When sufficient land was cleared to provide pasture for livestock, every effort was made to lay out fields so that there would be access to a brook for summer watering. In winter the animals went to a trough near the well.

Fields for pasture meant fences to keep the livestock out of the crops. Here again the pioneers turned to the forest and the "snake" fence came into being.

Logs four to six inches in diameter were cut to a length of ten to twelve feet and split with an axe and wedge. The split logs were then laid, with the ends criss-crossed at a sufficient angle to hold, until a zig-zag fence three and a half to four feet high was laid.

The building of such a fence entailed a great deal of labor but once built it would last for many years and would turn all animals, including sheep.

There was little furniture, partly because there was little available space, and most of what they had was home made on the spot.

Pine was plentiful and easily worked. An experienced man with a broad axe could hew a plank almost as smooth as if it were sawn. it is even possible that they brought a saw and a plane with them.

Before water power was harnessed to drive a circular saw, which came fairly early, an ingenious method was devised for using a crosscut saw to make planks and rough boards.

A pit would be dug a little deeper than the height of a man and a frame built above it to carry a log.

A crosscut saw was about five feet long with large teeth and a round handle at each end.

One man would station himself above the log, the other in the pit below, and they would draw the saw up and down through the horizontal log to cut a board or plank.

It was slow, hard work but with large trees it did not take many planks to cover a considerable surface, for instance a floor, or to make necessary furniture.

In any case a table and benches were necessary, as were bunks for sleeping. The bunks were of wood, boards with a lip around to hold the mattress, and were usually double deckers and double bunks.

The mattress covers would have been brought with them, empty. The material available, initially, for filling them was dry grass which made a quite comfortable bed.

Later, when grain had been harvested, straw was used as a filler and later still, after poultry became a part of the farm menage, feather pillows and eventually that ultimate of luxury and warmth, the feather bed, came into being.

These early mattresses were called ticks although the name tick properly refers to the cover only. Funk and Wagnalla defines tick as "the stout outer covering for a mattress",

With limited space shelving was important and boards would be sawn for this purpose.

It was not long before benches were partially replaced by chairs, with the rocking chair and the kitchen lounge becoming the last word in comfort.

The Simpson home was past the need of a crib but this piece of furniture would be an essential in the Clark and McNeill homes, and soon in that of William Junior.

As time went on open shelving gave place to kitchen cupboards and chests of drawers, all home made from local materials but many of them showing a high standard of workmanship.

Without doubt one of the essential pieces of furniture which our founding families would bring with them was a spinning wheel.

And very early sheep would become an essential part of the livestock of the farm. The family was almost completely dependent on sheep’s wool for clothing and blankets.

The process leading to a home spun suit or a pair of socks or mitts began with the growth of an annual fleece of wool by the sheep.

This was shorn, usually in early June, when weather was warm enough that the sheep would not catch cold.

Foreign substances had to be picked out by hand, a slow, tedious task because the wool usually collected a mass of seeds, burdocks, dried leaves, twigs, pebbles and whatever other small objects with which it came in contact.

Following washing in several waters or, in an openwork basket in a flowing brook, the wool being continuously agitated, the fleece was dried outdoors. During this period there was a certain amount of bleaching. During the process of washing, the wool became badly matted.

To prepare the fiber for spinning it had to be picked over again and the fiber disentangled. This was done, up to a point, by hand.

Then carding came into play, a process whereby two hand cards were used, wooden rectangles about four by nine inches, with a handle, each filled on one surface with small nails or steel pins. The cards were dragged across each other forcing the fibers to lie parallel, removing any remaining impurities and arranging the fibers in the form of a small web.

The web was then drawn into a loose strand called a roll, as part of the preparatory process for spinning.

This was a summer procedure. Spinning, the process whereby the fibers were made into yarn or thread, was often left for the long fall evenings. For the women, many winter evenings were spent knitting socks, mitts, sweaters, stocking caps and o⁴her pieces of wearing apparel.

There were few early settlers who failed to develop a skill in weaving. There were few whose outer garb and often whose inner as well, was not the product of their own farm, the wool carded, spun and woven in the farm kitchen.

Our founding families could not go out to a shoe store and buy footwear. They had to make their own. To make shoes they had to have leather, and to get leather they had to tan the hides of the cattle or other animals they raised. This meant that they had to convert an easily decomposed substance into one that would resist putrefaction and stand up to long wear.

It is not our purpose to go into the lengthy and somewhat involved process of tanning. Incidentally the name tanning comes from the tawny, yellowish brown color of the finished product.

Having prepared the hide the actual tanning was done with an astringent acid procured from the bark of one of several kinds of trees such as hemlock, oak, Willow or sumac, all of which were available.

The acid toughened the skin, condensed it and coagulated all the albuminous matter to preserve it from rotting.

Having prepared the leather, wooden lasts had to be carved to the approximate size and shape of the foot to be fitted and the making of the shoes would proceed.

When they were ready to wear, sheep tallow was rubbed in, and later applied at intervals, to make them water resistant.

Home made harness was also necessary and was made from the leather tanned at home.

Since William and Janets son-in-law William Clark was a shoemaker our founders were probably better shod than the average pioneer family, and their beasts of burden had more comfortable harness.

As years passed, itinerant Shoemakers began to go from home to home, staying with the family until they made the shoes and harness required. But the settler still had to provide his own leather.

Shoes had no laces and were usually at least ankle high, often knee high, and quite tight fitting. Hence, inside every kitchen door was a wooden boot-jack which fitted over the heel to assist in removing the shoe.

Kerosene had yet to be discovered and electricity was far in the future. For light, in addition to the glow of the fire, they had to make candles. These were made in tin molds, round cylinders, closed at the bottom, except for a small hole through which the wick was anchored. They were usually a little under an inch in diameter and often attached in a group, of four or eight, or more.

The ingredients were a fiber wick attached to the bottom of the mold in the center and to a cross piece above to hold it in place. Melted tallow was then poured in and left to harden thus forming the candle.

No home can operate without soap, but again these early settlers had to depend on their own resources. They had brought with them tested recipes using only materials readily at hand.

They knew nothing about the chemical balance necessary between the fatty acids from beef tallow or lard and the alkalies provided by the hardwood ashes they used. Scientists did not learn these secrets till early in the nineteenth century. But they knew that their recipes worked.

While the log cabin was made as draft proof as possible, the heating system was not too efficient, and fire was not ordinarily kept on overnight. Winter nights could be very cold. So for bed warmers planks, or sometimes stones, were heated before the open fire and put in the bed, sometimes also put at the children’s backs to retain heat.

In the preceding pages we have tried to picture something of life as it was during the first decade in Cavendish.

There were four log cabins along with whatever out.. buildings had been erected. William and Janet Simpson with their younger children were near the junction of the two lakes. Immediately to the west was William Jr. and his wife Mary Millar. Next to him on the west were William and Helen Simpson Clark. To the east, having arrived in 1791, were John and Margaret Simpson McNeill.

By 1800 each of the three younger men had young families of several children.

It is also probable that James, the third son, who married Nancy Woodside in 1798, built a cabin on his hundred acres to the west of William Clark. Fourteen years were to elapse before he moved to Bay View, the next district to the west and established the homestead on which the writer was born and grew up.

We began this chapter with the words "Progress is always relative".

A fast-moving young person of this age of speed would probably see the first decade of the history of Cavendish as a period of inertia and semi-stagnation.

But to the participants in that period of beginnings there was little of idleness and much of challenge as, with only the resources within themselves and in the land and sea, they met and mastered one by one the problems as they arose.

It took men and women of great physical strength and stamina and of strong character to face the unreinittin2 toil, the problems often apparently insurmountable, the loneliness, and the lack of very elementary physical comforts.

But, from the beginning in the unbroken forest of 1790, the year 1800 saw much cleared land under cultivation, a rapidly growing number of livestock, with the necessary barns

to house them, a steady improvement in the ordinary creature comforts of living, the happy voices of grandchildren, in short five happy homes where faith, understanding, mutual trust and cooperative effort were moving toward an even better future for all.

Progress was indeed relative. To the participants it may have seemed slow, but it was definitely progress.

In these first chapters it has been our purpose not only to introduce the reader to the founders of Cavendish, but also to cover in some detail the nature of the, country, the conditions under which life was lived, the primitive facilities available to them, developed by their own initiative and toil from the limited resources at their disposal and the way in which they met and overcame almost insurmountable problems.

At this point Cavendish was a community. Homes had been established. Young families were growing up. Land was being cleared. Roads were being opened. Community industries were being established.