashionable (or perhaps infirm or old) knelt facing the pew. There was carpet on the double platform (one smaller, on a larger one) in which the pulpit stood, surrounded by the altar rail, at which we knelt for communion, and for prayers at different meetings. Tho there was no outward altar, I know that in the hearts of people like my father and many others there was surely an invisible one, before which they knelt at this rail. ...

However, the drabness of the church was transformed and glorified by the sunlight pouring thru the lovely windows, eight of them, and three at the back of the church. I’m inclined to think those were there always, tho the other windows were frosted white glass when we came. ...

I can close my eyes now and go back to that summer Sunday morning of 1892, with the lovely windows opened to let in the soft air (also bees and an occasional bird) and the scents from the flowers (at our house and yard) and the grass of the old, sweet churchyard, and the wild roses. There was a soft Sunday hush over everything, just the distant humming of bees (there was probably always a swarm in the tower, along with the pigeon’s nests) and the sleepy twitter of birds, then the soft drone of the preacher’s voice, or the organ music in the “voluntary,” “offertory” or “processional.” We had probably sung “Welcome, Delightful Morn” and meant it with our whole hearts. 

Then the “opening hymn” standing and the second hymn sitting (or the other way about, perhaps), then the prayer (ten minutes at least, and were those who came in and had to be seated after the prayer looked on with critical eyes!). Then the anthem, the lesson read by the preacher, the announcements, sometimes made by Uncle Will,² a second hymn (sitting), the collection, while Mama played an “offertory,” then the sermon. The Gloria Patri was only sung on special occasions, generally to take the place of the Doxology which otherwise closed the service (plus the benediction). However, a good many ministers called for a final hymn, in which they “opened the doors of the church,” sometimes they sang one verse after another of this if it looked like more were coming, and some ministers had another prayer after the sermon, which could last another ten minutes. 

We never recited the Apostle’s Creed — it was just something on the back of the Sunday school magazines and in the back of the songbooks; it was just as well, for if anyone had mentioned The Holy Catholic Church³ at that time in our pews, half the congregation would have wailed in horror.

The “lesson” was generally quite lengthy, for they read the old and new testament lessons both, often from Deuteronomy and Romans, or Leviticus and Hebrews, and therefore hard for an eight-year-old to follow, tho I made a polite attempt, generally, but fell over against Mama’s shoulder midway.

Afterwards, we met ... in the back of the church, and then went home to such a good tho easily prepared dinner — sometimes taking company, or perhaps a whole family would eat at a brother’s or sister’s house and “spend the day,” or if the Presiding Elder was there, all would vie in inviting him home. He was “Brother” Vaughn for four years. (They told me afterwards to call him “Dr.” It was the first time I had known you could call a preacher that!) We almost always had a beef roast for dinner. Papa was felt to be extravagant in paying 40 cents for his, but we used it in “sliced cold roast beef” for three meals at least afterwards. ... He could slice it right across in such thin, lovely slices — he was an artistic carver. 

***********************

¹Possibly the new stained glass window contributed by brothers William Ficklin Howe, Joseph Brown Howe, and Robert James Howe. William was married to Louisiana "Lou" Winslow, sister of William Beverly Winslow, who with his brother George Bohrum Winslow was instrumental in organizing the purchase and installation of new windows for the church in 1891-1892. (Source: Our Church: A History of the Carrollton United Methodist Church by Hallie Masterson)
²William Ficklin Howe, brother of Sarah's father
³In the Apostle's Creed,"catholic" is not capitalized; it means "universal."

Images courtesy Carrollton United Methodist Church, Carrollton, Kentucky.

1890-1893: Sarah's First Years at School Prove to be No Match for Her Precocious, Inquisitive Nature

Perfect timing! In the jumble of loose pages I'm transcribing, I've come across Sarah Eva Howe's story of her first days at Carrollton School in 1890, plus a few episodes from Grades 2 and 3 as well.

Names are in bold to help family historians find them. As always, ellipses indicate missing or omitted words, and brackets enclose my own comments or clarifications.

*************************

School Year 1890-91 — Memories of Carrollton Classmates
I started to school in September of 1890, in Miss Sue Foster’s room. She had two grades,

Sarah before starting school, age 5

the “card class,” beginners who learned a word at a time from cards held up before them, and the First Reader, into which I was put. So I suppose I could read some and spell and “figger” tho it is hazy in my mind, for Mama read aloud so much to me I can’t remember just when I “flowered into reading” for myself. But I do know that she was already reading fairly advanced children’s books to me and that Mother Goose was so far behind that it seemed a memory.

Jenne Howe¹ was in my grade, and Mildred Goslee, with whom I had already become acquainted. I believe Jenne had started after Christmas [1889?] when she became seven, but a spell of illness either of herself or in the family prevented her from going full time, so she began again with me. The same was true of Mildred, who was a full year older than I (except for ten months). It wasn’t long before we three started walking to and from school most of the time together, and thus began our long friendship, into which Lida Hafford, whose sister married Jenne’s Uncle George² about that time, came a year or so later, tho she was at least two years ahead of us in school. 

Mildred was “kin” too, of course, being Aunt Sallie Goslee Howe’s³ half sister, and around there most of the time; we lived with Uncle Joe⁴ and Aunt Sallie for the first year and a half of our stay in Carrollton. I used to go around to Mildred’s to play, of course; I remember staying to supper one night, when they had a Polish dish pirogues — I suppose you would spell it, tho we called it Pi-rog-ees. Since then I have learned that a pirogue is a boat, and as these were baked meat dumplings I suppose the submersible idea was there, but I didn’t know for sure. Anyway, they were delicious and probably indigestible, highly so, but I ate two or three of them, being away from the watchful parental eyes that even counted hot biscuits on me, and I don’t remember any ill effects. 

I also remember playing church upstairs in Mildred’s room; we refrained from actually playing “communion,” as we felt that wouldn’t be right; but we did play “love feast” and passed bread and water. Mildred was never a great hand to play dolls, her mother having had a succession of live babies, all of whom died young, for her to play with. Mildred still talked about Hugh, her brother who had died at about the same time and same age as Chandler — the twin boys she could remember, too, dying when they were a year old and she was about three or four. Roman Alexander Goslee, her older brother, lived there and went to school (he was in a much older grade than we, as he was about five or six years older and was in W. L.’s⁵ grade) and Levi Goslee (who was still a small child, about a year old when his father Dr. Goslee married Miss Mary Browinski a year from the death of Aunt Sallie’s and Levi’s mother) lived there too; also Mr. Charlie and Mr. Jim and “Sis Nan,” Aunt Sallie’s younger sister about twenty five or -six when I used to go there in 1890. Mr. Jim married Mamie Lindsay, of Ghent, “Aunt Puss” Gaines’s niece, that winter; she only lived a year. Charlie was much younger, he and Levi (he was the youngest) were about 15 and 18 when I first knew them, and Roman 13. Charlie Kipping⁶, tho I didn’t remember him till later, was in the grade with Roman and Levi (who had failed to pass a couple of times because of inattention to study) and 12-year-old Will Salyers5, who was really a year ahead of the other boys because his Aunt Ruth⁷ had taught him to read at home before starting to school. At this time they were probably in the 7th grade, as he graduated 5 years later in 1894, and there were only three years of high school — tho the 8th grade was really a high school year, as they began Latin and Algebra in it. It was taught by Miss Moreland and was a “humdinger.” Levi never went any further than this grade. Roman and Will went on and graduated together, and Charlie K., who took an extra year, graduated with John Howe⁸, who in ’90-’91 was in the 6th grade. I’m not sure which year Lille⁹ went to Science Hill, but she graduated in 1896, so I imagine she was still going to Carrollton Pubic School (then in the “New Building” out on 6th St., now torn down). 

I don’t remember that first year so very well, except that going was very irksome to me. I so much preferred the “literary pursuits” and conversation of home, the pleasant sunny room and hall of Grandfather’s house, and the lovely yard where that fall I found the grave of Aunt Sallie Froman’s¹⁰ little dog Trip and began decorating it with little pieces of marble picked up behind the tombstone cutters in the alley. I think it was that fall, too, that Aunt Sallie gave us the squirrel, which used to run about the room a good deal and up onto Papa’s shoulder. He got to be a good deal of trouble, tho, so I think we finally gave him back. I still wanted what I couldn’t have, a dog. Cats were out of the question except a staid old Tom who lived around the cellar and stable, a black-with-white-feet cat who was certainly no good as a pet. Aunt Sallie only tolerated him because he kept down the mouse population; all her family disliked cats — in the case of Mr. Jim, Roman and Mildred, it was really “Cat-Fear.” They turned pale and sick and had to leave the room when a cat came in.

School Year 1891-92 — McGuffey's Reader and Ray's Arithmetic
There was a school entertainment that winter of ’91-’92. I keep trying to remember things from it; Marie Butler sang again “The Loveliest Doll in the World.” I remember the tune well; and a boy and girl sang “The Little Green Peach” — “hard trials for them, too, Johnny Jones and his sister Sue and the peach of emerald hue, boo hoo, boo hoo!”  One of the hits was the “Ten Little Sunflowers” song. The children had caps of leaves around their faces, and as each one disappeared like the ten little Indians, the others carried on till only one was left. A little boy in my grade named Walter Meeks, such a cute, pesky little boy, and he brought down the house when he piped up in a treble that carried to the last rows, “One little sunflower blooming all alone. It had to go to bed, and then there was none!" Perhaps later more things may swim up from the “lost seas” about this show, which was given by the whole school, tho I don’t remember many high school students in it.

Carrollton School circa 1890. Sarah marked with an X the door used by students in the upper grades.

It is strange that I don’t remember more about my second year of school. Miss Ella Giltner¹¹ was my teacher, both in the 2nd and 3rd grades, but it doesn’t seem that anything special comes up out of that nine months, except it seems there were several spelling matches, my first experience with the “gentle artifices.” 

I remember feeling superior to strange little girls who were only starting; one child, Carrie Garriott, whose people had just moved to town from the country, was so agonizingly shy, was afraid to ask anything, even where the outdoor toilet was! She wore such big heavy shoes, and some of the little girls were laughing at her, tho her father owned a big farm and had just bought a big house. I wish I could say that I rushed up to her and befriended her against the world, but I’m afraid I did nothing of the sort, but I did feel sorry for her and I think spoke to her as soon as anyone did. I met her the next Sunday at Sunday school, as they were devoted Methodists, and she was soon one of us, tho as long as I knew her she never quite knew how to dress, as to style or color. She is quite well to do now, lives in Princeton, Ky., and her son attended the University of Kentucky, tho I never knew which boy he was. 

Stella Carrico (Paul’s aunt, I feel sure) came to school that year, and a pale slim shy little girl with a long plait named Pearl Delane. Jim Webster was in my grade and used to come by and walk to school (and sometimes from school) with me. He was a slim pale person too, very studious, in fact perfection in his studies, tho he had adenoids and couldn’t read aloud as I could (that was my strong point, with spelling). 

Hugh Caldwell, brother of Henry but without his charm or red hair, was in the class, Jenne and Mildred (Lida, about two years older, was already in the fifth grade), Albert Whitehead, and, I think, John Dufour from Prestonsville. . . . Oh yes, I believe Henry “my turn”Darling  was there and probably Carroll Gullion, for they were with me later, I know. One little girl from Locust, I believe, when asked her name, piped up “Dinky O’Banion.” I’ve never forgotten that; and I also remember a softened little girl named

Maud LeClere who was probably kin to Cousin Ruth Salyers’ grandmother of that name in Vevay. We used McGuffey’s Reader (and I wish I had it now!) and speller, and Ray's Arithmetic book one (all of them of detested memory). 

Miss Ella had two grades. She had too many children, it was hard to control them, and this year was not very interesting — no drawing, no handwork[?] games, no stories as the children have them now. We sang some songs, mostly patriotic ones, and learned one or two portions of Scripture to recite in unison. 

Truth compels me to admit, I stayed home on every pretext — bad weather, a slight cold, etc. — where the warmth and light and Mama’s devoted companionship, as well as the current cat (we always had one), plenty to eat, and books to look at, handle and read, were always on tap. Also let truth compel me to add that I led my class, nevertheless, in the report cards, only Jim Webster rivaling mine, with all his studious and faithful ways. What a pity, it seems now, not to have spared me that year, for I could easily have taken the third grade work. It might have changed my life, for I’d have been in the class with Effie, Velma, and Will Rowland, and at Mr. English’s for two years instead of one in High School, but then I would have missed the wonderful year with Lille Howe⁹, which really did a lot for me.


School Year 1892-93 —  Art and Poetry Get Sarah in Trouble!
About this time I had whooping cough, but it was a light case and I was able to make a good start in the 3rd grade with the same teacher, Miss Ella Giltner, who as I said had both grades in the same room. 

Now began the study of geography, much less interesting than is now given to small learners. But it was something I could “get my teeth in.” Also by this time I had flowered into reading. I was beginning to draw, too, and tho after the first poem about the “Two Little Mice” I didn’t attempt further effusions for a time, the germ was still there. 

I got into trouble, too, drawing in school. I made two cartoons (not knowing them by that name) which I considered quite brilliant, playing on the names of Jenne and Mildred; a little red goose, with a girl’s head, labeled “Mildred Red Goose” and a blue bovine, with a girl’s head also, labeled Jenn Cow — no offense was intended, just a pun on their names, for Papa and Mama often made quite a game of puns on all sorts of names, both of people and household objects. Mildred, having a fine sense of humor, giggled and enjoyed it, but Jenne saw no joke in it and got mad. She took the pictures to Miss Ella (also very deficient in humor) who chose to consider them defamatory and reprimanded me — yet, not so much for maligning my subjects as for drawing pictures in school hours instead of studying (and I was making straight A’s!). 

In all my attendance at school, I was never tardy, yet on a few occasions I did hear the second bell at 20 minutes after eight, but I was in my seat when the tardy bell sounded (imagine the rushing that entailed on small fat legs). ...

Books! They were the joy of my secret life, away from school (which I only tolerated), happily curled up in the hammock in summer, which they gave me for my ninth birthday, or before the fire in the winter. Mrs. Harry Winslow had a fine literary taste and bought all the fine children’s books, and was generous in lending them to me. I was nervous that year tho, probably from trying to gorge down too many ideas, and some stories would make me stay awake at night. Strangely enough, one of these was Alice in Wonderland, that classic, with its Blue Caterpillar, Lizard, Frog footman, cross duchesses, and queens, frightened instead of amusing me (the myths of the gorgon and other creatures never did — I wonder why?), and one night when I woke up and almost saw the baby turning into a pig I had such a spell that Mama said indignantly I had no business reading such a book! But I persevered, until the fright passed away, and the charm stole in and has remained ever after.

A great help in this was that on Christmas one of the books Grandma Cost sent me was

John Tenniel [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

The Nursery Alice (with a foreward, which Grandma didn’t read, saying it was for tots from nought to five, in words of one syllable! This to me, who knew all about “the helmet of invisibility”!). What Grandma had bought it for was the large colored pictures, and indeed they were wonderful, authentic “Tenniels” in color, just like the little black and white ones in the real book. After looking at them and hearing me explain in a vastly superior manner the real scenes so coyly dehydrated to one syllable for “0 to 5,” Mama actually began to enjoy the Mad Tea Party, the croquet match, the Eat Me & Drink Me sequences, and became quite a convert to Alice herself. Mama loved to read aloud (never got over it!) and together we enjoyed the Alcott books about this time, the more advanced ones, tho I never got over loving the “Under the Lilacs,” but now we read Little Women and Little Men, Jo’s Boys, Rose in Bloom, and Eight Cousins — then oh joy! Mrs. Winslow lent me Jack and Jill, which should really have come along about Under the Lilacs, but I loved it just the same.

So the last day of school came, and with it another damper to my artistic zeal — or poetic, rather. It was a perfect morning, so sunny, so full of promise that I was filled with “the spirit” in all directions. I got to school early and had brought some roses and other flowers, so arranged them on Miss Ella’s desk. (I even felt a surge of affection for her, tho I never liked her at all till years after, when I found she was a shy, fine person, really) (she is Lyter Donaldson’s cousin, you know, and Giltner Salyers’ own aunt). I made what I considered a really tricky arrangement, a bunch at each corner and roses carelessly scattered between as if just dropped there. And then I felt a poem coming on and wrote on the board:
“The sun is shining brightly
And sweetly sings the bird
To make the sweetest music
That ever we have heard
And merrily are leaping
The fishes in the pool
All things are trying their best to make
A happy day of school.”

(Not a masterpiece, but not bad either for a child of nine in the 3rd grade, on the spur of the moment.)

I imagined Miss Ella coming in and saying “Why, who has done all this?” But no, with her usual nervous intensity she immediately swept the flowers from the desk into the wastebasket, and taking an eraser, cleaned the board — she never even saw the poem! But the desk and board were now neat for the rest of the day. Then I realized the truth (dimly) that between the neat and the artistic temperaments there was “a great gulf fixed.”
 

**************************

Interested in reading more about Carrollton, Kentucky school days in the 1890s? Take a look at these posts:

Schoolhouse Revolution of 1896-1897 

Sarah's Bovine Encounter

War Ends, Romances Blossom, Hearts Break – Autumn 1899

Carrollton Seminary Roster, 1896 – Names, Names, Names!

The Evolution of Carrollton High School, 1880s-1890s (segment 3 in a general post)

The Lost Is Found! The Story of Carrollton School Continues

ENDNOTES
¹ Sarah's first cousin, daughter of her father's brother William Ficklin Howe (1846-1916) and Louisiana Winslow Howe (1852-1944)
² George B. Winslow, brother of Jenn's father William F. Howe; grandson of William Beverly Winslow (1814-1883) and Martha Jane Woolfork (1826-1905)
³ Sallie Goslee (1858-1934), likely a daughter of Levin E. Goslee and Elizabeth Welles
⁴ Sarah's paternal uncle Joseph Brown Howe (1857-1929); husband of Sallie Goslee
⁵ William Levi Salyers (1878-1944), who became Sarah's husband in 1905
⁶ Charles Kipping would later marry Sarah's sister, Leonora Alice Howe (1896-1967)
⁷ Ruth Salyers, older sister of Sarah's paternal grandfather Charles David Salyers (abt 1812-1874)
⁸ Sarah's first cousin John Junior Howe (1879-1939), son of William Ficklin Howe and Louisiana Winslow Howe
⁹ Lille M. Howe, daughter of William Ficklin Howe and Louisiana Winslow Howe
¹⁰ Sarah Varena "Sallie" Howe Froman (1862-1950), sister of Sarah's father Robert James Howe (1855-1910); wife of Carrollton businessman Herman M. "Mack" Froman (dates unknown)
¹¹ Likely a relative of Susie Giltner, who in 1886 in Carrollton married the first William Levi Salyers, son of Charles D. Salyers and paternal uncle of Sarah's husband of the same name

Inside Sarah's House – From Wallpaper to Parlor Stove, 1891

Sarah wrote this journal entry in the 1940s, recalling life inside her family's home at 4th and High in Carrollton in the 1890s.

***********

And now it is time to go into the house, as I remember it, not the day we moved but after we were settled in it inside a few weeks. I am not clear whether Uncle John Howe¹ died within the first few weeks after we moved in, or the next spring — I will have to look at his gravestone for the date when I go to Carrollton, but I think it was in October of ’91, soon after we moved. . . . 

Between the big front east room (which Papa and Mama decided to make their bedroom, tho later it became our parlor) and the three rooms on the other side, which ran straight

Typical heating stove of the time²

back in a row, was a wide hall; before we went in, at least some years before, there had been a back porch at the end of it, but before we moved it had been enclosed and was now a long narrow room, which we took for a dining room. Behind it was a small pantry with one window and an outside door, and this led to the kitchen, on the west side, which also had one outside door and a window. 

There was no back porch, which was a great inconvenience, as the pump was at a little distance from the door, also the cellar entrance — and there was no inside cellar door even in the floor, as in many houses was the case. In fact, it was just about as inconveniently arranged, run-down, badly repaired, and dark (because of the trees in front) an old place that you could imagine, and a perfectly adorable place to look at and to live in! Walter Scott wrote “Oh Caledonia, stern and wild, fit nurse for a poetic child” — this red house was neither stern or wild, but what a nurse it was for me (a poetic child). 

I know, though, it must have rather dismayed Mama, who had for a year and a half lived in the super equipped (for that day) Howe mansion, with no work to do but look after her own room and one little girl; but I think Papa fell in love with it at once. It belonged to Aunt Lou (whose father had left it to her).³ Papa wanted to buy it, but she wouldn’t sell it. However, she rented it to him for $12.00 a month⁴ (considered a good price, too!) for a place occupying 1/4 square. Later he paid $15.00 for several years, and I believe was paying 18 or 20 before he died, after she put on some repairs. But the early arrangement was that he would put on the repairs, and thus have the low rent.

One of Papa’s revolutionary acts, but I believe not till after a winter spent in two dark front rooms, was to have the two cedars cut down and the yard sodded — for of course the pine needles had effectually squashed any grass blades, even if they had been able to grown in the dark. I think he had the limbs trimmed off a good way up the trunks that first fall, then in a year or so had the trees cut clear down.  ...

Now as to where they placed the furniture in the house — I don’t remember what the [wall]paper was like, other than that it had some small flowers in blue on white in the square east room, and I think a kind of creamy flower paper in the parlor. We must have re-papered soon, for I remember a new paper in the back bedroom on the west side, small red flowers on cream yellow, which reminded me so much of the coral honeysuckle outside the window. There was a striped paper in the hall and dining room, I think. 

In the early 1940s, Sarah drew this floor plan based on memories of her childhood home. The house faced High Street (now Highland), and the front door is in the middle at the top of the drawing. The house apparently had 2 large rooms and an entry hall that led to a dining room, pantry, kitchen, and a bedroom. The room placement doesn't always match her descriptions because her parents changed the purposes of the rooms from time to time. The area to the right of the dining room is part of the yard. Notice the bed of "sweet peas" and the "back walk" leading to the "cistern" and around the back to the "cellar door."

In the parlor we had the lace curtains used on Price Hill⁵, and I don’t remember our having any in the east room while it was a bedroom; of course there were great outside shutters closed every night, and dark green shades — the windows were very old and had the original “snaps” to put them up and down (indescribable if you’ve never seen any) (they were not on ropes). On the east room was a Chinese matting in the summer — in fact, the carpets came up and matting went down as the seasons changed; in the winter the carpet from the parlor and dining room in Price Hill was used; it took both of them, as the room was so much larger, so in the east bedroom there was in winter just a light ingrain carpet.

In the hall and dining room was matting with the strips of the hall carpet from Price Hill laid through across them, and the kitchen was simply supposed to be a bare scrubbed floor, like most kitchens of that day, with small pieces of carpet in front of the stove and table. The fireplaces in the house were very tall but were not white — all were painted a dingy black. I think sometimes how beautifully the house could have been fixed in the modern restoration idea. The hearths were made of brick painted red and of course we had grate fires in every room except the dining room, where the gay little Franklin stove from Price Hill was placed but proved so inadequate that about 1896 we bought a larger one from Mr. Salyers⁶ hardware store, as much like it as possible. But until we bought the anthracite stove, we froze every winter. I well remember heating pillows at the fire to put against my back to temper the icy sheets. I called them my “pup arms.”

I think the anthracite stove came in about 1894. In the front, or east, bedroom we used the guest room furniture, with dark marble slabs (Tennessee marble) including the washstand which stood in the corner by the door, and we did have a big piece of “oilcloth” under this stand. In the parlor, of course, stood the velvet furniture, but still no piano!, tho that was the hope that beckoned always. Papa’s desk had been added to the furniture — I don’t know just when, but it was a bulky, beautiful thing tho not a bookcase affair, just a roll top with lots of drawers, but it was a shiny, beautifully grained red cedar and I certainly wish we had it today. (She sold it about 1909 to a man in Worthville who had a poultry business, I don’t remember his name, for $15.00.) There were two big cupboards in this room, which were all right for storage but awkward looking in a parlor; when we made it into a bedroom they were just the thing (it was one of these that Shakespeare, my cat, went into and got shut in for a day or so in 1904).

In the back bedroom was the bed and dresser and washstand with white marble top (we still have the dresser). My little red bed stood beside Mama’s in the east room, but Papa was already arranging to have long sides put to it instead of the slat sides that went up and down. Mama’s great pride was a new picture Papa had gotten her — five little pink pigs looking out of a barn window. This was the day of “lambrequins,” “lampmats” and “throws.” We had a “throw” at the end of the parlor mantel, made by Grandma Howe⁷, of white “scrim” embroidered in black silk. We also had nonchalantly thrown over several of the picture frames pieces of Spanish moss brought to Papa by Aunt Emily⁸, I believe, or perhaps it was from Grandma Howe’s niece Mrs. Sue Higbee, who lived in New Orleans. 

I know we didn’t have a Christmas tree that year. I got my Christmas presents not in the parlor but in the big front room, and I had a new doll — the first new one actually given to me. (Alice Leonora⁹ had been Aunt Lee’s¹⁰  before she was mine). Grandma Howe gave me this very blue-eyed, fair-haired doll, who had her mouth slightly open and her teeth showed. . . . I called her Janie. Mama made her some nice clothes, in her careful, meticulous, little stitches — always the perfectionist, she even finished the inside seams of the doll clothes, as she did mine. Alice, too, had a new outfit, and I really enjoyed my

Sarah's cousin Jenn Howe (1883-1957)

dolls that year, for Jenne Howe¹¹ liked to play dolls and used to come down sometimes and help dress and undress them. Aunt Emily sent me a small “valise” (suitcase was what it was, but we didn’t know it) made in Paris and sent her by that friend who always gave her these imported things such as the lovely “Emily Jane,” as we called her later (I just called her Emily). In this case were a pair of tiny stitched kid gloves, a little silk parasol with ivory handle, a lovely little feather fan, a scent bottle, powder puff, a little “chambrè,” pitcher and bowl, and a soap cup with a quarter-inch cake of soap in it! And a pair of red high heeled slippers and a pair of bronze high shoes with tassels! It is just unbelievable that such dainty things existed, made in Paris, too. I kept them very carefully, too, in spite of my ... taking them out and admiring them at intervals. ...

What happened to those French trinkets was that when Leonora¹² was a little girl of about three she used to cry to see them, and Philip Holmes and the little Dunaway boy and “Pling me” Orr used to come down and play with them, too, and throw them all around until most of them were lost. I think it was that Christmas, too, that I had the doll jewelry — it was perhaps in the same set, necklace, earrings, & watch, with tiny dull red sets (and the little nursing bottle with a long rubber tube that said on the box, I never forgot that, “Biberon poupée”). But the time was going fast when these toys meant so much to me, and books meant already so much. 

And public appearances were beginning to multiply, too, for I didn’t leave my histrionic prowess behind on Price Hill. The “Children’s Day exercises” very elaborately practiced for affairs, were occasions when I was asked to “speak a piece” or “recite” and even sometimes other churches, or union affairs, like Sunday school “country conventions” were on my schedule. Mama labored with me ...  to learn the words. “Stretch It a Little” was my star selection for a good while. It really was a good poem, tho I don’t know who wrote it. It ended like this:
Stretch it a little, oh girls and boys
With hearts overflowing with comfort and joys
See how far you can make it reach
Your cheerful word and your loving speech.

There were several more lines, but I forget them. The story was about a little girl and boy standing in the wind; she had a blanket and put it around him and said cheerfully that it would be all right, she would just “stretch it a little” to take him in. (I was generally supposed to recite this before they took up the collection.) 

************

¹ John Irvin Howe, brother of Sarah's father, died Oct. 25, 1891 in Carrollton.
² Image from antiquestoves.com
³ Louisiana Winslow Howe, wife of Sarah's paternal uncle William Ficklin Howe and daughter of William Beverly Winslow (1814-1883) and Martha Jane Woolfork (1826-1905)
⁴ $12 in the early 1890s equals the buying power of $332 today. $15 in those days equates to $415 now; $18 or $20 then is worth $498 or $553 today.
⁵ The neighborhood in Cincinnati where Sarah's family lived and later visited her maternal grandparents.
⁶ Charles D. Salyers, Sarah's future father-in-law
⁷ Sarah Brown Howe, Sarah's paternal grandmother, an Irish immigrant
⁸ Emily Berndorf, wife of Sarah's uncle John Irvin Howe
⁹Another of Sarah's dolls, which Sarah named for her mother Alice and her aunt
¹⁰ Ida Leonora/Lenora Cost
¹¹ Sarah's cousin who was born in 1883, the same year as Sarah
¹² Sarah's sister Leonora Alice Howe (1896-1967)

*******************************

The Ultimate Victorian Garden: Sarah Eva Howe Recalls the Trees, Vines, and Flowers at Her Childhood Home in 1891

Today we "stroll" with Sarah Eva Howe through the gardens of her family home at 4th and High (now Highland) in Carrollton, Kentucky.The Howe's yard provides a perfect example of Victorian-era

Columbine, popular in Victorian gardens

residential landscaping. Sarah's details about the lilacs, the columbine, the snapdragons, and other plants could be a guide to creating today's Victorian-style garden.

In the preceding books, I have told of our life in Cincinnati ... and described Carrollton as it was when we arrived, so now I can take up the Reminiscences where I left off and begin with the fall of 1891, when we really became Carrollton citizens and moved to the low brick house at the corner of 4th and High Streets — in our own home at last and one Papa was never to leave in his lifetime. Of course all was excitement to me at the thought of moving and of seeing the furniture that had been in storage brought out and placed in the square, rambling, low-ceiling rooms of the 75-year-old house in whose parlor, it was told us, Mrs. Benjamin Harrison had attended school as a girl.
The yard was so beautiful too, with trees and flowers. Mr. And Mrs. Fishback were flower lovers and had planted a number of flower beds; each was surrounded by a wooden contraption, a little fence, painted dark red; they had been in place a long time and were rotting next to the ground, so it didn’t take Papa long to pull them all out and make the flower beds more natural looking. 

The only fruit tree of any consequence was a big, gnarled crabapple tree on the side of the yard next to the church; ... and a healthy grape arbor which to

Sarah drew this plat of her childhood home as she recalled it in the mid-1940s.

Mama’s disappointment had catawba, or red, grapes — she being a city girl had always eaten Concords, mostly from a basket. For shrubs we had a wealth of unpruned, tangled syringa, which to my childish delight formed a natural green grotto close to the churchyard fence. Then there was a Rose of Sharon bush, and most lovely of all (in poor condition, tho, because of not being trimmed) a coral honeysuckle in a sort of wooden frame. And under the grape arbor were quantities of orange-colored July lilies.

There were some old rose bushes, but the prize one was at the corner of the yard — the 4th & High corner — and it had deep red, lovely roses all through the summer. Up against the house on the 4th St. or chimney side of the big front room (which stood by itself on the left side of the double wooden front door) was a yellow rose bush, which bloomed just in May and June, whose fragrance Leonora and I can remember yet — not single roses, nor really very full, but a lovely color. 

In the corner where the big room joined the rest of the house at the back was a very large single or nearly single “common” red-pink rose bush, very profuse in its spring bloom but soon over. Over the door which led from the front room to the side brick path (which went from the back door to the front, past the cistern, and clear around the big room to the front door) was an arbor covered with a huge honeysuckle vine, which I always think of when I hear “the woodbine whose fragrance shall cheer me no more.” For indeed the morn could be “gazed on” from that door, and it was an unforgettable sight. 

Part of the previous paragraph, in Sarah's handwriting

From the big front doors a sloping brick path led to very old (partly cracked) front steps and a big iron gate which shut with a satisfactory clang (unless you had your fingers in it as Leonora did once). On each side of this walk, semi-wild flowers sprang from narrow beds — columbine, verbenas, mostly a purplish crimson — they were so prolific they even spread at times across the brick walk — and a lovely slender sweetbrier rosebush, you hardly ever see them now, with tiny flowers like apple blossoms (being of course of the same family) and leaves that were more fragrant than the flowers. Violets grew in clumps all over the yard, in some places very large, but wild ones still; on the sunny, or southwest side was a broken down violet bed for sweet violets, which Mama hastened to have built back into shape and covered with a “sash,” and the plants once started there gave us sweet violets for at least four years of our stay there.

In the middle of the back yard was “the pit,” a luxury not at all uncommon in self-respecting homes (where there was of course no central heating), [for] plants and a great many house plants. These large trenches, built up with wood and fitted with shelf steps, could accommodate the largest oleander trees at the bottom, and tiny begonias at the top. On a pulley, the large glass sashes were opened and shut and over these were heavy wooden doors also on pulleys. As far as I ever heard, nothing was ever known to freeze in them.

When Leonora remembers the house, the glory of the place was the lilac bushes — but when we went there, I believe there was just one clump of rather aged bushes by the side

Lilacs similar to Sarah's description of those in the Howe's yard

of the house by the cellar door; almost all of the later bushes came from the shoots growing on the ground around this big old one. They (the flowers) were of a very light purple, and an indescribable fragrance. But I think it was probably 1892 before Papa and Mama began to make this yard a really notable garden and to begin accumulating lovely large plants with which the “pit” could be fitted in winter. In a bed in the back yard (on the side of the crabapple tree), in a too-shady place, were some spindling plants that Mama pulled up. She said those common old zinnias I don’t want them in my yard! It was many years and many transformations later before she changed her mind. There were cox combs in the big square bed in the front yard, red geraniums and loveliest of all, sweet Williams and a few snapdragons. But as the Fishbacks knew they were moving, they neglected the flowers in the summer, so when we moved in (on Sept. 8th), the yard was rather sad looking.

The most prominent features of the place I have left till last: two enormous cedar trees, very dark & gloomy looking, on each side of the front walk, with limbs growing clear down to the ground. Also in the front yard next to the courtyard fence was a locust tree — either the same one or its descendant was the one who received into its arms the top of the steeple when it was blown off in 1943. This locust, temperamental in the extreme, alternately leaving great bunches of fragrant blossoms in locust winter and littering up the yard with its early shedding leaves, and being either struck by lightning or having its limbs torn off in high winds, was continually in our conversation. We were always going to cut it down but never did. 

The churchyard fence, small enough to be climbed easily where it ran into our iron one, became higher as it ran back in the yard and on down the garden hill. Generally meticulously whitewashed by some . . . servitor, it was no whiter than the top of Grandpa Howe’s [word undecipherable; probably referring to a structure on her grandfather's lot which was in the next block], which was plainly visible above it from our side in the yard (we could see more of them from the bedroom window).

***************

Part 7: Sarah Eva Howe's Stroll Through 1890s Carrollton — Friends Who Lived in the Area of the County Courthouse

In this final chapter in the series, Sarah Eva Howe continues to recall her neighbors in the area bounded by Main, High (now Highland), Fourth, and Sixth.

As before, she is addressing her memoir to her daughter, Mary Alice Salyers Hays. Her references to "Dad" mean Mary Alice's father, William Levi Salyers. "Papa" is Sarah's own father, Robert James Howe.
                                                         ******************

Miss Kate and Miss Jinny[?] Eblen lived in the little double house next to the church, and they owned it and rented out the other side. When we came there, the brother of Miss Kate and his family lived there — he had two sons, Frank and Homer (and Homer was in my room at school), but not long after that several other families in succession lived in it — the Staples family, I believe, were next (you remember our Mary Hill married Lyter Staples — “Tuff” we called him? He worked for Dad and thus met Mary. 

Carroll County Courthouse circa 1890. Photo from Carroll County by Phyllis Codling McLaughlin (Arcadia Publishing, 2012); courtesy Darrell Maines.

The Court House, of course, took up the whole square from Court to Fifth; but just down on Court lived the Logeman family (whose mother was a Huhn, “Augie’s” daughter ...) and farther down the street was the engine house and near it was the blacksmith shop of the Logan brothers. (The city hall was built later on, during the nineties, also the band stand in the courthouse square, when “Prof. Gentry” organized a town band and gave concerts on summer nights (about ’92 or ’93).

On the other side of High Street between 4th and 5th, as I said, was a row of good brick houses. On the corner stood the McCann house; old Mr. Allen McCann, his wife and his sister (or sister-in-law) and a niece lived there. Mr. Baker’s fine new house came next; he had two children (had lost one boy), Rose and Pryor (who was about Dad’s age).

Next to this was the house where Mr. Will Winslow and his wife Kate, who was a Fayette County lady, lived; however, they left Carrollton about ’92, and Dr. Hiner and his family lived there for several years, not wanting to go to the rather dilapidated and far-out parsonage (tho they were there for a short while) on 7th Street. After they left, the Orr family came down from Ghent and settled there, living there for many years, either they or Mrs. Lee’s family (Mrs. Ora’s daughter).

Next lived the Glaubers – Mr. John and his mother and his two brothers, Fred and Henry, and his sister Bertha. (It was from them in ’93 that I got my longed-for first dig, Solon.)

I think the Sanders family was already living in the “Holmes” house. Next, Mrs. O’Donnell (for she had remarried) and the three daughters, Betty, Sallie and Lou (who was there about ’93). No, of course not! They didn’t move there till after the death of Dr. Meade; he was living there then. (I must find out where the Sanders family did live; Charlie K. will know.) Dr. Prentice Meade (for whom all the Prentices in the county, black and white, were named) was a very fine doctor, but when we came there he was at the end of his life — in fact, I believe he died about 1891, and a relative, Dr. Lyter Conn, took his practice but was never a really trusted doctor to the “best people,” tho many Lyters were named for him, including, I think, Lyter Donaldson! (He was someway kin to them, too, I believe. I must find out this connection.) Anyway, I don’t believe the Sanders family moved there till at least ’93 or ’94, but Dr. Homes married Bettie Sanders, and they were all living there when Philip was born in the summer of 1896.

On the corner of 5th & High lived, of course, the Donaldson family. I don’t know whether he was called “Judge” then or not. (His wife was Sue Giltner, aunt of Mr. Mike Giltner and Aunt Sue Salyers) and there were three boys and a girl, Velma. Lyter was born the year we came there.)

I am going to stop this installment of the history at the corner, before we cross to the Winslow house — because there will be so much to say about that! However, I am going to go back a square and tell of a few families who lived on 4th Street below the Baptist Church on both sides. Nearest to the Kellar house lived Mrs. Losey and her mother — Mr. Losey with Mrs. Losey, and Mrs. Winter and her little girl Malina, with Mrs. Williams, Mrs. Losey’s mother — it was a double house. Mr. Losey was the chief salesman of the men’s side of the store [Howe Brothers] and was bookkeeper as well in his “spare time.” Mrs. Losey was a fashionable dressmaker and had a little building for her shop erected at the side of the “old store.” They were all from Mississippi and had accents you could cut with a knife! It seems to me the Moormans[?] lived down there on that side (Miss Mary’s people) for a long time, and at the corner was a big livery stable. I know I should remember someone else down there, and probably will later.

On the other side, from the church on, there was built a small house used as the Baptist parsonage; below that lived the Welch family (one of the girls married John Clahue[?] and one [married] Henry, his brother); and in an identical house next to it lived Mike Grasmick and his wife. She was a fair-haired, retiring sort of person. . . . 

Also in one of the little houses lived Mr. & Mrs. Siersdorfer and her daughter Mary.  ...    They were very intelligent. They looked like Dutch people. The father was a cousin of the “show people” whose shop was on Main at Court. Somewhere along there lived the Lees, of which George, the father, was editor of the News, and Somers, the oldest boy, was Dad’s friend.

Louis M. and Margaret (Kurre) Siersdorfer. They married 7 June 1910, so that doesn't fit with Sarah's memory of the Siersdorfer family living "in one of the little houses" in the 1890s. In the 1900 U.S. Census, a Louis Siersdorfer is living with his mother and his brother John in a house between the Frammes and the Grobmyers and not far from the Donaldsons. Another household of Mrs. G. Siersdorfer and daughter Mary were neighbors of Mr. and Mrs. Mike Grasmick, the family Sarah mentioned. A genealogical mystery for another day. Photo contributed by Del Brophy and published in Carroll County by Phyllis Codling McLaughlin (Arcadia Publishing, 2012); used with permission.

*****************************

So abruptly end the pages of Sarah's neighborhood recollections. If you found your ancestors in one of the seven posts in this series, I'm glad. If your family was in Carrollton but is not accounted for in this series, please remember that Sarah was writing her memories of 50 years before. She no doubt forgot some of her neighbors of the 1890s and their precise locations.

Part 6: Sarah Eva Howe's Stroll Through 1890s Carrollton – in Her Own Neighborhood, Close to the Methodist and Baptist Churches

Today we continue down Third Street and then over to Fourth. You can follow Sarah using a modern map of Carrollton or the Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps of Carrollton in 1898. Please remember that Sarah is writing in the early 1940s, and her memories of dates and places may not always precisely match history.

******************

Down on Third Street, next to Mrs. Webster’s, lived the Beelers, Irish as the Isle itself and good Catholics. Miss Mary still lives there in the same house, I believe; I saw her not long ago. I believe her brother John is still living there too. They had a cow, and we sometimes used to get milk or cream from them. I am not sure the DeMints lived next door then or moved in afterwards in a small frame house sort of “on stilts.” Of course, the Howe home occupied the half square opposite, stretching halfway from High to Main and halfway from Third to Fourth, or to the alley, before you came to the church. I am not going to describe the place here but will do so when telling how it unfolded on my dazzled sight when we took up our residence in it.

At one side of it on Third was the big brick house (with nothing but a large bare room on the lower floor, which was afterwards the home of the famous Hutchinson family, colored, all of whom worked for our family in some capacity) belonging to the Masonic Lodge, where the entire upper floor was given over to Lodge doings. I went up there just once, I forget on what errand or pretext, but as I was as, as always, looking for animals I was disappointed in not finding any goat, or signs of one, as I had been led to expect.¹ Instead, a lot of ashes and dust and stuffy looking costumes were all that could be seen on a cursory inspection.

Next to this brick building was the Harrison home, Mr. & Mrs. Harrison, older people lived there, and Maggie Branham and her mother, who was the Harrison’s daughter. Maggie’s mother was DIVORCED from her husband, someone said in a whisper, and he had married again and lived on Main Street with his new wife, and kept Maggie’s brother Harry, while her mother took her. The father’s name was Ophalius Branham, yes, it was indeed — really grounds for divorce in itself, and he was generally called by it without much shortening, except by some of the men. There was a Harrison boy who had been Papa’s² friend, but he died. ... Theodore, I believe his name was. Maggie was about my age, Harry a little older, thinking of it, I imagine maybe he was named Harrison, Harry for short.

The home of Sarah's grandparents, John Howe and his second wife Jane Hopkins Bell Howe. Photo and caption from Carroll County by Phyllis Codling McLaughlin (Arcadia Publishing, 2012)

Gracefully leaping over Howe’s yard, or going in at the “churchyard gate” and under the summer kitchen porch and up the diagonal path by the ice house out by the side gate on the way to the church, and passing on High Street the house temporarily the home of the Haffords, we could see two houses on the corner of 4th and High, but only one had its front gate on High Street, a long low red house with a high wall terracing its yard, topped with an iron fence, and a large cedar tree on each side of the front walk. This was next to the Methodist Church and with it, the only occupant of the whole square on that side. Mr. & Mrs. Fishback lived there (of them more later on, for they were the ones who moved out when we moved in). The house opposite us, fronting on 4th St., was the home of a Swiss-German couple Jacob Keller and his wife Mary, and his sister Lizzie, a tiny squat picture book person who could have stepped out of an Alps prospectus — as indeed so could Jake and his wife. They had lived farther out in town, near the cemetery and near the Scheiffelbeins, who I suppose were Swiss, too — anyway, Papa and Uncle Joe³ used to play with the boys of the family right where both are now buried (as Uncle Joe said with real pleasure when we bought Papa’s lot), before that was part of the cemetery.

Jake’s [first?] wife died, and finally he induced Mary to come and keep house for him. (I suppose Lizzie hadn’t come to town then.) She trial marriaged him for a week or a month, I forgot which, then they invited the wedding guests (of whom Miss Hallie Masterson’s mother (and Miss Hallie) were counted, and I imagine perhaps the other neighbors (they didn’t know the Howes yet, as [the Kellers] lived so far out at that time), and Mary got the wedding supper, served the guests, cleaned up, then took off her apron and came in and was married (by a preacher, not a priest, for she, tho a Catholic, had neglected her connections and Jake was a rigid Protestant). She was a good neighbor and friend to my own Grandma Howe, living there even before Aunt Lizzie⁴ died.

Of course the Baptist Church was across from Mrs. Keller’s, with doors opening on High St. In the basement of this church (before it was rebuilt of course) was the Academy or private school which the Howe children, the Winslows, and Conns and others attended, and where I suppose Professor Joyeaux (who fell in love with Papa’s sister Lizzie), the French writing teacher, plied his trade. I saw a letter from him to Papa written after Aunt Lizzie died, in violet ink, that was really a beautiful thing, so exquisitely written, as became a teacher of the graphic arts.

Now on the side of the street we afterwards lived on, across from “our house,” were good looking brick buildings clear up the street to 5th; while on the other side, from 4th (after the church) to the corner were almost tumble-down little lonely frame houses, flush with the street, with a deep basement, dark and damp looking, beneath them, and long, rickety steps down — a small town is like that. In all my experience, those houses were never painted, nor ever occupied, of course, by “prosperity.” 

In the farthest house from the church lived a Catholic family, the Niemillers, a big family, too, in a small house, but they spread out some, for they were industrious and smart and soon had good jobs. Theodore, the oldest, as I said, drove the bus and horses back and forth from Worthville; it was a big affair, almost like a stagecoach, and very cold in winter when they put straw over the floor. 

The "bus" of that day probably looked much like this one, which was refurbished for use in the 1940s. (Farm Security Administration - Office of War Information Photograph Collection, Library of Congress)

The oldest girl married one of the Grobmeyer boys (not Ed or Cass’s family, but another cousin) and was the mother of Harold Tambrink’s wife, and “Bill” Grobmeier, remember him? Rebecca or “Becky” was a fine cook and housekeeper and worked for Mrs. Winslow5 for years from the time she was a little girl. She finally married Casper Feller, and they lived on 5th Street, you remember, next to “Grocery Ed Hill,” when we lived out there. One of the boys, Albert, married Maggie Donnelly, and Amelia, “Melie” as we called her, married and went to Cincinnati to live. I think her name is now “Majolinsky.” But they all grew up there on High Street. 



¹An inside joke among Masons is that a candidate for membership must "ride a goat" as part of an initiation or degree ritual. Freemasonry has never required any such thing, but members often make jokes about it to initiates prior to the ceremony.

²Sarah's father Robert James Howe (1855-1910)

³Sarah's paternal uncle William Ficklin Howe (1846-1916) 
⁴Sarah's paternal aunt Elizabeth M. Howe, who died in 1869 


     ************************ Coming next week: The final part of this series ************************



 

Part 5: Sarah Eva Howe's Stroll Through 1890s Carrollton; From "Way Out Past Seminary" to High and Main Streets

In Part 5 of Sarah Eva Howe's "Book of Recollections," Sarah recalls some families living beyond Seminar on 7th before returning to Main and High streets – the heart of old Carrollton, Kentucky. As always, my own comments are in brackets. All parentheses are Sarah's own.

And now I’ll just have to skip around, for when I get beyond the schoolhouse, it is unknown country of my early years. Stamp’s Store was the grocery where Jasper’s is now — Laura Stamp was a very little girl (she afterwards was my nurse when David was born). About ’91, the Garretts moved to town and came to our church, where we saw a lot of them — more about them later; they lived in a big house with large grounds on the other side of the big house where Mr. John Tharp lived for so long. In one of the houses along there lived the Allie Pulliams. ... ; further on lived Mr. Tate, a carpenter, very nice looking old man with a tiny VanDyke white beard, whose son Randall ... was a great baseball player. Miss Mary King and he were sweethearts at one time (opposed by James G. King¹. Then at last came the two-story frame in the big farmland that belonged to Grandpa King, of whom in those days I knew less than nothing! I don’t know just when they bought the place and moved to town, but I suppose it was almost 1890; and on the other side of the road (for the “street” had become a “road” a good deal further down toward town) was the Bridges place, a big house, a big farm, and a remarkable family. (More about them later.) The road led on down past the Blue Lick or “Lick Well” as everyone called it, to the river. 

As to 7th Street, from Seminary on out, it was more than unknown to me. Even in 1900 it was still “way out on 7th Street” to me and seemed an immense distance from the heart of town where most of our life went on. I will mention just two interesting families, one of which stayed out in town while the other moved down to Main Street before I really knew any of them. The first was the Marlette family, who seem to have moved out there from upper Main Street — as both George and Charlie worked at the woolen mill — and started a store. (“Artie’s” father it was who kept the store. They probably had French blood — they always had a voyageur-piratical look! — but they didn’t spell their name Marlette then. 

The other family came to Carrollton “way back there.” I don’t know whether they came direct from the old country there or not, but they were from Scotland, tho they had lived in Ireland for awhile, where Miss Lydia, the youngest, was born. Their name, of course, was Shaw. They lived in 1890 in the house where the McCrackens have lived on 7th Street for many years now. Mr. Shaw was, I imagine, brought to Carrollton by M. I. Barker, who with his family caused more speculation and conversation than almost anyone who came in. Mr. Barker, a huge man, gave a lot of people work and made a good deal of money himself. He used to go to Maine every summer to a camp, and from there about 1892 he brought the Maddox family — “Maddocks” I believe they spelled it. They took the house after the Shaws moved down to the big brick on Main Street a little up the street from the “Old Store.” The oldest Shaw, daughter Lizzie, married a Mr. Clark and was already separated from him and living at home when we came to town; she had a boy, Will, a tall, gangling youngster of about 12 or 14. Mary, the next daughter, had married John Lewis, the elder half-brother of George Lewis, who married Ida Booker, Josie King’s friend. Another daughter, Jennie Shaw, . . . studied music. ... Lydia [presumably another Shaw daughter] was “going with” Jim Goslee for a while.  ... 

Jennie was a member of the Methodist Church, as were all of her family except Miss Maggie (and by the way, I left her out in telling about the sisters; ...  She was the one who became matron of the orphanage at Anchorage), who was a strict Presbyterian. ... 

Well, with the exception of a few families I will speak of later who lived on these side streets toward the river (Kentucky) and a few out 4th Street near the factory, I have covered the town away from the waterfront and now, at last, have come to the place where we really lived, which will have to have a diagram all its own. [Unfortunately, I have found no diagram in Sarah's papers.] I will start with High Street [now Highland], leaving out Second, which by that time, mostly because of floods in '83 and '84, were so bad — was being vacated by all the families at all able to go elsewhere and was being known as “Frogtown” already, tho the Albert Jetts didn’t move for several years after 1890 from their big home back of Grandma Howe’s, not till after the funeral of their little boy James, which I well remember (I was about 8 years old, I guess, when he died). Dad [Sarah's husband, William Levi Salyers] was born in the house across the street from the Jetts, but by this time it was in pretty bad shape, and of course Grandad [Charles David Salyers] had moved “out in town” about 11 years before we came.

Here then is High and Main and intersections. I’ll take High Street first, as it will take up less time than the intensely interesting area of over-populous Main Street.

Portion of Sanborn Fire Insurance Map, Carrollton, Kentucky, 1898

Coming up the hill from the Kentucky River — only a ferry crossed it then, of course — the first large house was the one newly built on the highest part of that end of town — the Hafford house; but when we came, it was not yet finished, and the family were living in the house afterwards bought and now occupied by John Glauber[?], opposite the Methodist Church. Before the family was able to get into the new home, Mr. Hafford died of a heart attack as he was cleaning up the yard preparatory to moving the family in. This was another remarkable family, and as Mr. Hafford was pretty close kin to Granddad, you should know about them. Mrs. Hafford was a Malcolmson from back of Lamb[?] or near where the Lamsons lived; Mr. Hafford's Uncle or Cousin Eben, as the Salyers boys called him sometimes, was the son of one of the Lamson girls (Uncle Wallace’s sister or aunt, I’m not sure which, but Mrs. Adkinson, mother of Buford and Austin Sr., was another sister. I must ask Cousin Ed, but I believe Grandad’s mother was a first cousin of Mr. Hafford and the Adkinson boys’ mother. 

Mr. Hafford was a very just, fine man, tho he claimed to be an atheist follower of Tom Paine — an agnostic, rather. Mrs. Hafford was a woman of strong character, strong likes & hates, but devoted to her family and very shrewd to say the least, in a business deal.  ... The boys of the family, except Wilbur, the baby, had died young, one as a small child, another was drowned, and Will died of heart failure just a little while before his expected wedding day. The girls were all good looking; all were smart and given good educations, but Lida was the most brainy and talented of all. Julia married T. H. Karn of Owensboro and lived there many years. (Lida went to high school there and stayed with them.) They had one child, Hafford Karn, who died in his second summer on a visit to Carrollton. Except for Wilbur’s children, long after, he was the only grandchild of this large family. Lucy married George Winslow, but not till about 1892; Mary married Sid[?] Wood some time later; Nettie never married at all, nor did Flora; Nell and Linda both married rich elderly widowers with grown children. Wilbur married a Southern girl and became a specialist (eye ear etc.) and lives in Waycross, Georgia. But when we went to Carrollton he was a very small boy, Lida next older than he was, two years older than I, or eight years old, and Nell, next older, was about twelve.

That was certainly a lovely yard to play in, full of flowers and fruit trees, and especially fine apple trees. When Wilbur was able to pull a little wagon, he sold apples from his own tree, about 15 cents a dishpan full — the juiciest eating apples I ever ate.
 
Between the Hafford's new house and the church was a pasture, a steep hill going down just like the church yard does, with quite a big pond at the bottom. This used to freeze over, and lots of people went skating on it, tho most preferred “Winslow’s pond” farther up High Street. It made a good coasting place, too, but I didn’t believe I ever went on it; mostly little boys went there, and Mama was always afraid I’d get hurt.

Across from the Haffords on the other corner of 3rd and High lived Mrs. Webster and the boys, but before that Mrs. King and Mr. T.C. King and Ernest, their little boy, lived there (she died last year — her son Ernest, also dead, was the husband of Mary Masterson, who lived in Louisville). They were there just a little while after we came to live at Uncle Joe’s,² then the Websters moved in. Mr. Webster kept a grocery at the corner of 3rd & Main opposite Howe Bros. — of which more “anon.” Mrs. Webster was not (as I said a little previously in my narrative) the half-sister but the step-daughter of Mr. Lowe, the Englishman, I remembered afterwards.  ...  She had a little daughter, Cora, and she married Harry Grigsby, whose son Harry Jr.was Bob's³ good friend when he was in school and even afterwards in Lexington where Harry was in business.


                                ********************  To Be Continued  ********************

¹James Guthrie King, grandfather of Sarah's future husband William Levi Salyers
²Joseph Brown Howe, brother of William Levi Salyers
³Sarah's son Robert King Salyers (1907-1977)