2012
Railsplitter Festival - Lincoln, Illinois September 14 - 16, 2012 Copyright LDN 2012
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A
big part of the festival is the demonstration of crafts from days gone by. In the days
before electricity, cooking stoves and gas furnaces, settlers in central Illinois had to
figure out how to do things on their own.
Their daily chores included cooking sewing, weaving and cutting firewood. Fences were built
using split logs, and children played with each other instead of toys.
One interesting point that came out in the frontier demonstrations this year is how mothers
engaged their children in learning and chores.
When wool is spun into thread or yarn, it has to be wound together for storage. In the first
photo below, the pioneer lady is explaining that mothers would set the children to work
winding the yarn. As they wound, they were supposed to count the number of times they made
a complete rotation. In the end, kids got the work done and learned their numbers at the same
time.
Farther down in the album are two ladies cutting wood with a crosscut saw. This was just one
of several railsplitting events that took place on Saturday.
Pictures by Nila Smith
