EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the ninth 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 and Aug. 1. Harvey’s spelling and punctuation have been left as they originally appear in the diary.
As summer waned in September of 1861, so did the drought. Without much-needed rain, the county’s harvest might have failed completely. As a news report of the time put it, “The country is very much suffering from want of rain. The pasture fields are literally dried up. Corn, especially on high and dry land, looks wretched.”
Harvey Devoe was fortunate that his land wasn’t on the highest ground, though he, too, struggled with the weather.
Harvey is very low-key in the comments he makes in his diary, regarding the weather or otherwise. He makes a subtly powerful comment on Sept. 3, 1861, when he takes his brother Ed to Fredericktown to catch a train to Columbus to join the army and train for combat in the war that had just broken out. Harvey notes in his expenses inside the back page of the diary “two glasses of ale,” which annotator Alan Borer notes may have been a parting drink by the two brothers.
As the train left, Harvey surveyed the scene.
“There was a large crowd of people there,” Harvey observed, “and a good many long faces.”
Early in the month, Harvey noted that the potatoes he dug up from his garden were poor due to the dry weather. He mentions harvesting some tomatoes as well, though he doesn’t say much about their condition.
As rains finally began to restore greenery around the middle of the month, crops rallied. Devoe spent considerable time “cutting corn,” by which he meant the process of cutting down stalks of corn, then bundling them in teepee-shaped shocks, allowing the corn to dry. Though long supplanted in most areas today by combine harvesters and other modern technologies, corn shocks can still be seen on Amish farms in central Ohio in September and October, an evocative relic of the history of agriculture.
As the month went along, Harvey went elderberrying (“Did not find them verry plenty…”), duck hunting (“did not have the luck to kill any thoug we saw a good many”), and squirrel hunting (“killed 3”). He also had a perplexing visit from Mr. Brown’s boy. As reported in last month’s column, Mr. Brown agreed to buy Harvey’s horse named Charly for $70, paying $5 down. On Sept. 21, “Mr. Brown sent his boy to pay me. but did not send but 60 dollars.”
Brown still owed him $5.
The first frost of the year came on Sept. 24. That day, Harvey gathered some provisions for a special trip and headed to bed early. He got up and ate his breakfast at 1 a.m.(!) Why would he rise so early? Because he had a 3 a.m. train to catch, which would take him to Columbus, where he could visit his brother Ed at Camp Chase, the Civil War training camp which had been organized to drill recruits.
After staying overnight, Harvey and his brother “took a stroll” around the camp and watched “a sham battle,” presumably a training exercise. On the way out of Columbus, Harvey was impressed by the sight of the Ohio Statehouse, a building which had just recently been finished, looking much as it does today. He got home just in time to receive a visit from his old friend Charly Canan, whose son would years later marry one of Harvey’s daughters.
The month closed with more frost and Harvey coming down with a cold.
