Chapter 2 - Aunt Kate The Pioneer

Our Youngest Grandson Tate
This is the cutest picture so I posted it to make you smile.

More of Aunt Kate's Pioneer Story

Chapter 2

During all of these years the specter of poverty still followed closely. When apples were in season our school lunches consisted of the fruit and bread eaten without butter. I was the pilot of my family so seizing the ten pound lard bucket that held our lunches. I led the little fry to a nice quite spot remote from the eyes of the rest of the school. There we feasted joyfully without any remarks or curios glances to interfere with our pride or our digestion. 

During the first fifty years of my life I never knew anything but hard times. The only difference was that every once in so often times froze up so very solid that it seemed to me a battle axe was the only thing that might cause them to thaw. 

In 1879, my oldest sister Mary Delia Pillsbury, who had been housekeeper since my mother's death, was married and went to a home of her own. I tried to take her place and go to school also. But it was too much for me to do. We lived at least a mile and a half from the school house and by the time I had prepared breakfast, finished the housework, baked the apples for lunch, dressed myself decently for school and hurried to be on time, I was too tired to do justice to my studies. I went about six weeks of the fall term and then quit. 

It seemed queer to think of the studies I had in that one room mountain school in the 1870's. I don't know if there was a course of study or not because a pupil could take up or leave out anything he or she wished. But I think that all had to learn to read, spell, count and to write at it. Other subjects were their own choice. I took all the subjects usually included in a grammar school course and in addition I took Algebra, Geometry, Physiology, Philosophy, Botany and I read Astronomy. As there were no other pupils in school taking those subjects, it just depended on me, myself, whether or not I got anywhere with them. I think I must have had a streak of scholarly ambition, for the teachers said I did very well. 

It is with a heart full of gratitude that I look back to that fine group of men who were my teachers, and who made school life so interesting and pleasant for me. Namely: Mr. Swank, Mr. Wells, and Mr. Coulter. They knew how to arouse ambition in a student. I hope in the Great Beyond to which they have passed, they are still leading other pupils on to higher things.
(to be Continued)

Love,
Grammy T.