[Illustration: Windows were usually near the fireplace where family activity was carried on.] [Illustration: Over an open fire, in iron pots, frying pans and skillets, housewives cooked venison stew, roasted pork and wild game, fried mush, baked corn bread and corn dodgers to a golden brown and often hard enough “to split a board or fell a deer at forty feet.”] [Illustration: Sturdy trestle tables served the pioneer family well.] [Illustration: Pioneer women were especially proud of their chinaware.] [Illustration: A Seth Thomas clock adorned the mantles of those who were able to afford a touch of elegance.] [Illustration: Housewives spun the wool from which they made garments often stiff and too large, but suitable as garments to protect the family from the elements.] [Illustration: Beds were dressed with home-woven coverlets.] [Illustration: Babies came in annual crops.] [Illustration: Of the humble one-room log house the cooper’s son wrote: “At meal time it was all kitchen. On rainy days, when neighbors came to relate their exploits, how many deer and wild turkey they had killed, it was all sitting room. On Sunday, when the young men all dressed up in their jeans, and the young ladies, in their best bow dresses, it was all parlor. At night it was all bedroom.”] [Illustration: Outside, wood stacked high during the summer, dwindled rapidly as the winter passed.] [Illustration: From the ash hoppers, found in every backyard, lye was leeched for use in making soap.] [Illustration: Wells with windlass ropes and wooden buckets supplied the household with needed water.] [Illustration: Rain barrels caught the “soft” water that dripped from the eaves. This water was used for the family washing.] [Illustration: Samuel Hill, New Salem’s most prosperous businessman, owned the only four-room, two-story house in the village.] [Illustration: The opulence reflected in the Hill residence was not common to the homes of New Salem.] [Illustration: Samuel Hill was also owner of the woolhouse and carding machine. In spring, during wool shearing time, farmers brought their wool to the warehouse in sacks, old bed quilts and petticoats, pinned with thorns from the honey locust.] [Illustration: The carding machine in action was New Salem’s most dramatic attraction. From dawn until darkness the weary treading of oxen hoofs on the cleated treadmill powered the squeaking, moaning, wooden gears of the carding machine.] [Illustration: Samuel Hill and John McNeal owned the most successful store in New Salem. It was the center of village life. Under its protective porch people gathered to argue the questions of temperance, travel and human slavery.]