7-4 A Bridge To The Past

that the milk was kept sweet by carrying it to the shady spring—hole where the cream would rise quickly and be skimmed off to make nicely flavored butter. They took on the task of handling the newly shorn fleece (if indeed they had not already helped with the shearing) and prepared it for washing.

They stoked the wood fire which heated the huge iron pot that was fill- ed with the soft water taken from the rain barrel at the corner of the house. Their homemade lye soap produced a genérous lather and before the end of the day the clean white wool was spread on the grass to dry. They picked, carded, and spun, wound the warp and threaded the loom, and spent long hard hours throwing the shuttle and swinging the beater. All this activity produced the web of homespun. This work, done by the womenfolk, was not recorded on the census reports.

Neither would there be a record of the back-breaking work done by the men in clearing that extra five acres where the heavy crop of buckwheat had grown, and where another year a good crop of potatoes was hoped for. Nor was the full story told about the newly sawn lumber, neatly stacked for drying, that suggested a new and larger barn to house the increasing number of livestock. The census taker would also notice, but not record, the callous- ed hands, the deeply furrowed brow and the weary sag of the shoulders of both the men and women. He would seldom draw attention to the person with a mental problem by making that noticeable check mark under “Insane" but would simply include that person as a family member. He would not mention the extreme poverty and the sickly, undernourished children although this recorder of genealogical data must have longed to draw someone’s attention to their plight. He knew that these misfortunes were accepted as part of living and as problems to be handled in the home and by the family. He also realized that this independent spirit of our forefathers was their fortifying resource in an age when men survived by the sweat of their brow and the tenacity of their spirit and no census taker had any right to leave an enumerator's eye-view that would suggest otherwise.

THE EMIGRANTS

This community history has been written mainly about our immigrant families and their descendants. It is interesting to learn of several emigrant families who also deserve to have their rather remarkable story recorded. It is the story of three young families with a total of 22 children who left everything behind them in Wilmot Valley and set Out to travel by boat, train, and caravan halfway across Canada and the United States to make a new home for themselves in Iowa and Utah, USA. This was in 1850 and the people involved were the Maxfields. The purpose in going was to join the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Mormons) in Salt Lake City, Utah, to which faith they had been converted.