Bring your imagination and step back into history with me.
No, we are not going to attend a grand ball or witness an epic battle. We’re going to go to Missouri in the mid-19th century.
See the farmhouse. This is Dent land. Home of Fredrick Dent, wife, children, and slaves. By 1854, his daughter, Julia, is married to U. S. Grant. He has left the army and is trying is hand at farming. After four years he realizes he is not suited to the business and he moves the family to Galena, Illinois.
The house, several miles outside St. Louis, is named White Haven. A visitor is startled to sight the dark, Paris green color of the siding. The building is not large. Parlor and dining room take up much of the first floor. Bedrooms are upstairs. Winter kitchen is in the basement. Much of the day-to-day household work takes place in separate buildings – summer kitchen, laundry.
This pump on top of the cistern is a crank and chain apparatus. I don’t know the number of buckets on this one — perhaps forty or more. I shiver to think of going to draw water in the winter, when the temperature has been below freezing. Will the crank turn? Chain stay in place? Is the water below me coated with ice?
In the sweet historical romance, Stitching a Dream, a building catches fire. (With wood or coal burning stoves for heating and cooking this occurred more often than today.) The seamstress, Polly Black, is one of several to raise the alarm. She also assists in using a pump similar to the one above to fill buckets for the men and women fighting the fire. Find the book at the link: https://amzn.to/3VwoeFh
