Keeping house at “Maplehurst”, when I look back now, was a full-time job. I often wonder how Mother, brought up as she had been in New York with a house full of servants, managed as wonderfully as she did. In the morning, Father was up first and built a fresh fire in the stove or opened the drafts and put on fresh coal if there were enough embers left to kindle with. Then Mother got up and always with her hair perfectly done and in a soft black dress, never an apron, started the breakfast. There was the coffee to grind in the old mill, the oatmeal to be put on the hottest lid, the breakfast table to be laid. My older sisters with smooth combed hair and bright gingham dresses were soon downstairs to help. By the time the coffee was boiled and the eggs ready, Father was up from the barn where he had gone to milk Molly and give her some hay. We all sat down together at the table, and there was a moment of silence while Father said “Oh, Lord, for what we are about to receive make us truly thankful.”

After breakfast each of us was given her task to do, and never was there a thought of running out in the cool of a summer morning until our work was done. There were the beds to be stripped and made (Mother always insisted on a complete stripping every day). The slops were to be carried out, some of us washed in bowl and pitcher in our room, and the oil lamps were to be filled and the glass chimneys washed until they sparkled. The sweeping twice a week of the straw matting that covered all the second floor bedrooms with wet tea leaves. The dusting, the tidying, and last but not least, the washing on Mondays in the soap stone tubs with the corrugated washboard. The washing seemed endless, for with six women the starched petticoats alone were an enormous task. Then came the ironing with the old, sad irons, which always seemed to me either too hot or too cool. How many times I burned my fingers testing them when I took them off the stove.

We never had any baking day as most country people did; we seemed to bake every day. Mother was really not too good a cook but her specialties were sponge cake made in a fluted ring or a spice raisin cake called “election cake” for some reason. It was rather heavy and chewy. Through the summer months the big copper preserving kettle was seldom off the stove. All the garden vegetables were put in mason jars, jams and jellies in glasses, and peach, pear, plum, cherry, strawberry preserves made a riot of color in their gleaming containers.

Miriam Church Peabody

To be continued….

This month’s memoir, courtesy of Gustavo Falla, current owner of “Maplehurst”, is one in a series we started last year. We welcome the remembrances of those who grew up here, or their parents, or grandparents, whatever the era, as well as written “attic treasures”.