Totem Pole Tales-Trails Tales of Pioneer Settlers of Allis Part IV Submitted by Nute Chapman From Onaway Outlook January 18, 2013

CAPTION #1:  CARRIE FERGUSON and her horse Tiny going to the Roberts School, 1921.



CAPTION #2: THE BENAWAY children at the Roberts School 1921-22.



CAPTION #3:  EVELYN SWETT sitting on her horse in front of the Roberts School (1921), while her brother
Clifford Swett seems to be holding up the back end of her horse.



   Unpublished by Oscar Adelbert Roberts and edited by daughter Ruth (Roberts) Schmidt Part IV


   Our Home

   Our home was the best built of any of our neighbors.  We had cedar logs for the basement and the nicest white pine 
for sidewalls hewed to 7 inches thick with dovetailed corners.  Spruce was used for joists and rafters.  It was a 
one-and-a-half story home with cedar-shingled roof.  Stovepipes went straight up and out the roof through a 
"mossback" for insulation.

    I was born in the old temporary log house on the flat.  I remember seeing it when it was no longer
used, and being sorry that I hadn't been born in the new house on the hill like my brother Homer, who was two years
younger.

   My mother's name was Rachel C. Roberts but her name does not appear on the Methodist membership roll for the simple
reason that she was a "dyed in the wool" Baptist.  But I believe she did more in and for the Methodist Church than anyone
on the roll and many times as much as some.

   My Mother was average size, "good looking' as every small boy's mother is.  She kept her hair braided and "done up"
in a large knot on the back of her head.  I remember her most for her habit of singing or humming hymns as she went
about her work.

   I don't know how she ever managed to take care of her large family, have a few flowers inside and out, help with a garden,
take care of the milk from a few cows by "setting" it in six-quart pans and later skimming off the cream, making butter
with a dash churn, picking and canning berries as well as helping pick hundreds of quarts of huckleberries for Father 
to haul to Cheboygan in the wooden boxes and creates he made.  Of course, she had several older daughters to help
until they left to make homes of their own.

   Mother's kitchen and living room were large and contained plain but good furniture.  Everybody had rocking chairs in 
those days.  There was a sewing machine, and also a nice striking clock.  The "other room" contained a nice upright
heater with six isinglass windows.  We were very proud of that stove.  But like everyone else she washed clothes by hand, 
using an old washboard and soap she made from wood ashes and waste fat.

   Our kitchen table stood with the end next to the door and I can remember on a Sunday "Old Ben" Avery, while passing
by our house on the trail, walked in and took a couple slices of bread and started away.  Mother stepped to the door and
called "Come back, Ben and get some butter on that bread."  He called back, "Your bread is good enough without butter!"

   She always taught Sunday school class and gave out special tiny cards to those who regularly attended.  I had one of
those cards given to me 22 years ago by Beatron Doolittle, who said he had kept it for 40 years.  So it's over 60 years
old.  One of my treasures.

   Continued next week.

 
    -From The Onaway Outlook, January 18, 2013, p 3.
    

Retyped by J. Anderson.