Old Rail Fence Corners. Various
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was left after the expenses of the trip were paid. A neighbor took my father with him and met us at McGregor Landing with an ox team hitched to a prairie schooner. We were four days getting to Fillmore County, camping on the way. The nearest town, only a post office, was Waukopee. Father had come the previous spring and planted two acres of wheat, two acres of corn and one-half acre of potatoes. The potatoes all rotted in the ground.
I was only nine years old and my brother thirteen, but we made all the furniture for that cabin out of a few popple poles and a hollow basswood log. For beds, beams were fitted in between the logs and stuck out about a foot above the floor and were six feet long. To these we fastened cross pieces of "popple" and on this put a tick filled with wild hay and corn stalk leaves. It made a wonderful bed when you were tired as everyone was in those days, for all worked. After we had cut off a section of our big log by hand, we split it in two and in one half bored holes and fitted legs of the unpeeled popple for the seat. The other half made the back and our chair was done. As we had no nails, we fitted on the backs with wood pegs. Our table was made of puncheons split with a wedge and hewed with a broadax. The cabin would have been very homelike with its new furniture if it had not been for the smoke. My mother had to do all the cooking on a flat stone on the floor with another standing up behind it. She nearly lost her sight the first winter from the smoke. Our attic was filled with cornstalks to make the cabin warmer.
Our fare was good, as game was very plentiful and we had corn meal and a coarse ground wheat more like cracked wheat. There was a little grist mill at Carimona, a tiny town near. My mother made coffee from corn meal crusts. It would skin Postum three ways for Sunday.
When I was nine years old I killed a buffalo at Buffalo Grove near us. That grove was full of their runs. Elk were very plentiful, too, and deer were so plenty they were a drug in our home market. I have counted seventy-five at one time and seven elk. Pigeons were so thick that they darkened the sky when they flew. Geese and ducks, too, were in enormous flocks. In season, they seemed to cover everything. We used the eggs of the prairie chickens for cooking. They answered well.
Once my brother shot a coon and my mother made him a cap with the tail hanging behind and made me one too, but she put a gray squirrel's tail at the back of mine. She knit our shoes and sewed them to buckskin soles. I was twelve, when I had my first pair of leather shoes. They were cowhide and how they did hurt, but I was proud of them. None of the country boys wore underclothing. I was nineteen before I ever had any. Our pants were heavily lined and if it was cold, we wore more shirts. I never had an overcoat until I went in the army. Before we left Vermont, my mother carded and spun all the yarn and wove all the cloth that we wore for a long time after coming to Minnesota.
We found the most delicious wild, red plums, half the size of an egg and many berries and wild crab-apples.
The timber wolves were plenty and fierce. My sister was treed by a pack from nine o'clock until one. By that time we had got neighbors enough together to scatter them. I was chased, too, when near home, but as I had two bulldogs with me, they kept them from closing in on me until I could get in the house.
There was a rattlesnake den near us and once we killed seventy-eight in one day. They were the timber rattlesnakes—great big fellows. I caught one by holding a forked stick over its head and then dropped it in a box. I kept it for a pet. It was seven feet, one and a half inches long, I used to feed it frogs, mice and rabbits. I thought it was fond of me, but it struck at me and caught its fangs in my shirt when I was careless, so I killed my pet.
The only time I ever went to school was for two months in '55, to John Cunningham. Wilbur made our desks out of black walnut lumber, cut in Buffalo Grove. It was very plentiful there.
Later we used to go to dances. I was great for cutting pigeon wings and balancing on the corner with a jig step. We used to dance the whirl waltz, too. Some called it the German waltz. We spun round and round as fast as we could, taking three little steps.
Mr. Elijah Nutting—1852.
We came to Faribault in 1852 and kept the first hotel there. It was just a crude shanty with an upstairs that was not partitioned off. Very cold too. I rather think there never was anything much colder. But it was very well patronized, as it was much better than staying outside.
There were many Indians whose home was in our village. We used to have good times with them and enjoyed their games and seeing them dance. Families were moving in all the time. Finally winter was over and spring with us.
We began to think how near the Fourth was and how totally unprepared we were for its coming. We decided to have a minstrel show. We had seen one once. My brother was to be end man and black up for the occasion. But he was a little tow head and we did not see our way clear to make nice kinky black wool of his hair.
Unfortunately for her, a black sheep moved into town in an otherwise white flock. We boys would take turns in chasing that sheep and every time we could get near her, we would snatch some of the wool. When sewed on to cloth, this made a wonderful wig. The proceeds from this entertainment, we saved for firecrackers. Then we bought some maple sugar of the Indians—very dark and dirty looking. It looked very inadequate for a young merchant's whole stock of goods, but when it was added to by scrapings from the brown sugar barrel, when mother's back was turned, it sold like wild fire.
We felt like Rockefeller when we entrusted the stage driver with our capital to buy the coveted firecrackers in Cannon City, which then was much larger than Faribault. They cost forty cents a bunch, so we only got three bunches. The size of the crackers depressed us considerably for they were the smallest we had ever seen. We feared they would not make any noise. We put them away in a safe place. Brother was a natural investigator. Every time I was gone, he would fear those crackers were not keeping well and try one. He wanted no grand disappointment on the Fourth.
Joe Bemis, son of Dr. Bemis, always trained with us fellows and never backed down. We were going to have a circus in the barn. Joe said, "I'll ride a hog." The hogs were running around loose outside. They were as wild as deer. We laid a train of corn into the barn and so coaxed one old fellow with great tusks into it, and then closed the door. Joe ran and jumped on his back. Like lightning the hog threw him and then ripped him with his tusk. Joe yelled, "For God's sake let him out." We did. We laid Joe out on a board and Dr. Bemis came and sewed him up. He said, "Joe won't ride a hog very soon again, boys. Neither will you, I guess."
Mr. Charles Rye—1853.
Mr. Rye, eighty-six years old, hale and hearty, who still chops down large trees and makes them into firewood for his own use, says:
I left England in a sailing vessel in 1851 and was five weeks on the voyage. My sister did not leave her bunk all the way over and I was squeamish myself, but I see the sailors drinking seawater every morning, so I joined them and was never sick a minute after. We brought our own food with us and it was cooked for us very well and brought to us hot. We did not pay for this but we did pay for any food furnished extra. Some ships would strike good weather all the way and then could make a rapid voyage in three weeks, but usually it took much longer. I stayed in the east two years and came to St. Anthony in 1853.
The best sower in our part of England taught me to sow grain. After three days he came to me and said, "Rye, I don't see how it is, but I can see you beat me sowing." I hired out to sow grain at $1.00 a day as soon as I came here and had all the work I could do. I would put the grain, about a bushel of it, in a canvas lined basket, shaped like a clothes basket and fastened with straps over my shoulders, then with a wide sweep of the arm, I would sow first with one hand and then with the other. It was a pretty sight to see a man sowing grain. Seemed like he stepped to music.
Once I saw twenty-five deer running one after another like Indians across my sister's farm where St. Louis Park now is. I was watchman for the old mill in St. Anthony the winter of '53. It was forty degrees for weeks. I kept fire in Wales bookstore, too, to keep the ink from freezing.
I made $34.00 an acre on the first flax I sowed. A man had to be a pretty good worker if he got $15.00 a month and found in '53. Most farm hands only got $12.00.
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