Another Trip North To Buy Sheep
by George Holcomb • Transcribed by Betty McClave • Edited by Alex Brooks
Saturday, Sept. 28, 1849: This evening I carried potatoes and apples in the celler and on this evening my two sons watched to catch the dogs that killed two of my sheep on my Rodgers farm but no dogs came.
Sunday: Today Stephen Palmer’s time is out, he has worked the five months agreed on and I paid his father Russel Palmer for his work which is twenty dollars all in cash paid in hand but said Stephen is to work one day more to make up lost time.
Monday, Oct. 1: Today quite rainy. The boys worked making a door to the hog house.
Tuesday: On the way to Hancock this morning I called to J. Acox and borrowed one hundred dollars and gave my note on demand, I borrowed the money for Geo P. Tonight Mr. Rufus Withee and wife came and stayed on a visit and I paid him one years interest on a note of thirty dollars. The interest I paid him was two dollars and ten cents. Today we butchered a fat sheep.
Wednesday: This morning Geo P. started in company with Wm Bliss Maxon to go north to buy sheep. Said Maxon went with his horse and Geo P’s wagon. I let Geo P. have one hundred and seventy dollars and he had enough to make up three hundred dollars in all, to carry with him.
Thursday: Tonight I went to school meeting and we put J. M. Glass trustee and I rode in the two wheel carriage to Gay’s Store and paid nine cents for six candles.
Friday: Today I and John F. stopped fence and wired the pigs noses and put them on the hill to get shack and we gathered apples. Today John F. took the two horse wagon and went to Benoni Briggs and picked over twenty bushels of grafted greenings and signifiders that Geo P. bought by the clump, three trees, and agreed to pay ten dollars and said Briggs had agreed to help pick said apples but did not help. John F. did not finish them and late home in the rain until eight o’clock this evening. High wind tonight.
Tuesday: I gathered apples. Today John F. took the two horse wagon and went to Benoni Briggs and picked the remainder of Geo P. apples, seven bushels. Today Charlotte E. retured home from the west, she came to Troy on the cars and then in the stage and Wylie Gardner fetched her home.
Friday: John F. went chestnuting this forenoon and this afternoon we picked winter apples.
Saturday: Today I took the two wheel carriage and went to Pittsfield. Cornelia Wylie rode home with me and her father F. Jay Wylie rode with me to Lenox. I went to see Squ Bishop and in Pittsfield I called to see Squ. Gold. Bishop rode to Pittsfield with me and I returned home from Pittsfield by seven this evening.
Sunday, Oct. 21: On this evening Geo P. returned home from the north from Vermont. He left Wm B. Maxon in Williamstown with the sheep they bought to come on tomorrow. Geo P. bought 142 wethers and Maxon bought about 40 ewes.
Monday: I and Geo P. gathered apples and John F. went to Hancock with one horse wagon to meet Wm B. Maxon that was coming with the sheep that he and Geo P. bought to the north.
Tuesday: This forenoon my two sons tended to dividing of Geo P. sheep from Maxon’s and John F. tended to driving then to Truman Merrils pasture and fixing the fence some.
Wednesday: I went to Pittsfield with one horse wagon and carried ten bushels apples and sold for fifty cents per bushel, three bushel of them were John F, that he bought at 12½ cents per. On the way home I called to N. Nichols post office and paid five cts for a letter for Charlotte E.