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NEW LAND PIONEER: A DECKER FAMILY HISTORY By Chrystol (Holmes) Lindsey Previous Index Page 5 Pages Next
a corner filled with weeds and burdock and wild morning glories. Here she dug away with a will, running and hiding whenever she saw her father approaching. One day she heard him say to gentle grandmother, " Elizabeth, why do you let that child dig in the dirt of that corner? She has done a job of it." To which grandmother replied, "All the more shame to you for such a looking place." The little girl skipped away with a happy heart. Her mother was on her side." This, then , is the gentle Elizabeth who left her home in Morristown to pioneer with her husband in a harsh and uncompromising land. The gentle Elizabeth who gave her lace handkerchief in exchange for their toll fee. The gentle Elizabeth who gave birth to nine children, seven of them in the little log cabin on the mountain top, and most of them without benefit of a doctor as the first doctor came to the area in 1808. In her gentle strength, she insisted that her children be raised in the Presbyterian faith of her ancestors even though it would have been easier to attend church in her own community. In that article by Alice Diefendorfer, we again see the quit but strong Elizabeth who would defend her children, no matter what.
The hardy pioneers of Eminence carved prosperous farms of the forest and were almost entirely self- sustaining. The cleared land for a log cabin using the logs for both houses and out buildings. They burned away underbrush and planted their first seeds among the blacken stumps so as to harvest a first crop. This was needed to feed both themselves and what ever livestock they had that first year. The complete clearing of land came later. Their log cabin had wide board floors and hand-hewn beams, both held in place by wooden pegs. Handmade hinges and latches were on their doors. The shingles for the roof were made of by hand, slitting logs to the correct thickness. The windows were oil paper or skins. They cooked over and heated their cabins with a fireplace first made of stone, later made of handmade bricks using clay and straw. They had smoke houses to smoke and preserve their meat. Vegetables and fruit were dried in the summer and thus preseved for the long winters.
The Federal Census of the 1800, Schoarie County, New York, listes Peter Decker in the town of Bleinheim. In the New York State Census of 1825,
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