Fourth of July

The following is taken from History of Mt. Pleasant by Hilda Madsen Longsdorf: 

The Fourth of July was appropriately celebrated. Wellington Seeley and George Frandsen had been appointed to see that a liberty pole was erected and that the American Flag was hoisted at sunrise. The 24th of July, honoring the pioneers, was also fittingly celebrated.

In the evenings, the voices of the children could be heard at their gatherings in the street. Among their popular games were Steal Sticks, Stink Base, Pomp, Pomp pull away, and many other similar games. For the grown-ups, there was buggy riding behind spirited horses, and with the first fall of snow, sleigh riding, in bob sleighs, and later on in the fancy cutter, drawn by fancy horses, bedecked with strands of tingling bells. There was always dancing.

Rasmus Frandsen and Perry McArthur were appointed man­agers and conducted all the dances. Sometimes other musicians joined the John Waldermar, Lars Nielsen group in furnishing the music.

Game:  Pump, Pump, Pull AwayTwo 20 ft long imaginary lines are drawn about 50 ft apart. All the players line up on one or the other line. “It” stands between these two lines and calls out to both sides “Pump, Pump, Pull Away, Come Out Or I’ll Pull You Out.” Players from both sides try to race to the other side without getting caught by “It.” While the players are racing to the opposite side “It” tries to catch one of the players and taps him/her lightly three times on the back. If this player cannot get away before “It” has so tapped him, this player also becomes “It.” Now when the lead “It” calls out the same phrase the players again try to get safely to the other imaginary line. Both “It” people can catch these players and tap them three times gently on the back. Anyone caught becomes “It.” Sometimes a number of “It” persons will gang up on a person to catch him/her. The goal of the game is to be the last person caught. The last person caught becomes “It” for the next round of the game.  

The following is taken from ConstitutionFacts.com        https://www.constitutionfacts.com/

So what did happen on July 4, 1776?

The Continental Congress approved the final wording of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. They'd been working on it for a couple of days after the draft was submitted on July 2nd and finally agreed on all of the edits and changes.

July 4, 1776, became the date that was included on the Declaration of Independence, and the fancy handwritten copy that was signed in August (the copy now displayed at the National Archives in Washington, D.C.) It’s also the date that was printed on the Dunlap Broadsides, the original printed copies of the Declaration that were circulated throughout the new nation. So when people thought of the Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776 was the date they remembered.

In contrast, we celebrate Constitution Day on September 17th of each year, the anniversary of the date the Constitution was signed, not the anniversary of the date it was approved. If we’d followed this same approach for the Declaration of Independence we’d being celebrating Independence Day on August 2nd of each year, the day the Declaration of Independence was signed!

How did the Fourth of July become a national holiday?

For the first 15 or 20 years after the Declaration was written, people didn’t celebrate it much on any date. It was too new and too much else was happening in the young nation. By the 1790s, a time of bitter partisan conflicts, the Declaration had become controversial. One party, the Democratic-Republicans, admired Jefferson and the Declaration. But the other party, the Federalists, thought the Declaration was too French and too anti-British, which went against their current policies.

By 1817, John Adams complained in a letter that America seemed uninterested in its past. But that would soon change.

After the War of 1812, the Federalist party began to come apart and the new parties of the 1820s and 1830s all considered themselves inheritors of Jefferson and the Democratic-Republicans. Printed copies of the Declaration began to circulate again, all with the date July 4, 1776, listed at the top. The deaths of Thomas Jefferson and John Adams on July 4, 1826, may even have helped to promote the idea of July 4 as an important date to be celebrated.

Celebrations of the Fourth of July became more common as the years went on and in 1870, almost a hundred years after the Declaration was written, Congress first declared July 4 to be a national holiday as part of a bill to officially recognize several holidays, including Christmas. Further legislation about national holidays, including July 4, was passed in 1939 and 1941.https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=823365018368490611#editor/target=post;postID=612198047640260485

James Monsen Life Highlights

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Happy Times for Pioneer Children: by Eli Day

Eli Azariah Day
One of Mt. Pleasant's First School Teachers

Those were happy days for me! Going to school, learning my lessons, going herding barefooted on stormy days, carrying fire in a torch made of cedar bark, for we had no matches in the sixties to speak of, playing on the hard ground, gathering the cows at night, and trudging along behind, barefooted and weary, sore feet, cracked and bleeding, washing those poor sore feet at night in warm bran water, greasing them with a healing salve made of equal parts of rosin, beeswax and mutton tallow. And when the stone bruised our feet, curing them with fresh barnyard poultices. Not very pleasing to the nose, but the most efficacious remedy for taking out inflammation and blood poisoning that I have yet discovered, even in these days of learned doctors. When herding in the fields in spring or fall we often caught the big green frog, took the hind legs only and skinned, roasted, and ate them. It was said that frogs hind legs in those days were a great delicacy in France. I know they are tender, juicy and tasty when rightly prepared.

We also played two kinds of jacks, using smooth rounded pebbles for jack stones. Right jacks and hundreds, we called the games. Hundreds was the simplest, tossing the five jacks gently, we caught what we could on the back of our hand, tossed again and caught them in the palm of the hand. If we missed catching all in the palm we were out, then using one of the caught stones for a taw, tossing it up, picking up the missed jacks one at a time without a miss until all were regained. One hundred, or five hundred thus gained was the game. Slaps and pinches were the penalty for losing the game. The hand of the looser was placed upon the ground, the winner tossed up his taw, slapped the other's hand as many times as agreed upon, but if he missed his taw, the other returned as many slaps as were made misses. Pinches were similar, pinching the hand instead of slapping it. Though a good player, I did not like the penalty game. Right Jack is rather too long to describe here.

What did we do on the hard ground? In the early spring we dug segoes and Indian carrots and other roots to eat. We played Indian, sometimes scaring some of the uninitiated by a pretended Indian raid. We picked gum from the pitch pines, and in the fall gathered pine cones from those pines from which we got the pine nuts. We went swimming in Sanpitch, we fished, we got mud throwers, small willows some three feet long on the small end of which we put a piece of sticky clay about the size of a common marble which we could throw after much practice with a great speed and considerable accuracy. When going home we would often carry a good lump of clay along to throw from our mud throwers at the cows that might get off to the side of the herd to wander away. A scorching mud dob or two would generally bring her back. In the fall of the year we often gleaned potatoes and roasted them to eat. Sometimes, the larger boys got the smaller ones to fight, which I never liked, and they went home with scratched and bruised faces, minus some hair also. Mischief and fun were the main diversions.


Father often sent two of us boys to herd on his grassy willow land along Sanpitch. At such times we spent much of our time moulding cattle, horses, and sheep from clay. We found a layer of clay at the edge of the water in one of the banks of Sanpitch. It was splendid for clay moulding, and we made from it whole herds of animals, which we kept in corrals we made out of willows. From this clay we made horns, tails, legs, for it was pliable and tenacious, and I thought we made many beautiful horns, and tails and limbs of it for our numerous herds. Other times we fenced in farms and gardens and decorated our gardens with flowers and shrubs. My brother Edwin seemed best at this. But I was proud of the horns I made for my cattle and sheep. I wish I could make you feel the pleasure I had in this pleasant pastime. Sometimes wrestling, racing and gymnastics were our pastime. Also, when weary from these strenuous efforts, we would sit around and tell stories, and I was one of the best at this pastime.