Emmitsburg
Customs and Traditions of Old
Marie
Campbell
APPLE TWITCHES AND BELSNICKLES
Times are changing, and I suppose that will always be
so. But as we enter the final quarter of the twentieth
century, we observe vast differences made on our lives
over the past twenty-five, fifty, one hundred years. Our
youngsters are a visual media generation: even the radio
has lost the significance it had in the ‘30’s and
‘40’s when we tuned our ears to transmissions of
Lowell Thomas, "The Squeaking Door," and
country music. More and more we see and listen, less and
less do we talk during our leisure hours. We would seem
to be losing our roles as transmitters of oral
traditions.
Evidence of these changes is observed in the
passing of many traditions which exist today only in the
memories of our older citizens but not in practice. I
have talked with a number of Emmitsburg area people
about the customs and traditions which they, their
grandparents and their great-grandparents lived by.
These recollections come from the past fifty to one
hundred years and constitute an oral history of a wax’
of life as a small town reminisces.
Daily Life in Emmitsburg
When we consider the "good old days" we of
course tend to remember with fondness. Life seemed
simpler then but perhaps we have forgotten roads
knee-deep in mud for months at a time, a wagon or buggy
occasionally frozen in for weeks, or repairing your own
narrow section of road to make it more passable. And
then there were the tolls collected every few miles for
travel on the public roads.
The toll house stands just
outside Emmitsburg as a reminder of these oft-collected
fees. Some people I spoke with told stories of
illnesses, the cholera and flu epidemics, and had used
home cures for more common ailments: spring tonics, poultices
of mustard or mutton tallow and often the
asafedia to ward off disease. Other more spectacular
disasters have left their marks in oral tradition; fires
and train wrecks which involved friends and relatives.
But on the level of everyday life, these were also the
days without the ease of modern conveniences: there was no central heating, no plumbing and no
electricity. All these are also part of our by-gones.
Better and more enjoyable memories are part of those
days: the Emmitsburg Railroad with its dinky which
carried many people to nearby destinations, the
blacksmith shop, the horse-drawn station wagon going to
Gettysburg for an all day trip, the coming of the street
cars. In the homes the kitchen was the cozy spot with
wood stove blacked with home made lamp black, perhaps
from the chimney behind the big iron stove. One hundred
years ago in Emmitsburg the fireplace was rapidly giving
place to a convenient iron wood stove. It is likely that
somewhere in the kitchen, perhaps on the cabinet, hung
the razor strap, symbol of the love and respect clue
parents, as one of my informants recounted.
Soap Making
Some Emmitsburg area residents still make soap with
Babbitt’s lye and hot water (according to one person I
talked to, "an absolutely lethal combination, smoky
and fumy"), to which tallow and kitchen greases or
"fryin’s were added, never good lard. the
generations before our grandmothers didn’t buy lye,
of course, but made it from rain water dripped through
wood ashes. People I’ve talked with recommended
homemade soap to relieve the itching of poison ivy and
with someone who said, "Oh, if you ever had a bath
with lye soap, well, then you haven’t lived right and
despite the fact that it took one layer of skin off. Mom
always said, ‘this lye soap is so lovely.’ But, my
God, it would just peel off one layer of your
skin."
These directions were given concerning homemade soap:
"Now when you boiled the soap you had to boil at a
certain time, in the full of the moon. When the moon was
going the opposite way it would all go up and dry
out." Soap making, shingling and planting crops,
all were guided by the fullness of the moon or the
"signs" if you wanted proper results.
Holidays
With summer came holiday celebrations: Memorial Day
with a parade to the cemetery to lay bunches of mountain
laurel and arbutis on graves of loved ones and soldiers.
One of the most important parades was the Fourth of
July. Flag poles were cut, contests held, and some
people even had hot air balloons to celebrate, in
addition to rockets and fire crackers. Mr. Helman, in
his Emmitsburg history, tells of the heated discussions
as election day neared, of the poles erected by each
party in front of the hotel of its choice. He seemed to
be especially relieved when some of the heat was taken
out of the arguments by banning the sale of liquor on
that day.
In the fall the advent of cold weather signaled the
time for all kinds of activities: apple butter boiling,
cider making, schnitzing bees, hulling walnuts,
butchering. The butchering was often held on a
Thanksgiving weekend when all the family was home to
help. It began at 4:30 a.m. and lasted the whole day
long, involving everyone in tasks to preserve the meat.
Even today if you drive in the area on this weekend you
will likely Games and Activities
Cold weather also brought activities for the young
people; a favorite was bunting apple twitches if the
youngsters were of a mischievous nature. Hunting
twitches was an initiation designed to scare and cause
discomfort to the victim who had never been on a hunt.
The procedure was much the same as the snipe hunt
undertaken in an area where snipes don’t exist.
After
the group assembled in a dark apple orchard on a
moonless night, the hunter was carefully instructed to
hold the bag open while the others served as beaters to
drive the twitches toward him; there he was left,
literally holding the bag for a twitch which would never
appear, while the organizers of this hunt were back in
front of a warm fire wondering how long it would be
before the poor fellow caught on or gave up because he
"as frozen out.
Apples were a rather important commodity, both
agriculturally and socially. Making apple butter was
often a two day affair: first the neighborhood gathering
to peel bushels and bushels of apples, then the hours it
took to boil the apples, cider and sugar all down to the
right consistency. Some families, when the peeling was
done, took the apples to the mill to have the task
completed and paid the miller in kind, that is, with
part of the product.
Once cold weather was established for the winter,
skating or sleighing parties were in order. After school
the young people would build a bonfire, often on Tom’s
Creek, bring out a raw potato and salt which they had
brought along, and roast it for a hot snack on a cold
skating day.
For Christmas most families went to the woods to cut
their own tree, trimmed it with cranberries or mountain
berries, paper rings, popcorn. A happy girl woke to find
her very own Betsy Ann doll and an orange, when the
fruit was expensive and hard to get.
Christmas Traditions
Between Christmas and New Year’s was one of the
most memorable traditions in the neighborhood. Everyone
looked forward to a visit from the New Years mummers,
the belsnickers, or kriskringlers, who appeared on
horseback in black hats and strange costumes and
silently awaited a handout, preferably a warming drink,
a stirrup cup. Having received the treat, the
beisnicklers sang Christmas carols, more often in German
than in English. In Holland and Germany the beisnickle
visited on Christmas Eve or a few days before. He was
the neighborhood wag dressed in a shaggy bearskin coat
or a skunk skin hat, a St. Nicholas in furs.
But there
was little of good old St. Nick in this fearful
creature. He carried a bundle of switches on a dag over
his shoulder and hit the window pane with a switch, to
ask admittance, In his gruff voice, he asked if Johnny
and Katy had been good during the year. Suddenly the
floor was covered with candies from his bag and the
children grabbed for these warily eyeing the belsnickle’s
switch at the same time. But in Emmitsburg the tradition
was one of fooling people with false faces and old
clothes, riding from house to house on horseback, and
singing Christmas carols.
Social Events
Neighborhood gatherings were held on many occasions:
there were fewer of the many distractions which today’s
easy transportation and push-button technology have
given us. People enjoyed closer family and community
relations. They made their own entertainment, and as one
man said, helped each other, visited, argued
politics." Quilting bees have long been a part of
American culture. The quilt is a uniquely American folk
art, born of need and of the thrifty nature of our
pioneer fore-fathers.
A lady told me, "I remember
Momma covered me up on a cold winter’s night and she’d
say that here was Aunt Maggie’s winter coat and over
here was Poppa’s old overalls and it was like a
hodgepodge of all the materials that went into the
quilts. They utilized everything they could." There
were barn raisings and public sales (the auction is
still a favorite way to spend Saturdays) and flittin’
dinners. When a neighbor was moving, his friends would
come with wagons and move the family to their new home,
Afterward a pot luck dinner was shared.
Serenading or banding (also called belling or the
shivaree) is a waning tradition in Emmitsburg. What a
welcome for newlyweds: pots and pans, kettles and
noisemakers banged and pounded, horns and bells sounded
by visitors in the dead of night who would not go away
until they had been recognized and treated by the young
couple.
These are the traditions which the older residents of
the Emmitsburg area have recalled. They are the
activities common to our ancestors which help us and our
young people account for why we are what we are people
living in a small town continue to value this lifestyle.