When the proper time came for the funeral services, if it was in the growing season, friends and neighbors would contribute from the best flowers in their gardens, if the deceased was a young person or a child. If it was an old person a carefully arranged sheaf of ripened grain was considered an appropriate and sufficient emblem.
After a sermon accompanied by singing, the coffin was loaded into the best appearing farm wagon conveniently in reach and driven at a solemn walk to the graveyard, followed by relatives, neighbors and friends in a variety of vehicles including buggies, carriages, spring wagons and wagons without springs, if they were the best their owners could turn out, as was a very common occurrence, all driven on a walk, which in many cases was fast enough for comfort, except when there was good sleighing, when cutters and bob sleighs were brought into service and driven at a somewhat faster gait.
On arriving at the grave a good sized pile of earth would be found lying without cover by the grave. The coffin would be lowered by two strong straps in the hands of the bearers. At the closing ceremony the minister was expected to scatter a few handfuls of earth over the coffin as he slowly repeated, “Ashes to ashes and dust to dust.”
This might seem a rough way for the dead to be handled, but it may be truthfully said that our settlers did as well by the dead as they were well prepared to do in those early times, and quite as well as they did by themselves, and I never knew of any of our old pioneers coming back to complain. The cash expense of an early funeral was said to be about twenty five dollars.
It was the custom of those days to have only two terms of school in a year, which for a time was paid for by rate bill, that is, the total expense of a year was figured out and divided among the patrons according to the number of days schooling their family had had the benefit of, except that in case of a patron who was too poor to pay his, or her rate bill, it was divided among those better able to pay.
The winter terms began after the farmer’s fall work was done unless he was way behind his neighbors, and was intended especially for the older scholars who could not well be spared from home during the warmer part of the year.
If the father needed the help of his boys, with the cultivation of his cleared land along with the work of clearing more, the care of the garden, the chickens, calves, pigs, and perhaps the cows, was likely to fall on the mother, in addition to the care of the household department with little to work with, it was nothing strange if she felt that she must have the help of her older girls during the summer season.
The summer terms were intended especially for the younger ones who could not well walk to school in winter on unbroken, or at least, poorly broken roads as roads were likely to be in those early days.