EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the 12th and final installment in our year-long examination of the adventures of Knox County farmer Harvey Devoe, who kept a diary for the year 1861, which has been annotated and published by historian Alan Borer and is available through online retailers. The series began on Jan. 4. It continued on Feb. 1, March 7, April 4, May 2, June 6, July 4, Aug. 1, Sept. 5 , Oct. 3 and Nov. 7. Harvey’s spelling and punctuation have been left as they originally appear in the diary.
This month we come to the end of a year-long journey following the diary of Knox County farmer Harvey Devoe during the significant year of 1861.
That year was important for the nation as it saw the country tear itself apart into Civil War. And as we’ve seen, that was very much on Harvey’s mind, especially after his younger brother Edward enlisted in the army and was sent to Camp King in Kentucky for training.
But it was also a significant year for Harvey himself as it marked the beginning of his adult life as a farmer. He rented a farm south of Ankenytown and began the labor necessary to upgrade its facilities for a full farming operation, while still finding the time to help on his father’s farm, as well as with various neighbors. It had been a busy year, but Harvey liked the work.
However, the start of winter found things a little slow.
With no crops to tend, it was a good time to do some hunting and trapping. Harvey’s targets this December were muskrats, minks, and red squirrels. Muskrat hunting was a popular gun sport for farmers of the day. Their pelts could be sold, though the meat was rarely eaten, due to the animal’s characteristic musky odor. Harvey bagged a few, but had less success with his mink traps.
He and his friend Ed Wheeler had their best luck of all shooting red squirrels.
Another major activity of the winter months on a farm was hog slaughtering. In the days before meat processing plants, it was a family activity done at most every farm.
While Harvey never lists exactly what animals he had on his growing farm, we know that a major portion of them were hogs, for he mentions in his diary slaughtering and processing some hogs during December, and also helping his father do the same on his farm across the road.
As Christmas approached, Harvey and several others donated money for a large Christmas cake to be baked by Mrs. Cokens and sent down to their boys at Camp King. While Harvey doesn’t dwell on the recipe, one can imagine that a cake sturdy enough for traveling over 100 miles would probably be some variety of fruitcake.
Diary annotator Alan Borer tracked down a period fruitcake recipe from Godey’s Ladies’ Magazine:
2 pounds of flour
2 pounds of fresh butter
4 pounds of currants
18 eggs
8 ounces of almonds
8 ounces of citron, candied orange, and lemon peel
brandy
nutmeg
allspice (but only a quarter)
mace
coriander
ginger
cinammon
16 ounces of sugar
Not much seen today, the citron is a large, fragrant, and lumpy citrus fruit from which modern lemons were selectively bred. Everything else is fairly standard fruitcake fare, except perhaps mace, which is simply the ground up sheath that covers nutmeg kernels. Harvey’s contribution to the making and shipping of this epic cake was 25 cents.
As for Christmas, well, it seems that Harvey got a little bored.
“Pleasant sunshine … And a thawing some …” he wrote. “Went to Fredericktown.. And so past the day … And a dry Christmas it has been to me nothing going on of any note.”
After the holiday, Harvey resumed the “choars” of winter, even though he was a little under the weather one day, feeling “knot verry well.” But it soon passed, and he got back to work, finishing the diary on Dec. 31 and slipping off into undocumented history for the rest of his life.
The last clues about the life of this Knox County farmer can be found in the back pages, where Harvey kept a meticulous list of his expenses. While most of them are predictable enough, a few are interesting to note:
“For tole on plank road – .25” (Where was this plank road? That’s a steep toll for 1861. Plank roads were roads where the mud was covered by wooden planks, which may or may not have been continuous. There is an amazing description by the famous English author Charles Dickens (he of A Christmas Carol with Ebeneezer Scrooge and all that) of a plank road that he traveled through north central Ohio when he was on a speaking tour in April of 1842. Dickens called the plank road stretching from Tiffin to Upper Sandusky the worst stretch of road in America, and even claimed that he had to use handkerchiefs to tie his wife to her seat to keep her from being flung out the stagecoach door as it pitched over the uneven and non-continuous wooden planks. We hope Harvey’s road was better!)
“Cigars and raisins – .18” (Elsewhere in the list, Harvey notes spending three cents on cigars, so they couldn’t have cost more than a penny-and-a-half each. Unless he was baking a fruitcake himself and buying a huge portion of raisins, the bulk of this expense must have been for a plentiful supply of cigars, suggesting that Harvey was quite thoroughly bitten by the nicotine bug.)
“For two shirt collars – .37½” (Shirt collars that connected to the shirt were a later invention!)
“Coffee 6 pounds – 1.00” (He needed his caffeine, too. I can relate, Harvey, I can relate.)
“For Cincinati daly gazet – .30” (This must have been a subscription to this popular regional newspaper. He also spent occasionally to buy the popular Harper’s Magazine.)
“For Muslin 6 yd – .75” (Harvey was regularly sent to the store to pick up sewing, crafting, and – dressmaking supplies by Martha.)
“Pain killer 1 bottle – .25” (No details about the pain killer medicine, though it was probably aspirin.)
“For Left handed pitcher – .35” (He couldn’t just turn a regular pitcher around? It must have been one with a side spout. At any rate, it tells us that apparently either Harvey or his wife Martha was left-handed.)
“Lincey to line coat 3½ – .12½” (Not sure about this one. Perhaps linseed oil to preserve the leather of a coat?)
“For and emblem of union – .10” (The only artwork Harvey mentions buying is a Union emblem, which suggests he felt that his patriotism was an important way to support his brother and the war effort.)
So, there you have it. Now we bid Harvey Devoe adieu and let him get on with the rest of his life. Martha will pass away in a few years, and Harvey will remarry, to Eliza Jane Gibson. They leave Ohio for a time and live in Illinois, but return to take over Eliza’s father’s house, on Gregg Road, just east of Palmyra, where they live until the early 1900s.
In his final years, Harvey moves into Fredericktown for his retirement, where he will pass away in 1914.
We thank the researchers who have made it possible to get so many glimpses into the daily life of this Knox County farmer from the mid-1800s, including historian Alan Borer and Harvey’s descendent, Pat Canan, whose full name is Patrick Harvey Canan, in honor of his great-grandfather.
Farewell, Harvey, old friend, until we meet again!
