Many Boosums To Carry
by George Holcomb • Transcribed by Betty McClave • Edited by Alex Brooks
Saturday, April 10, 1847: I took my two horse wagon and my son Geo P. with me and my wife and two daughters and the widow Eunice Sackett, we all rode to the funeral of Mr. Sylvenas Carpenter at his dwelling. Elder Wm. Maxon preached, he is from Berlin, and towards night I gathered a barrel of sap.
Monday: I this forenoon helped Geo P. get manure onto the garden and I gathered two barrels of sap and this evening Henry P. Wylie and wife and three sisters came to eat maple sugar when we boiled in or sugared it (sugar on snow).
Thursday, April 15: This forenoon my two sons dug up maples to set in front of the house, and this afternoon Geo P. and Ezra Sackett tagged our sheep. One hundred and fourteen is all that they tagged, five that is sickly and weak and twenty had died.
Friday: I this forenoon went to the bee hewing timber at the lecture room and school house and this afternoon cut and drew two eleven foot sticks for posts for to hang the bell in and today I gathered two barrels of sap.
Monday: Today I went to Troy with my two horse lumber wagon and carried fourteen bushels of signefiders apples and sold them for one dol per bushel and three bushels common apples at 75 cts per, and I paid 18 cents for 57 clams and ten cents for 12 oysters and I paid one dollar and 38 cts for five hundred and 50 pounds plaster. I called to Bennett’s boosum store and left two dozen boosums for Charlotte and the same for Eliza Russell and got them two dozen each to make, and I called to Bacon’s boosum store and left my wife one dozen boosums and Charlotte two dozen and got them both two dozen each to make and I carried and fetched boosums to Bacon’s for our neighbors, for the widow Wylie’s three daughters and Eliza Russell and Harriet Johnson and two Mrs. Rodgers and Susan Jones, and I returned from Troy to Alba to Knight’s old stand tavern and stayed. Today Ezra Sackett began to work for me half of the time for six or seven months at ten dollars per.
Tuesday: This morning I paid my bill to Alba tavern for my horse keeping on hay 37½ cts and lodging 12½ cts and bitters twice 6 cts. I came to Sand Lake to Upam’s tavern and bated on my own feed and had breakfast and beer and a traveller paid my bill and rode with me. One gate open on account bad road and I paid 25 cts gates.