Nineteenth Century Life

Nineteenth Century Life

Edith and I were born in the prior century—the nineteenth century. Things were quite a bit different than they are today. Kerosene lamps lit our homes. Our heat was generated from coal or wood burning stoves. There were no hard roads anywhere and there was no indoor plumbing. This was true not only in much of the city, but altogether on the farms. Electricity was a new thing and very few lines were spread; many towns did not have an electric plant. Telephones were scarce and used only in businesses. No farmers had phones, and what service was available was abominable. There was no privacy; everyone’s phone rang when yours did, so everybody listened in on the conversation, which became a favorite pastime. That day didn’t come, however, until somewhat later after our births.

Edith was born on the farm near McDowell, a crossroads marked by an elevator about nine or ten miles from Pontiac, Illinois.

It was a very special occasion when people hitched up the horse to the buggy and drove to town to the county seat. Often a farmer would never drive into town at all during the dead of winter from December until March. The constant cycle of thaw and freeze, thaw and freeze, turned the roads either into a quagmire or produced such sharp ruts that the horses’ hocks would be bleeding in no time.

The farmers prepared for winter as if they were being besieged by Indians. Each had a cellar, which some called a “storm” cellar, but actually it was for storage. It never froze in winter, and was the coolest place they could devise for summer. Sometimes this room would be built over a natural spring, and the water in the floor turned into a pool. Perishable foods were suspended over this water to be kept cool. In every cellar were eight or ten bushels of potatoes, rutabagas, beets, and dried onions. Of course, farmers would butcher a hog and smoke their own bacon; that would supply meat all during the winter. Sometimes a couple of farmers would get together to kill a yearling steer, divide the meat, and sell the hide. Mama had her chickens; two dairy cows in the barn gave them milk and butter, and the hog provided lard. There were no cooking oils—none were needed. Some folks dried herbs to be kept for seasoning. Every woman did her own baking of cornbread, bread, and biscuits. Flour came by the 50 pound sack, cornmeal by the 25 pound sack, and sugar was purchased anywhere from 50 to 100 pounds at a time. Other supplies were bought and stored in similar fashion. All the food raised was canned, put in the pantry in the proper order and labeled as to what the glass “cans” contained. Preserves, jellies and tomatoes; everything was put up very nicely. So these folks had fresh meat and poultry, milk to drink, and rich cream. Lots of times a mother would barter her eggs and butter to a grocer for coffee or things of that sort. Coffee beans arrived whole and every home had its grinder and ground its own coffee. Egg shells from the breakfast table were put into the pot to clarify the coffee; it was thought they absorbed some of the bitterness. Farmers lived well. Food was rich, but plain, and always plentiful.

Men plowed their fields with a team of horses, and reaped the grain with scythes. They shucked their corn right while it was standing in the field. A good shucker could keep two ears of corn in the air going into the wagon while he was shucking the third!

Water came from a pump out in the back yard. Sometimes the well sank ten feet deep, sometimes ninety feet deep. Drillers went down as far as necessary to get the water, which was cold, clear, and lovely. It was always good-tasting.

For washing, a barrel at the corner of the house caught rain water, which was very soft and was good for bathing, too. People were always careful to keep the chickens from roosting on that rain barrel! Someone would have to go out on a bitter cold morning with a tea kettle of hot water and pour it down the pump to thaw the ice so that the water could be pumped. Some farmers even built their houses with the kitchen over the wells so that the pump was on the inside. That was really up-to-date!

Saturday night was bath night. A big washtub was put out in the middle of the kitchen floor, a tea kettle heated, the tub filled with warm water, and the bathing started. First Mama, then Papa, and then the kids, until they all had a bath. The kids were really scrubbed. They used homemade soap which consisted of rendered meat fat combined with lye. It was mixed into an emulsion which would dry hard, and then be cut into cakes. Yes, farmers even made their own soap; the soap they scrubbed the floor with was the same soap they scrubbed themselves with.

The horseless carriage had just been invented and there were not yet any manufacturers of automobiles. The airplane did not yet exist. Kerosene had for only twenty-five years replaced tallow candles and sperm oil for illumination. The crowing of a big rooster or the mooing of a cow out in the barn waiting to be milked rolled you out of bed before daylight, and because of the poor lighting at night, and no newspaper or radio, people usually went to bed by 8:30 or 9:00 at the latest, except when it was hot in summer.

The country school had only one room where all eight grades were taught by one teacher. Attendance at school was controlled by the weather; if it was a nasty day, few children attended as kids in those days all walked to school, no matter how far the distance.

Home remedies included goose grease, kerosene, and turpentine. If you had the croup, you were given a teaspoon of kerosene with sugar in it. For a cold, your chest was lathered with goose grease and covered with a flannel bib. It never occurred to folks to cover their backs as well. Turpentine was used as an inhalant for nasal troubles.

Now you have a picture of how things were when Edith and I came into this world.

Lambert

Edith’s mother, as some of you will remember, was our beloved Mother Lambert. Her maiden name was Lizzie Brown, but everybody called her “Lib.” Now let Edith take up the story:

George Brown married Willie Ann Bell. Their seven boys and four girls were named: Alonzo, Charlie, Wally, Ella, Mattie, Elizabeth (Lizzie), Eddie, Harry, Estelle (called Stella), Willie, and Arthur.

My mother married Henry Lambert. He was 36 years old and Lizzie Brown, my mother, was 28. They were married on the twelfth day of January, 1893. I was born in 1896, on December the ninth.

Mattie Brown (Aunt Matt) married a man named Saul Allen, who owned a farm of 160 acres near Anchor in McLeanCounty. One of the other sisters, Ella, lived in Pontiac and married a man named Mortimer. Stella married a man named Cain and resided in Paxton. Many of the brothers died in infancy and it is not known who any of the others who survived ever married. The only brother I ever knew was Harry, who stayed with Aunt Matt as a hired hand for some years on the farm.

When I was born out on the farm (near McDowell) my mother was very sick, for weeks. She had what they called “Childbed Fever”, and they didn’t expect her to live. My Uncle Saul, Aunt Matt’s husband, went over to the farm and picked me up in just a little ol’ basket and took me over to Fairbury for my Aunt to take care of until my mother was all right.

My father died when I was eighteen months old. He died of pernicious anemia (a thinning of the blood). I guess they can cure it now.

Mother and I moved into town, into Pontiac. I had two (much older) half-sisters, as my father had been married before, who insisted my mother sell the farm so that they could have their money. With her third of the proceeds, Mother bought the house in Pontiac, which was on Henry Street. I don’t really know what happened to the sisters, other than they moved out west and one of them was killed in an airplane accident in California many years later.

When Uncle Saul died, Aunt Matt moved from Fairbury to Chicago so that her daughter could go to school up there, at UniversityHigh School in Hyde Park.

When I was six years old, (I remember being in first grade), we also moved up to Chicago and I attended CosminskyGrade School, located right near the University of Chicago. We lived at Drexall Avenue and 56th Street.

I was kind of a tomboy. My playmates were all girls, as far as I can remember; I don’t remember any boys, but we used to build bonfires in the vacant lot and bake potatoes, you know, and stuff like that. I had a little flat-runner sled, which we would hook on to the back of wagons and hitch a ride all over Hyde Park in the winter time. Oh yes, I was a terrible tomboy! When the lagoons in Jackson Park and WashingtonPark froze over, we went skating over there, or on the Midway, (the main street from the World’s Fair) which had been flooded for just that purpose. The parks put up big high toboggans. We couldn’t afford to rent a toboggan, so we would go up to the top of the steps and wait for an empty place on someone’s sled. Before they could take off we would jump on and ride down with them!

Mother worked as a practical nurse, and she worked awfully hard. I’m not sure how she got the jobs, but she worked for some awfully nice people. I remember one Jewish family, named Isaacs; oh they loved Mother. She was with them a long, long time. I don’t know if she had any training, she was just a practical nurse. She had to work, and we lived with my aunt and cousin. Then my cousin, Ruby Allen, went away to a girls school called Frances Scheimer. She later married, had two boys, and moved out to Kansas or someplace and I never saw her again.

I remember one time we were prowling around, and if we saw a big party, well we were always there to get a handout. One time we were scouting around, and there was a big long line over at the University chapel. We wanted to see what was going on, so we went in and followed the line around only to find the body of the President of the University, President Harper, who had died and was lying in state. We just stopped right there and looked. I know I got home late that night; I had to be home by six o’clock, or by dark. Boy, I got the hairbrush. Oh yes. My Auntie used the hairbrush on me, and you knew you had had it then, yes sir.

Aunt Matt didn’t work, but she had a farm down around GibsonCity. Finally after years, and after her daughter was married, she moved down and took charge of the farm. My mother and I used to go down there and visit in the summertime. It was about nine miles out of GibsonCity, about two hundred and forty acres.

My Grandmother Brown (Willie Ann) used to love to sit in the twilight and tell me stories as a child, about her life. As a girl, she lived on a plantation in Kentucky. Her father had slaves. She had her own little pony called ‘Rough ‘n Ready’. She had a little house all her own and the colored cook would bring out little cakes and pies to her little house for her.

Willie Ann’s father (Great-Grandfather Bell) married a girl whose family name was Bruce, however, her mother’s name is unknown to us. That is the extent of the knowledge we have of the different generations of Edith’s history.

Henry Lambert, (Edith’s father) had been married before he wed Elizabeth. Little is known of his first wife, except that by her he had two daughters, Georgia and Leora, half sisters to Edith. He owned a farm of 160 acres where they all lived together. While Edith was still a baby in arms, he died intestate. It was not long after he died when the older girls wanted their part of the inheritance, which, according to common law, gave them each one-third and Mother Lambert (considered a dower inheritor), one-third. Edith received nothing because her mother stood between her and her father as the inheritor. Edith doesn’t remember very much about her step-sisters.

Leora was quite crippled by arthritis and was confined to a wheelchair. Georgia married an automobile man in Texas and she was killed in an airplane in California.

I remember some of the details of that death. She was flying with a stunt pilotwhen the plane caught fire and she was so badly burned that she died. As we understood it, the stunt pilot was one of those pilots who flew in that famous picture Wings that Howard Hughes made.

All these previous generations of Edith’s family must have lived in and around Fairbury because there are two family plots in the FairburyCemetery. Henry Lambert’s grave is in the PattiCemetery just outside of Pontiac. On his plot are his two wives and one of his two sisters. Little is known about the sisters. It is also vaguely remembered that he had a brother who was in the newspaper business somewhere out in the Dakotas. We drew a blank on getting any further than that on Henry Lambert.

The farm having been sold and petition made, there was nothing to keep Elizabeth in that area any longer. Because of the schools, etcetera, she adjourned to Pontiac with her little girl, bought a residence on the fashionable south side of Pontiac and put her into SouthSideSchool. They attended the FirstMethodistChurch, about which (and its Sunday school) there will be more later.

As you will see, my family moved to Pontiac when the furniture store opened there, so that Edith and I arrived in Pontiac within a short time of each other although we were not destined to meet for quite some time.

I graduated from EnglewoodHigh School (my Grandmother lived in Englewood, and we had lived with her for a short while). We kind of moved around all over the place, because Mother didn’t have much money.

EnglewoodHigh School Graduation Program

January 25, 1917

Edith Lambert, Chicago, Illinois; Class Vice President.

Favorite saying “Walton.”

Miss L., do you desire your name to be spelled Edythe or Edith?

NameEdith Lambert

VirtueHair

WeaknessGiggle

AmbitionBillie Burke

RealizationQuinn

Edith Lambert and Grace Joy are going to Sargent’s after they have graduated. They are to be regular Gym teachers, just like Miss Klein.

V.P. of graduating class, E. is scribe of the Inter-Council and has been for the past three semesters. She was the Girls’ Athletic Editor of the E one year. With all this she has played Captain and Baseball for four years. She is a Senior Sponsor. Such is her record at Englewood.

In high school, I was so crazy about this gym teacher (Lillian Klein). She talked me into going out to Sargent in Boston, where she had gone to school. I was very athletic and loved games and such, and wanted so badly to go out to that women’s college. Mother said all right, and never objected to anything I wanted; she always went right along with me. She worked all the time I was in school.

I lived in the dormitory. She would send me a check every month and would always say, “Now take as much as you need but don’t overspend.” She trusted me with a blank check. Oh, she was wonderful to me. She never denied me anything.

Some years back, when Edith and I were returning from a vacation we passed BlackburnCollege. Edith sat bolt upright in the car and said, “Why, that’s where my mother went to school!” It is not known how long she attended, but it is safe to say that Lib received as good as or better an education than most girls of her time.

Mother Lambert was born in 1865, the last year of the Civil War. As she was the sixth child in a family of eleven, her mother must have been born around 1832 to 1835. That would place Grandma Bell back to about 1810 to 1815, and Great-Grandma Bruce back into the Eighteenth Century. It is reasonable to conclude that Edith’s American forebears, through her mother, go back to Revolutionary times.