For breakfast the man of the house might find on his table ham, eggs, corn pone and fried potatoes, in addition to the standard dish, mush and milk. For a variation, or if meats were not handy, hominy and mush might be cooked in sweetened water with bear oil or grease from fried meat added. For supper he might have wild turkey, smoked sausage or venison, cheese, peaches or pears, and vegetables. Once a week in most households the supper consisted of “pot luck,” made of meat and various vegetables, cooked together in one big pot. In almost every house there was a store of cider, brandy, rum or whiskey, but the men seldom overindulged except at weddings and funerals. It was not uncommon at such affairs for an argument to ensue and end in a fist fight. Schools followed the establishment of churches in the township. The school building was a log cabin with a fireplace at one end, and it often was erected in a single day. Desks were made of puncheons and seats of flattened saplings. The children usually wrote with pens made of goose quills, for pencils were too scarce and too expensive. Ink was made from maple bark and copperas. The school curriculum was confined to the “three R’s”: reading, ’riting, and ’rithmetic, and no high standards were required of the teachers. More often than not, the teacher was selected because of his or her physical inability to do other work rather than an ability to teach. Each patron paid his proportionate share of the cost of operating the school, even to the point of boarding the teacher for a certain length of time. The unfortunate teacher, like the pauper, was looked upon as a person merely to be tolerated. All that was expected of the pupils was the ability to write legibly, to read the Bible or an almanac, and to compute the value of a load of produce. Mail deliveries in the rural areas were unknown, but a post office was established in Dayton in 1804, and by 1810 mail was being brought from Cincinnati by horseback once a week. The township people seldom had an opportunity to see a newspaper, and it was a treat, indeed, when a copy of “The Ohio Watchman,” a 12- x 20-inch paper printed in Dayton, fell into their hands. Often the paper would be passed along from home to home many weeks after its date of printing. In these crude surroundings our forefathers lived. They built their cabins amid mud, stumps, poison ivy, mosquitoes, rattlesnakes, wolves, and wildcats. It was in this environment that babies were born and grew to healthy adulthood, although they entered this world without benefit of sanitary facilities and hospitals, and often even without the presence of a doctor or midwife. To imagine that wilderness civilization—without telephones, electricity, bathrooms, furnaces, automobiles, trains, airplanes, radio, and television—is difficult. But it is even more difficult to comprehend that these improvements date back only a few short years to the lifetimes of our own grandparents.