Believer, at any rate hope he will." Trouble was now fomenting
in the country leading up to the Civil War and Freegift comments
that he had the thought that "the only effectual way to prevent
secession or to hold the states in the union will be to have a
few of the leaders in rebellion to commit suicide and this would
frighten their followers into a feeling to beg for union again."

Now he is back to small chores -- making a pleating stick of cherry
for the tailoresses, altering the rockers on a small chair,
making a coffin, but he also instructs Thomas in the filing and
setting of saws. In March and April they were making a hot bed
which involved in making 100 mortices and setting 240 panes of
glass. He and his brother, Jesse, took down, repaired and
replaced the Meeting House fence. On June 21, aged 76, he went
up on the roof of the 2d house to instruct a brother in laying
shingles in the gutter or valley between the two roofs. He
comments "my shoulder and arm a little better, knee and leg
worse . "

In September there was another trip to Long Island, unusual in
that he went alone. He was gone thirteen days and, of course,
kept a journal. The trip was by railroad except for the ferry
across New York harbor. He again visited the house where he
his siblings were born. He discovered a new fishing industry
about three years previously by "Yankees from Connecticut."
Scallops have one eye with black meat around it that is not
desirable to eat, he explains. This dark meat is thrown away and
two bushels of scallops produces one gallon of eyes. He also
went to the local church on Sunday and found "the state of
religion very low in Cutchogue, partly because the best people
have moved away and partly because they have allowed people of
inferior race to come in among them and in many instances inter-
mix with them." (Sounds like a modern day complaint, doesn't
it?)
Back at Watervliet, his October 1st entry tells that he "made a
plate of sheet iron to stop one end of our drum so as to increase
the heat in it for the purpose of popping corn more
expeditiously , " and that "Thomas had improved the most of the day
in chestnutting and got about 6 quarts of real good ones."

But his contacts on Long Island now began paying off and in
December he received the present of two gallons of scallop eyes by
express. In January the same friend sent a barrel of long clams
and 3 gallons taken out of their shells. The next day Freegift
helped the deaconesses boil the clams and pick them out -- there
were 1900 of them.
At tne end of December in 1861his brother Luther invited Free-
gift to join him and their broxhers Stephen and Jesse and sister
Hannah for dinner. They were/\all in their 80s except Freegift
who was 76. Freegift declined because during all his years as a
Shaker, he explained, he had guarded against the temptation to
build up and support the relationship between natural kin and he
feared such a dinner would be a bad example for other Shakers.
He certainly had natural affections which made him return to his

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