When Hutson was not in school, he was working the farm. People raised their own provisions in those days. His father raised corn, wheat, cotton and tobacco. These were work a plenty the year round for little Hutson. When the crops were laid by, the wheat was to thrash. There were no steam thrashers then. This is the way it was thrashed. They cleaned off a big yard and put wheat on it, and the boys were put on horses and started around and around the wheat to tramp it out. The men stood with wooden pitch forks and kept it stirred up. That is the way they got out their wheat to make the biscuits. After it was gotten out, there were small sacks filled up and put on horses and a boy would take it to a water mill to be ground. Barrel and sack flour was unknown then. After a while Hutson's father put up a thrasher, and the farmers hauled their wheat to his thrasher, so Hutson still had plenty to do. In winter there was wood to chop, rails to make and land to clear, so the boys were kept quite busy. Hutson's father kept what was called a public house. That was where the travelers stopped for a night, there was a heap of travel on horses back there. There were no railroads, and very often there was a great drove of horses and cattle and sheep and hogs driven through on foot. They put up at the public houses. Sometimes the water would get up so they could not cross the river and they would have to stay several days, so Hutson helped to tend the flock. His father raised sheep and sheared the wool off of them. Then his mother and sister and old aunt Rachel, the black woman would card and spin the wool and his mother would weave jeans cloth of it and either color it blue or brown and cut and make his jeans with her own hands, and they made cotton cloth, too, for him to wear. And the boys would catch raccoons and skin them and his mother would make and trim caps to wear on their heads. People did not buy much in those days. What sugar and coffee and molasses they ate and a few Sunday clothes. People did not have so many fine rooms in those days. Hutson's father's sitting room, bedroom and dining room was all the same room. They cooked in the little house on the fire place, the house where the negroes stayed. Cook stoves were unknown in those days. They raised their own vegetables, dried their own fruits, they made their own kraut.
So this is the way cousin Hutson lived in his youth. When he got to manhood, he had education sufficient to teach in the country school. Well do I remember him being my teacher in the winter of (18)54 and (18)55. He taught for a while, then he went to work for a man in McLemoresville by the name of John Hart. After clerking for a while he got an interest in the store. It was while in this store he married Josephine Norman of Huntingdon. I think it was in the winter of 59, when the Civil War got up, he moved out and went to farming again. He was a Union man but never went in the army. He farmed some years then went into the merchantile business again, which he followed the balance of his life.