Indiana. The Stars fall. Move. Texas. The flood of
1844. First School. White River's Pocket. No
Nimrod. A Fish Story. Clarksburg.
At the time of father's arrival, Indiana was only 14 years old and
contained about 300,000 inhabitants. Its capital city's first Mayor
was inaugurated two years before I was born and three years after the
stars fell.
In 1842 when I was about four years old my parents sold out and moved
down the river five or six miles and bought a new, larger and better
farm with a large two story hewed log house and a big double log
barn, and a good apple orchard. The farming land was bottom and lay
along the river. Here we had some sheep and cattle on a few hills
and some hogs in the woods, that got fat in the winter on white oak
acorns and beech nuts. And here we had a large "sugar orchard" as
the Hosiers called it--hard maple trees by the many from which, in
the early spring, flowed the sweet sap by the barrels full which we
converted into gallons of maple syrup, and into many cakes of maple
sugar.
It was while we lived here, when I was six years old, there was the
greatest flood, known to me, since the days of Noah. I remember it
well. You too, my boys, will never forget the year when I tell you
it was the same year, 1844, in which your best earthly friend was
born, your mother. But I did not know anything about her until
twenty years afterwards.
The flood was great. All the lower lands were under water. Mr.
Greene's, the ferryman, our nearest neighbor's family had to go in a
canoe from the door of their kitchen to their smoke house to get
meat. All our cattle and hogs were in the stalk fields near the
river, and all were drowned, except one large, strong cow which swam
more than one half mile, almost in a straight line, and was saved.
We could see the cattle huddled together on a small island knoll away
down in the field next to the river. The poor creatures would stand
there until the rapidly rising waters would crowd them off the knoll,
and then they swam until exhausted and overcome by the great
distance, and turbulent waters when they would go down to rise no
more. I was the first to see the cow which swam out. Looking down
through the orchard where the waters were swimming deep, I saw the
end of her nose and the tips of her horns above the water. Slowly
she came, almost exhausted. But finally she found footing where she
could stand and then the poor creature stood and bawled and bawled
for quite a while, and then walked to her young calf which was at the
barn on the hillside.
About this time I attended my first school and my teacher was my
cousin, Arthur D. Hastings, Jr., who lived to a good old age, and
died September 15th, 1906 within a little more than a stone's cast of
where he taught. My first and only textbook at school for a year or
more was Webster's blue back Spelling book. It had both Spelling and
Reading in it. I learned all from end to end. The teacher said I
ought to have a reader, so farther bought for me, McGuffey's second
reader; as soon as I got hold of it I ran with it to the barn loft
and sat down on the hay and read all that was in it before I got up.
The next day the teacher said I ought to have a higher reader, so
father bought for me McGuffey's fourth reader, the highest that was,
and these two readers were all the readers that I ever read. Grammar
was not so easy. My text-book was Smith's. I would start at the
first of the book, and get about half through at the end of the term.
This I did for a half dozen years or more. Finally when I started to
high school I took up Clark's grammar and finished it.
But, to go back a little, father after the great flood, went down to
Texas and bought several hundred acres of land and came back and sold
his farm intending to move to Texas, but changed his mind and sold
his Texas land for a song in the shape of a beautiful colt. This
colt grew into one of the prettiest and best horses your grandfather
ever had. But remember it cost hundreds of acres of land which are
worth thousands of dollars now. It was like paying too much for your
whistle.
If we had gone to Texas, boys, I do not know what might have been but
I do know now that you are and that you have one of the best mothers
that lives. Often have I heard her pray with tears in her eyes that
you and all the boys might be saved from the use of tobacco and
strong drink.
Father next turned his attention towards securing a home in the
pocket of the White River, which he did by buying a farm in Daviers
County on the border of Clark's Prairie and adjoining the village of
Clarksburg, which is now the city of Oden. At the time of our
removal to Clarksburg I was about nine years old. We liked our new
home. At this time Daviers County was a wilderness of brush, trees
and swamps, with plenty of wild game,--deer, coons, opossums,
squirrels, turkeys, ducks, quails, snowbirds, and of wild fruits,
grapes, plums, crab-apples and strawberries. And of fish of all
kinds, nearly.
I never was much of a Nimrod. Many times I saw deer, and once when I
had a gun upon my shoulder, but I did not take it off. Early one
morning a flock of thirty or forty wild turkeys came within a rod or
two of the kitchen window, but when we opened the door instead of
coming in, they flew away. Some days after that I heard turkeys
gobbling in the woods, and I took the gun and went where they were
and shot one dead. Happened to hit it in the head. Once I shot a
crow and killed it.
One day I shot and killed four or five squirrels. Often I trapped
quails and snow birds. The biggest fish I ever saw caught I did not
catch. Brother Henry, who was nine years older than I, caught it.
It was a cat-fish, and Henry and a boy named Billy James, who was
less than six feet tall, ran a pole through the fish's gills and
carried the fish between them suspended from the pole which was
rested upon the boys shoulders, and the fish was so long that its
tail tipped the ground as the boys walked. Now, this is the biggest
fist story I ever tell, except the Jonah story, and I believe both.
We liked Clarksburg because it was a good place for schools, Sunday
Schools and churches. I hardly remember the time when I was not in
school, Sunday School and church. I think to this day these are good
places for boys to be.
My parents were always anxious to have their children in school and
made many sacrifices to this end; as a result their five boys all
were public school teachers before they were out of their teens.
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