Hoosier Homemakers Through the Years

 Hoosier Homemakers Through the Years... an oral history project of The Indiana Extension Homemakers Association Eleanor Arnold, Editor and Project Director  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  The Indiana Extension Homemakers Association's oral history project began in 1979, in view of the upcoming 75th anniversary of the organization in 1988. Since many of the pioneer members were living, the state board felt that a study of the history of the group should begin then, and Eleanor was asked to chair the history committee.  IEHA is the largest group of organized women in the state of Indiana, with a membership of approximately 45,000 women. There are many local clubs in every county, meeting typically in members' homes once a month and featuring educational material on home, family and community at each meeting. The initial charge to the IEHA history committee was to compile and publish a history book. The committee decided to use oral history (tape-recorded interviews) as the research method, mainly due to the advanced age of many of the pioneer members. Soon the decision was made to broaden the scope of the committee's inquiries to include a study of woman's role as a homemaker.   The interviews were done almost entirely by dedicated volunteers and a list of topics were given to each, as those subjects which were to be emphasized: interviewee's experience with IEHA, her chronological history, including life as a girl, courtship and marriage, childbearing and childrearing, memories of the influences of outside events such as wars on her life, typical daily housekeeping routines in various stages of her life, comparison of her life with that of her mother and of her daughter, effect of technology on homemaking chores, as well as her judgements and values on various issues of modern life, significant accomplishments and failures as a homemaker, and her opinions on aspects of husband-wife and parent-child relationships.  Of those on which age data was available, there were 17 interviewees older than 90, 115 between ages 70-89, 75 between ages 60-69, and 29 younger than 49. The oldest interviewee was 100 and the youngest 25. All interviews occurred between September 23, 1980, and February 24, 1983.  This book is the first in the series. Here are some quotes I think you will find interesting and thought-provoking. Enjoy! :-)   We ate a lot of pie and the men folks -- we had a hired hand -- and I tell you, they could eat more pie than you could shake a stick at. Custard pie, I'd just cut it in half because I didn't like custard pie, and they each ate half. ~Hazel Williams, 79, Franklin County  To get to school on time, we got up at four o'clock in the mornings. We children helped Mother prepare breakfast which was a huge meal consisting of meat, gravy, oats, apple butter, biscuits, milk and coffee. My sister and I washed the dishes while Mother prepared our lunches, which we carried to school in small buckets. ~Violet David, 79, Brown County  Our whole neighborhood would get together at butchering time. We always said our prayers over the plentiful things we had to eat. Sometimes we would stretch up five or six hogs. We would give some to the preacher and to the neighbors. We were always generous, because they were generous to us. ~Clara Nichols, 81, Wabash County  Then after the threshing was done, they always had a threshing meeting at night at somebody's house, and everybody brought their ice cream freezers and made ice cream and cake. The whole neighborhood went and it was a great big party. It was really a lot of fun. I think the kids nowadays really miss some of that. Even the hard work didn't hurt us any, I guess. ~Dorothy Hoffman, 60, Adams County  We lived at Buck Creek and my parents lived at Otterbein. I had never driven until I had a lot of cabbage and I wanted my mother to help me make sauerkraut. I had watched Albert drive, and so I started out with my oldest son, who was about one year old at the time. I drove through Battleground so I wouldn't have to be out on any big highways. And I herded that old Model T and I got there. Sometimes I had to stop and think what I was supposed to do. My dad cranked it for me when I started to come back home, but I stayed two days and we made sauerkraut. After that I made my own -- I knew how to do it then. ~Pearl Meharry Sollars, 70, Tippecanoe County  And I remember once hearing my mother say I was so good to help with the dishes, but she was always afraid to go away and leave me, because I was so little and so slow she was afraid I would go to sleep and fall in the dish pan. ~Pearl Garrison, 92, Carroll County  My parents gave us a cow when we were married. ~Hazel Williams, 79, Franklin County  When my father was living, he killed a beef every year. And he would hang it out in the smokehouse, and just hang it up. I don't know how in the world it ever kept, but I remember it hangin' out there. But we had, I think, longer cooler winters than we do now. It always kept good. ~Irene Redington, 80, Decatur County  Of course it was the woman's place to keep the garden, and I'll have to admit that mine usually raised a great crop of weeds, but we did have vegetables. We'd put about half the garden in potatoes and the rest of it in various other vegetables. ~Erma Agnew, 88, Decatur County  The kids would all grab a tin cup from the kitchen and come running into the barn. They would want you to milk a tin cup full of milk. They would drink this warm milk with foam all over the top. Just seemed to dearly love it. Once in a while we'd squirt the cat, and the cat would open his mouth and get some milk. We had fun sometimes when we milked. ~Beulah Grinstead, 68, Hamilton County