Interviewee: Emma Fell Tinsman
Date of birth/age at interview: June 13, 1876/99
Interviewer: Linda Ricker
Interview date: estimated 1975
Interview location: unknown
Interview length: 58 minutes
Time span discussed: 1880s – 1890s
Summary: Emma talks at length on farm life, food, and cooking. Her childhood chores, mention of the “Indian Boy” who lived and worked on their farm, turkeys, mother’s cooking, and her father’s farm work are the base of this history. Her adult life is not mentioned here.
Time markers:
00:00 – starts in mid-sentence about fire starting responsibilities work in the kitchen
00:40 – farm house and cellars for food storage
01:09 – her childhood chores, skimming the cream off the milk, running for items in cellars
02:50 – ice house, partnership with the neighbor
04:19 – Indian boy lived with them, their joint chores; no boys in family;
05:28 – cows, milking, grandparents helping on weekend
07:48 – commission man who sold extra produce and squabs in Philadelphia
08:09 – her job to take care of squabs; her mother’s diary; prices of food items
09:42 – squabs, picking feathers
11:15 – planting potatoes; potatoes at most meals
12:30 – traveling butcher from Lumberville; treatment of meat: salted, dried, brined, smoked
16:48 – lambs occasionally
17:36 – slaughtering in winter
18:22 – pigs: scraping hairs, legs in brine
20:56 – stories about picking cherries: making pies, canning, drying cherries
24:01 –outside wood oven with door inside house; mother judged a good farmer by his woodpile
25:42 – using stone dome oven (beehive)
27:21 – beans dried
27:54 – stories and details about raising chickens, turkeys (parts indistinct)
38:09 – father was a farmer, plowed behind two horse plow
39:40 – Indian’s lived with them and worked for them
41:30 – personal washing habits, no bath tubs
42:20 – stoves kept houses warm
42:20 – indistinct
44:24 – pig pens, feeding pigs
46:20 – creamery operation in Solebury
48:20 – attended Solebury’s one-room schoolhouse, only 6 months per year because of farm work
49:21 – girls became teachers or seamstresses, employed in stores
50:20 – baking stories, interviewer talks
53:53 – Lettie Betts, a Quaker friend, gifts of bread
55:42 – eventually lived in New Hope (parts indistinct), value of porches
