The Autobiography of John Milton Morris.

My grandfather called this his "Diary," but it is actually more of an
autobiography.

I (Chaumont Devin) have had a struggle transcribing all of this, and the
struggle is still continuing (in other words, this is not all of John
Morris' autobiography).

A microfilm copy of this "Diary" can be found at the little library at the
top of the hill on UC Berkeley campus.

More information about John Milton Morris and how he fits into the family
can be found in the genealogy section of chaumontdevin.com.

Transcript follows:

Rev. Milton Morris, son of Thomas Morris, carpenter near Knoxville, East
Tennessee.  17 July 1831, married Sally Dodge at Boudinot mission,
Kansas.  He was a farmer as well as a preacher.  Lived in Little Osage,
Mormitan (spelling verified), and Deepwater Creek, in Missouri, on the
Nodaway (spelling verified), in Iowa, seven miles from Platsmouth, and in
Jefferson County, Kansas.  He was a zealous pioneer preacher, of wonderful
memory, a whig (spelling verified), free soiler, and a lover of religious
liberty.  He never allowed a fiddle, a dance, cards, or checker board in
his house, but he never refused anyone hospitality, and never charged but
one man for his entertainment.

Children:
1. Thomas Morris, born 2 October 1832, in Bates (now Vernon) County,
Missouri.  Died 15 March 1864.
2. John Milton Morris, born 29 January 1835.
3. Sarah Morris, born 20 January 1837, died 3 September 1865.
4. Nathanael Brown Morris, born 19 February 1839, died 30 November 1854.
5. William Morris, born 3 May 1841, still living.
6. Lucy Jane Morris, born 27 November 1843, died 18 July 1872.
7. Newell Morris, born 11 July 1847, died 21 August 1847.
8. Harriet Morris, born 25 March 1849, Married Joseph Tracy.
9. Edwin Morris, born 26 August 1852, in Sydney, Iowa, died 13 January
1907(?).
All but the last born in Bates (now Vernon) County, Missouri.

Diary of John Milton Morris

Book 1.

Quite a snow-storm.

It is said by those present that on January 29, 1835, the greatest
and most severe snow-storm known to any of the Indian traders or oldest
inhabitants fell.  The intense cold and severity, my mother has recited to
me so many birthdays, that reigned on the mountain in bates county,
afterwards vernon county, Missouri, where the author of these
reminiscences first made his advent.  (Sally Dodge, born 28 July 1811, at
Barre, Vermont. --Joe).  That same kind of storm, or racket, has been kept
up most of the time since that event.

The first recollections of my infant musings occurred on my father
loading up his effects on an ox wagon, and starting for the state of
Illinois.  The grief being so great on my mother's parting with her
relatives at Balltown, when I was about two and a half years old, that the
then sad event impressed me so tenderly as ever after to have a lodgement
in my little heart, never to be forgotten.

We only journeyed twenty-five or thirty miles to Deepwater, in the
same county, before my father found lands so desirable as to give up the
trip to Illinois; and, in two days, to locate on unsurveyed government
lands, where the second recollection of my mental facilities were shocked
and awakened.  When near three years old, a large wild hog (just after my
father's getting moved into his log cabin) came into the yard.  The dog
took after the hog, and the hog, making a lunge for the dog, both came to
the door, and into the front part of the cabin.  Being the only child in
the cabin, rustling for the beds, my small legs slipped down through the
truncheons of the floor, skinning both sides of one leg.  And to this day,
the affrighted child, scrabbling for life, cannot tell whether the scare
or wound were the worse.

During this winter, my memory was further strengthened by the sad
scene of a band of Indians coming into the settlement we had left at
Little Osage, and stealing a band of hogs belonging to the whites.  All
the settlement were up in arms, including three or four brothers of my
mother, Dr. Leonard, Nathanael and Newell, and maybe Edwards, Dodge.  Snow
being on the grounds, it was easy to track these Osage Indians over the
Marais Des Cygnes, where they were encamped.  On the approach, the Indians
made for their guns and tomahawks, a battle ensued, and Nathanael and
Newell Dodge were wounded.  The former died thirteen days after, and
Newell was never after able to do any hard work, but became interpreter
for the American Fur Company among the Osages, and at Cecil Ball's, at
Balltown (a trading post just over the line of the Indian territory, in
Missouri).  My mother grieved so over this bereavement that, on coming to
the house, we more frequently found her wiping the tears from off her face
than in any other mood.

Marais Des Cygnes.  The country was little else than a wilderness of
game, and my father being an excellent hand with his old flintlock rifle,
we were always supplied in the intervals when game was good, with venison,
wild turkey, mallard ducks, geese, or quail.  The prairy hen and hare were
not so good.  Yet he never hunted for sport.  And the neighbours reconed
him the surest shot for game in our part.

The next recollection.  In a short time after settling on Deepwater,
three hundred Osage warriors came one evening and camped on father's
claim.  All the neighbours were notified, and some sixteen men were all
that could be summoned to order them off from violating strict government
treaty rules.  Meeting next morning, my mother was the only one in the
settlement who could speak a word of the Osage dialect.  She had to act as
interpreter.  Having three children, one brother older than myself, and
one sister younger, leaving them in charge of my older brother, she headed
the posse, and made up the following statement--that there was to be three
hundred United States dragoons there the next morning, and if they were
not over the line, in their own country, these dragoons would put them
over.  All the chiefs hollowed, "woo! woo!" a word of great surprise, and
quickly agreed to be away the next morning, early.  Their word was worth
nothing, for of all the Indians we in after years ever knew, the Osage
were the most treacherous and unreliable.  The next morning, all was
astire, the Indians leaving, and by twelve the dragoons began to pour in,
until three hundred landed in the settlement by night.  The strange part
of this narrative is, my mother never knew that a United States soldier
was in one hundred miles of Deepwater (where they lived) when she told
these three hundred Indians that the dragoons were coming.

Here my father thrived for a few years, until the hard times set in,
caused by the failure of the United States bank, and sickness overtaking
the family.  He had entered land at $1.25 per acre that he could not sell
or turn over to his creditors for the government purchase money, having
borrowed $200 of my uncle, Nathanael, who the Indians killed, he was never
able to pay the estate this amount, and turned over the whole place to
settle the heirs' claim.  Taking the fever and aug, we would all be down,
not one able to help another.  Thus the struggle set in, and the next
three or four years at Deepwater was more like a hospital than a
farmhouse.  My lot, besides having the malaria, was to be given out by a
good physician, ever recovering from spotted, or typhus, fever, my mother
thought to be at the point of death at the same time.  My parents had, in
order to eek out a mere support, to move back and forth from Little Osage
to Deepwater, from Deepwater to Little Osage, where we received much of
our support from my mother's people and others of the old missionary
families, and much of my time was spent at my grandfather Dodge's until
nine years old.  (Rev. Nathanael Brown Dodge Jr., born in Winchester, New
Hampshire, 5 June 1781.  Married Sally Gale, 22 March 1803.  Died at
Little Osage, Missouri, 3 September 1848. --Joe).  This grandparent, the
reverand Nathanael brown Dodge, of Barre, Vermont, was sent as missionary
by the American board of missions in 1820 or 1821 to the Osage Indians.
He established Harmony Mission, long years ago discontinued, then near
where the town of Papinsville, Missouri, now stands.  When the government
removed all the Osages to the Neosho river, he followed the tribes and
established Boudinot mission on the Neosho river.  He put out fine
apple orchards at each mission, which the natives destroyed, and not a
vestige of house, barn, or orchard for forty or fifty years remain.  We
can but recall the days spent at Little Osage with this venerable man.  At
times going away, then returning for near a year at a time, we got quite
well acquainted with the habits and life of this early pioneer that we May
have more to say about later on.  My grandmother Dodge, whose maiden name
was Gale, we never remembered seeing out of humour.  (Sally Gale, born at
Princeton, Massechussettes, 21 July 1784.  Died 20 December 1866. --Joe).
Always at work, always humming some tune, though she could never sing, she
was good for about three ordinary women's work.  Every child, severely or
otherwise hurt, received the same treatment at her hands.  She ran with
sugar bowl in hand and applied it inwardly and outwardly for all known
disease.  And this medicine was very scarce, for sugar was a very scarce
article in those days.

While among the relatives at Little Osage, my first labours of life
began in the way of feeding stock, gathering eggs, and going on errands.
During corn-planting time, at eight or nine years of age, girls and boys
got from ten to twelve and a half cents per day for dropping corn, (ten
cents was called a short bit, and twelve and a half cents a long bit), and
men fifty cents for covering the same with a hoe.

Being sick so much, it was impossible for me to go to school much.
My grandfather taught about sixty scholars, and a most excellent teacher
he was.  Grave, serious, always kind, we never met a man, woman, or child
but reverred and loved him.

One day two french men of the American Fur Company fell out (high in
standing), and one was cursing the other to an old friend; but on seeing
Grandfather turning the corner of the garden fence, Shoto remarked to his
friend, "George was in..." (and, seeing Grandpa turn the corner, he added)
"in heaven."

During three months of my attending the school at his church, we
never saw him reproove a scholar, and complete quiet and order prevailed.
This school, taught in the white church belonging to my grandfather's
congregation (then Presbyterian)  Was all the place for meeting of any
kind for miles away.

When about nine years old, after getting better of my inflammetory
rheumatism, most of one year was spent at my grandfather Dodge's, and my
uncle, Newell, the interpreter, was at home.  He was but a child when
leaving Vermont.  He spoke the Osage language before he was grown to
manhood as well as any Osage chieftain in the nation.  He took up with the
habits of the Indians, and would go further, when grown, to eat a bowl of
buffalo soup made by an Indian squaw than the finest dinner his mother
could get him, she being an excellent cook at that.  He was fairly well
educated in english, and his father sent him to Andover, Indiana, to high
school.  He returned in a little less than one year, remarking that he had
been through college.  That he went in at the front door and out the back
door."  He would step off thirty steps, split a stick about two feet long
with a little slit in the top, and stick twenty-five cents in the top of
the stick (in the slit, stick the other end in the ground), and take his
bow and arrow, and every time he knocked the twenty-five cents out of the
stick with bow and arrow, he took the money.  When he missed the set
twenty-five cents,.  He soon had all the students' quarters that would
gamble, and the professors had to send him home.  He always had money and
property, gave away more than anyone in that country, and, like Victor
Hugo, died more lamented by the poor than any man in that part of
Missouri.  His religion was that of the Indian, and my father used to say
that Father Dodge went out to Christianize the Indians, and made Indians
of his two younger boys, who were children when he came from Vermont. at
any rate, the older stock, when he left Vermont, were all the most
respectable, married, and Christian people of the land, and so remained.
But the younger boys took up in great measure with the habits of the
Indians and the traders on the frontier.

My father, when getting over the aug to some extent at Deepwater,
rented land of Dr. Reckwa (an old missionary of former years) at Double
Branch, Missouri.  The docter was a practicing physician, Presbyterian
preacher, and a farmer, a very fine man, and doctored us for nothing.
During this summer, being at home most of the time, the first sad grief of
death visited our home, the sixth child, a very bright, handsome babe of
six weeks old, took the krupp, and in three or four days breathed its
last.  We wellremembered the throng that gathered at our house, it seemed
all the neighbourhood were out, and at the burial, not a preacher offered
a word, and there were three standing there, and why not, we cannot tell
to this day, but just before lowering the angel form into the grave, a
Presbyterian deacon of Dr. Reckwa's church, and a nephew of the docter's,
stepped forward and said, "You who stand here may think this a very light
thing to lay a little cherub like this away to rest, but I tell you I have
had an experience in this line, and well remember when passing through the
same sad event how dark all around me looked.  And although to you who
have never passed this last sad experience, you May think stranger that a
father should shed these tears when laying our infant child beneath the
sod, allow me to tender the father my sympathy and prayers..."  And on he
went for fifteen minutes, until nearly every one of that assembly shed
tears, and the only reason that seems probable to me that this old deacon
made these remarks was that my father usually, when he could not get at a
dollar from any other source, could always step over to George Reckwa's
and get a few dollars.  Yet my father was a Methodist preacher, and there
were two Methodist preachers on the grounds.  But be it said, in all human
probability, not one of those three or four ministers present could have
done so well in an address on this occassion as good, honest George Reckwa
(as he was called) had done.

My health growing worse, being confined to my bed, and having
inflammation of the bowels this summer, brought on by trying to out jump
some other boys at school, one night some of the neighbours came to set up
all night with me.  When they all thought me asleep (Mother just having
dressed a blister that covered my stomach and bowels, and the docter
having told my parents that death would overtake me before morning) the
following remarks were made by my mother that came very audibly to my ears
as the tears came streaming from her eyes: "he little knows what will
become of him before morning.  The docter says unless a change comes for
the better by midnight there is no hope (now ten o'clock).  What can be
done?"  About midnight, the change came, and on getting over this
dangerous sickness, a lesson was learned.  The larger boys of the
settlement were always getting me to wrestle or jump, if they could.  My
being so very small of my age through sickness and other causes, they
never could get a boy of my size but I could throw down or out jump.  And
looking so small, pale, and child-like, the young men would laugh heartily
to see me out-do boys so much larger than myself by getting me excited and
ambitious.

In the fall, when ten years old, the damp weather brought back the
inflammatory rheumatism.  My parents being very poor, it was thought best
to send me to my uncle, Leonard Dodge's, to be doctored, he being the most
eminent physician of that country.  Having to be pretty well on leaving
Dr. Reckwa's at Double-Branch for Little-Osage.  On arriving at my
uncle's, he took me to his quiet country home, one mile and a half from
the trading post that Cecil Ball had established to trade with the Osage
Indians, who had the only store in the whole country.  And the little
village gristmill and blacksmith shop, which afterwards took the name of
Balltown.  He set me to feeding cattle, husking corn, and running general
errand jobs on his farm.  But nothing escaped my eyes, and on the return
of the docter to his home the next day, he brought a roll of red flannel,
and my aunt went to cutting it up.  Before she had made up the red
flannel, the docter brought home a roll of what they called full cloth,
and my aunt, although a cultured lady, tacked that heavy roll of full
cloth.  But of nights, she would take up her knitting, which looked to be
men's socks, with long legs ribbed.  After this had went on for a week or
two, it seemed to me the docter must soon begin to give me medicine.  But
being averse to taking medicine, having had a great deal of that to do,
and my stomach quite weak, this part of the neglect did not worry me.  One
morning, after noting all this preamble, the docter took me with him as he
went his daily rounds to see his patients as far as Ball's store, and said
to mr. Ball, "i want you to make or pick out this boy a pair of boots that
will turn water."  He got me a seal skin cap, and what we called then a
comfort, or what we now call a scarf, to wear around the neck.  And some
way or other, the next morning, the mystery of the whole matter was
divulged by an under-shirt and a pair of drawers being laid on a chair,
made of red flannel, a pair of long-legged ribbed men's socks, a pair of
full cloth pants, and round about (or a blouse) of the same full cloth we
had formerly seen.  The seal skin cap, scarf, and boots set by the chair
when the docter said to me, "put them on, and never do you let me see you
get your feet wet!"  They were put on, and that was all the medicine taken
for inflammatory rheumatism.  The docter sent me with Old Lucy, an old
colored woman, to have the stock corn on a cart with a yoke of oxen (to
feed forty to sixty head of cattle), and a much more busy winter we cannot
recall in our boyhood days.

(Dr. Leonard Dodge, son of Rev. Nathanael Brown Dodge Jr.  Born 14
January 1805, at Underhill (or possibly Barre), Vermont.

At the age of 16, he went with his father to Harmony Mission,
Missouri.  He studied medicine under William N. Belcher, M. D., the
physician to the mission, and began practice in 1826.  In 1830-31, he
practiced one year in Independence, Missouri.  In 1831, he visited his
friends in Vermont, then a formidable journey.  He united with the
Congregational Church in 1835.  He later united with the Presbyterian
church.  He married Mary Burton Choate, 10 March 1835, at Neosho,
Missouri.  He was a strong friend of the temperance cause.  As a
physician, he had few equals in that region, his rides often extending
sixty miles.  He was beloved by all who knew him for his manifest
integrety, firmness, energy, and for his love of right and justice.  He
died 10 March 1864, at Little Osage, Missouri.

His son, William Burton, born 2 January 1839, died 3 July 1839.
--Joe).

The docter educated and studying medicine under Dr. Belcher
(afterwards principal of Sing-Sing, N.Y.) was thoroughly Eastern in every
phase of life.  The docter was always ahead of his brothers in his
profession.  The docter used to say, "When Dodge talks, all listen."  He
was the most systematic docter we ever remember being acquainted with.
Generally leaving home at six a.m., he as universally returned at six p.m.
If anyone hurried him up by telling him of the urgency of the case, he
would remark blandly, "If they are so bad that they will die before I get
there, I could do them no good if I was there."  If anyone asked what he
was giving, he was just as likely to remark, "Medicine." as anything else.
And if anyone asked what ailed the patient, he would frequently say, "I
don't know."  Unpretending, he got all the practice of all this country.
One peculiarity was he always rode a hard-trotting horse, and was nearly
always away from home in the daytime, but if away of nights, someone must
be dying, or else very bad.

during the year there, he never censured me
but once that we recollect, and that was about leading a jack to water.
One evening, the docter being public administrator, came home leading a
medium-sized jack.  His wife comes out and says, "Docter, where did you
get that animal?"

"At the summer's sale." he replied.

"What did you give for him?" she asked.

"two hundred and forty dollars." the docter replied.

"Well," said she, "Docter, by the time you make two or three more
such trades as that, we will come to want, I think."

"Oh, Mary!" he says, "i have always managed to get something for you
to eat and wear, and I guess i'll be able to do that yet."

"Never mind," she says, "I'll keep up my end of the singletry."

This is all the time we ever remember hearing the docter or wife ever
chide one another.

(Mary Burton Choate, born 31 January 1804, at Thetford, Vermont.
Died 12 May 1866, at Little Osage. --Joe).

The docter gave the jack into my possession; and, being somewhat
diminutive myself, and having about one quarter of a mile to lead my
donkey to water, he found out (the donkey) that I could not hold him.  But
we got a long larriet rope.  When he started to run, by giving him rope he
would fail to pull me down; and for awhile he was manageable this way.
But finally he got so strong he pulled me down.  On telling the docter, he
was a little doubtful of my efforts, and he was always at home Sunday,
unless a very bad case, and the first Sunday at home, only a few days
after, he ventured to lead the jack to water himself.  The jack drank,
then snuffed the wind; and away he went, taking the docter along at a very
fast rate!  But the docter gave him rope, and soon all were out of sight,
and the docter came out at the end of the race (though said to be very
fast on foot) away behind.  The jack was let out to another keeper, and if
anyone found of that animal's whereabouts, it was not through the docter!

Dry, quaint, and always seemed in a deep study about his business or
something, yet a fine conversationalist.  Quite a joker.  Well, and more
than favourably, liked.  He died during the civil war, lamented by all who
knew him.  He married Miss Choat, who volunteered her services as a
teacher to the Osage Indians at old Harmony Mission.  She was a teacher of
infant classes of children in Massechussets before coming west.  Some
three or four years the senior of my uncle.  One of the best cooks and
neatest housekeeper we ever met.  Very systematic.  The first child,
Leonard, died when one or two years old.  They had two daughters
afterwards that always called me their brother.  They were younger than
myself.  And the mother took the greatest care of them, teaching them
herself, at home.  She done all her housework, and besides teaching these
two daughters, braided palm-leaf hats three or four hours each day.

Here we saw the first cook stove and thermometer, the first
apothecary shop, filled up with cinnamon, all-spice, cloves, ginger, and
nutmeg; and this May have been helpful in my aunt's making the best pies
and cakes ever eat in that borderland.  But the cook stove was more of an
ornament than useful nature, for my aunt used her oven and skillet in the
old cabin, where it was my privelage to sleep by the old fashioned
fireplace in a bed in a corner of the kitchen, covered with the huge
buffalo robe and mackinaw blankets of the cold winter nights.  And the
cook stove sat in one of the parlors in the frame building adjoining the
old log cabin, only to be used when company came.

We never remember meeting Aunt's disapproval but twice, one time for
loping her favorite saddle horse that she always rode to church, where she
led the singing for my grandfather when he or anyone else preached; and
the other time was when, feeling unable to go to church Sunday on account
of a large cake being cooked in that stove the day before, and cut for
visitors, and only a small portion eat.  For the loping of the horse that
ate so many oats that when anyone got on her to ride wanted to run and
play.  And when the docter came home at the supper table, she remarked
that, "a merciful man was merciful to his beast."  'Twas the next morning
the docter gave me another animal to ride.  On Sunday, the day too sick as
to be unable to go to church, a stroll was taken through the apothecary
shop, and the pecans and other nut drawers examined before entering the
cinnamon and spice apartment.  Bot on going to the cupboard, we did not
know that in cutting the cake, it being a little dry, the knife would show
just where and how much we cut, and I felt awful ashamed when seeing the
mark of the knife show so plain on the cake on cutting a piece.  I never
saw the remainder of that cake afterwards to this day!

A more benevolent woman, how many times (though no blood relation)
has she helped us.  A wise counsellor.  A good mother.  An accomplished
lady. it was a benediction to dwell under her roof, and I only think of
her to love and respect her.

The old colored woman, a slave, who the docter hired to do nearly all
the farm work when there, belonged to Mrs. Merchant, an old widow lady,
and was Mrs. Merchant's only support.  This colored lady dressed in men's
clothes, plowed, husked corn, hauled hay, and stacked corn fodder, and cut
up in the air (and many times that I fell off the wagon or cart, all the
load on top.  One is incredible and be alive).

The two girls of the docter, my cousins, were very bright, and had a
romp every night, after the docter came home, on the carpet in the parlor.
He was fond of music, but neither he nor wife sang often.  Though the
latter was a good singer, she was always too busy to sing at home.

When Mary ann became of age (the oldest), the docter asked on her
birthday which she would have--a horse or melodian.  (Mary Anne Burton,
born 24 September 1840, at Little Osage. --Joe).  She said, "A horse."
The docter bought her a fine horse.

And when the second daughter became of age (Adoline), he asked the
same question, and she said, "An organ," or melodian.  The docter was so
pleased he got her a melodian, hired a music teacher, and she became a
fine vocalist, as well as a good musician.

(Sarah Adeline Apphia, born 8 June 1842.  Married Joseph H. Warden,
Nevada, Vernon County, Missouri.died 12 November 1876. --Joe).  Adoline,
afterwards Mrs. Warden, of Nevada City, Missouri, was a bright,
intellectual woman, dying early from scrubbing house and overwork when she
had no occassion so to do.  We remember her charms when a young girl, no
less notable when wife and mother.  One of the finest cooks and neatest
housekeepers of the age she lived in.

Her older sister, Mrs. Mellick, has a large, respected, intellectual
family, always at work, no time to visit or receive company.  She married
Dr. Mellick, a good docter and wealthy farmer near Balltown, and is
respected by all, though she May not inherit the mind of her younger
sister.

One more patient sufferer we wish to call to mind before we leave
Little Osage.  My uncle, Thomas Morris, who attended Ball's grist mill at
Balltown.  To conceive in the mold a man, a pattern of more native
simplicity, more patient, persistent endurance, and kindly affectionate to
all. so tall, lean, and people looking, yet so faithful in labours and
care, having charge of this water mill for years.  Whose business it was
to carry every boy's grist brought to this mill, grind it, and carry it up
and down a flight of stairs to and from the mill to the horse, and divide
this two-bushel sack into two parts to keep it from falling off of the
saddle horse as the boy went home.  The idea entertained in this age was
that two bushel of corn meal was as much as would keep good until an
ordinary-sized family used it up.  Hence, two bushel of corn, among the
more wealthy, was all taken to mill at one time.  And corn was the
principle bread of all classes.  The time spent at this mill by my uncle
no one knew but my uncle himself.  For The Governor, as we called him, was
a hard task-master (this name, Governor, was given by Cecil Ball to my
uncle Dodge when interpreter for him).  At any rate, uncle Thomas lost his
wife just after coming west from East Tennessee to Balltown, and these six
motherless children had to be taken care of, the oldest daughter being
only thirteen years old when her mother died.  My uncle tending the mill
day and night, he managed to raise the children, and keep them together
until they were large enough to care for themselves.  We will not dwell
upon this saint.  To think of his hardships makes us sad.  And my wife
never allows me to read the deaths of martyrs to her.  If he misses a
crown in that better country, we cannot now see why it was.

Finally, my father, in his preaching tours, got acquainted with Tayes
and Mr. Summers, two Virginians who had settled at Marshall's Creek, some
miles from Clinton, the county seat, and having got so poor from sickness
and cutting the main artery in his leg when skinning a deer at Double
Branch that he could get little to eat or wear, he concluded to send for
me at Dr. Dodge's, and move to Marshall's Creek.

But before entering into this change, one or two incidents of the
many that happened while at Deepwater and Double Branch may be told to
show how people suffered for the necessaries of life.  One summer, the
whooping cough came to Deepwater, and all our family had it.  Even myself.
I was not more than eight or nine, and had all the work to do.  And the
disease was so malignant that children died with it.  Almost everyone had
it in some form.  The parents were down flat with what the docters called
"nurse cough."  Children would sit for hours as still as death, for the
moment they moved, they would cough.  We never before nor since have seen
such a seige with whooping cough, and it lasted from spring until the next
winter.  With this came a general ear ache.  The ears would fester, rise,
and break.  The suffering was intense.  Deafness set in, and my poor
mother could not hear what the children said.  The stomach had no desire
to receive food.  Off in another settlement we heard of some honey, and
such a thing as sweet was not to be had with us.  Being the only one able
to do anything, Father got up Old Mike, the old sore-back horse, put
blankets on, gave me a bucket, and sent me for honey to Finas Means'es.
The horse very gentle, but would scare, and jump sidewise.  Mr. Mean gave
me the small pail of honey on the horse (it was strained).  On my return
home, the horse scared, jumped as quick as thought to one side.  Holding
onto Old Mike, in vain drew the bucket up onto the neck of Old Mike, and
turned the honey over on the top of my head, running all down over my face
and stomach.  On reaching home, my mother cried, and a funeral procession
could have been no more solemn than this occassion.

Another time, my mother making 42 coats in one year besides pants and
vests.  She nor Father either one of them never saw but one dollar cash
during that year, and that dollar Mother got in part pay for making a
coat.  This was the only dollar seen by either one of them, let alone to
have, and Mother gave fifty cents of that to the presiding elder of that
district.  And we think she got this dollar of Mr. English, ex-sheriff of
the county, for making a fine broadcloth coat to go see General or
President Jackson in.  It being reported that General Jackson had given
English a fine coat, which, after the coat was made, my father being
acquainted with the traits of Jackson, believed the whole matter a hoax.
And on ferretting out the affair, it proved to be the case.  He never went
to Tenessee to see General Jackson.

During this year of starvation, the only resource we had was pecans
brought one doller a bushel in St. Louis.  Dr. Rekwa offered us his wagon
and horses free of charge to go onto the Marais Des Cygnes bottom and
gather
pecans by taking his son and daughter and hired man along, C. T. Towner
(spelling verified).  We all camped together.  Slept in one bed on the
ground, the women on one end and the men on the other end of the bed, that
must have been forty or fifty feet long.  The men fell the trees, and
nearly all the pecan trees on the Marais Deshen botten were cut down this
year.  The women and children picked up the nuts, for when the trees fell,
all the nuts shattered out on the ground, and on clearing away the limbs,
the nuts could be scraped up by the handful on the bare ground.  We got
sixty bushels to our share, and made a store account of $60 all told.  We
well remember how Father and Mother divided and subdivided their $60 to
make it go the farthest.  Father needed a $7 blanket so bad to make an
overcoat, and this $7 seemed to always be short.  Finally Father said, "I
will have to do without the overcoat. pass on."  But Mother would not hear
to it.  We had only one dollar's worth of sugar that year.  One story Miss
Rekwa told on this trip all may have heard, but worth preserving.  A
back-woods preacher one day mounted a hulk's head of molasses in the woods
to preach to an innumerable company, it being the only elevation at hand.
He got warm and earnest, and would repeat every few moments, "My brethren,
if you do not repent, you will go down into irretrieveable woe."  Every
time he repeated this, he would stomp his foot on the hulk's head.  The
third stomp, the preacher went through into the molasses.

At Marshal's Creek we fared better.  My oldest brother, Thomas,
worked for Mr. Tays (spelling verified) by the year, as he had done at Dr.
Rekwa's.  My mother taught school what little she could, and my being able
to help Father farm, we soon began to pick up a little.  The neighbors
were very good to us.  They were well off.  All owned slaves.  But the
women folks did not know how to cook.  They were daughters of Col.
Everetts, of Virginnia, who gave each one of these married daughters a
tract of land and some negroes.  But to the daughters, he gave young,
inexperienced help, while to the sons-in-law he gave experienced negro men
to help improve the raw land he had bought for them.  Mrs. Summers knew
how to weave, and my mother used to spin cotton and wool on her big and
little hand wheels, and Mrs. Summers wove it to make all the clothes we
wore; and in turn, my mother learned the woman how to cook, make cheeze,
and many garments of both male and female attire.

My father, a preacher in the Methodist church South, was ever opposed
to the institution of slavery.  He preached nearly every Sabbath.  We had
an organized Sunday School class meeting, and three months' day school
each year.  But the question of slavery being agitated, the feeling became
very bitter with the two branches of the Methodist church, and charges
were prefered against my father as "being tinctured with northerism."  The
presiding elder, Jessie Green (spelling verified) asked if Father preached
his sentiments in his sermons.

The quarterly conference answered, "No."

"Well," says the elder, "so long as Brother Morris preaches nothing
of this sort in his sermons, we have no right to interfere in a man's
private opinions."

The case was dismissed, but the next year, the same charges were
prefered against my father.  They read just simply that, "Brother Morris
was tinctured with northernism."

These slave-holding Virginnians came forward, pled Father's case, and
every member of that quarterly conference voted for the renewal of
Father's liscence.  But Jessie Green (be it said to his praise, was never
guilty of such a farce) had been removed from the district, and a haughty
Virginnian by the name of Bennet sent to the Lexington District, and
although Father's liscence had been voted him, this elder, Bennet, in
order to legalize them, had to sign the liscence.  But he replied, "No.  I
am not going to sign liscence of any Methodist preacher in Missouri that
is tinctured with northernism."

These Virginnians were my father's friends, done all in their power
for him, offered to help him in any way if he would remain among them.
James Tays (spelling verified) was certainly the best man to the porr we
remember to have met on Marshal's Creek.  But my father had made up his
mind.  He had one yoke of oxen and one old horse, one mule.  He made an
arrangement for an old wagon, and began packing the spring of 1849 for
Iowa.  The neighbors all grieved to think we were going to leave them.
When all the household goods were aboard, Father had $2.50 in his pocket
to make a journey of 250 miles among strangers to Iowa.  But grass was
plenty along the road, travel cheap.

The last night we stayed at Mr. Tays'es, a very trying scene
occurred.  Sarinas (spelling verified) Mackabe, a kind but unenergetic
man, came to see us, and, it seems to me, stayed all night.  The next
morning, on parting with neighbors and old friends, Sarinas Mackabe took
Father's hand, and reached his other hand into his pocket, pulling out
fifty cents.  "Here.  Take this.  You are going on a long journey.  You
may need this." and gave Father the half dollar.  He was viewed as a
simple, rather unreliable man, very poor, and undoubtedly the only fifty
cents he had.  But after going to Iowa, we learned that he engaged with
James Cummins (spelling verified) to work for him a year from time of
starting from Missouri to California for to pay said Cummins for bringing
him to the golden state, and among quite a number of men who engaged with
Mr. Cummins the same terms, Sarinas and one other man were all the men who
fulfilled their contract, and came through to California with Mr. Cummins.
Poor Sarinas.  We know not what went with him.  Mr. Cummins told me
afterwards he never had a better hand or more honorable man work for him.

Before leaving this part of Missouri, it seems prudent to mention of
the more important part of man's mission, the church, state, etc.  My
father, an old Federalist, after that an old line Whig, we never heard him
speak of voting for but one Democrat, and that was Andrew Jackson, and
this was through personal feelings.  Though a Virginnian by birth, raised
in East Tennessee, he always despised the Southern institution of slavery,
and when anyone spoke of blood-telling, he would remark, "My father worked
on Patrick Henry's barn.  If that entitles me to any claims of being of
the first families, I suppose I am one of them."

The Morrises are of old English stock two hundred years back.  The
Fords, a wealthy family of Middle Tennessee that the Morrises never cared
much for, the Morrises accusing the Fords of taking some technicality in
the law to cheat my grandmother, who was a Ford, out of her share of the
slaves in the Ford estate.  (LUCY FORD (FMFFM) WEALTHY, OF EASTERN
TENNESEE.  HER FAMILY WAS ANGRY BECAUSE SHE MARRIED "BELOW HER STATION IN
LIFE" WHEN SHEE MARRIED A MORRIS.  Rev. Isaac Milton Morris, son of Thomas
Morris, father of Milton.  Died young, in 1819.  Other children: Lucy and
two or three other daughters, JOHN CRAWLEY, ZECHARIA OR ZACHARY, AND
THOMAS. --Joe).  Grandfather Morris dying early, my father  had the
principle care of his widowed mother, and being prejudiced against the
institution of slavery from seeing a neighbor by the name of Camel sell a
Negro woman to a slave-driver to be taken south.  This Negro woman had a
child at the breast, and my father went over to Camels' the morning the
driver came for the woman.  When this mother got about half way to the
gate (my father just coming through the gate at that time) saw her throw
up her hands and make a very strange noise.  She turned to the house, and
groaning very distressedly began crying for her infant child.  Camel took
down a raw-hide from over the door and took after her, saying, "I'll learn
you how to be acting the fool in that way," and drove her off.  This made
such an impression on Father's mind he never got reconciled to the
institution, though he was forman on some of the farms in East Tennessee.

My uncle, Thomas, the miller, having been spoken of at Ball's mill,
zack I never saw, but he was the first of the Morris boys to come west and
stop at old Harmony Mission. My mother knew him well, and a more
interesting joker, pranky fellow never was at the mission.  A good axe
man.  Leading out in work.  Well liked. Dying early, he left my father a
fine horse, overcoat, and some other property before I was large enough to
remember.

Uncle John, who it fell to my lot to be named for, was a lawyer,
educated at Virginnia College if we recollect right.  He was always going
back to Tennessee to "law" the Fords for them slaves, as he called it, and
went two or three times.  But he always went to college in lew of lawing
the Fords, and my father used to think the Fords sent him to school or
college.  He started to college in '49, and we never got any trace of him
afterwards.  But being a weakly man, and very ambitious, we suppose he
perished on the plains.  But on our crossing the plains in '57, we saw at
The Devil's Gate, way up where it looked impossible for any mortal to
ascend, the name, J. C. Morris cut up in a hanging rock.  Father said in a
moment, "That is John Crawley," for he was always trying to do something
nobody else could do.

The three or four sisters of my father I leave out, except Aunt
Patsy, who I never saw, but hearing my father say so much of her devoted
life, how they went to meeting together, how she was sent for, allowing
the hands to help get up wedding dinners, etc.  She married Julian
Frasier, a man who had some knowledge of law, and during the civil war,
these cousins (his children) were all scattered, like Uncle Thomas Morris'
sons, over Arkansas and Texas.

All of the entire Morris stock except my father went to the southern
wing of the army during the rebellion.  And be it said, my father's house
being the home of the preachers, I have seen my mother make beds down on
the floor in time of quarterly meetings until there was not room to make
any more.  My mother being an excellent cook, like her mother, before,
both running a free hotel, and it would take volumes to tell the jokes,
interesting incidents, and controversies that took place under my father's
roof.  And during the late rebellion, having ample time to read, being in
a store, we don't remember ever seeing a new idea muted on the vexed
question but was discussed and thoroughly analysed under my father's roof.
An uneducated man like Andrew Johnson, he never went to school over
thirty days during his life, yet nothing pleased him better than to select
all the difficult examples in the then larger arithmetics, and poke them
at some New England school-teacher who could not work them, and then work
these examples himself.  He could murder the king's English the most
completely of any preacher we ever heard.  Spelling correctly was small
potatoes for him.  He read everything.  A controversialist at home, but
never in his sermons.  He labored for the one end in the pulpit, and that
was the salvation of souls.  In controversy at his own home rarely ever
beaten, he became a textbook, and all the preachers in their sophistry
called him "Bishop Morris."  He knew more of the southern strength,
training, and strategy than any preacher of the north, and when Really,
William H. Seward, douglas, and others were talking of the short duration
of the war, and the hypocritical leaders of the south were wanting peace
"just to be left alone," he said, "Ah, little do they (the north)
understand that people.  They claim that all they want is just to be left
alone, when the fact is they want to fight.  Raised to the saddle, the use
of the gun, they mustered every week before I left Tennessee.  The Norht,
raised up to other persuits, not having thought of or devoted their time
to arms will make poor show with all the force and arms in the south.
Why?  I tell you, they are politicians.  And I doubt if they ever clean
them out."  Thus did my father talk.  Prayers always at the home.  He
lived what he taught.  Preached a free gospel.  Though eccentric, he never
introduced his eccentricities into his sermons, and made his boast that he
had preached forty years, and during that time had never received but two
bushel of potatoes and one peck of seed corn for all his preaching.  And
if anyone spoke favorable of his preaching, he would remark, "Yes, I have
during my life heard of two persons bragging about my preaching.  One was
a Dutch woman who could not understand the English, and the other was a
drunk man who fell asleep and I could hear him snoring all the time I was
preaching."

When seven years old, I had deep conviction of sin, used to go out
into the woods and corn fields to pray all alone to myself, my heart all
broken and crushed.  It seemed to me at that early day I should die unless
I found relief.  But being a child, no one took any notice of my
complaints, if I made any, and most likely these fits of melancholy passed
off without my parents thinking or questioning anything about this concern
I felt for my soul.  And my disposition was to keep this matter as far off
as possible from my parents.  Gradually they wore off.

My mother was more of a congregationalist or Presbyterian than
Methodist, and took more care of the children's spiritual spiritual
welfare than even Father in the way of catecising us and learning our
prayers.  But I loved the Methodist preacher.  They were such jolly,
whole-souled fellows, and if they missed putting up at our house over
night every time they come around (which was every three weeks) we thought
we had missed a treat.  There was no preaching place except in log
schoolhouses daubbed with mud unless some citizen opened his doors to the
preacher, which was frequently done.  And most generally in the latter
event, half would stay to dinner.  Camp meetings were the greatest
gathering of this day.  All came to camp meeting, and a revival was
expected.  The first of these was at Deepwater, that we ever remember
attending.  Richard Colburn (spelling verified) was the preacher.  A small
man, full of energy and fire.  He would come back into the congregation,
take hold of the men, and try to pull them up to the altar for prayer.
Nor did he stop at this.  He would even lay hold of mothers, like a man
pulling them out of the fire, and coax, pull, and persuade them to come to
the altar.  He was so well-liked that all seemed to think him perfectly
legitimate and right except our more aristocratic Presbyterians, mostly of
my grandfathers missionaries, who came with him as teachers, docters, and
mechanics from the east when he founded old Harmony mission, and who had
taken land all over the county here and there, and made themselves
comfortable homes.  These Presbyterians were annoyed and mortified about
the Methodists shouting, falling over, and crying, "Amen!  Praise The
Lord!" and clapping their hands, shouting to the top of their voice, and
praying for everybody by calling their names.  Some of the mothers were
scared worse than to have seen a dozen Osage warriors coming to scalp
them, but they were doomed to being worse mortified than this.  John
Austin, the flower of the old missionary families, having married Dr.
Jones'es daughter (Jones was a Presbyterian preacher and teacher, but when
the mission broke up, Dr. went to preaching and practising medicine on
Deepwater) settled near this camp ground, where his son-in-law lived on
Deepwater.  One day or night, we've forgotten which, John Austin, a very
religious young man, comes over to the camp meeting.  The Methodists got
to shouting, John caught the fire.  He clapped his hands and shouted,
"Glory!" until he wore himself out.  The report was that the Methodists
had to carry Deacon John off from the camp ground.  It spread, got to
Little Osage, twenty miles away, that John Austin had so humiliated the
Presbyterians as to shout.  John being well-to-do, well educated, the
Presbyterians did not know what to do about Sir John.  His father (Father
Austin), who built Ball's mill (at that day a greater event than Morse's
telegraph) came to see Grandfather Dodge about John's conduct.  And it was
a self-evident fact that these two fathers had a greater problem to settle
than Christianizing the Osage Indians.  They consulted my mother.  Living
in the door-yard at my grandparents, she, through her younger sister or
mother, usually got the decision some way when a counsel of war was
called, heard this much of the conclusion:

"Oh, well," says Grandpa, "if it comes from the heart, and they don't
make it, I don't care if they shout."

We left Bates County, Missouri, in May, when grass was plenty, as the
custom was to feed all our teams and loose stock in those days on the...

Our trip to Iowa.  Whether it was in the year 1848 or 1849 we left
Missouri for Iowa we cannot tell, for our memory on dates never very good.
May be at fault in many cases.  Yet the narrative set forth is true in
all the subject matter set forth in these essays, as far as the author can
comprehend.  And we may have made the pages more dry and uninteresting by
being too careful to have  each word and sentence written just as it
occurred as far as seemed possible.

We have such a distaste for all books of fiction that we may lean a
little too strong to the opposite.  Yet we hear and receive so much as
true which deceives and misleads that we fill up our cranium without
knowing the fact to a great extent with what we suppose true today and is
contradicted tomorrow that we rather be a little monotonous than utter one
word of unknown truth so as to misguide or create doubts with the reader.

Nothing of a thrilling or mysterious nature occurred on the first
sixty miles of our journey.  But on reaching the bank of the Missouri, at
Kansas City, this wonderful, muddy, wide, and rushing stream brought forth
to our minds much more than Joaquin Miller could picture, much as we
admire that poem.  The city itself amounted to little.  We should judge
five or six stores, mostly for the Santa Fe and California out-trading
trains.  Scarcely any family residences were noticed by the pilgrims, and
it seemed that we were much more favorably impressed with Westport than
Kansas City.

Some inquiry by my father at the ferry soon put us over this mother
or monster of all waters in the cottonwood bottems on the other side,
where quite an amount of four-foot cottonwoods was cut for sale to the
steamboat companies for fuel.  We built up a fire to cook supplies when it
began to get a little dark.  'Twas then we heard a strange noise down the
river.  On looking closely, my mother says, "A steamboat!"  All rushed to
the bank to see the monster that belched forth fire and brimstone from its
nostrils.  But my mother was the only one of the family that had seen a
steamboat.  My father, though traveling from Knoxville, Tennessee to
Harmony Mission, now Papinsville, Missouri, had never seen a steamboat,
knew nothing of the liabilities or casualties of such mighty structures,
and came to each member of the family, stationed them up the bank three or
four rods further from the boat than we were, saying, "Get back! We don't
know the danger!  It might blow up!"

They took on wood, and we had quite a time viewing the outside of the
structure, but none dared to step on board to view the inside.  We had
late supper that night.  My father was up nearly all night.

From Kansas City, we journeyed through Clay, Platte, and Bucannon
counties, stopping to recruit in Andrew County.  Platte City was the
largest place I had ever seen.  It glittered and shined so that, in my
mind, it seemed a beautiful little city to one today.  We came to Saint
Joe, then the most prosperous, busiest, and wide-awake city west of St.
Louis.  And it seemed to me that anything under the canopy of heaven could
be seen or bought in St. Joe, Missouri.  Savannah, the county seat of
Andrew County, was not so fine as the two former-mentioned county seats
(Platte  City and St. Joe).  The most beautiful landscapes, the finest
upland timber, springs of water, sugar tree groves, blue grass pasture and
farm buildings we ever beheld up to that date were in this Platte Purchase
as we journeyed through the above-named counties in Missouri.

The only sad scene of this journey was leaving Old Mike.  On a
beautiful, blue grass slope, the old fellow gave out.  We wrestled,
coaxed, fed; but to no use.  He had served us faithfully so far back, and
as recollections went, done all the cultivating of corn, melons, garden,
and hauled wood, corn, etc.  One year, broke all the grounds we
cultivated.  Father had rode him to all his appointments to preach for
years.  Mother had taken two or three of the children on his back to
church and to see the neighbors.  He was the only horse Father ever bought
or had given him but lay down and died.  He had been foundered from
over-eating corn, and taken to Deepwater, and turned out to die by a big
hole, or ponds, of that river.  When Father went down the next morning to
see him, he was standing half sides in the water, and much better, and
afterwards, when foundered (which happened many times), he always broke
for the water with the same result.  We had to part with him, and like
Beechers' Old Charley, we felt like he had seen a hard time in this life,
and if no hereafter for him, his case was disconsolate.  My Father grew
sad, mysterious, and bewildered, remarking as he nearly cried, "Well,
Mother, I feel as bad as if I'd lost one of the children."  He went to an
aged colored man nearby, and told him if Old Mike got well he could have
him if he would take good care of him.  Taking the bell from off his neck
(the blue grass was good, water fine), we left him in the clover.  The
last scene of poor Old Mike, our faithful, good, obedient horse.

In thinking over our trip in after years through the east counties,
it seems we never passed through so new a country with such good houses,
barns, fields, and orchards.  The people were the best off, lived the
best, the most generally intelligent we ever met.  It seemed like an old
country, judging from the improvements.  Many double-hewed log houses.
When Father would see one of these, he would say, "There lives a
Kentuckyian."  They always build a chimney at each end of their houses,
and usually build two-story houses.  These chimneys were run up on the
outside of the house, usually built of brick, and form a long,
pyramid-shaped flue, looking very high and nice.  Some brick houses and
frame buildings were to be seen, and the people were the greatest variety
we had ever seen, being from nearly every state in the union.  Money
seemed more plentiful than when we left, and this certainly was the
richest country we had ever passed over.

We stayed at North prairie, in some fifty or sixty miles of the Iowa
line to work for more money to carry us on to Iowa.  These people were
from Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana, mostly.  Hemp was a great staple, and
the slave power not being very strong (yet some owned as high as 100), but
the most of even well-to-do farmers owned no slaves at all.  Father and my
older brother got plenty of work.  It took me most of the time 'round
camp.  How much was earned here we have forgotten, before we started for
Iowa.  But early in the fall, we pulled out for Iowa.  The rains caught us
out the second day, and we went into a house with a Kentucky family
formerly from E. Tennessee, and he and my father were as well acquainted
the first day as ever after, for Father always used to say that E.
Tennessee people were just as well acquainted the first time they met as
ever afterward.  They were very kind.  A large house, but little to eat.
We found them actually living on potatoes and salt.  They had plenty of
Irish potatoes.  Both families joined in the roast.  We would build up a
fire in the large fireplace if there was not a plentiful supply of live
coals already in the hugh fireplace, and when coals were plentiful, then
pull forward on the hearth ashes and all until reaching the solid rock or
bricks in the bottom.  Then we'd pour in from one peck to a half bushel of
potatoes, putting ashes first of all on the potatoes, then the live coals
on the ashes.  In about one hour, all are done.  When all the ashes are
again scraped from the hearth in front of this potato hole or deposit,
when all the potatoes are, with the assistance of the fire shovel pulled
out, each and every inmate helping themselves.  And frequently cornbread
is cooked in the same manner.  We got the salt, and nearly entirely lived
on these potatoes, eating them out of the rinds to save washing the
dishes.  You will say this is hard living, and so it is, but we will tell
of harder living than this before we get done with the Mormons in western
Iowa, some three or four years after.

The rain stopped in two or three days.  This good thoroughbred E.
Tennessee Kentuckyian, on parting, charged us nothing for house, rent, and
potatoe harvest, gave Father some good advice.  One thing more
particularly than others was to be careful of the Indians.  "You may know
them by their always being dressed with yellow hunting shirts and yellow
jeans pants.  They will cheat and rob you if they can.  Beware of them!"

On leaving Mr. Sharp's (our Kentuckyian), the first night come on to
a little, running prairie brook, and camped by the banks, where just
opposite, in two hundred yards, lived a family that my father had asked
the permission of to camp, as was his custome to do.  He never would camp
in reach of anyone but he would always ask the permission to camp, and
never go onto anyone's premises to hunt or fish unless he asked
permission, and would say to us children in our raising, "Ask for anything
you are seeking before you help yourselves."  "Anything worth having is
worth asking for."

We had scarcely built a fire when a rather plain-looking man came
from that house dressed with yellow pants and yellow hunting shirt on, and
all whispered, "Look out for the Indians."  We talked awhile, got up, and
said, "Wouldn't you like some fresh meat?  I killed a beef today, and if
you like we will bring you over some."

"Yes," says Father, "and I will pay you for it."

"Oh, no.  I don't want any pay for a piece of meat given to a
traveler."

We have heard since, that was Mr. Graham, and his wife's name was
Mary, and when the citizens come to name the county seat of Nodaway
(spelling verified), they were bothered to know what to call the town, and
someone says, "Name it 'Mary,' after the first woman that settled in the
town," calling it Marysville, after this Mr. Graham's wife.  We don't know
whether he was an Indian, or whether this naming be true or not.  What we
know, we got a fine pail of meat that we very much needed.

Being heavy-loaded on this trip with our old, rickety, squeekety ox
wagon, about fifteen or twenty miles was all we could travel per day.  In
two more days, we landed in Iowa at Boundary Grove, Page County, so named
from a lawsuit growing out of a twelve-mile strip across the north side of
Missouri and south side of Iowa.  Iowa gaining the suit, Boundary Grove
fell to the state of Iowa.  We stopped at this grove but a few months when
Father traded his oxen and wagon for a claim on government land in the
forks of the Nodaway.  We moved onto this claim not a house, cow, hog, or
chicken.  No money.  A shell of a house, but no fencing.  Dense forests of
timber for miles up and down these two rivers (Little and Big Nodaway),
and the finest kind of oak, walnut, red oak, white oak, and better than
all, deer and wild turkeys.  My mother advertised to make coats for trade,
anything we could eat, just as she had done in southern Missouri.  There
was no money here, but plenty of work for corn, potatoes, etc.  My oldest
brother and myself went to gathering corn for Lark Thompson and Jessie
Majors (spelling verified), two brothers-in-law that were well-off for
that country.  We soon earned bread corn for a year, bread, three or four
hogs, some chickens, and household furniture.  Mr. Robert Stafford
(spelling verified), an old ex-sheriff of Nodaway County, and afterwards
sheriff of Page county, Iowa, soon found us out. Though three miles away,
he used to pack us meat every time he killed a hog on his back.  Father
went to preaching of Sundays, having got to Iowa in time for Uncle Jimmy
Still, the presiding elder of the Nodaway District to renew his liscense
before they run out after the charges prefered, before related, at
Marshall's Creek, Missouri, and going on foot.  No preacher being located
near this part of Iowa, Father had to say all the marriage ceremonies, but
those who married in this locality had hard work to raise the fifty cents
it took to record the marriage certificate in the county clerk's office.
And we well remember two funny ceremonies that took place, one in Boundary
Grove, then in the state of Missouri, and the other at a settlement on the
Nodaway, some fifty miles below where we now lived in Nodaway County,
Missouri.  A farmer came to Father.  His name was Lionabo, a very
nice-looking and honest man, and asked Father what he would charge to go
three or four miles away and say the marriage ceremony for him.  Being
present, my father talked low, but said, "It will cost fifty cents to get
it recorded, and that will be cash.  You will have that to pay.  It will
take a half day to go over there and say the ceremony.  You pay the fifty
cents, and come over and work for me a half day, and that will make it
even."

The ceremony was said.  He came and worked a half day, not an hour
more, ate dinner, and went away.

The other was a young man in Nodaway County, Missouri, but he had to
send to Savannah, the county seat of Andrew County, for a preacher to
marry him, some twenty-five or thirty miles away.  The preacher
encountered a heavy snowstorm the day set, but made his way to the young
man's father, and stayed all night.  The next day being quite cold, he
went to the bride's mother's to say the ceremony.  When the dinner was
over, the young man (who was quite well off) took this Presbyterian
minister out and said, "How much do I owe you?"

"Oh, nothing," says the preacher.

"Why you can't come clear out hear from Savannah and marry me for
nothing!  I intend to pay you well for it," pulling out his purse.

"Oh, I never charge anything.  If they feel like it, I take whatever
they offer me."

It was the days that ten cent silver coins and 12.5 cent silver coins
were in circulation, both legal.  One, the former, called a "short bit,"
the other, 12.5 cents, called a "long bit."  The young man added, "Well,
you must be paid well," and added, "By Bing, I'll go a long bit anyhow!"
and pulled out a 12.5 cent piece from his purse, and gave the minister.
Mr. Florrince (spelling verified), a justice of the peace in Newark,
afterwards Philmore, Missouri, who I worked for, told me this was true.
He would not give me the name, but told me on going one day up the Nodaway
some miles, the same course (though many years after) to say a marriage
ceremony, that this trip of his reminded him very much of the
Presbyterian's ride, although his took only one day.

Winter at the forks of the Nodaway.
My brother, Thomas, and myself worked away into the mid-winter gathering
corn for these drunken brothers-in-law.  One of them, Larking Thompson,
and was so beastly drunk he hardly ever got out of doors, and if he saw a
cloud, he would always bet with his hired girl fifty cents to two-fifty
that it would rain before tomorrow morning.  Then the hired woman would
always bet with him, and nearly always win.  She was an Indiana lady, if I
may call her so, for she was handsome, smart, and had twin babies with her
that the neighbors called "illigitimate."  We never hunted the matter up,
and what she cooked, corn bread,  very thick side pork, occassionally a
little cabbage or sour crout, never poisoned us.  And as the Mormons were
scattered pretty thickly over this region, which soon will engage my mind
and pen, she may have been hermetically sealed to some of these Mormon
lords so plentifully squatted over this part of Iowa on their way from
Naru to Salt Lake City.  On many occassions, we came home (or to Lark
Thompson, for it was no home for anyone), and had to take the oxen from
the wagon we were hauling corn in all day, go into the woods, quarter or a
half mile away, cut a hickory tree, the ground usually frozen, hitch this
excellent yoke of oxen to the but ends of the tree with a log chain, and
drag it up, cut wood to build a fire, before getting our side pork and
corn dodgers for supper.  Sometimes the same performance before breakfast.
And we were quite sure we never saw another yoke of oxen that could pull
as much as that at Lark Thompson's.

At Jess Majors' we fared much better.  Mrs. Majors done the cooking.
We had more vegetables, and Orleans molasses.  Then there was a barrel of
sour crout set by the large fire place in one corner of the kitchen.  I
set by that sour crout, and during the debates after supper 'round the
fireplace, I would raise the lid.  It was just working.  I'd dip my hand
into that barrel of sour crout, take out a big handfull, and eat it.  It
was kind of free-truck for all, and no one, after jerking corn for
fourteen hours, felt that he was stealing this food.

The winter passed, and after doing much moonshine work unloading
stock, fodder, getting wood, and our father come to see us.  These fellows
were coarse jockeys (nay, horse racers), and they were very anxious to
show my father their horses.  And they had fine ones, too!  They had one
that had been beaten they wanted to sell. They bragged him up.  Father
went to the stable, looked at all their fine stock, telling them this
one's good points, and that one they wanted to sell, his bad points.  And
on my father's leaving the stables for home, my older brother heard Majors
remark to Thompson, "Why, that damned old Methodist priest knows more
about race stock than anyone in the country.

The last part of the winter, what my brother, Thomas, done, we do not
now recollect.  But it does not seem that he helped Father and myself make
rails on the claim at the forks of the Nodaway.  But we were so poor and
out of clothes that what little sowing Mother got did not get us much to
eat or wear.  She used to try to get half out of the store of them in
Missouri, the other half in trade, meaning corn, wheat, vegetables, honey,
pork, eggs, or whatever we could use.  What we got from the stores was
counted cash.  But so few were able to pay anything from the stores that
it might be all called trade.  She got fifty cents for making pants, 75
cents for a vest, and two dollars for making a man's coat.  In Iowa, close
by where we lived, was a tailor who got most of the work.

On returning home, we went to work helping Father make rails, and we
recollect all we had to eat was straight thick-side bacon.  No lean.  We
were too far from home to go to dinner from where we were making rails,
and we would take our corn dodger and bacon at noon, and cut a forked
stick, build a fire (the weather being cold), stick the two forks through
bacon, put it up before the fire, and cook the bacon, put the slice on a
piece of corn bread, and cut off from the side of bacon a mouthful, then
the bread, in like manner, drinking water.  Thus we made ten-foot rails
until spring.

At home we fared a little better of mornings and evenings.  My mother
usually managed to keep a little flour to make thickening gravy, and she
would take the grease she fried out of the bacon, and for breakfast and
supper we would have gravey on our corn bread.  That was made up with
water, without any shortening.

No cow, no horse, no wagons, nothing but the unimproved land, and
father could  only go on foot to his appointments, and got acquainted with
but few.  In the spring of 1850, something had to be done.  To part with
any of the children was a source of grief to our parents, but on sprin
opening, the parents held a consultation.  They had got somewhat
acquainted in Andrew County, Missouri, where we stopped to work and we
came to Iowa.    My older brother and myself were counselled, and all
thought it best for us two to go to Andrew County to work.  My older
brother was a fine hand of his age.  He was seventeen years old.  He had
worked for Dr. Rekwa one year and James Tays one year before he came to
Iowa.  Mother patched up our old clothes.  One pair of my pants was made
of thin linsy, and holes came in them shortly after leaving home.  All a
parent could do was done for us in the way of advice and good counsel, but
they found no way to furnish us any money for the journey, but sent us to
L. Thompson, to the same Mr. Graham who gave us the beef at Marysville
from Lark Thompson to stay all night.  As bad as Thompson and Majors were,
they were kind in this way, and the women were very different from the men
morally (and I have forgot to mention the greatest object of piety we ever
met in Page County, Iowa, at Lark Thompson's when working there.  Mrs.
Thompson's sister had a sore shin, or fever sores, on her leg, and I am
ashamed that in giving the narrative of our working there, the suffering
of this poor, afflicted mortal were not mentioned.  She used to lay awake
all night and groan.  No one to pity her but her sister, Mrs. Thompson.
How often I have thought of her, and how she was forgotten in my writing
up our winter's work puzzles me).

We made Marysville our second day, and Mr. and Mrs. Graham treated us
very kindly.  Yet we were tired and sore, having made nearly thirty miles
carrying all our clothes, and being only fifteen years old, very small of
my age, it seemed we could not have made this distance.  It seemed my
mother seemed to part with us in better heart than on former occassions
like this.  She always cried on my leaving home before, but if she cried
this time, we have forgotten the fact, and maybe the pressing necessity
had something to do with the matter.  Where we stayed the next night we
have forgotten, but we know where we took up to enquire for work and
stopped until we found it, VIZ at Amos Collinses.  My brother had no
trouble to get work.  He went to work for Amos Collins at ten dollars per
month.  Amos was a Methodist preacher, raised and educated in Indiana, we
think, and now had a good farm on North prairie, five miles from Newark,
Andrew County, Missouri.  His brother, Tom Collins, had been in the state
legislature in Missouri, and adjoined farms with Amos.  The Old Man
Collins, uncle Jacky, as we called him, lived near Newark, in one or two
miles.  And Kerns Laughlin (spelling verified), his son-in-law, lived in
Newark, clerking in a store.  Mr. Laughlin was said to be the best
salesman clerk in that time in the upper Missouri country.  My being so
diminutive, Uncle Jacky being a good farmer, and the father of Amos and
Thomas Collins, of north prairie, where my brother went to work, they all
seemed to take my case into consideration, and Uncle Jacky said if I would
come and work for him one year, he would give me seven dollars per month,
I went to work for him.

Being thus thrown among these good people, it made the matter very
pleasant, and the distance of sixty or seventy miles from home did not
seem far to those who had a good horse and saddle.  To a poor boy who had
no clothes scarcely, and every cent that was earned must go to the
parents, and five or six children at home, there was no opportunity to go
home, and we were farther from the forks of the Nodaway than we are to the
facilities of the railroad from New York City.  Uncle Jacky Collins was
very kind, honorable man.  A good Christian, and always took me to Newark
to church if I desired to go.  And through going to church, I got
acquainted with Kerns Laughlin.  This excellent Christian man, who gave me
so much good advice in after years.  Mrs. Collins done my washing (as was
the custom in hiring a man in those days.  You got your washing and
boarding and eating at the same table.  You was treated better, if
possible, than though you had been a son of the landlord).  Thus, only
having my work to do, we were always up early, and worked until dark
before getting all the chores done. My brother came once in awhile to see
me, and we had all Sunday to ourselves.  The Sabbath was strictly observed
by all classes, and Uncle Jacky Collins would not allow us to read a
secular paper or anything on the Sabbath, but religious books and
pamphlets.  The Western Christian Advocate, the leading Methodist paper at
that time, coming to his table every week.  We had one grown son at home,
Andrew, and two single daughters.  Malissa was one of the girl's names,
and the other we have forgotten.  They were very quiet, and we only
remember that the oldest was a consumptive, and a very devoted Christian.
She must have been sixteen or seventeen years old when I worked there, and
often reminded me of Samuel Wesley Jr.'s beautiful poem, "The Morning
Flowers Display Their Sweet," which has been sung at more funerals of
young people than any other hymn (and was the best type of the life of
that author written that hymn that has ever been published).  She died
shortly after my year was up, and we well remember her clinging to the
door case, being unable to stand without some prop to lean against.  But
we know from her Christian demeanor while there she had a more sure prop
to lean upon than earth can give or take away.

Nothing very remarkable occurred during my stay at Mr. Collinses.  My
father came down during the summer, and we let him have fifty or sixty
dollars earned, and he drew a few dollars ahead.  With this cash he bought
a pony for $25, a fine Durham cow for $12.50, and he had several dollars
for the necessaries of life.  The vexed question (slavery of the negroes)
began to assume huge proportions.  Debates were held all over the land,
and much persecution existed on the application of Californian's
admission.  The two Methodist churches had the most of these debates.  One
man by the name of Kelly, a northern Methodist preacher, came to Savannah,
and spoke on the division of the church.  Wen done, they took him, poured
tar into his ears, gave him a coat of tar and feathers, rolled him on a
rail, and sent him out of the country.  This was done in many places with
the Methodist preachers of the old church.  And no doubt the southern
church egged it on to great an extent, for they claimed that the northern
Methodist preachers had no rights south of Mason and Dixon's line.  We
were strongly prejudiced in favor of the north, and politically and
religiously the communities were quite equally divided.  Yet the epithet
of abolitionists was  not so commonly applied to everyone who did not
think just as Calhoon or the southern leaders advocated.  John Chivington
(spelling verified) and a few others were heard under the color of the
resolver.  We do not particularly admire Chivington, although our sympathy
was entirely with the north.

Next spring, 1851, we went to work for Mr. Florrence (spelling
verified), a saloon keeper in the town of Newark, and the then-acting
justice of the peace.  He had little to do, and only wanted me for a
month.  It was about as near doing nothing as we ever remember doing.
Just he liked me so well, he kept me longer at $7.50 per month.  He was
kindly.  Good pay, and the most to eat, his wife being a good cook we ever
remember having where we worked.  Here we met Mrs. Kinnison, a docter's
wife, up street, and she says, "When you get done with Mr. Florrence, I
want you to come and work for the docter.  I will send him up to see you."

The next day, the docter came, and offered me $10 per month for one
year.  On inquiry, he was well and favorably spoken of, and so was the
wife.  He had married Perrman Taylor's daughter, a slave-holder of
Virginnia.  A virginnian by birth and raising, and I may add, by politics,
but a Yankee in genius and knowledge, a practising physician and southern
Methodist preacher.  He had more practice than he could attend to.  Often
have we seen him asleep in his saddle, always going horseback or on foot.
Here I slept in the Docter's office or apothecary shop among the
medicines, and made myself generally useful by being up by daylight,
feeding the small amount of stock, building all the fires, and hoeing the
garden until breakfast, which came any time from six to ten A M, owing to
the combination of the wood and the time the spirit moved the cook.  The
cook was a negro girl, judging about sixteen.  She knew how to mix so as
to make dough.  Whether it came out dough or paste, it was all the same.
She knew how to boil Irish potatoes and boil fat bacon sides.  This was
all.

Sarah, the oldest daughter, was an excellent cook when she went into
the kitchen.  Then we had a fine meal.  She was always there when they had
company, and they had quite an amount of company.  It was not necessary to
enquire if company was there.  If you went to the well at the kitchen door
and found Sarah in the kitchen, you might know there was company.  But
unless some visitors, the girls (five in the family, and two of them
grown) would absent themselves from the kitchen.  But each come to the hog
and hominy every meal, as regular as the hired man, enjoying the meal,
always cheerful, handsome, and happy.  Naturally they made more fine
quilts than any young ladies we ever were acquainted with.  They milked
the cow, helped the colored girl do the washing, and sarah could build and
make a fire burn out of green out of green elm, which I could never do,
and she was not red-headed either, but rather golden.  Then she could beat
me or anyone else I ever saw picking wild blackberries in the woods,
except my present mother-in-law.  I did not like the latter performance,
but was always glad to have Miss Sarah along at the blackberry picnics.
We were not like Jacob, serving fourteen years, for she was my senior.
Yet she had a younger sister, very diminutive, and said to be the most
handsome girl in ten miles around.  We always quarreled, that is, she was
always raising some little dissatisfaction with all around her.  Yet it
was only mischievious fun with her, for she was wonderfully good meaning.
This was Miss Ann (spelling verified).  The next was Susan.  Her business
was to take care of her little brother, and a more faithful soul could not
be found.  The child, William Pearman, was good.  Two years old, and
humored in every whim, but it never spoiled little Willy Pearlman.  And
Verdie were too young for me to pay much attention to.  And then it
occuppied most of my time to keep Miss Ann straight by hectoring her what
little spare time I had from my work.  The docter not much at home, we had
less to do with than any of the family, for he was nearly always away from
home among his patients.  But when at home, you fine a more interesting
man if you could than old Dr. Kinnison!  During the whole summer, the
docter came out twice on the plantation by my vehement urging and his
protest, to see how I was running things.  And all he said, "Oh, it's no
use for me to come out here.  You know just as well how to do it as I do."

Of all the makeup of man, never shall we behold another like him.  He
could tell more funny things, looked younger, though bald, more pleasant,
and chewed his tobacco nicer than any man we ever saw to chew as much as
he did.  Always pleasant, the greatest humanitarian, never asked for the
payment of a bill unless some member of his family was in need.  Always
poor, could not get enough out of an extended practice.  He had for to
respectfully support his family of six children.  Never played any pranks.
Could not bear to see anyone hoaxed, but would quickly come to the relief
of any party that was the victim of any plot.  Temperate, yet taking all
the men that were drunk or got into a fight election days to his house,
and took care of them until they got sober.  A peacemaker, a good
preacher, and a fine physician.  Although accused of never receiving a
medical education, always trying to do something for young men, advising
them how to get a good education, how to go into business, and so forth.
If anything in this world worth living for, I owe Dr. Kinnison, next to my
father, of all earthly benefactors, that debt.  Two or three of his
amusing traits among hundreds let me mention.  One day, on walking up the
street from Dr. Baker's store, where we done all our trading, we met the
Dr. Baker with a huge fish.  Accosting him with the usual salutation, I
said, "Where did you get that fish, docter?"

"Oh, just down here in the pond (a lake one half mile from town).
You can catch lots of them down there.  Just get you some hook and lines.
You can catch all you want."

Keeping on up to Dr. Kinnison's with the bundles I had brought for
the family, I goes up to Dr. Kinnison and says, "Docter, I want a dollar."

He run his hand into his pocket, and gave me the dollar, saying,
"What do you want with it?"

"To buy some fishhooks.  Dr. Baker had a great big fish he caught
down in the lake, and 'you can catch all you want,' he says, 'down
there.'"

Going down for the hooks, someone come running after me, and on
looking, here comes Dr. kinnison.  "Oh, Johnny, that's just one of Dr.
Baker's hoaxes.  He never got that fish out of that pond.  Go  back.  I'll
find out pretty soon.  Here comes the docter back."

Just as I suspected, he replied he had bought it off a fish wagon.
Of course I felt cheap.

We came home one night from Savannah, and after supper he said, "I
saw a lot of fellows horsing a well-dressed, well-appearing young man.
He, the young man, came into the drug store where I was, and asked for a
pair of Jew's harp mold.  The clerk went, and looked, and said, "They were
loaned out over at a drug store over the way.  You can get them there."

Doctor followed the young man out doors, called him to one side,
and said, "Young man, them fellows are hoaxing you.  There is no such
thing as Jew's harp molds."

The young man thanked him, and they parted friends.

On another time, just before Christmass, a very ragged-dressed young
gawk of a man, looking to have his father's shoes on, his uncle's coat,
and Jew Bowerses patched pants, and on coming up, looked embarrassed,
knocked
at the docter's front door.  The docter ask him in that cold morning
early, and on settling him a chair, kindly asked, "Have you had your
breakfast, young man?"

"No, sir," was the reply.

"Ann, daughter, set on some breakfast for this gentleman, will you."

After breakfast, he carried a fine quarter of beef as we ever beheld
into the docter's kitchen, and bidding all "good morning," started for the
gate.

"Oh!" exclaimed Ann.  "Did you ever see such shoes?  They were big
enough for the fat man.  And then his coat!  Oh, was it queer!  His pants
were large enough for two or three such men.  Oh, wasn't he queer?"

"There, Ann!  Stop right there!  That poor boy come to bring me a
quarter of beef to pay his father's docter bill.  He put on the best he
could get.  Now never again do you let your father hear you make any such
remarks about anyone who comes under his roof."

We never lived in a more obedient family to parents than these
children were, and we have lived in twenty-seven different families.

Of Mrs. Kinnison, we will speak farther on.  She was very kind and
good to me and everyone else, only taking three or four tantrums a year,
and they amounted to nothing, only to amuse all present.  She was the
daughter of a wealthy Virginnian.  Raised to do nothing.  A complete lady.
And she kept it up all through life.  Of her antiques we may speak later
on.  Suffice this for the present.

Of the two younger daughters, Caroline inherited the amiable
disposition of her father like Sarah, her older sister.  None could know
her but to love and respect her.  Verdie, the young girl, like Ann and her
mother, spritely, mischievous, and high tempered, she is said to have been
the most successful spies in the southern army.

Of the little two-year-old and only son, he was the pet of the
family.

During this year, though living hard, we look as the most enjoyable
ever spent away from home.  Only for one sad event or all would have been
complete.  Just before my time was up with the docter, I took the measles.
They settled on my lungs, or cough set in.  For a month, I was
prostrated.  All thought I'd die.  The girls, by the docter's order,
carried cold water to my bed in the office, and ordered me to drink all I
wanted, the docter being gone nearly day and night.  But one night I
noticed him when conscious always in the shop with me.  The next morning,
on coming to myself, my quarters were changed, and waking up in the
docter's quarters, the old lady and girls seemed quite interested in my
behalf.  The docter had sat by my side all night, then carried me in his
arms into his family apartment.  He told my brother, Thomas, who he sent
for early in the morning, that he had a very hard time to keep me alive
through the night.  Being able to do nothing that fall, my brother thought
best to send me home to the folks on the Nodaway.  The docter charged me
for this four weeks' doctering, nursing, and board, four dollars.  We met
a wagon going within twelve miles of my father's, and we got aboard,
leaving my brother, thomas, to take my place at the docters.  Being very
weak, we were not able to walk very far.  But so anxious was I to see my
mother, father, and the children, that about two o'clock, reaching the
destiny of the wagons, I shouldered up my traps, and started out on the
twelve-mile stretch home.  Night coming on, there were seven miles of
forest without a house, and I never shall forget how the wolves howled
that night!  The road was dim, being little traveled.  Occassionally a
wild turkey or two would fly out of the tops of the trees, but it was too
dark for the most part, for the turkeys to see me.  We reached home about
two o'clock in the morning.  Gave all a surprise, but found all well.
Mother got me breakfast about four A M.  Tired.  Worn out.  Had been
twelve hours making twelve miles with my heavy load.  Went to bed, and was
wakened up away after sunrise by someone coming rushing into the room and
accosting Mother thus: "Good morning!  I hear John has got home.  Where is
he?"  And rushing for my bed, she says, "How are you, John?"  On looking
up, there stood Nance Limels (spelling verified).  She left my room long
enough for me to get up, and then returned her visit.  She was a young
lady.  Grown, but this was all she knew of the rules of etiquette or
decency.

My cough and cold from the measles stayed with me the most of that
winter, and never did regain my voice so as to govern it in singing.  My
father, needing an opportunity to sell his claim on this government land,
it not being yet surveyed, the population being very rude, quite a number
of Mormons scattered here and there, Father sold for about as much as the
rails we had made and the buildings erected were worth.  And in the spring
of 1852, we had two yoke of oxen and a good wagon, and were on the road
again.  We came from Page County to Mills County, took up the Missouri
River, came to old Cainsville, in Potawatimie (spelling verified) County,
now Counsel Bluffs.  In all that region there were said to be but
seventeen gentiles.  The Mormons called themselves "Latter Day Saints,"
and all who were not Mormons, "Gentiles."  We got as used to calling
ourselves "Gentiles" as they did, and this became the distinguishing term,
"Latter Day Saints," and "Gentiles."

Cainsville was a business place.  Some 20 or 25 large stores, and all
the gentiles to be found in this city were heavy merchants, coming here to
make fortunes trading with the Mormons.

The Mormons, as a mass, were ignorant, poor, and despised.  Mostly
foreign, and the English were in the majority.  Orson Hyde (spelling
verified) had the command at this time at Hanesville (spelling verified).
They were just out from Norvau (spelling verified), Illinois, and camped
all up and down the Missouri bottom and tributary streams to recruit for
Salt Lake City.  This must have been in the year 1852 at any rate.  For
two or three years, there was a big immigration of the Mormons from all
parts to Salt Lake, and Cainsville was the center, or headquarters, for
all these throngs of immigrants to congregate, sit out, and start for
Utah.  We lived in the house with them where the men had as many as three
wives.  They were always up for a controversy, and we got accustomed to
all their habits and beliefs.  And the various wings of the Joe Smith
dynasty may talk as they please about Smith being opposed to polygamy.  We
know better.  The old Joe Smith proselytes were the strongest of the
polygamists.  The women advocated the doctrine, and thought it the
greatest honor to be sealed to Joe, claiming he had about 300 sealed to
him.  We knew quite a number of the elders.  They were great boosters,
pretenders but cowards.  One Gentile could put a hundred to flight, and
for this reason they were abused shamefully.  We well remember the first
Methodist preacher that came among them to preach, Mr. Simpson (spelling
verified), of Iowa.  He was very tall.  Six feet and seven inches.  They
used to threaten him, but never molest, and the year after Simpson
preached, Elder Shinn (spelling verified) came.  They (the Mormons)
threatened Shinn (later of Shinn's addition to Omaha), and on the Mormons'
gathering on the streets of Kanesville, headed by Elder Hyde, Shinn got
down off from his fine horse he always rode, took a large club with a
great head to it, and run Elder Hyde and all his emmissaries from the
street with nothing but his club for a weapon.  Shinn was the first
presiding elder on Bluff District, and we think he belonged to the De
Moine Conference.  He settled in Kaynesville, lived there for years, made
a fortune in Omaha, and we think him dead long years ago.

Simpson preached the celebrated "frog" sermon, "Mormons, the
Apocalyptic Frog."  We wish we had kept this sermon after we read it.

So many amusing, strange, and mysterious affairs came up during our
two or three years' residence in western Iowa, where half of our neighbors
were Latter Day Saints.  We will not attempt to here make enumeration of
their peculiarities any further than they relate to our own life.  My
mother would not consent to stop at old Kanesville or in any of the
sections of country we had passed, and Father turned his course up the
Missouri, and came up above the Booyer (spelling verified), in Harrison
County, we think it was.  The most beautiful, productive region in North
America.  Now known as Upper Missouri Valley.  But here all were Mormons.
It rained and flooded, so we had to stop and live in the houses with the
saints of three or four wives.  And before the floods dried up, we were
about as anxious to leave pens covered with haye, dirt slabs with mud
floors, as Noah and his family were to leave the ark.  Yet these simple
people may have saved our lives, for it seems that it done little else but
rain and flood for too months, and these saints were very kind.  They
believed in entertaining strangers, and any enlightened man who had a soul
as big as a mosquito must have felt sad to see the want and starvation of
these poor, deluded souls.  Not even corn to make hominy.  They had peeled
nearly all the bark from all of the slippery elm trees during the bitter
cold winter, and ate it as food.  It was a strange spectacle to see these
trees peeled like tan bark forests, and eaten by people as food.  Many
died.  Some recanted.

Forgot to put in Towner and the Lands store.

It was a sorry spectacle to see these pilgrims start for Utah.  The
Lords, with for or five yoke of oxen hitched to a good wagon, then a much
larger amount with two yoke.  Then cows, with cows yoked up with oxen.
Then all cows, with old, rickety wagons.  Then the wagons with raw-hide
tires.  Last but we like to have said not least at all, the hand carts.
All bunched up in a train on the Missouri bottom, presented a picture of
the outward faces of humanity we never remember encountering elsewhere.
Then the maimed, halt, and the blind.  So many with one eye, or with some
blemish, that with all our experience among the Indian tribes, we do not
recall among the savages so much deformity and shocking examples of
depravity as seemed to be depicted in the face and form of these pilgrims
to the promised land.  And this may be accounted for in part from what the
proselyting had preached throughout Europe and America.  They preached
that they had the Lord's store among them.  That anyone could get what
they wanted by giving to this store.  That all things were held in common,
and they had a fund to help these poor mortals to Jackson County,
Missouri, Novau, Illinois, and Salt Lake.  These thousands came of these
poor, maimed, halt, and blind, by being helped out through this fund.
They recanted, and left by thousands in all these different localities,
some renouncing the faith, others, like Fisher's Grove, in Iowa, concluded
to hold onto the faith but not go to Utah.  We worked for Mr. Fisher
(spelling verified) one summer, and they have quite a town at Fisher's
Grove, Freemont County, Iowa.  Glenwood (spelling verified) once nearly
all Mormons called Coonville when we lived there, after Elder Coon.

My mother would not consent to stop in Harrison County, Potawatimie,
nor Mills counties.  We had turned our course down the Missouri River
until reaching Freemont, the corner county of the state on the southwest,
and drove into Sydney the very day the old man Sharp and Ford, two jack
Mormon lawyers, were laying off the town lots.  And not a house.  But the
county seat being located here, it soon became a little village of three
stores, Singleton (spelling verified) and Bradford, Botcher (spelling
verified) and Bourn (spelling verified), and the other name, we think, was
Rinkle (spelling verified).  Afterwards the firm of Toodle (spelling
verified) And Company.  One hotel, one drugstore, this comprised the
business part of the town of Sydney.

In three miles of this town, at the head of Key Creek (spelling
verified), Father took up a claim on government land.  Here lived a good
order of people.  Industrious.  Some very intelligent.  The various
churches were represented.  The Maine  liquor law being passed in Iowa
while we lived here.  And the district judge, Judge Bradford, having his
cellar full of spiritus liquors, being a leading merchant of the place and
judge.  We could not see them being circuit judge.  He opened the cellar
doors, and gave away all anyone wanted.  Such a thing as getting alcohol
was next to impossible.  He helped Father improve his claim in the fall of
1852, we think it was, for awhile.  But on times being hard, we returned
to Andrew County, Missouri to work again, my brother, Thomas, having gone
to California.  Yet we did not find things so favorable here as formerly.
My brother, Thomas, having the position at Dr. Kinnison's, we went into a
blacksmith shop, and struck for John Whitton (spelling verified), a good,
E. Tenessee man, part of the winter.  Helped Mr. Armstrong in the store a
little, went to St. Joseph, Missouri, with this merchant, Armstrong, and
helped him down with a drove of hogs, some hundred and fifty.  On our
return from St. Joe, Riddle (spelling verified) shot down Murray (spelling
verified) on the streets of Savannah.  One of the most cold-blooded
murders we ever heard of.  Armstrong, though a Methodist preacher, was
summoned by the Masons to Savannah to counsel over the Riddle-Murray
murder, Riddle being a wealthy man, and Mason.  We plodded on until a late
hour at night, stalled with our two-horse team, and put up for the night.
Riddle was cleared, and sat on the bench at Counsel Bluffs, Iowa, being
circuit judge of that district.  This was the second murder we ever heard
of in any of the counties we had lived in, either in Missouri or Iowa.

We worked for C. K. Chambers a month or two at twelve dollars per
month, for John Shroefand (spelling verified), Thomas Smith, but do not
remember working for anyone else but Thomas Collins of North prairie.

At T. K. Chambers' we saw the first lump of California gold ($60) we
ever beheld.

And not being so well as the years gone by, we concluded to bid adieu
to Andrew County, Missouri, and go home to Fremont County, Iowa, in the
spring or summer of 1853.

Our place being too small at Sydney, Father doing most of the work,
we went to work for Robert Gorden (spelling verified) and William Steward
(spelling verified) for $12.50 per month.

After corn plowing was over, we quite work for William Steward and
Robert Gorden, and went to hauling stone for Fisher, the founder of the
Mormon settlement at Fisher's Grove, east of Sydney.  He was a
well-digger, and my business was to haul the rock.

In the fall of 1853 and the winter of 1854, being a severe winter, we
worked on contracts for the most part.  We cut wood for William Lambert at
fifty cents per cord until about Christmass, when the weather got so
severe that no merchant would venture out to cut the four-foot wood into
stove wood.  Walking three miles into Sydney, we cut wood all day, and
walked back home at night all the balance of the winter, making thirty
dollars per month, the largest amount we had ever made.  When spring came,
I was given a horse and buggy, and sent out by Botcher (spelling verified)
and Bourn (spelling verified), the then-leading merchants of Sydney, to
buy up all the first of that locality.

Preaching was at my father's house, and we had three or four local
Methodist preachers in the settlement, and about one third of the
congregation would stay to dinner.

Wages were good.  Finding more than wages could be made by
contracting than month or day work, we would take would to cut and hay to
cut by the acre.  Yet I was never a good axe man or a good hand to mow.
But this winter, we worked further out of debt, and went up to Mills
County to camp meeting.  And these days, if a boy got one or two weeks
during the year from hard work, he done pretty well.  This was in the year
of 1853 and 1854.

In the fall of 1852, while at our home near Sydney, a revival of
religion broke out at Lacies (spelling verified) Grove, in Freemont
County.  My father done most of the preaching, assisted by Fathers Baker,
Martin, Rector (spelling verified), and Brackner.  My oldest sister,
Sarah, was converted, and my younger brother, Brown.  The latter was very
bright and wide-awake.  The meeting was held at Brother Jefferson Lacie's,
in his dwelling house of two rooms, one or two beds, in a hewed log house.
The neighbors helped make benches by splitting logs in two, and boring
holes in the logs, driving legs into these  logs with the wide, split side
up, shaved smooth with a drawn shave, and set all over this room for the
congregation to set on.  A small square in one corner for the preacher to
stand in with a kitchen chair in front constituted the pulpit.  When
seekers of religion were called for, one or two of the front seats were
cleared of the occupants, and the congregation were asked to sing, while
all desirous of salvation were asked to come and kneel at these benches
for prayers.  Sometimes fifteen or twenty men, women, boys, or girls would
come forward crying and weeping.  Rarely any ever came unless under
conviction.  Once in a while, Brother Simpson, the missionary among the
Mormons, came and preached in our sixteen-feet-squar log cabin.  Once in
three weeks, we believe.

This Lacie settlement was noted for its drunkenness and immorality
generally.  Here and there were some excellent families interspersed here
and there.  Jefferson Lacy (spelling verified) was given to strong drink,
and his good wife, taking the right view of the situation, believing
nothing but being converted to God could save drunkards from a drunkard's
grave, as my father had always preached for years, labored assiduously,
patiently and hopefully all through his meeting, helping feed the
multitudes that came.  She being quite frail, it was a wonder to all how
she kept up.  But Brother Lacy being the first converted, she seemed to
look as her only sure safety getting the entire community saved.  Men came
to this meeting with belts girt around them and butcher knives in the
scabbords.  Men and women gazed with astonishment at these meetings held
everywhere in the woods, at cabin and barn, and at least half of the
ungodly were converted who attended those meetings.

During this time, I was mowing away at my hay.  Father, my oldest
sister and my brother, Brown (the scholar of the family) were attending
this meeting, and stopping at Father Martin's, a local preacher mentioned
above, my father usually came home of nights, and urged me very strong to
go to the meeting.  I had a curiosity to see what was going on, but never
mooted (spelling verified) the matter to him, but would invariably say, "I
think we had better be making hay to winter our cattle."

On one Friday, at the breakfast table, my mother says, "John, I think
you ought to go over and attend the meeting.  Your father wants you so
much to go."

"Oh, I am going to put up the hay first."

"The meeting, by that time, may be over."

"Oh, well, I have no vest to wear.  If I had a vest, I might go."

"Well," she says, "I'll make you one today if you will go."

'Twas too much.  I promised her to go, but did not believe she could
make the garment, having so late a start.  But on coming home at night, we
found the vest done, ready to go, and it seemed I went that very evening.

For years having tried every way to be an infidel, all feelings of
conviction had left me, but there was something within that would keep me
from believing the doctrine so hard espoused, and with all my efforts in
that direction, we could never bear to see people make fun or ridicule
Christian believers. The Methodist preachers were my idols.  They seemed
just about perfect to me.  And be it said, they WERE in that day.  But
they were quite different from the salaried self-seekers that some of them
are today.  The meeting had progressed favorably.  My father preaches with
his usual earnestness, and called for mourners to come to mourners' bench
(not the anxious seat nor altar, but the old, plain, mourners' bench).  We
always liked things called by their right names.  Several went forward,
but not I.  Several came, and talked to me, but not my father.  He knew
better.  He was too great a general for that.  My sister came.  Several
young people came.  But no feeling, and always the impression was wrought
within me that no one should go forward without conviction.  The last one
who came was a veteran.  A soldier, shall we call him?  Nay, but a Marshal
Ney of a fellow.  He could out-general me when I told him I had no
convictions, and did not believe in going forward unless convicted.  He
replied, "You may never have any.  You should discharge your duty.  Many
people never have convictions until they set out."

He out-done me on every point.  Finally, to put him off, I said to
him, "If it will please you in any way, I will go," thinking to get rid of
him.

"Come right along," he said, laying hold of me."

In two steps there was no more legs under me than had they been out
of square up to my body.  The standers by looked hazed.  The lyon of the
tribe of Judah had been slain, and such a shout as went up from that house
it seemed would take the roof off.  All concentrated on the moralist of
the settlement.  The vain, precise skeptic of neighborhood.  But the old
warrior who got me there (Father Martin) was floored.  He talked, prayed,
sang, and implored my sister to come and hug me.  My brother, Brown,
prayed by my side, but oh, the heavens were brass.  The storms raged, and
it seemed a log lay across my stomach.  Such a load.  The carrying of my
load to Pondray County, sixty miles and back, was a light, light burden to
this.  Yet determined if there was anything for me, I was going to have
it.  Then my father came, and I saw where his strength lay.  Simple,
clear, he could tell me just the way to Heaven.  But all was dark.  Oh,
how I felt!  Never so bad before.  And I was going to have light before I
left that house.  They opened the doors of the church, but no, never would
I join the church until converted.  Marshal Ney appeared again, urged me
to join the church to no effect.  But he calfed ***** with me, and said,
"Oh, what a thing our prejudices are, only to give up all!  It may be the
means of your conversion to join the church."

He out-generaled me, giving the preacher my hand.  The benediction
was said about midnight, and I went home with Father Martin to stay all
night.

Still the load was there.  The next night, going back to Brother
Lacy's to meeting on the invitation to go to the mourner's bench, it took
no lengthy remarks to get me there, but no relief.  I went, and prayed
aloud.  All tried to help me on agonizing.  My father would come and talk
to me.  It seemed he had a little clearer idea of the way than any of the
rest.  A little light would gleam.  The intense gloom and darkness would
set in.  The load was still there when my father says, "Tell me just how
you feel."

On telling him, he says, "You cannot save yourself.  Just rool your
load on Jesus.  Believe on Him that He will save you."

"Oh," said I, "I could see a little."

"Just hold onto what you have got, and ask for more.  Pray, 'O Lord,
give me more faith!'"

But I said, "Oh, this load!"

"Never mind the load.  Just roll it onto Jesus."

The light grew a little brighter.  My father whispered something to a
by-stander.  This individual disappeared, but soon came back with my
sister, Sarah.  She kneeled down on one side, my father on the other.
Rays of light, just like the streaks of sun, shone right on me.  "Oh, I
see a little better!"

"Praise the Lord!" my father says.  "Only praise the Lord for what He
has done, and ask for more."

Light poured in.  Arising, all I remember was clasping my hand, and
shouting, "Glory."  Down the room to the door, where my skeptic friends
stood, I poured out my soul to them until they looked as white as sheep,
and it seems to me the best sermon I ever preached was to those young men.

Returning up the aisle, someone says, "How about your hay, and
wintering the cattle."

"Glory to God!  We will winter our cattle on the rush!" I cried,
knowing Father had put this in someone's ears.  (In the Missouri bottom,
in early days, the rush would grow up along the low banks as high as one's
shoulders, and the snow never fell so deep but the cattle would keep fat
in the timber among these rush bottems).

These meetings continued until forty or fifty were converted at
Lacy's grove, when they spread more or less over Freemont County.  Camp
meetings were innaugurated up and down the river, and hundreds were
converted to God, and joined the church.

End of volume one.

BOOK2

NEBRASKA

     On approach of spring, my father sold out the claim at Sydney, and
took a trip up to Glenwood with ox teams.  We had some eight or ten cows
besides two yoke of oxen. The Mormons were thinning out in Mills county,
and on our return this year of 1854, we only found about one half of the
population at Glenwood were Mormons.  The name had been changed from
Coonville to Glenwood.  Father sold some of our cows, and we moved into a
house owned and occuppied by A. C. Towner, who accompanied us upon that
famous Pecan trip at DR. Reckwa's.  These Towners, Abraham and A. C.,
followed my father from Bates County, Missouri, to Page County, Iowa, and
from Page County to Freemont.  Then to Nebraska and California.  The
father (Abrahaam) was a Methodist preacher.  He joined the movement at
Independence, Missouri, under Old Joe Smith, the founder of Mormonism.
But on going to the Lord's store to buy an axe and some tea (his wife
being sick), the Lords would not trust him.  Sam Owens, the richest man in

all that part of the country, who controlled the Santa Fee trade at that
time, and who owned a large store at Independence, was unacquainted with
Towner, but Towner having no other store to go to walked over to Owens
(both being strangers one-to-the-other), and Mr. Towner accosted Mr. Owens

thus, "Are you the owner of this store?"

     Mr. Owens replied, "Yes."

     "Well, I've been over to the Lord's store, and the Lords would not
trust me, and I thought I'd come to the Devil's store, and see if the
Devil would trust me."

     It is useless to say that Owens let him have the goods.

     The Mormon elders pretended, when preaching over the country, that
this Lord's store was to give the goods away to the poor, as explained
elsewhere in this essay.  Towner did not want them to give him the goods,
but simply to credit him.  This done, Towner pulled out, as hundreds of
others done, and never had anything further to do with the Mormons.  This
was the case all over Missouri, Illinois, and Iowa.  My mother having
taught the first school in Independence, Missouri, and Dr. Nathanael
having been at Independence when Joe Smith first came to the village, my
people were pretty well posted on Mormonism.  These Mormons in Iowa that
remained here as late as this year, 1854, were mostly deserters of the
ranks, and many of them, like Cooledge, Green, Gaylords, Leekies, Fisher,
and hundreds of others we could name, renounced the faith, were well-to-do

citizens, and much respected.

      We lived in this house during the spring of 1853 with A. C. Towner,
wife, and we think some five or six children, in two miles of Glenwood (if

we recollect right).  They were most excellent people, and A. C. and
myself formed a partnership to break prairie, putting both of our teams
together.  While my father and quite a number of people from Mills County
went over into Nebraska to look after homes over there.  They reported the

land rich, fine water, and the most beautiful country they had ever
beheld, and my father and some eight or nine men bought the right of the
Otou Indians to settle in Nebraska before that territory was open for
settlement.  Mr. Towner and myself did not get much prairie to break, and
I
went to work for Mr. Shield, at Glenwood.  He was a blacksmith, and had a
small farm just out of town.  How long we worked for Mr. Shields we have
forgotten, but some months when we concluded to move on to the banks of
the Missouri and be ready early in the spring to cross over into nebraska,

and go to work on land my father had previously claimed when he bought the

right of the Otou Indians.  And during this summer or fall, ten of us went

over the Missouri River, and put up ten cabins, one cabin each for each
and every one who bought the right of the Indians to settle in that wild
country just above the mouth of Platte River.  This region was rather
scarce of wild game, for a new country, but a few deer and wild turkey
were to be found along the bluffs of the old Missouri.  My mother, always
full of good deeds, volunteered to go along with this poass of
land-grabbers, and cook for the entire company.  Such a crew you can only
find by taking one each from Kentucky, Tennessee, Ohio, Indiana, Missouri,

Illinois, and Iowa.  Of all the good, jolly fellows to be met, they were
here.  And in place of ten men in camp, we had nearer twenty, being known
in Freemont and Mills county as soon as it was known that Father Morris
had bought the right of the Indians, and gone to the territory to build
cabins, any amount of our friends followed, and come to camp, and looked
at the country, gathering around the huge campfire of nights.
Tale-telling was the principal amusement, and it seemed we had the best
crew for this we ever met.  Uncle Thomas Ashley, it seemed, was not to be
surpassed.  We got up a cabin every three or four days, and in thirty or
forty days were ready to take up our abode for a short time again in Iowa,

making preparation for to move onto these claims in the early spring.  But

one of the party, bringing over a prairie plow, Father had this man break
him two acres of prairie for a garden.  I did not get my cabin built,
being
only nineteen years old, and having no right to hold a claim, although all

had agreed as I helped these nine or ten families put up their houses, I
should be entitled to full rights with the rest, and insisted I should
have a cabin put up on a claim, but on telling the company that we would
put this off until we all got moved over, they defered the matter for the
present, and it was never after attended to.

     In the fall, we took our effects, and moved into a cabin on the banks

of the old Missouri River, some eight or ten miles below our claim, on the

Iowa side, and close by an island some three miles long by one mile wide,
covered all over densely with large cottonwood trees, brushes growing as
high as a man's waseburns all over the island under these trees, and
hundreds of head of cattle wintering on these rough bottoms.  Wild turkeys

and deer pretty plentiful, and the richest colonies of bees we ever saw in

the hollows of these trees.  We cut one bee tree that had ten gallons of
as fine honey as anyone ever tasted on this island, besides others running

from five to seven gallons to the tree.  We suffered here intensely from
ulcerated teeth.  Having two docters try to pull teeth for me and neither
one succeeding, but one telling me after smashing one all to pieces with
his old twisters, that I would have to be very carefule, or I'd get a jaw
broken, for my teeth were very bad to pull, and my jaw bone very slim.  My

face would swell up even from shoulder to chin, and being unable to eat
much for one week while my father, mother, and sister were gone up to
Iowa, it seemed that sleep was almost unknown to me.  Some Mormon families

were all the neighbors we had.  One of these men brought over the book of
Mormons, and read to us, and he and Father would have some controversial
talks, until Father gave him to understand that he did not wish to hear
him read further.  Fish were plenty, and no finer locality could be found
for winter than these bottoms.  The most productive lands of the east are
poor compared to these bottoms, the easiest place to make a living, but in

the spring, summer, and fall, the fever and Ague prevail, and where one
has no help, there is no enjoyment or happiness to be found.

     Early in the spring, we moved onto Father's claim, seven miles from
where the city of Plattsmouth now stands to the southward, and three miles

from the Missouri River.  To show that my father knew how to locate a good

claim, when the government surveyor came to run out this county of Cass
(Mr.  Cazad), he, after surveying all this region, bought the land my
father had located.

     Here the battle set in in earnest.  We were the first family in Cass
County, and being known all over the land, everybody came to stop with us.

 Mother had to make beds on the floor of nights.  Railroad men,
speculators of all kinds, put up at our place.  All our provisions had to
be hauled over the Missouri River.  Sometimes getting to the ferryboat
with a load of corn, flour, or groceries, we were detained two or three
days with high winds in three miles of home, the river being so rough at
Kenoshe we could not get ferry over.  Finally, after running a free hotel
two or three months, Father says, "Well, I shall have to charge people, or

they will eat me out of house and home."  He charged one poor footman
fifty cents for keeping him overnight, giving him supper and breakfast,
and felt so bad about it, he never after charged anyone else.  My younger
brothers, Brown and William, had to help me haul the provisions from the
Iowa side, and it took quite an amount of our time.  We all went to work
vehemently, making rails.  My brothers helping me chop the timber, and
father helping me split the rails.  After the rails were split, Father
went to hauling them, and I went to breaking prairie.  Having bought two
town lots in Glenwood when working there for $13 each, we traded the town
lots for two colts.  These two colts were sold for $75 each, making $150.
We borrowed $100 of A. C. Towner, bought a yoke of oxen for $75 on credit,

and while father was hauling out the rails as he supposed, to fence forty
acres, we boys cheated him.  He left it to us to measure the land, and we
put the measure to fifty acres, he knowing nothing of the matter.  On
buying a plow and three other yoke of oxen, having my brother, William, to

drive, we broke forty acres of prairie for Father, and twenty-five for my
brother-in-law, Elza Martin.  We planted sod corn, cut prairie haye, and
entertained all who came.  The meetings were held at our house, and the
first quarterly meeting ever held in Nebraska was held at my father's
house by Elder Good.  (See "Outposts of Zion," by William H. Good).  Good
had Kansas and Nebraska for his district.  We had good meetings after the
settlers gathered in, in the fall, Rev. Gage being the first preacher on
this circuit.  We lived here nearly one year without neighbors, and the
worst annoyance we had was the Pawnee Indians, of a low cast, much like
the Osage, treacherous and unreliable, they moved all over the praries,
and one time when all of us except Mother and the four younger members of
the
family left to go to Iowa to camp meeting, (we got one of the neighbor
boys nearly grown to stay with Mother, and the children, while we were
gone) the Pawnees came into the settlement.  Some twenty or thirty came to

our house, while we were away, and began clubbing our chickens.  My mother

went out and ordered them to leave, but one or two taking out some bows
and arrows, when the young man says, "Oh, Mother Morris, just give them
anything they want", at that Mother picked up a club and went after them,
and they all ran.  They were great cowards.

The Otoes on the other hand were noble, trusty, always keeping their word,

fine orators.  We used to like for the chiefs to come.  Many of them spoke

the Osage language well, and my mother and the Otoe chiefs had many fine
talks in the Osage language.  The Otoes kept their words with Father and
all the ten men they sold settlement rights to, and we had no trouble with

them.

The most of the people that came to live by us were Christians, and the
camp and grove meetings were well attended.  Times were good, and no one
seemed to be in want, health was good and although most of the immigrants
coming late in the fall, their houses being open, not daubed with mud
even, some living in tents, but the winter was one of unusual warmth, and
we heard of no one suffering.

Late in the fall we had a camp meeting at Three Groves, and the Reverend
Taylor, who done most of the preaching, a fine orator, a great wit, we
have rarely ever heard better preaching.  All joined in to help the
meetings along.  Sectarian bigotry was not known.  We knew nearly everyone

in the county, and for the first time in life took an active part in
politics.  Iowa shipped nearly all the office holders over to our side of
the river, and virtually Iowa ruled Nebraska.  We soon got tired of this,
and one day four neighbor men at our house, got to talking about the
matter, when one suggested we put up a ticket, against the Iowa clique as
we called the men nominated on the Iowa side and sent over for us to vote
for.  We had four delegates in the appointment of the first legislature
that met in the territory and one senator.  We took four good men from
different localities in Cass County, and a very popular man by the name of

Kirkpatrick for senator.  William T. Laird, a young man who had taught
school from our settlement; Mr. Buck from Three Groves, a well-to-do
farmer; and J. N. C. T. Haygood of Kenosha (the least acceptable of the
four) (Haygood one must know from his name was very tall, red-headed, he
done to fill up with and man by the name of Thompson a good citizen).
These four we set up as the nominees of Cass County's choice.  J. Stirling

Morton afterwards First Secretary of Agriculture at Washington, was then a

young man, and through F. S. Nuccolls of Nebraska City, was the political
boss south of the Platte.  And he laughed at the Haystack Clique as we
were called, (from William T. Laird's hay stack catching fire while our
caucus of seven (if they call me one of the convention) was in session
John Carroll putting out the fire--he could do more with fire than any man

we ever saw, but no politician.).  Well, we were thought to be of small
calibur, and so we were, but they did not know the old war horse (my
father) was at the back of all of this, and undertook the wrong thing to
ridicule our abilities dumbness.  The old man knew every voter in that
county, and his son, John, rode the fastest horse (though it did not
belong to him).  They sent out their oraters--they were good ones.  (Sir
John, though not allowed a vote, he being too young) after these oraters
harangued the voters of Cass county, was loudly called for by the
assemblage.  He as well as his father were well-known all over the county.

 He only exposed their plots in his speeches.  In return they called him a

monkey.  So it went, but our precinct outvoted all the rest of the county.

 On election morn, Sir John knew the Morton wing had deceived some of our
good men, and thought he would get onto his brother-in-law's fast horse
and go up to Plattsmouth and see what was going on there (having no horse
of his own).  He had not been in Plattsmouth ten minutes until he got all
the Morton methods.  Mounting his horse, he turned her head towards Rock
Bluff, our voting precinct, and in less time than it takes to tell, this
Sir John arrived at Rock Bluff and exposed their schemes.  All the experts

except Sir John and the old war horse thought us beat.  We knew better.
And sure enough that racehorse beat Morton and all his emissaries.  The
vote was overwhelmingly in our favor.

The legislature met at Omaha, and the fight came over the moving of the
capital.  My father for the present thought the capital had better remain
at Omaha, and although the South Platte man could outvote the North Platte

man, they could not move the capital.  On my becoming mixed up in
politics, a lot of old men wanted me to go up to Omaha as a lobby--and be
fore I was of age, they sent me to the capital.  And my exit from home
created something of a flutter in the Morton wing of the South Platte
delegation.  But it was only a few days before we found out that this
business they sent me on would not come up during the term of that
legislature then in session.  Morton was the leader then of the Democrats,

a very young man, always wore a red shirt and big coat over it, looking in

this heavy shirt like a mirror of temptation.  When we saw him, and his
paper was filled up with the most outlandish headings we met with.  It was

published at Nebraska City, and all such headings as "The Latest
Skullduggery," "Hell Caved In," etc.  We never admired the man nor his
paper, but in after years we think all parties respected him.  This, like
all first legislatures, was pranky, and little was done.  Mrs. Bloomer
came and dressed in her bloomer costume, made a speech on women's rights.
Many of the old men took up her cause, among them Major or Colonel
Larimer, whereupon Morton and some others are said to have got a woman's
skirt and put the skirt high up over Larimer's head, and when he got up to

speak, they let down with ropes over Larimer's head this skirt.

The wolves used to howl of nights so you could hear them howl all around
the capital.  Strickland, of the Council Bluff paper (four miles away from

Omaha) came over with a friend to Omaha one evening, the river being
frozen over, and calling at the editor's office of the leading paper of
Omaha, went in to warm.  The Omaha man, having got a fine piece of
beefsteak for his supper, lays it down on the counter, thinking of
something to do of a half hour's duration, and says to Strickland, the
editor of the Bluff City paper, "Will you be here for half an hour."  "Oh,

yes," answered Strickland.  "Well, you keep office until my return."  As
soon as the Omaha editor left, Strickland fell to broiling the steak, and
says to his chum, "We will eat that up before the Omaha man gets back",
referring to the fine steak.  The Omaha man returning, and seeing his
steak gone, took the situation in at a glance, exclaimed "Good God,
gentlemen!  You haven't eat that beef have you?  Good heavens!"  He
carried a bottle of machine grease, "Here, take this and be off for the
drug store or you are dead men.  I put strychnine into that beef for to
give those wolves that are howling around here of nights.  Strickland and
his chum took it, and all went to the drug store stating the facts and
took about one pint of castor oil each.  It like to have killed
strickland, and all the city sympathized with Strickland.  No one joked.

Our home was saddened by my brother, Brown, taking sick and dying while
away from home at A. C. Towner's, my old friend and benefactor at Mills
County, Iowa.  He and myself had gone over for a load of provisions at the

time, and he took inflammation of the brain.  The doctor called to doctor
him was young, though said to be a good doctor.  He was unconscious.  It
seemed to me he should be bled, but the doctor thought not.  It run three
or four days, and another physician was called.  He knew more than the
other doctor, and said there was no show for his life.  On my suggesting
again to bleed him, Dr. Donald, we think his name was, says "The stage to
bleed has passed.  It will do no good."  "Oh, it may restore
consciousness" he added, and got a lancet and bled him or tried to bleed
him.  He bled a little, but the blood was too thick to run much.  But he
spoke "Oh, Mother" he says "I want to go home and see Mother"  I heard Dr.

Donald, the last doctor, say to Street, the one who had charge, "Only one
thing I'd have any hope of.  That is to put him all over in warm water,
and I don't think that will save him"  They put him all over in warm
water.  He had a very large operation in his bowels, was conscious the
next day or two, but the fifth day peacefully and quietly fell asleep to
wake no more.

My mother taking very ill the first day after we left, Father could not
leave my mother's bed side, and my brother, William, only fourteen years
old, was on the road every day for five days.  One night at home in
Nebraska and the next night at A. C. Towner's in two miles of Glenwood,
Iowa, not knowing which was likely to die first, the mother or the son.
They were some twenty-five miles apart.  For five days and nights, I stood

by that brother's bed, and wanted no sleep, no rest, nor little to eat.
Then the coffin in the spring wagon and an escort of faithful friends
started early in the morning for my father's farm in Nebraska.  All the
settlement out, my mother better, to receive us.  We arrived safe across
the Treacherous River at about five PM, and lay my dear brother in the
grave the neighbors had opened upon my father's farm.  And as his body
passed over the muddy stream of commotion, his sweet spirit crossed over
the river into the bosom of his God.  My mother bore up wonderful under
this sad affliction, but my father walked the woods of nights, and refused

to be comforted.  He had always been more favorably impressed with this
brother than any son he had ever had.  He was sixteen years old, a great
student, read and understood everything he read.  Tall, sandy haired, fair

skinned and freckles on his face, he read theological books, history,
biography, and the Bible; would answer almost any question asked him,
being so well read and posted in all good literature.; a leader of the
young men's woods meetings before churches were built, he looked like the
Dodge wing of the house, and how often we have heard Father say "Of all my

children, he is the scholar of the day."  My brother, William, was two
years younger.  There were six boys in the family and three girls.  One
brother, Newel, dying in infancy.  This brother, Brown, named after his
Grandfather Dodge, of whome he was a fit type.  Everybody said he was in
looks, disposition, and love of learning the image of Father Dodge.  Our
ranks thus broken, my older brother, Thomas, gone to California, this may
have had somewhat to do with my father's restlessness.  He always wanted
to go to California.  He began to talk of going to the golden state.  Yet
the surroundings here were beautiful, here and there interspersed groves
of timber, good wells of springs of water, all over, the praries gradually

rolling, but rarely ever steep, it was the most beautiful place we had
ever beheld.  Then the land so easily worked, so productive.  One could go

to plowing in two hours after the heavy rains, the soil being so sandy, a
loam) it was easily cultivated.  The only pull-back the winds, it was
quite windy.  And then Father being the first settler in the county,
getting the first fifty acres broke.  We had often bought corn for high
prices, but this was the first we had ever sold (one dollar per bushel) at

high rates.  When Father got the two acres broke, we sat down to rest on
the beam of the plow.  He, the man who broke the ground (my driving his
team) and I remarked to this man (Father being present), "This is the best

country I was ever in to make money, I can clear $250 every year clear of
expenses."

My father looking at me says, "Well, I think I'd be at it in place of
talking about it."

This was the last year I had to work for my father (I was only twenty
years old then).  He never was able to help me any since I was thirteen
years old.  Two years after he made this remark I had cleard of all
expenses two thousand dollars, and this was quite a fortune in those
backwoods settlements.  Many enjoyable scenes came up, many amusing things

also.  One morning on going over to Uncle Thomas Ashly's, father-in-law of

A. C. Towner.  He, Ashly, done all our blacksmithing.  He was a good man
but ignorant, and no comprehension of poli