Vermont Women on the Farm

What follows are excerpts taken from the book The Last Yankees, Folkways in Eastern Vermont and the Border Country, Scott E. Hastings, Jr.,  The book offers a rich collection of first-person recollections of rural life in Vermont. See our Vermont History selection for more of Scott Hastings' fascinating portraits of Vermont Women on the Farm.

"That's the way I've always done. Mother always taught me to do my work well. She'd say, 'It isn't a matter of how much you do. It's how good you do it! If you learn to do your work well, it won't bother you to get a job when you're old enough to work out.'"

".....Women were very, very neat. They brought their children up that way. To go visiting , you put on a white apron over your wrapper. Their children were taught to sew and darn and mend; and use a needle and a thimble before they was even old enough to go to school. My aunt cut out little squares of woolen cloth, and she taught her children to sew with them, to string them on a thread. They had a needle and thread and a little thimble. Little tiny thimbles for when you learn. I can't sew without a thimble even today. The little ones, every afternoon after they'd had their nap, they had to sit down and string those squares. That was their work. They was taught to work...."

--Nettie Adams, Barnard, Vermont, born in 1889

Source: The Last Yankees, Folkways in Eastern Vermont and the Border Country, Scott E. Hastings, Jr., Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1990.

If you are interested in ordering this book, it is available in our Country Bookstore: History.