Short Stories About Beloit, 1836-1970, from the notes of Walter Dundore
Garbage & Trash Collection: Today our garbage and trash is collected at our homes and hauled to a dump. Of course, this wasn’t always the case. The early settlers didn’t have this problem. The garbage was fed to the pigs, corn husks were used for mattresses, corn cobs became fuel for the kitchen stove, feathers went into ticks and pillows and straw was bedding for both people and animals. There were no papers, no cans and no disposable bottles. Manure became fertilizer and in butchering animals, they used everything but the squeal and the grunt! There was no waste.
Travel (Winters in Beloit): Travel was sometimes difficult for settlers in Beloit. Winter months were especially hard. In 1837 three men and three teams of oxen set out on a trip to Rockford for supplies. They ran into a snow blizzard which soon stopped the oxen, therefore leaving them to continue on foot. The men finally reached a cabin and asked the settler to go get the teams of oxen. The settler refused, but he offered the men shelter for the night. The next morning they set out to look for the oxen and were only able to find them by the steam from the animals arising out of the snow. They continued on their journey to Rockford, discovering a dead man who had frozen to death. What should have been a fairly short trip for these men actually turned out to be a one week journey to travel to Rockford and back to Beloit.
School: Schooling was very important to early Beloit settlers. Even though life was very hard, they worked even harder to get schools started. In 1843, children had to pay to go to school. The cost was $3.00 per term to learn to read and write English and $4.00 per term to learn Latin and Greek. Dexter Colley was asked to pay $5.10 for 14 weeks of school. He had no money so he paid it with lumber shingles he made from the woodland. Benjamin Nito had to pay $2.75 to the school. He paid his bill by cutting fire wood and making fires in the school stoves for 8½ weeks. Henry Tenney paid his bill of $4.36 with three bushels of dried apples worth $4.40. He received 4 cents in change. Joseph, Mary and William Riddle owed the school $6.37. They paid with 6 pumpkins, 6 squash and 129 lbs. of pork worth $3.28 and 64 quarts of milk worth $2.56.