Iva Standish Calkins

Iva was the daughter of Winnifred Lawton daughter of Lyman Lawton, descendent of Thomas, the original Lawton immigrant in Rhode Island in 1638/9.  Not only was she something like a tenth cousin to me, she was also a dear friend developed through genealogy studies via United States Postal Service.  Iva was a schoolteacher throughout most of her adult life.  At times she penned stories of her childhood as well as her teaching years.

Wash day was a hard day for mother.  Water had to be carried to the house, put in a boiler on the stove and heated.  The white clothes were boiled.  The wash tubs were placed on a fold-out frame that held two tubs with a wringer between.  Mother scrubbed one article at a time in the sudsy water, put it through the wringer and into the rinse water that had some bluing in it.  From the rinse the clothes went to the clothes line---winter or summer.  They finished drying in the house.

After six years on the Jenks farm another move was necessary.  This time we moved to a forty acre farm which years before had belonged to my grandparents Lyman and Sarah Lawton.  They raised apples and peaches.  The apple trees were still there.  I believe I was told that they carried water from a spring at the foot of a big hill near Cedar Creek.  We had a well near the house and pumped the water by hand for household use.  The horses were watered at the neighbor’s water tank.  The cows went down a winding path to the creek for clear spring water.  That ended in a loss as one day my pet cow Buttercup fell down the hill and broke so many bones she had to be butchered.  My dad got about twenty dollars out of her from the butcher shop.  This was another sad day for me.