In this year Joseph Doniphan, whose son long afterwards won fame in the Mexican war, opened the first regular school at Boonsborough, [Footnote: _Historical Magazine_, Second Series, Vol.
VIII.] and one of the McAfees likewise served as a teacher through the winter.

[Footnote: McAfee MSS.] But from the beginning some of the settlers' wives had now and then given the children in the forts a few weeks' schooling.
Through the long, irksome winter, the frontiersmen remained crowded within the stockades.

The men hunted, while the women made the clothes, of tanned deer-hides, buffalo-wool cloth, and nettle-bark linen.

In stormy weather, when none could stir abroad, they turned or coopered the wooden vessels; for tin cups were as rare as iron forks, and the "noggin" was either hollowed out of the knot of a tree, or else made with small staves and hoops.

[Footnote: McAfee MSS.] Every thing was of home manufacture--for there was not a store in Kentucky,--and the most expensive domestic products seem to have been the hats, made of native fur, mink, coon, fox, wolf, and beaver.