Marie’s Note 4

My Take

DiVoran Lites

Marie in White (1883)

Jasper Newton Dulgar (1847-1944) was Marie’s paternal grandfather. He had two wives. Nancy Emeline was his second wife. She had lost her husband and between them, she and Jasper had a family of six children.

When they married they outfitted their kitchen with utensils…mostly made of iron. They bought an iron stove that came with a set of ironstone dishes, an iron stew pot, an iron tea kettle, and a big iron skillet.

They had a pair of black bread-pans that were made of a lighter metal. They were two feet square each. Emeline made two double batches of bread two times a week. If the bread dried out, she tore it up, put it in bowls and poured milk over it for breakfast. If there was a bit of extra bread at the end of the week, she could make bread pudding with milk, eggs, and sugar.

The stove used wood for fuel. Ovens in those days were temperamental but a good cook knew how to make her oven work right. She could have spent up to six hours in the kitchen every day, except Sunday. Most likely she made enough food on Saturday to take to church the next day. It seems that most of the hard-working farmers believed in the Lord Jesus and wanted to be together on that day to learn more about Him plus they needed the rest and the company.

One winter Jasper discovered there were Indians living in dirt caves somehow worn into the bank of a stream. Being so close to “wild” Indians, was a bit scary at first, but they left each other alone. 

Speaking of Indians, my friend, Patricia Franklin in Colorado is of pioneer stock, too. She tells a story that goes like this:

“In the 1800s when my grandfather was a small boy he pulled a kettle of boiling water off the stove and down the front of his body. Since a doctor had never lived in the Wet Mountain or anywhere close, his mother hitched up the horses, put him in the wagon and drove twenty-five miles over rough terrain to an Indian camp where her Indian friends lived. She left him there with them, and several months later, they returned him to his home totally healed except for the scarring of his torso and legs. He would have those throughout his long life. 

Now back to Jasper. As Jasper grew old and frail, sons and daughters took over the hard work of the farm while Jasper spent some of his days as an unpaid county clerk. Because he had been there when the area was first settled he was the only person who could remember who lived where and when they lived there. In good weather, he sat out front with his squirrel gun on his lap. In the picture, he has something else on his lap—a birthday cake. I wish I could count the candles, but by this time he was 97 and that was the year in which he died.  

Jasper Newton Dulgar 1844

I was born in ’38 and Jasper was still alive back east, but I never got to meet him. When I was twelve years old, however, my grandmother Marie and grandad Ira took me by car to Illinois and I met many fine relatives, most of them still farmers. When we got there, I slept in a feather bed for the first time in my life. 

Marie 1942 

DiVoran has been writing for most of her life. Her first attempt at a story was when she was seven years old and her mother got a new typewriter. DiVoran got to use it and when her dad saw her writing he asked what she was writing about. DiVoran answered that she was writing the story of her life. Her dad’s only comment was, “Well, it’s going to be a very short story.” After most of a lifetime of writing and helping other writers, DiVoran finally launched her own dream which was to write a novel of her own. She now has her Florida Springs trilogy and her novel, a Christian Western Romance, Go West available on Amazon. When speaking about her road to publication, she gives thanks to the Lord for all the people who helped her grow and learn.  She says, “I could never have done it by myself, but when I got going everything fell beautifully into place, and I was glad I had started on my dream.”

Tags: Early Colorado life