In the "Valley of the Three Forks o' the Wolf" Old Coonrod Pile was
still the dominant figure.
Those who had settled in the valley were prospering on its fertile soil.
It was then, as it is to-day, remote from popular highways, but the
valley had grown into a community almost self-supporting. The owners of
the land had equipped their farms with such agricultural tools as were
in use in those days, and the Wolf river had been dammed and a
water-driven flour mill erected.
The houses tho built of logs and chinked with clay were comfortable
homes, where in winter wood-fires roared in wide chimney-places, where
there was no problem of the high cost of living--and few problems of any
kind relating to living.
The men of the valley farmed diversified crops, furnishing all that was
needed for food and clothing, and they even raised tobacco for the pipes
smoked at the general store run by Coonrod Pile in an end room of his
home.
It was the day when the weaving-loom was the piano in the home, and all
the women carded, spun and wove. The table-garden, the care of the
house, the preparation of the meals and the making of the covering and
the clothes were in the women's division of the labor. The families
usually were large and every member a producer. To the girls fell shares
of the mother's work.
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