Part Two of 1891 Home Remedies: Domestic Animals

Keeping chickens became popular for city and suburban dwellers a few years back. I knew a few ladies who had chickens in their large yards. In 1891 raising chickens was more than a fad. And Home Remedies had pages of illustrations and information on their care and treatment.

 No one wants me to write about the symptoms of chicken diseases! It is gross! But the treatments given include carbolic acid in water for cholera, sulfured butter for asthma, castor oil and burnt butter for fever, and brown sugar water for loss of feathers.

"Poultry Raisers' Egg Food Powder": Red pepper, powdered, 2 ounces; Allspice powdered, 4 ounces; Ginger powdered, 6 ounces. Mix by sifting. 1 tablespoon to be mixed with every pound of food, and fed 2 or 3 times a week. Also feed chopped-up fresh meat.

 "How to Doctor Sheep" included use of Epson salts, Jamaica ginger and peppermint for colic.

The most space was given for the care and treatment of horses. In 1891 horses were important and were causing environmental issues in urban areas. But within two decades they would be 'old technology.'

 "To man, whether as a civilized being or as a barbarian, no animal is more useful than the horse. The beauty, grace, and dignity of his noble creature, when in a properly developed state, are as marked as his utility. As an intelligent animal, he ranks next in scale to the dog, that other companion and fiend of man. Taking into consideration, then, his usefulness, his attractive appearance, and his intelligence, what is known of his history cannot prove unacceptable."

 How to Enliven an Old Horse.
1 ounce of oil of cloves
2 ounces oil of sassafras
1 ounce of oil of wintergreen
1 ounce tincture cantharides
5 ounces of alcohol
3 ounces of tincture of assfoetida
Mix well and give twelve drops daily in a pail of water

NOTE: I would not suggest actually using any of the home remedies presented in this book!

 "Remember that he who buys a horse needs a hundred eyes."

1891 Home Remedies

"The object of this volume is, to instruct every housekeeper and every owner of domestic animals in the use and applications of simple domestic remedies. It may be properly called a book of Self Instruction in the art of home doctoring. This work has been especially written to benefit and bless suffering humanity everywhere."

The Midwife's Revolt character Lizzie medicine bag held herbal cures, including Belladonna used in childbirth to dilate the cervix. But most medicinal herbs were less deadly.

I have a battered second edition of Home Remedies, passed down through my husband's family. It was first owned by James H. O'Dell and given to his son John H. O'Dell. Then it went to his daughter Laura and then to her son, my husband.
  

  

Sick room foods included chicken broth: Boil the dark meat of half a chicken in one quart of water with a little rice or barley Take off the fat and use as soon as the rice is well cooked. Add bits of brown toast.

Milk Porridge was made by boiling a quart of milk and adding one and a half tablespoons of flour, arrow root, or cornstarch wet in cold water. Salt to taste.

One recipe that has come down through my husband's family was Hot Lemonade! Lemonade was considered a sick room drink: Juice half a lemon, one teaspoon o sugar, one glass of water either hot or cold. Hot lemonade was used for colds.

"During the paroxysm dashing cold water in the face is a common remedy. To terminate the spasm and prevent its return give teaspoon doses of powdered alum. The syrup of squills is an old and tried remedy; give in 15 to 30 drops doses and repeat every 10 minutes until vomiting occurs. Seek out the cause if possible and remove it. It commonly lies in some dearrangement [sic] of the digestive organs."

According to A Modern Herbal, Squill "stimulates the bronchial mucous membrane and is given in bronchitis" and is used with other expectorants. It should not be over used, as it irritates the "gastro-intestinal mucous membrane" and can cause death in overdoses.

Alum was used to staunch bleeding, mixed with molasses to make cough syrup, mixed with water to relieve inflamed eyes, and used to cur pimples and prevent 'offensive sweating.'

Rules include "A Child should never be weaned during the warm weather in June, July or August." One wonders if that is because of a previous rule, "Not until a child is a year old should it be allowed any food except that of milk, and possibly a little cracker or bread, thoroughly soaked and softened." It was hard to keep milk from spoiling in warm weather.

Ginger tea was used to cure a cold or for bowel trouble, Sassafras tea was used to relieve dysentery and 'inflammation of the bladder. Peppermint oil on a lump of sugar or dissolved in water,was used for neuralgia, Cinnamon oil was applied to toothache. 

This little wonder book also has household tips and a section on keeping domestic animals healthy. That will be another post!

Meanwhile, Back in Braintree...

In 1818 Lizzie Boyleston prepares her dear friend Abigail Adams for burial. Together they had endured great hardships keeping their family farms going while their men were caught in Revolution--Abigail a 'widow to the cause' when her husband John Adams and their son John Quincy went to France, and Lizzie as a war widow. Lizzie was trained in herbal remedies and midwifery. The Midwife's Revolt by Jodi Daynard tells the story of their home front experience.

On June 16, 1775 Lizzie heard the noise of battle and walked to Penn's Hill to look down upon Boston Harbor. The British were attacking Boston. Abigail Adams and her son John Quincy were also drawn there, and the older woman befriends twenty-one-year-old Lizzie. In her first unladylike act of courage, Lizzie borrowed the Adams horse to ride into Boston and learn her husband's fate. He had been with Colonel Prescott, trying to take Bunker's Hill. It was Prescott who gave the famous command, "Don't fire until you see the whites of their eyes!" (To save gun powder!)

Making her way through Cambridge, Lizzie is shocked by carnage and suffering. She discovers the body of her beloved husband. Devastated, she loses all interest in life. But community was important in those distant days, and Abigail Adams and other neighbors bind together for support and succor. She rouses and becomes determined to make it on her own.

Abigail Adams from Remember the Ladies by Nancy Bekofske

Lizzie takes in Martha, daughter of Loyalists who returned to England, and her sister-in-law Eliza whose wealthy Loyalist parents disapprove of her involvement with an 'unsuitable attachment' that has led to pregnancy. Lizzie is attracted to Martha's brother; later Martha becomes attached to Lizzie's brother when he returns from sea. Meantime a stranger in town uses his charms on Lizzie.

Wooed by two men, Lizzie must determine if she can love again, and if so which man is worthy of her love. One of them may be a Loyalist spy. When two strange deaths show signs of belladonna poisoning, Liza decides to become a spy herself, dressing as a boy to infiltrate local pubs. The novel then focuses on a Loyalist plot to kill John Adams upon his return from France. A subplot about Eliza and her son will be spun off into Daynard's second novel in the series.

Daynard has done wonderful research. I had read Bunker Hill by Nathaniel Philbrick last year and thought of it while Lizzie looked down upon the battle in Boston. See my post at http://theliteratequilter.blogspot.com/2014/05/when-yankees-realized-they-had-declared.html
I had also read a lot of biographies on Abigail and John Adams and their son John Quincy in recent years. Daynard's Abigail seems quite reasonable a portrait. There are a few issues of characters or an event not being in keeping with their times. But why quibble over a few details? It was an engaging read.

I received a free e-book in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

The Midwife's Revolt
Jodi Daynard
Lake Union Publishing
ISBN:9781477828007
$14.95 paperback
Publication April 7, 2015

Romantic Outlaws: the Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and her Daughter Mary Shelly

1831 illustration from Frankenstein

"I can hardly describe to you the effect of these books. They produced in me an infinity of new images and feelings that sometimes raised me to ecstasy, but more frequently sunk me into the lowest dejection." Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, Chapter 15

I have struggled for days now, endeavoring to put my feelings into words. I read over 500 pages in four days, staying up late into the night, negligent of the time, enraptured by these people. And now four days have passed and I still cannot find my tongue--what language can frame the whirling images and restless feelings that trouble my dreams?

What can I do? Offer names, dates, and events to create thin, ghostly images without substance? Reduce passions and sufferings to a few scratches on a virtual page? It is impossible to limn the characters who lived and breathed in these pages with mere words. No! I must tell my impressions, how what I have read has brought out in my emotions, aroused my sensibilities.

+++++

Ah, the Romantic Era! The sublime art, the emotional music! The poetry and grand passions!

The Romantic Outlaws: Mary Wollstonecraft and her Daughter Mary Shelley was a compelling read. Charlotte Gordon presents parallel biographies of  Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley in alternating chapters.

These brilliant and iconoclastic women embraced ideals that made them social outcasts. They fell hard for men who broke their hearts. They both spent time as outcast, single mothers of illegitimate children. They believed--gasp--that women were equal to men in intelligence and potential; they eschewed the marriage market that sold women's love for four-in-hand carriages and a large pin allowance. They actually believed that women should work and earn their own support--they were against marriage--and they believed they had found soul-mates with whom they could share spiritual, intellectual, and sexual love.

Mary Wollstonecraft is known as the philosopher who first championed equal rights and opportunities for women. Her Letters Written From Sweden introduced a personal element into travel writing. (Robert Louis Stevenson took his battered copy with him to Samoa.) She had a brilliant mind, deep passions, and high ideals. She stayed in France during the revolution. After a torrid love affair ended badly she had to fend for herself and her daughter Fanny. William Godwin, a political reformer and novelist, came into her life. They were intellectual equals, philosophically compatible, and complete opposites in personality. Neither believed in marriage, but went through the formalities when Mary became pregnant. Five months later Mary Godwin (later Shelley) was born; her mother died from complications of childbirth leaving a bereaved husband and two daughters.

Mary Shelley was two years old when her father was visited by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, one of the first generation Romantic poets. Coleridge was well loved and told the girls spellbinding stories. After he returned to his home, Mary and her half-sister Fanny missed him. After their father remarried Coleridge visited again. The girls were sent to bed by their evil stepmother, but they surreptitiously crept back into their father's study to hear Coleridge recite The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.

The poem became imprinted on Mary's mind for life; its influence can be seen in her novel Frankenstein: the tormented outcasts, the suffering for sins against nature, the awesome settings of mountains, ice, and tumultuous seas.

At sixteen Mary fell in love with 21-year-old poet Percy Shelley. His father did not approve, so they ran away together. Theirs was the ideal Romantic romance, but it ended seven years later with Shelley's death.

I appreciated Gordon's setting them in context of the shifting cultural background, from Enlightenment, through the French Revolution, to the flowering of the Romantic era, and finally against the Victorian age. The book is well illustrated throughout with portraits of all the major players. I didn't have to Goggle them! The book was intellectual stimulating and told the stories of two great romances. It's the whole package.

I received a free ebook in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Romantic Outlaws: the extraordinary lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley
by Charlotte Gordon
Random House
Publication Date: April 28, 2015
ISBN: 9781400068425
$30.00 hard cover

Censored: The Book of Negro Spirituals

After finishing Song of Sorrows and reading how spirituals were neglected until the publication of The Book of American Negro Spirituals I wanted to revisit my 1926 printing of that work.

First published in 1925, it was edited and with an introduction by James Weldon Johnson and with musical arrangements by J. Rosamond Johnson.

My book has a battered cloth cover and a few loose pages. I paid $12.00 for it at an antique mall. The inside front pages are well marked. Most prominent are two stamps reading, "Property of the POW Camp Fort Devens, Mass."
A smaller stamp states, "Censored Fort Deven Mass." Someone has written the names and pages of the spirituals. The printed name Anne Epstein is written in fountain pen ink and in cursive the words "Parisian[sic] Libere, Samel [?]Oct. 10."

I researched the Fort Deven camp and found that during WWI it was the major East Coast induction center for soldiers. The 1918 flu epidemic started in Boston but within weeks reached the 50,000 soldiers stationed there and soon after the devastation began. As those soldiers traveled across the US they took the flu virus with them.
http://www.flu.gov/pandemic/history/1918/your_state/northeast/massachusetts/index.html

During WWII an internment camp for German and Italian aliens was created at Fort Devon. 22 of the men died there, and their graves are found on the campground.
https://lostinnewenglanddotcom.wordpress.com/2014/11/15/a-few-of-the-22-wwii-pows-at-fort-devensma/
http://gravestonecollector.blogspot.com/2014_10_01_archive.html

Why was a book of American Negro Spirituals censored and removed from the camp library?

According to James Weldon Johnson's introduction, the songs were the pure and spiritual expression of the slave's higher natures: "...you catch a spirit that is...something akin to majestic grandeur...always noble and their sentiment is always exalted. Never does their philosophy fall below the highest and purest motives of the heart."

Wheldon chaffed against the performance of the songs as art songs and believed that white singers could only sing them if they "felt" them, holding interpretations by Paul Robeson and Roland Hayes as ideals. Johnson addresses dialect and movement and their place as folk music.
Read more on Johnson's views at http://www.bartleby.com/269/1000.html

He says nothing to suggest they were veiled protest songs, hymns of hopeful release from their enslavement, a challenge to the status quo. Newer musicologists have other views about the slave songs.

I found the article Veiled Testimony Negro Spirituals and the Slave Experience by Professor John White at http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/slavery/JAS-1983.pdf and was interested in this quote and what Frederick Douglas thought about this music of his people, in his time:

"Writing in the Journal of Negro Education (October 1939) on 'The Social Implications of the Negro Spiritual', John Lovell, Jr, rejected the 'escapist' and purely religious reading of the slave spiritual. To Lovell, a black scholar, the spiritual was 'essentially social', a graphic and revealing record of slave resistance and earthly aspirations. Three themes, Lovell suggested, run through the songs: (1) the slave's desire for temporal freedom, as revealed in Frederick Douglass' remark that the spirituals were ' tones breathing the prayer and complaint of souls boiling over with the bitterest anguish. Every tone was a testimony against slavery '; (2) ' the slave's desire for justice in the judgment upon his betrayers which some might call revenge '; and (3) read correctly, they formulated the slave's tactic of battle, the strategy by which he expected to gain an eminent future'. The spiritual, then, conveyed physical and metaphysical resistance to enslavement, as witnessed by such lines as : ' My Lord delivered Daniel... Why can't He deliver me?' or 'We'll Soon Be Free'. These songs were 'the slave's description of his environment', and 'the key to his revolutionary sentiments...his desire to fly to free territory '.

In this context, these song's messages would have been a succor to the interned aliens of the Fort Deven camp. Is this why the book was censored and removed?

I have not found a clear understanding of the Parisen Libere Oct. 10. Some mysteries are harder to solve.

The music by J. Rosamond Johnson in this volume are arrangements for piano accompaniment and solo voice. The words retain some of the original dialect and pronunciation discussed in Johnson's introduction.

This music is a far cry from Lucy McKim Garrison's settings; here is her Roll, Jordan, Roll:

My brudder^* sittin' on de tree of life,
An' he yearde when Jordan roll;
Roll, Jordan, Roll, Jordan, Roll, Jordan, roll!
O march de angel march,
O march de angel march;
O my soul arise in Heaven, Lord,
For to yearde when Jordan roll. 

 Little chil'en, learn to fear de Lord,
And let your days be long;
Roll, Jordan, & etc.

O, let no false nor spiteful word
Be found upon your tongue;
Roll, Jordan, &c.

        * Parson Fuller, Deacon Henshaw, Brudder Mosey, Massa Linkum, &c.

        [This spiritual probably extends from South Carolina to Florida, and is one of the best known and noblest of the songs.] http://docsouth.unc.edu/church/allen/allen.html

Here is the version in 1925:

McKim's Nobody Knows The Trouble I've Had:

[Nobody knows de trouble I've had,^*
Nobody knows but Jesus,
Nobody knows de trouble I've had,
(Sing) Glory hallelu!

One morning I was a-walking down, O yes, Lord!
I saw some berries a-hanging down, O yes, Lord!]

I pick de berry and I suck de juice, O yes, Lord!
Just as sweet as the honey in de comb, O yes, Lord!

Sometimes I'm up, sometimes I'm down,
Sometimes I'm almost on de groun'.

What make ole Satan hate me so?
Because he got me once and he let me go.

        Variation on St. Helena Id.

[O yes, Lord! I saw some berries hanging down.]

        * I see.

[This song was a favorite in the colored schools of Charleston in 1865; it has since that time spread to the Sea Islands, where it is now sung with the variation noted above. An independent transcription of this melody, sent from Florida by Lt. Col. Apthorp, differed only in the ictus of certain measures, as has also been noted above. The third verse was furnished by Lt. Col. Apthorp. Once when there had been a good deal of ill feeling excited, and trouble was apprehended, owing to the uncertain action of Government in regard to the confiscated lands on the Sea Islands, Gen. Howard was called upon to address the colored people earnestly and even severely. Sympathizing with them, however, he could not speak to his own satisfaction; and to relieve their minds of the ever-present sense of injustice, and prepare them to listen, he asked them to sing. Immediately an old woman on the outskirts of the meeting began "Nobody knows the trouble I've had," and the whole audience joined in. The General was so affected by the plaintive words and melody, that he found himself melting into tears and quite unable to maintain his official sternness.]

http://docsouth.unc.edu/church/allen/allen.html

And the 1925 version:

Here is the 1925 Go Down, Moses:

And Gimme That Ol'-Time Religion:

Gimme Dat Ol'-Time Religion (3x)
It's good enough for me.
It was good for Hebrew Children, (3x)
An' it's good enough for me.
It will do when de world's on fiah (3x)
and it's good enough for me.

Deep River was dedicated to Booker T. Washington.

Deep river, my home is over Jordon,
Deep river, Lord,
I want to cross over into campground,
Lord, I want to cross over into campground,
I want to cross over into campground.
Oh chillun, Oh don't you want to go to that gospel feast,
that promised land, that land, where all is peace?
Walk into heaven, and take my seat,
And cast my grown at Jesus feet, Lord,
I want to cross over into campground.

Most of the songs in Johnson's collection are different from those in McKim's. But today we sing songs from both collections. I had no idea of the history behind the spirituals we sang when I was a girl and no awareness of how recently they had become mainstream. Now I understand that they are the roots of American music.

Abe Lincoln, Animal Lover

Abe and Fido by Matthew Algeo is the charming tale of Abraham Lincoln's life long love of animals. Fido, his big eared, short tailed, 'yaller' dog became a national sensation after Lincoln was elected president, a home town fixture and community pet until his tragic death.

Since the time of Lincoln's presidency, friends and neighbors told stories of his soft heart concerning animals. The tales range from Lincoln's replacing baby birds into their nests to getting down in the mud to pull a pig out from under a fence. He had a special love of 'yallar dogs' and cats. He fed one cat at the dining table, with the White House gold tableware! Mary was not so pleased. She was afraid of dogs, which was reasonable at the time: they could bring rabies, fleas, ticks, disease to her beloved sons...and dirty the house. Lincoln was an excellent horseman, a necessity for a country lawyer who had to travel for his business.

Algeo places Lincoln's actions against his times.

Farm animals were sources of food, slaughtered by hand on family farms. Some dogs were bred for specific purposes and were prized, but all other 'mutts' were routinely, viscously, killed for public protection against disease and for population control. There were no veterinarians, no preventative vaccinations, no special foods for pets.

Fido came into Lincoln's life by 1855 when he was at a low point in his career and deeply depressed. By the end of the year Lincoln's "hypo" was better and he was reentering politics. Based on current research on the effects of animal companions on human well being, it is possible that Fido offered Lincoln much needed therapy.

The newly elected President Lincoln, planning his family relocation to Washington, D.C., choose to leave behind his beloved animal companion. Fido had been having a hard time dealing with all the noisy campaign activity around the Lincoln household. The boys and Abe loved the dog but Abe knew Fido would suffer during the long trip to D.C. and in the hectic White House life style. Fido deserved to live out his life in peace and familiar surroundings. His son's boyhood friends took Fido in....along with Fido's favorite horsehair couch!

We also learn about Lincoln's relationship to his family and neighbors, like his long friendship with his free African American barber William Florville who marched in the funeral parade. As did Old Bob, his horse who was also left behind in Springfield. Old Bob was draped in black mourning, and the riderless horse followed the hearse.

Abe and Fido is an enjoyable read. It will appeal to all animal lovers, Lincoln lovers, and those interested in 19th c history.

I thank NetGalley and Chicago Review Press for access to the e-book for a fair and unbiased review.

Abe and Fido
by Matthew Algeo
Chicago Review Press
Publication date April 15, 2015
ISBN: 9781556522222
$22.95 hardcover

• 
  

Songs of Sorrow: Lucy McKim Garrison and Slave Songs of the United States by Samuel Charters

Imagine traveling through a treacherous war zone, crossing the sea on a steamer to an unknown island. There is no pier and you are carried through the surf to the beach. The humidity and heat, the mosquitoes, are unlike anything you have ever experienced.

You see for the first time contraband slaves, ten thousand refugees without proper homes or food, but jubilant in their newfound freedom. You hear their songs, weird and otherworldly, in dialect foreign, so unlike the sentimental minstrel songs carried to the North. The plaintive Go Down, Moses with it's cry for freedom; The Lonesome Valley about the emotional preparation for baptism; Michael row the boat ashore; the upbeat Rock O' My Soul and Do Remember Me; Jacob's Ladder, Roll Jordon, Roll and The Stars Begin to Fall--sorrow songs of the plantations that today are well known but in 1861 had been dismissed by the denizens of the Plantation and were unheard by the general public of the North.

Samuel Charter's new book Songs of Sorrow: Lucy McKim Garrison and Slave Songs of the United States chronicles the brief life of McKim and her role in the first documentation of the songs of slavery.

In 1861 nineteen-year-old Lucy McKim left her home in Germantown, outside of Philadelphia, on the biggest journey of her life. Lucy's Abolitionist Quaker father James Miller McKim was head of the Philadelphia Port Royal Relief Committee and was chosen to visit Port Royal in South Carolina where former slaves had sought refuge. He was to report back on conditions. The freemen needed immediate aid and help to prepare them for their new reality. He asked Lucy to serve as his secretary.

The island was surrounded by Confederate troops. It was a dangerous journey. Lucy gloried in the adventure. She had trained in piano and classical music and taught piano students in Philadelphia. She was delaying marriage to "live for herself" first. An ardent Abolitionist, Lucy felt the constraints of her sex, her uselessness compared to what men could do.

Seeing face to face the suffering of the slaves Lucy wrote, "How lukewarm we have been! How little we know!" Encountering the music of the freemen was a revelation. Lucy heard their hopes and dreams, their sorrow and loss in the music. She recorded seeing two "shouts" and one "praise," religious gatherings of the contraband.

She copied down the songs she heard. Within months of returning home she had published Poor Rosy, Poor Gal. 

Poor Rosy, poor gal,
Poor Rosy, poor gal;
Rosy break my poor heart,
Heav'n shall be my home.

Lucy married Wendell Garrison, son of Abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison. (Her best friend Ellen Wright, niece of Abolitionist and Women's rights activist Lucretia Mott, married Wendell's brother Lloyd Garrison.)

During her first pregnancy Lucy worked to prepare the songs for publication, knowing that motherhood would preclude finishing her work. She was assisted by William Francis Allen and Charles Pickard Ware. Additional songs were collected by Thomas Wentworth Higginson (Emily Dickinson later sent her poems to him), Lucy Towne (who was trained in medicine and gave her life to educating the Port Royal freemen). This first collection of American slave songs was published in 1867.

Lucy's health declined with each pregnancy and miscarriage. She suffered from rheumatism and strokes. At the age of  34, paralyzed and unable to speak, Lucy refused food.

Charter's use of letters and diary entries brings Lucy to life. Lucy would be thrilled to know that the songs she recorded have become known to all Americans, and would be honored to have her brief life's work remembered in this biography.

Included is the full text of Songs of Slavery, complete with Lucy's musical adaptations and words to the songs, and with the introduction by William Francis Allen. Charters draws from Lucy's many letters and other documents, allowing her to come alive. Those interested in America's musical heritage and in women's history will enjoy reading it.

I received a free ebook through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Songs of Sorrow: Lucy McKim Garrison and Slave Songs of the United States
By Samuel Charters
University Press of Mississippi
American Made Music Series
Publication Date April 7, 2015
ISBN: 9781628462067
$55.00 hardcover