friday's frontier fact

There was a quaint custom in the 18th-century that made its way to the frontier and seems a bit risque even today. Back then a man often had to travel a long way to court a woman. Once there, he spent the night with her family. If he was both besotted and clever, he would do this in the dead of winter when bundling was practiced. Candles and firewood were never wasted so this came about as a means of keeping the couple warm and saving on light and heat.

Simply put, the parents wrapped the fully-clothed courting couple in separate quilts and put them to bed with a bundling board between them so they could talk to one another through the night. If a man truly loved a woman he'd make sure her reputation wasn't compromised. Besides, in those one room cabins, Ma and Pa were likely within spitting distance. And Pa's rifle was loaded, no doubt. Public penalties for the bundling board giving way included fines and whippings.

It looks like young women were given greater freedom in the frontier settlements than their Colonial sisters in the east. An itinerant preacher traveling through Kentucky in the late 18th-century said that nine out of ten couples he married were already expecting.

The original bundlers were Biblical. Ruth and Boaz seem to have done this in Ruth 3:6 and 3:13.

In the movie "Witness" there is a scene in which the protagonist, Harrison Ford, spends the night with an Amish woman with a bundling board between them.

Would you have been a bundler in that day? Sounds pretty cozy to me!

Sources:
www.history.org
www.family.jrank.org
www.quiltersmuse.com

friday's frontier fact

Any Kentuckian should recognize this man like I learned to do long ago. It would hardly be fair to post these Friday frontier facts without first paying tribute to Daniel Boone. But before we go further you need to unlearn, as I did, anything Fess Parker taught you. The real Boone is much more interesting and complicated. And no, he didn't wear a coonskin cap - he thought them uncouth!

Dr. Benjamin Rush, noted colonial physician and signer of the Declaration of Independence, had little good to say about frontiersmen. But I doubt he ever met Boone. As a child I used to wonder what it was like being the famed frontiersman's daughter (he had four). Jemima was my favorite (his, too). The typical frontiersman roaming the 18th-century woods was infested with vermin, foul-mouthed, superstitious, belligerent, and illiterate. More than a third of them couldn't write their names. Then there was Boone.

Boone stood out, not because he was a character, but because he had character. One relation described him this way: "he had a soft, almost effeminate voice, and extremely mild and pleasant manners." Surprised? Here's more. He lived with the Shawnee and liked them. Two of his sons were killed by Indians yet he never bore a grudge. He fathered ten children though he spent more time away from home than at home. He was swindled out of thousands of Kentucky acres. He only admitted to killing one Indian and then in the most genteel terms. His only autobiography was lost when his canoe hit a log and capsized. He was plagued with severe arthritis. He moved to Missouri and died there at age 86, but his bones were brought back to Kentucky. Boone has always been my hero.

Only 16 more Fridays till The Frontiersman's Daughter is on shelves!

Happy Friday.

Sources:
Boone: A Biography, Robert Morgan.
Frontier Living, Edward Tunis