Inside Ann Lindsey's Home in the Blockade

Women who live in Fort Harrod are adventurous and spunky!  One woman, whose tongue has been split by the Indians can not speak.  Another saw her lame husband tomahawked by the Indians.  One of the bravest is Ann Lindsey, a self reliant "home economics" innovator who has been widowed three times.  She came to Fort Harrod with her spinning wheel and began to spin buffalo wool.
She discovered that the fiber of nettles was a good substitute for linen thread.

Along with other women of the fort, she knits woolen socks, fashions doeskin underwear, and buckskin winter moccasins.  She even creates pottery from clay.  The women make cheese, prepare tea with spicebush buds, make candles of buffalo or bear grease, even make the wicks from spun milkweed.

Ann Lindsey lives in one of the blockhouses and life in her house centers around the fireplace which takes up one whole wall.  It's an earthen pit sunk below the plank floor.  The fire seldom goes out.  The chimney is seven foot high of sticks, mud and stone.  If it catches fire, the fort requires Ann to run outside, push over the top chimney with a long pole. This keep the fire from spreading to the rest of the fort and is required of all residents.

On the mantel are a few of Ann's precious possessions - long handled cooking utensils, pressing irons, dishes and a photo.  Nearby  a barrel containing a year's supply of salt, along with a large barrel filled with a winter's supply of cornmeal.

Ann depends on the fire for light and heat.  Most household chores take place by the hearth.  Today she is cooking:
Roasted eggs
Baked potatoes
pot of beans
corn pone
huckleberry and maize bread
hominy
johnnycakes
along with churning butter, and making buttermilk.

Other special days she makes  a supper of venison, buffalo hump with turnips, sweet potatoes, peppers, and string beans. For dessert she serves maple treetreacle (sugar confection), paw paw (native bananas), crab apple tarts, strawberries and wild berries with hips of sweetbriar roses.

I am truly worn out from all this work! And really hungry now :)  Let's go have some of Ann's cooking...Next time more life inside Ann's home.
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Today in Pioneer History:  On October 26, 1881, the Earp brothers face off against the Clanton-McLaury gang in a legendary shootout at the OK Corral in Tombstone, Arizona.