The more primitive of these peoples ate from wooden trenchers and
platters; sat upon three-legged stools or wooden blocks; used bear's
grease in lieu of lard and butter, and cut their foods with the same
sheath-knives used in disembowelling and skinning the deer killed by
their rifles. They had no money and their scant furniture was
essentially crude, sometimes including a few pewter dishes and plates
and spoons, but usually nothing beyond wooden bowls, trenchers, and
noggins, with gourds and squashes daintily cut. The horse trough
served as a wash-basin, and water buckets were seldom seen. The family
owning an iron pot and a kitchen table were esteemed rich and
extravagant, and china and crockery ware were at once practically
unknown and uncraved. Feather-beds and bedsteads were equally
eschewed, these hardy men who had conquered the wilderness not
disdaining, when night came, to sleep upon a dirt floor with a
bear-skin for covering.

With muscles of iron and hearts of oak, they united a tenderness for
the weak and a capability for self-sacrifice worthy of an ideal knight
of chivalry; and their indomitable will, which recognized no obstacle
as insuperable, was equalled only by their rugged integrity which
regarded dishonesty as an offense as contemptible as cowardice. For
many years they dwelt beyond the pale of governmental restraint, nor
did they need the presence of either courts or constables. Crimes
against person, property, or public order were of so infrequent
occurrence as to be practically unheard of. In moral endowments--even
if not in mental attainments--these sturdy pioneers of Loudoun were,
it must be admitted, vastly superior to many of those who followed
them when better facilities for transportation rendered the County
more accessible.