Jacob Hunter Trust

Chores

Leona Newton White

Leona Newton White was a granddaughter of Jacob Hunter (2)(b. 1-18-1809 d. 12-21-1874) and Mary Moore Duncan Hunter (b. 5-1-1814 d. 8-21-1896).  She was a daughter of Lucina Evaline Hunter Newton (1853-1933). 

Leona Newton White (b. 1-5-1886 d. 5-29-1982) recorded her memories in notebooks that were passed down in her family.  Leona dedicated her writings to her daughter Pauline White Mason (b. 12-25-1911 d. 4-2-2003).  Leona’s notebooks were given to the Jacob Hunter Trust for copying by her grandson, James Mason of Indianapolis, IN.

We children didn’t visit much like as now, maybe one afternoon a week we were allowed to go to one of the neighbors, but must come home at four o’clock to be ready to do our part of the chores.

The evening chores consisted of milking, gathering the eggs, getting in kindling and wood to cook breakfast, getting in the vegetables from the garden for the next day’s dinner, watering the hogs, shucking corn to feed the hogs and work horses, and putting the corn in the mangers for the horses, carrying the corn to the hogs, pumping a trough full of water for the stock, and driving up the cows from the pasture.

Us children did this for the boys must stay in the field and work until the sun went down.  So there was not very much time to be spent in visiting.

My mother never liked for her children to stay away from her, but once in a longtime she would let one of us go home with Uncle George Hunter and Aunt Laura.  They always came to our house in the wagon and Lucy sat in the back of the wagon in her little red rocking chair.  It was the dream of my life to get to go home with them and ride in that little red chair.  I have a faint memory of getting to go just once.