The boys and girls in the early days of Kentucky usually married very young; and a wedding was an event so important that every one in the entire community felt a personal interest in the affair. The ceremony was usually performed just before noon.

On the morning of the appointed day the groom and his attendants met at the home of his father and proceeded to the home of the bride. The gentlemen wore only clothes that were homemade; linsey shirts, leather breeches and leggins, moccasins or shoepacks, and caps of mink or raccoon skin with the tail hanging down the back completed their costume.

The ladies were beautiful in linsey-woolsey, coarse shoes, or moccasins embroidered with beads and quills, and buckskin gloves. Just after the ceremony there was a feast of venison and bear, beef and pork, turkeys and geese, potatoes and cabbage, cornmeal mush with milk and maple sugar, ash cake and dodgers.

As soon as dinner was over the dancing began and lasted not only through the afternoon but through the night until dawn. The square dance, the reel, and the jig were the figures that gave most joy to their flying feet.

Either the next day, or very soon thereafter, the neighbors helped the newly married couple "settle." A party of choppers felled and trimmed the trees, others hauled them to the site, while others made the clapboards for the roof, and puncheons for floor and door. If any windows were made, they were covered with oiled doeskin and had thick shutters. No one had windows filled with glass in those days.[2]

The neighbors helped not only to raise and cover the house, but to make the furniture also. A table was made from a slab of wood with four legs driven into auger holes; some three-legged stools were made of like material. Sticks driven into auger holes in the wall supported clapboard shelves where various articles were kept. A few pegs were likewise driven in the wall where the wearing apparel of both men and women was hung. A pair of buck horns or two small forks fastened to the logs held the ever trusty rifle and shot pouch.

Nor did they stop here. Through a fork placed with its lower end in a hole in the floor and its upper end fastened to a joist, they placed poles with their ends through cracks in the walls. Over these, clapboards were laid. When the whole had been covered with skins of bear and deer, this made a most comfortable bed.

At these house raisings, log rollings, and harvest homes there was much merriment coupled with the hard labor. Any man who failed to perform his part of the work was dubbed "Lazy Lawrence" and was denied similar help when he needed it.