Today we have furnaces, electric heat, solar power and other means of keeping us warm in the winter. Doctors and drug stores are everywhere. For the most part, this has come about in the last 150 years. Things were much different before 1900.

Fairview might have had one doctor before then, meaning a person who had at least some medical training. Dr. McCracken was the first college trained doctor I heard of in Fairview. The earliest person to practice medicine in Fairview was Ann Ashworth. She had no medical training. Ashworth would mix herbs together and make potions. She often would cast spells to go along with her treatments. You can find some of her spells and potions in her estate file in the NC archives. How many of them actually helped anyone is unknown. I imagine she took credit for a lot of people who got well on their own.

Today, when we hear the term “bed pan,” we think of something you use the bathroom in when you can’t get out of bed. In the past, a bed pan was a metal pan with a lid that people would stick in the fireplace to get hot. They would then stick the pan under the bed covers and run it up and down the bed to make it warm. After removing the bed pan, they would get under the covers into a nice, warm bed.

Carrie Chatham Jenkins (1894–1985) and Carmie Chatham (Guffey 1888–1982) said that people used to have five children share the same bed in the winter. The two oldest children would sleep at the head of the bed, and the three youngest children at the foot. That way, all five children would be warm in the winter. Most men wore long john underwear in the winter as well.

A large number of people use to have can houses. People would dig a hole and then build a small shed in the side of a bank. Three sides would have a dirt wall to protect the building and help keep the canned goods from freezing or getting too hot. The front of the shed would have a door to let you inside. It often would have a lock on the door to keep people from stealing what was in the building.

You had to be well-prepared for winter. You also had to presume you would have a long, bad winter. If you did not, your family could face very hard times.