A Boy Named Virgil, Part 3: Grandfather's House
Tales from a Small Village in Southern Illinois Circa 1900
A Boy Named Virgil is the first-person account of Virgil Bravard Browne, based on a letter he wrote to his niece, Marcia Moore Sagebiel, in 1958. The story is edited and read by me, his grandnephew. Read the introduction.
Our grandfather’s house was like many of that time. It was built piecemeal, an ell1 or another room being added as needed. The house originally had measured about 40 feet in length and 16 feet in width.
The Kitchen
An ell had been built on the north side of the house, about 15 feet in each dimension. This was the kitchen.
A pantry on one end was divided by a partition of 10-inch tongue and groove poplar lumber — with two doors entering into the kitchen — and was about eight feet wide and 16 feet in length. There were two built-in cupboards with hinged doors. There also was a “safe”2 on one side that housed our Sunday dishes and cutlery and other odds and ends of chinaware that were not in daily use.
In the center of the kitchen and near the wall of the pantry was the stove that was fueled with wood. The wood box sat directly behind the stove, and it was my fate to keep the box filled with “cook wood.”
On the other side of the kitchen was a long heavy oaken table that would seat eight people for everyday use, but in case of company two leaves could be added and its capacity increased to 12 diners. This was for wintertime.
The Porch Room
Connecting with the kitchen was a room we called the porch room, enclosed on three sides with the other being open and protected from flies with a screen. On the outside was a barn type “roller door” running on a track that could be closed in case of bad weather. This was our summer dining room. During winter it was filled with wood for the kitchen stove, ensuring dry wood for cooking.
The Front Room
What is now known as the living room of a home was known to us as “the front room.” This room was the scene of the family’s social life.
A wood-burning stove called a “King Heater” occupied the center of the room. It included a cast iron top and bottom and japanned heavy sheet metal for the sides. Filled with a few chunks of ash, oak or hickory — and with the draft open — the stove would be red hot in minutes and could scorch knees and cover calves with goose pimples.
A wood box of ample capacity was behind the stove. Keeping it filled was my daily chore, a task I thoroughly detested. For that matter, any task was viewed with distaste when one was 10 to 14 years old.
In one corner of this room was my grandmother’s bed. It was built from walnut with towering headboards, springs made of coil steel with light wooden slats top and bottom holding them together, a “tick” filled with fresh oat straw each fall, and atop this was a thick feather bed to which many a goose had contributed its down. No innerspring or foam rubber mattress but equally comfortable if not more so, I am sure.
“My grandparents’ home became a permanent home for me.”
— A BOY NAMED VIRGIL, PART 1
A bureau of walnut, a small stand table with a small drawer in which I kept the things that were dear to a boy of 10 or 12 and of no value to none but him, a rocking chair each for our grandparents, a low rocker for Aunt Jane and straight chairs for my cousin Goldie and me completed the furnishings of the front room.
Feather Beds and Cold Nights
At night in wintertime the stand table was set in the middle of the floor near the stove. Two kerosene lamps were placed upon it and our grandparents would seat themselves on opposite sides. Goldie and I would sit on the other two sides and do our schoolwork or read or pursue any other interests we might have.
When 8:30 p.m. approached, the stand was set against the wall and the stove filled with a night log, the draft carefully closed to a small crack. Grandpa and I wended our way to our feather beds in the east end of the house that never knew heat.
These two bedrooms were ceiled3 with 10-inch poplar boards, painted a robin’s egg blue. Since home insulation was unknown at the time, there was nothing between the ceiling boards and the wooden siding outside. The temperature inside the bedrooms that were occupied by my grandfather and me was the same as outdoors, the walls acting as a windbreak only.
This seems to one of this age as something unbearable, considering the severity of Illinois winters at that time, with the high humidity that is usual to a place of low altitude. But we thought nothing of it, not knowing any better and being no worse off than our neighbors.
We had feather beds into which we sank and the sides came up around us, with covers made from scraps of old woolen overcoats and pants so heavy we were almost crushed by the weight of them. The winters have been increasingly milder as the years have gone by, with zero degrees the exception rather than the rule. But I remember it being 22 below, and 10 below was not uncommon.
The Parlor
The parlor, also unheated, was between the bedrooms and front room. It was ceiled on the sides and had a ceiling with 10-inch boards painted robin’s egg blue. In this room was another big walnut bed — the twin of the one on which my grandmother slept.
The parlor was reserved for guests, such as visiting relatives and our Baptists who were called for revival meetings and conference meetings.
Next time: a visit from Reverend Throckmorton.
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In this usage, “ell” means an extension to a building.
Like pie safe, a “safe” in this instance is a storage cabinet.
To line or plaster (Oxford Languages).
That is astonishing —that he slept in an unheated room all winter. I’ve lived in Illinois and I don’t know how someone wouldn’t freeze to death some nights feather beds or not.
Stepping back into time, thanks to Virgil letting us in.