Christmas in the Great Black Swamp

By Becky Brooks

news@gazettepublishingco.com

GIBSONBURG —Imag­ine a Christ­mas where your most cher­ished gift was a sim­ple orange.

For a young girl on a farm in North­west Ohio prior to the Civil War, that may have been a gift from a suitor. Plus, it would have been shared with her whole family.

Farm fam­i­lies who lived in North­west Ohio dur­ing the 19th cen­tury truly knew a hard life — yet while many left the region — oth­ers stayed and con­quered the Great Black Swamp.

Deb­bie Haubert, edu­ca­tion spe­cial­ist for the San­dusky County Park Dis­trict, shares the tales and a first-hand demon­stra­tion of life dur­ing a 1850s Christ­mas at the cab­ins in White Star Park dur­ing a series of din­ners each Christ­mas season.

The Christ­mas at the Cab­ins pro­gram is cel­e­brat­ing its 10th anniver­sary this year, and the 10 din­ners set for the Rei­neck and Schlea-Swartzlander cab­ins were booked solid in under a week of reser­va­tions being opened for 2012.

In late Novem­ber, Haubert was dec­o­rat­ing the Schlea-Swartzlander cabin for the upcom­ing Christ­mas din­ners. That cabin was orig­i­nally built in 1874, while the Rei­neck Cabin was built in 1950. Both were orig­i­nally from the Gib­son­burg area and donated to the park dis­trict, which moved them to 800-acre White Star Park.

“Nei­ther of our log homes had fire­places when they were built,” Haubert said as wood cracked in a large four-burner cook stove.

The entire floor area of the Schlea-Swartzlander cabin would fit in most of today’s liv­ing rooms. Yet for a fam­ily in that region of the state, the cabin was kitchen, bed­room, liv­ing area and work space.

Haubert said this cabin was the big­ger of the two as it was newer and built at a time when fam­i­lies in the Great Black Swamp were see­ing just a bit more pros­per­ity by the 1870s. The swamp was start­ing to be drained just before the Civil War, she said.

She also explained that the two log cab­ins at the park were built at a time when Ohio was mod­ern enough that fam­i­lies could buy cast-iron pot belly stoves for their homes instead of build­ing a fire­place into the wall.

That stove would have set in the cen­ter of the cabin for heat with a stove pipe lead­ing out a side wall instead of extend­ing up through the loft where other fam­ily mem­bers would be sleeping.

Like oth­ers liv­ing at the time in Ohio — fires were always a con­cern for peo­ple liv­ing in log homes.

Haubert pointed out that for much of North­west Ohio — the Great Black Swamp was part of daily life until nearly the 1900s. The swamp stretched from mid-Sandusky County near Clyde north to nearly San­dusky (then called Port­land) and then west all the way to Fort Wayne, Indi­ana. Wood County, for exam­ple, the home of Bowl­ing Green State Uni­ver­sity today, was com­pletely cov­ered in swamp.

That swamp affected fam­i­lies who moved to the region to farm and how they cel­e­brated Christmas.

Just as peo­ple real­ized they could drain swamp­land for clear­ing and farm­ing — the Civil War came and post­poned improve­ments, Haubert shared.

After the war, fam­i­lies used drainage pipes made from the clay under their feet and a sys­tem of ditches to change the land­scape, she explained while sit­ting at a cabin table cov­ered in oil lamps being cleaned and wicks trimmed for the upcom­ing dinners.

Tin punch orna­ments were com­mon in fam­i­lies who had the abil­ity to cut tin.

Because of the Swamp, Ohio has a sys­tem of drainage laws that remain in effect today, she added.

The peo­ple who lived in the Great Black Swamp changed over the years in the 1800s — First it was trap­pers like the French who moved through the area, and then Ger­man fam­i­lies and oth­ers came to the area to claim land for farm­ing. They dis­cov­ered the dif­fi­cul­ties of life in the swamp. Farm­ing was not easy and the land qual­ity was poor, Haubert said.

“Life in the swamp was dif­fi­cult,” she reiterated.

Some city homes and a few farm homes from the same period in North­west Ohio had more ameni­ties. For farms, it depended on the type of land the fam­ily had to work — and on the geog­ra­phy. Some areas were higher and more workable.

U.S. Route 20 that is a major east-west cor­ri­dor — then called the West­ern Reserve Road — played a major role in North­west Ohio.

“It was one of the high­est roads going through the swamp,” Haubert pointed out.

Liv­ing in the swamp changed the way many fam­i­lies cel­e­brated Christ­mas in the 1800s, she added.

In the cities and in years prior to the Civil War era, Christ­mas was a com­mu­nity event or cel­e­bra­tion where peo­ple would come to the square of a village.

“By 1874, Christ­mas had evolved to a fam­ily tra­di­tion,” she pointed out. Espe­cially in North­west Ohio, trav­el­ing to cities was a day-long jour­ney and trav­el­ing at night was just dan­ger­ous, accord­ing to Haubert.

“We did still have wolves in Ohio,” she com­mented about the dan­gers. “You faced nat­ural dan­gers by being out.”

“Things revolved more about the fam­ily and you stayed in your area,” she added.

Ger­man fam­i­lies were already known for being fru­gal — for any farm fam­ily in the Black Swamp that was dou­bly so.

Haubert said fam­i­lies on the farms in the region would dec­o­rate for the hol­i­day with green­ery hang­ing in the cabin by the mid-1800s. In the cities — you would see fam­i­lies putting up table­top trees adorned with can­dles — a tra­di­tion brought with the Ger­man immigrants.

“Fam­i­lies out in the swamp – you’re not going to waste can­dles,” she said about hav­ing set­ting up a tree with can­dles. “And it’s a fire haz­ard, and you’re liv­ing in a wood house.”

Homes in the cities had fin­ished walls unlike cab­ins homes on most farms then.

Haubert said that the idea of using greens to dec­o­rate actu­ally came from Greens and Romans. Ever­greens were the only thing that would show life in the dark­ness of that time of year. The greens were also viewed as a pro­tec­tion from ill­ness and bad spir­its, she added. Plus since fam­i­lies lived in log cab­ins the ever­greens could be put up for a day or two dur­ing Christ­mas and tossed outside.

“It wasn’t a huge fire haz­ard,” she pointed out about greens.

Besides greens in the cab­ins, Ger­man fam­i­lies influ­enced what type of gifts and dec­o­ra­tions were being used in the Black Swamp after the 1850s.

“Your dec­o­ra­tions could be a gift you could give away,” she said about the fru­gal ances­tors of the region.

One of the most expen­sive gifts some­one could give in the Swamp was a piece of fruit, like an orange, the park dis­trict offi­cial said.

“It was hard to get and expen­sive,” she said. While less fru­gal city dwellers might take an orange and pep­per it with cloves for a hang­ing dec­o­ra­tion, in the Swamp that orange was a gift between a suitor and his lady and was prop­erly shared with fam­ily for its health value, she said.

In the city in the mid-1800s, more glass orna­ments were becom­ing part of the Christ­mas tra­di­tions. Those tra­di­tions were slow to move to the farms of the Swamp, however.

In cab­ins like the Schlea-Swartzlander home (named for the fam­ily who donated it) most gifts would have been hand­made. What gifts were given would have depended on the skills peo­ple had — smithing, sewing, or cooking.

There would have been tin-punch orna­ments, tin ice cycles, fab­ric stars, dolls of cloth, apple­sauce dough orna­ments and dried apple gar­lands orna­ments. Apples were a fruit that was avail­able in the region, and they could be kept nearly year-round with the aid of a fruit cellar.

“They did have access to some spices,” Haubert said about families.

“If you had a rel­a­tive who sent you some fancy paper,” she said that could be turned into a paper doll gar­land. Haubert said the Ger­man cul­ture also used Marzi­pan as dec­o­ra­tions, which could be shaped into fruit and col­ored — then eaten later.

The Christ­mas din­ner on the farm would be dif­fer­ent than most peo­ple might expect for the times. In the Swamp — live­stock was kept for its value not as a meat prod­uct. Chick­ens pro­duced eggs, cows milk and oxen were needed to pull the plow and wag­ons. Horses were for sin­gle per­son travel and did not han­dle mud well.

An old lay­ing hen could be saved for a hol­i­day din­ner — or wild game like turkey, deer or pheas­ant served. Haubert said even muskrat was used for a meal.

Desserts were few, because sugar was expen­sive. Farm fam­i­lies may have had access to maple syrup — but it would be dif­fi­cult to make it last until Christ­mas. Haubert said they would have access to honey, but col­lect­ing that had its own chal­lenges. Dried fruits could be used for spe­cial occa­sions — apples, cher­ries and wild fruits.

As for a hol­i­day drinks — Haubert said whiskey was kept on hand for its dual pur­pose of med­ica­tion and drink. There could be cider, milk, plus tea and cof­fees. The lat­ter were most likely made from locally grown items like herbs or chicory. Haubert said chicory and dan­de­lion root — com­mon for the time — are very strong.

After hang­ing some of the period dec­o­ra­tions on the green­ery in the cabin, Haubert said that her Christ­mas in the Cabin pro­gram includes food being cooked in the cabin stove and that the meals are a lit­tle more mod­ern — with beef roast, car­rots and onions plus cherry cobbler.

The cabin hol­i­day vis­i­tors today also have a chance to make their own orna­ments, and they string pop­corn and cran­ber­ries. Com­pared to the 1850s, the visit to cabin is a some­what plush event.

“Their tra­di­tions were quite sim­ple,” Haubert said about old farm fam­i­lies of the region.

Posted by Becky Brooks on Nov 27 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.