A Journey to Alabama - The Winter Months

A Warm Place to Stay

For weeks now, they have been traveling in rain, in heat, and now the cold. There was no way that they could be prepared and settled before winter.  The best they could hope for would be to find a settlement, a warm place to spend the winter. Setbacks had befallen them.  The wagon wheel has broken. The muddy trail, from all the rain, had slowed their movement to a crawl. But they were making good time now and knew that there was a town, a small settlement, but a town just the same somewhere nearby. And they knew there would be a warm bed to lay their heads.

At last, they found a town.  A small settlement. Loggers mainly, with a few women folk on farms here and there. They went to the sheriff and asked if there was a place where they could spend the cold weeks away from the ice and snow. It just so happened that a young couple, the birth of their child imminent, had headed back North to spend the winter months.  They had left their cabin with the sheriff to care for over the winter. The sheriff agreed they could stay there, as long as they would take care of the place and leave as soon as the weather warmed. They agreed and moved in quickly. 

It was a one-room cabin with one bed for Sarah and John Thomas.  Matthew would make a pallet on the floor.  There was a fireplace, a rough-hewn table, and four chairs. Matthew, being good with his hands, went to work quickly on a high chair for the baby, so when the family returned with their new youngun in tow, he would have a place to sit.  He might also make a little cradle depending on time.

It was a logging town, mainly men, Sarah was able to start taking in laundry.  This provided them with money to buy eggs, milk, flour, and cornmeal. Of course, they could always eat beans, although beans were the last thing they wanted after eating them every day of their journey. John Thomas and Matthew did some hunting, and a little fishing, when it wasn't too cold, to bring meat to the table. They also picked up odd jobs as farmhands, here and there around the community, doing what needed to be done. It was a quiet settlement, and they were safe and warm until they could resume their journey.

1st Christmas

John went out early and cut down a small fir tree. He placed it in the corner of the big room. Sarah had picked up a few acorns. She took some whitewash, tinted it with red berries and painted the nuts. When they had dried, she carefully strung them together with yarn. She then draped them on the tree. She had crochet a chain of yellow yarn and draped it around the tree with the acorns. Everything was beginning to look like Christmas. It wasn’t as fancy as the trees at home, but it was theirs. 

The town they had stopped in was small. There would be no shopping for store-bought presents this year. Sarah had been able to barter for a couple of pieces of nice tanned leather. She was going to make the boys billfolds. The trapper she had bartered with had also supplied her with sinew to sew the pieces together.  She had her awl to make the holes and a good knife to carve their initials in the outer pieces. It would be a simple gift, but something useful.

John Thomas was busy building a high chair for the new baby. It was the least he could do for the couple, allowing them to winter in their home.  He was a very talented craftsman, and this was good practice for the chair he would build for their child one day.

Dinner would be simple. The boys had caught a rabbit and Sarah had roasted it with some of the potatoes and carrots she had brought. She made a pan of cornbread dressing and cooked the dried beans she had brought from home. And of course, she had made one of her famous peach cobblers.  It was a simple meal, but the important thing was that they were together.  

The New Year

The beginning of the new year brought a renewed desire and urgency to get moving. A few weeks in, as the weather cleared, they packed up the wagon and said their goodbyes to the many new friends they had made in town. They had only been here a little over a month, but the town folk were welcoming and caring.

They still had a way to go south, before turning west. The weather was still cold, but the snow was behind them.  They had traveled down the east coast, avoiding the mountains for the most part. But now they were turning south-west across the tip of the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Coosa Valley.  A few roads were being built that they could travel and it would make it a little quicker going. Traveling through the mountains, even just the tip, would be slow. But if they were going to be in their new home before planting, they needed to go.