Excerpt from Osage County Directory and Statistical Compendium

These conditions had established themselves without serious consideration of the respective duties of the sexes. The early settler answered the call of the wild as the first law of his nature. He was not disturbed with ethical problems of home life further than to require morality and virtue in the home. If the women performed more than their share of work, their endurance was regarded as proof that not too much had been required. No Lochinvar could woo with greater ardor than the sturdy young suitor of that period, but once having acquired possession of the object of his affection, he reverted to type and lived true to the example set by the fathers.

While there was apparent a palpable inequality in the domes tic requirements of the sexes of that early day, yet the men were not lacking in respect and affection for the women. The do mestic structure was the creation of long custom. With no pretension to aesthetic tastes, they accepted without question the perfect idealism of their primitive conditions. They were jealous of any invasion that threatened established customs. The head of the family concerned himself with the work which the mother of the family could not perform. His duties were to annually clear additional land, put in the crop and cultivate it. But these duties were not permitted to interfere with his pleasures. He could discern with fine discrimination the favor able or unfavorable signs of the weather for fishing, and always yielded to his native impulses in matters of this character. The summer months afforded him much delight on the banks of streams, where he kept tense Vigil at his lines. During the winter months he spent much of his time in the woods in quest of game, and he demonstrated prowess with the crude firearms he possessed. The rifle, loaded at the muzzle, was the chief implement of execution. Occupying a place of high esteem was the long-eared, deep bass-voiced hound, whose endurance was a quality of admiration. That hound that laid out in the chase or was outdistanced by the others subjected himself to speedy dispatch. No man in the community dared venture the humiliation of the ownership of a hound that shirked in the chase. In fact, he craved no higher honors than the distinction of owning the best pack in the community.

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