Journey through Fort Harrod - Part 3

Frontier life is a use of the imagination and a use of nature.  Most things in this fort town are made of wood because it is plentiful.  Wooden pegs are the nails for building.  The hardwood forests around the fort are good sources for the wood needed. 

Fish swim in the stream behind the walls, geese and ducks are nearby, and swarms of pigeons darken the sky. Panthers and bobcats, elk, wild turkey, buffalo and grouse  live in or near the forest.  The animals provide food, clothing, grease and window "panes."  Doeskin membranes are made translucent with bear grease.  (more like our frosted glass today).  They would be used only for windows that faced inside the fort.

All ages gather herbs, nuts, wild grapes, crab apples, persimmons, and berries.  They tap maple trees for sugar, get salt from natural brine springs by evaporating the water, and they make dyes from berries, lye from charcoal and urine.

Even milking cows takes 2 people...while one milks, the other stands guard against Shawnee.  They transport the milk back in "noggins",  wooden buckets with handles carried on poles across the shoulder. 


Men wear moccasins, shirts of deerskin or homespun, trousers of deerskin or burlap (ouch!),  In hot
weather they leave off breechclouts (Native American for loincloths) and suspend leggings from their belts.

A group of men arrive from a military base with gunpowder carried in a drum shaped keg.  Powder is stored in an earthen magazine camouflaged as a root celler. 

The carpenter makes clapboards, barrel staves, plow handles, powder kegs, furniture, washboards, small noggins called "piggins", noggins, and paddles.

All these pioneers work together, constantly it seems, to survive in one of the first communities west of the Alleghenies...all the while watching for danger.  Every one has a job to do. The survival of the community depends on it!

Next time...Ann Lindsey, Blockade leader of the Women
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Today in Pioneer History:  On October  22, 1775, after years of poor health, Peyton Randolph, former president of the Continental Congress, dies at the age of 54.
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Journey through Fort Harrod - Part 2

Fort Harrod is a town within walls!  Inside we find communal hominy blocks in a hollow sycamore stump where corn is pounded by pulling down on a two-handed pestle attached to a bent sapling.  When the sapling recoils, it lifts the pestle up.

The Blacksmith repairs tools and makes tools with an anvil he brought from back East.  He makes the fort's first plow.  He works by a charcoal fire using bellows.

Life within the fort is active.  Women are scraping animal skins to make clothing.  Other women are making lye soap or washing clothes near the spring. 

Outside the walls on the stream is the tub mill which grinds the fort's flour.  Water hits the rotor (a circle of wooden blades at the base).  The rotor turns the vertical shaft attached to millstones in the housing.  Grain is poured into the hopper around the housing and the flour falls into a bin beneath.

A corral pens the horses on the east side of the fort.  Cows and pigs are left to forage in the grass.  Horses are used for transportation and plowing and are left unshod.  During attacks, the horses are brought inside the fort and a 10 stockade gates are bolted with huge logs to close off the corral. Horses are very valuable!

Another job of the horses are to pull "lizards" of corn husked in the field.  The lizards are open triangular shaped boxes, that sit on a Y shaped elm branch, pulled by a horse.  "Huskers" are favorites of the Shawnee to attack, so they are always armed.

Next time...finishing our tour of Fort Harrod
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Today in Pioneer History:  On October 19, 1791,, British General Lord Cornwallis surrenders 8,000 British soldiers and seamen to a larger Franco-American force at Yorktown, effectively bringing an end to the American Revolution.