OKGenWeb Notice: These electronic pages may NOT be reproduced in any format for profit or presentation by any other organization or persons. Presentation here does not extend any permissions to the public. This material may not be included in any compilation, publication, collection, or other reproduction for profit without permission.
The creator copyrights ALL files on this site. The files may be linked to but may not be reproduced on another site without specific permission from the OKGenWeb Coordinator, [okgenweb@cox.net], and their creator. Although public information is not in and of itself copyrightable, the format in which they are presented, the notes and comments, etc. are. It is, however, permissible to print or save the files to a personal computer for personal use ONLY.


Indian Pioneer Papers - Index

Indian Pioneer History Project for Oklahoma
Date:
Name: Eliza Cross
Post Office: Hugo, Oklahoma
Date of Birth:
Place of Birth:
Father:
Place of Birth:
Information on father:
Mother:
Place of birth:
Information on mother:
Field Worker:
 
Daddy raised stock, mostly hogs, and raised corn, sweet potatoes, peas, and cane for our syrup-but lots of corn. And every Monday Sarah would have us beat three gallons of corn. That was to make bread and hominy. We beat it in a mortar with pestle. That would last a week, for making shuck bread, sour bread, and peanut bread.

My stepmother taught me that I could take sweet potatoes, some syrup, and some eggs, and make sweet potato pies. I had never heard of them. She'd make us go out in the woods and get hickory nuts, crack them and put other "goodies" in the cooked hominy. Sometimes we'd cook pumpkins with the hominy. Just cut up about a half a wash pot full of pumpkins and cook with the hominy, mix and stir as they cook.

Dried peaches and hominy was another good dish. Hominy cooked nearly done, then add quartered sweet potatoes. We always raised lots of black-eyed peas, and cooked them with hominy too.

Daddy said flour bread was not "healthy" for us to eat, so he did not buy any till I as about eight years old, then very little. I had tasted biscuit.

We had an ash-hopper out behind the smokehouse where we poured our hickory ashes. When it was full of ashes we'd pour buckets of water over it, and let it drain slowly through into a trough at the bottom and into a wooden tub. It would be lye then.

We always had lots of hog meat, so had lots of scraps to make soap out of, but if we wanted extra nice soap we made it of mutton-tallow.

[Transcribers note: Eliza Cross is Eliza Bohanan Cross]

Submitted to OKGenWeb by NAME <CindyYoung@aol.com> 05-1999.