Going barefoot

[csabugler]

Re: Going barefoot

Here's my two pennies worth.
I have a small 10 acre spread . We have horses, dogs, cats, and guinea hens. I virtually NEVER go in my yard without shoes lest I have to pick and choose every step carefully. I am not fond of having to remove droppings from my feet. In a culture where everone had and relied upon animals, I have to believe the amount of droppings would be great.
Granted, their culture was different than ours, but you still gotta think stepping barefoot in crap was avoided!

[Hank Trent]

Re: Going barefoot

Here's my two pennies worth.
I have a small 10 acre spread . We have horses, dogs, cats, and guinea hens. I virtually NEVER go in my yard without shoes lest I have to pick and choose every step carefully. I am not fond of having to remove droppings from my feet. In a culture where everone had and relied upon animals, I have to believe the amount of droppings would be great.
Granted, their culture was different than ours, but you still gotta think stepping barefoot in crap was avoided!

I've walked barefoot in barnyards and pastures, and I have to say, it's not a big deal. It really isn't. I don't know how to explain--you avoid what you can, just like when wearing shoes, though it's much easier to wash off what you can't barefoot than with shoes, just by wading through a creek or something. If we're both extrapolating from modern mindset, that would be a total non-issue for me but a deal-breaker for you--so that's why I'm hoping either for period sources, or information like Terre posted from a culture where going barefoot was still within the norm.

With animals, though, another problem does come to mind... At September Storm, helping with the ambulance while barefoot (as a soldier), my biggest worry wasn't the manure, it was getting my feet stepped on while backing the high-spirited horse up to the ambulance. It didn't prevent me from helping, but it required a lot more attention to his feet and my feet, because I knew the consequences of being stepped on were greater than if I'd had shoes.

Hank Trent
hanktrent@voyager.net

[csabugler]

Re: Going barefoot

Hank,
As much as I respect your opinion, maybe I should re-evaluate my thoughts on stepping in doo from a historic perspective.

[Hank Trent]

Re: Going barefoot

I think this is one of those things like "ewww, do you really sit on the dirt and sleep on the ground?" or "ewww, do you really eat that nasty food?" where people already have their comfort zone figured out, and anything outside the lines is just, well, ewww! :D

Hank,
As much as I respect your opinion, maybe I should re-evaluate my thoughts on stepping in doo from a historic perspective.

See, based on your post, it looks like you step in it and track it around more than a barefoot person would have in the period.

"I virtually NEVER go in my yard without shoes lest I have to pick and choose every step carefully."

So when you wear shoes, you don't step carefully? Even if you wash your shoes every day, ewww! :D

Seriously, the best way I can describe it, is I just get in the habit of watching where I step, either shod or barefoot, but I don't notice a great difference between the two. I don't enjoy fresh manure all over my shoes any more than my feet, and if I step in it, it still needs cleaned off either way, unless the shoes are solely dedicated to barnyard use and left by the door. But then you'd need two pairs in the period, for barnyard and church/school/dress-up, and we're talking about a class that barely has one pair.

If someone can come up with period evidence or even oral-history type evidence of adults or children wearing shoes to keep their feet clean, I'll change my mind. Terre? Thoughts on that?

Hank Trent
hanktrent@voyager.net

[Spinster]

Re: Going barefoot

Hank, I'm really not seeing that as a part of the equasion.

A related side street in that part of the culture though--the foot tub. A small metal tub, roughly the size and shape of your typical reproduction CW tin dishpan--shallow, maybe six inches deep.

Kept on whichever porch, front or back, that had the well on it. Anyone coming in from the fields, shod or unshod, sat down, and washed their feet before coming inside to eat . I have no point of reference for this practice though--and it could have arisen during the public health campaigns of the 20's and 30's. We were still seeing hookworm even in the 1980's

At 'dinner time' (the midday meal in these farming communities) those shoes stayed on the porch. Towels for the purpose of washing feet tended to be made from guano sacks or feed sack--very coarse.

Hands and face were then washed, often in a different basin. Toweling for this purpose tended to be huck. All this was a pretty splashy job, especially for men, as hairstyles were short in the era I'm talking about, and the basin was often poured over the head.

Integral to this was the well being on the porch---one either opened a trap door in the porch floor and drew up from the well, or there was a pump handle to accomplish such. Families that had to draw water from a distance, or from a creek did not tend to be so generous with washing.

[Becky Morgan]

Re: Going barefoot

As a longtime fan of kicking off shoes at every possible opportunity, I have to wonder along with Hank Trent whether period sensibilities were much less concerned with "eww, that's dirty!" Horses and other critters were around. Watching your step around their exhaust would have been as natural as watching for glass along the road is now.

My feet have only begun to toughen up for spring. After a couple of warm weeks, they'll have soles that can pick up small rocks and thorns without actually getting cut. (Yes, I mean it.) I haven't walked more than a couple of miles barefoot along our country road. On hot summer days, I stick to the gravel shoulder or the grass along the way.

Consider an army in motion in a dry summer. The wagons will be kicking up dust and knocking small rocks around. The beeves, draft horses and mules will be doing what they do, as well as occasionally shedding a horseshoe nail or, now and then, a shoe. Units ahead will be dropping bits of stuff--not to the extent 0f a modern crowd and its constant shedding of plastic wrappers, but the items that drop without anyone realizing it, now and then combined with things discarded when they get too heavy on the march. Given those circumstances, hot ground (though churned and muddy from the animals passing) and long roads make it plain why Lee made that side trip to Gettysburg in case there were shoes to be had.

[csabugler]

Re: Going barefoot

Ok, it's kind of a slow day here at work, so I'll hop back in here sinse I seem to losing badly on this. :)
As a point to ponder, ( not looking for an arguement) if grown men being barefoot in public was such a common site, then why do we see references to passing troops as "many were barefoot and ragged" and similar. If it were so common, would it bear notation in a written commentary on troops? I cannot quote the references, but I do seem to recall reading such more than once...
I could be wrong...

[USSanCom]

Just another late reply to this thread:

In Battleground Adventures ([url]http://books.google.com/books?id=jmUUAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=battleground+adventures/url]) in the chapter called The Farmer's Daughter, it says:

We see hard times in the war. The women had to turn their dresses upside down and wrongside fore and inside out to make 'em last. My youngest brother had pants made out of pretty gray cloth that had been some Southern soldier's saddle-blanket, and his jacket was made out of a blue army overcoat. The battlefields was quite a help to us, for you could find almost anything on 'em — all but a steam engine. I never went out on 'em that I didn’t bring back a load of plunder. That's where we got materials for our shoes. Cartridge boxes were good for soles, tent canvas would turn water and was all right for the upper part, and we tipped 'em with patent leather from soldiers' belts. Paw could make the rougher shoes. But a fellow who lived out across the battlefield made shoes for all over the country. We took the stuff for our best shoes right to his house to be made up.

In several of the illustrations for the book (written 30 yrs after the war), it shows the children barefooted. There are many other mentions of shoes in the book, but that's the most interesting to me. I know in a couple stories it mentions them scavenging the battlefields afterward for all sorts of things or picking up things left in the camps. Even when they mention the bodies being so close you could walk across them, it doesn't say anything about if they had shoes on their feet while walking.

Duchess Martin,
U.S. Sanitary Commission,
Columbus, O. Branch.

[Becky Morgan]

Re: Going barefoot

The reference to "barefoot and ragged" might mean the onlookers were shocked to see the condition of the troops, but it does confirm that it happened. I know I've seen references to barefoot men in General Gordon's memoirs, among other places, and that it's always mentioned with a sense of embarrassment. Grown men out in public apparently should have been wearing shoes, the way I wouldn't drive to town barefoot even though I walk around home like that all the time. It's probably right up there with men not having a hat; the hat was more than a comfort item to period men, and its absence would draw attention.

[Jon The Beloved]

Re: Going barefoot

Can anyone aid my scholarship and authentic impression with any accounts of unfortunate Confederate privates making or 'jimmy-rigging' temporary shoes? Did they use socks, leather. twine, bark? I'd be interested in creating a pair for the AOT Battle of Franklin Commemoration march this weekend.

BTW.. I have found a few accounts where some soldiers sold the tops of their tall boots to another soldier without shoes and that they made shoes out of the cylinder of leather.. such is an example of what I'm looking for.

Thanks.

[Virginia Mescher]

Re: Going barefoot

Can anyone aid my scholarship and authentic impression with any accounts of unfortunate Confederate privates making or 'jimmy-rigging' temporary shoes? Did they use socks, leather. twine, bark? I'd be interested in creating a pair for the AOT Battle of Franklin Commemoration march this weekend.

BTW.. I have found a few accounts where some soldiers sold the tops of their tall boots to another soldier without shoes and that they made shoes out of the cylinder of leather.. such is an example of what I'm looking for.

Thanks.

You might want to try Google Books, using various search terms and see what turns up. You also might want to try Vicki Betts' website at http://www.uttyler.edu/vbetts/ and check out newspaper accounts there.

I know that a man in our unit, had his pair of brogans fail at New Market this past spring. He tied the shoe tops and soles together with pieces of twine. While it would not have worked for long at least it held his shoes together for the weekend.

My focus of research in not on the military but on the homefront so I really can't help you with military documentation.

[Citizen_Soldier]

Re: Going barefoot

Greetings,
I know of an account of a local militia company that was raised in 1861 from a rather poor part of Greene County, Iowa (located about 60 miles north of Des Moines) that were without shoes for the local 4th of July celebration that same year. Many of these fellows were from poorer backgrounds and were hit hard by the Panic of 1857, the result was thier financial position made them unable to acquire shoes of any kind which caused a desire not to march because of embarassment in the 4th of July parade that was slated as part of the celebrations. Finally they decided to paint their feet with soot in order to present the appearance of a shod company and no one in the crowd was able to tell what kind of "sole leather" the fellows were marching in.:)

This wasn't a wide spread occurance throughout the county, just something that affected a small portion of the population (about thirty men of one hundred fifty who enlisted which was out of a population of nearly fifteen hundred people) who had settled on small lots of cheap ground or were tenant farmers. Most of these fellows were in their teens and twenties. Later some would enlist in Co. H of the Tenth Iowa Infantry and others in Co. E of the 39th Iowa Infantry.

The source for this is "Past and Present of Greene County" by Stillwell.

Concerning make shift shoes on campaign for soldiers, there are several primary accounts out there of "rawhide" shoes being worn by taking pieces of hide from butchered beef and wrapping them around the feet.

Darrek Orwig

[Jon The Beloved]

Re: Going barefoot

Since posting my question I have found a few sources in which these rawhide shoes were created. If I can swing it by a few days from now, (for effect) I plan on wearing unmatched socks, one with a few holes in the toes of course, and two pieces of dark rawhide or leather and tied securely with twine around my feet. I'll bet there were a few soldiers with such a predicament. Hey.. at least it''l be a heck of a conversation piece. At least now I have SOME documentation. Should prove to be relatively cheap as well.

Thanks.

[OldKingCrow]

Re: Going barefoot

I hve lots on barefoot soldiers..here are a few quotes on civilians:

The Daily Dispatch: June 10, 1861

Our informant passed many of these refugees on the road, some of whom had formerly lived in Eastern Virginia, but were now being driven back by the mercenaries of abolitionism.--One of these was an old man nearly seventy years of age, who, barefoot, was traveling with his wife and family to a place of safety, driving before him his cattle and sheep and hastily-collected household goods. In the course of the brief colloquy which ensued he remarked, "Sir, I am over sixty years of age, and have been driven from my home, but as soon as my family are in a place of safety I shall return to the house I have left, and if necessary shall defend it with my life, and if it should happen to be in ashes then I will die defending my fence

Centreville, Nov. 14, 1861. Editors Dispatch:

As to the "soldiers contributing something extra to the support" of the man they want, and who won't stay for $50 per month, this is all stuff. Many a poor soldier here, near Centreville, who, while at home in his little hut, surrounded by his industrious wife and barefoot little children, can luxuriate without cost upon rich milk and sweet butter, and all kinds of vegetables, can scarcely lay up, per month, enough to buy his wife a calico dress, if he ventures to gratify his palate with these luxuries once a week.

[J. Donaldson]

Re: Going barefoot

This discussion makes me wonder about farm safety and the prevalence of footwear. While it might be comfortable to walk in a plowed field in one's bare feet, would the danger presented by such actions as chopping weeds or working in tall grass wear snakes might linger make one prone to wear shoes for work? If you are paying attention to your work, things would go fine, but if the people in question were anything like I am, conversation and other things might distract me from the job at hand, and while a leather shoe would not prevent an injury from occuring, it might be the difference in the technical possession of one's toes should your down stroke be misplaced. Unfortunately I approach this question from the point of view of one who has minimal field work experience, and there very well may be some out there who have hoed corn or gardens that know the answer to this point of view better than I.