possession of the farm and erected a fitting monument to the memory
of John Brown. When the old home is gone, and the monument has been
replaced, the great rock will stand there just as Brown found it,
seeming to say, "I alone will stay and guard his long repose."
Strangers now live in the Thompson home, the evergreen on Jobe's
Hill is seen no more, the long wooden bridge over which Old Jim
thundered out the distant echo as he hastened the fair Vida through
the mountains, has been replaced and each fair day, as the evening
sun nears Ontario's restless waves, it kisses a fond adieu to the
little cemetery where Mr. and Mrs. Thompson sleep, while a little child
smoothes Grandma Vida's silver locks on yonder's distant shore where
the grand old Pacific ebbs and flows as time rolls on.
[Illustration: YANKEE HORSEMEN.
LEFT TO RIGHT, UPPER. PERRIN, PARKHOUSE, WILSON, MERRICK, SLATER.
LEFT TO RIGHT, LOWER. JONES, WESTCOTT, COLLINS, GORDON, SHERMAN.]
YANKEE HORSEMEN GO WEST
The following year, 1865, it appears Gordon and I were not satisfied
to let well enough alone, so we gave up our lucrative business for
something more leisurely, by going into Batavia, New York, as fruit
dealers. We had a stack of money and pitched right in, buying up whole
orchards and paying approximately 40 per cent down, and when apples
declined from $8.00 to $5.00 per barrel we had hardly enough money
left to get out of town with, but our brother, Collins, loaned us all
we needed and we struck out again at our old business, undaunted, as
though nothing had happened.
The next year, 1866, we three brothers, with our wives, and all our
teams hung out for the winter at Cleveland, Ohio.
Collins and Martha.
Merrick and Mary.
Gordon and Amanda.
In the spring, 1867, with about fifty teams, we scattered over the
south and west planning a rendezvous on the Mississippi River, where we
all grouped for about three months. Our evenings of sport are better
remembered than imagined. We had expanded our business until there were
nearly 100 of us, playing tricks on each other, wrestling, lifting,
swimming, running horses, telling stories, singing songs, etc.
One of our men, a hostler, named Kelly, made an impromptu speech one
evening, which was comical, but without the surroundings could not be
appreciated. Ramson Young started an old-time school play of snapping
the whip. It consisted of a captain standing at his post and as many as
were take hold of hands and when he gave the word, all start on a swing
to run around him. Of course, the outer one must run faster and the
trick was to all pull the outer or tail man off his feet and see him
try to save himself from falling. They got Kelly on the end and when he
came around the next man let go of his hand, his body got ahead of his
legs and he ran among the tables and dishes and through the camp fire
in his big bare feet, before he could stop, but did not catch on that
it was intentional.
Next evening the boys gathered again and when Kelly saw that he
would be on the tail end, he let go, and stepping onto a stump said:
"Gentlemen, I am a Hoosier, born in the State of Indiana, and an
uneducated man, but you will never again get me on the tail end of that
'ere." I did not like to see Young impose on Kelly, so I embraced the
first opportunity to even up matters. One evening while waiting in camp
for supper, near Duluth, Kelly was exhibiting his new shotgun, when
Young said to me: "I'm going to bet with Kelly he cannot hit my new hat
at twenty paces, and you must load the gun, but put in no shot."
"I will do nothing of the kind," I said.
"Yes, you will, Mr. Richardson; this is just for a joke."
"I tell you I will have nothing to do with your tricks."
"Kelly," he cried, "I will bet you a quarter that you cannot hit my new
hat at twenty paces, and Mr. Richardson says he will load the gun."
"All right," says Kelly, "Richardson is honest; I will trust him."
I again refused, but when they both insisted I took the new gun and
ammunition and when out of sight I put in, not only a good charge of
powder, but a whole handful of buckshot, and when I delivered it, Young
said to Kelly: "Suppose we make it fifty cents instead of a quarter?"
"All right," said Kelly.
By this time all the boys were excited, for they knew Kelly could hit
the hat, and Young began betting five and ten cents each, with them,
until he had nearly two dollars up and his new straw hat on stake.
Young caught me smiling, and looked at a little scared as he whispered,
"There is no shot in the gun?" to which I paid no attention. Now Kelly
squared himself and took aim long and steady and then fired. Of course,
blowing the new hat all to driblets.
Young gave me one wicked glance and then stood around like a rooster
in the rain, and when the joke got out he simply remarked, "If a man
cannot trust a preacher, who can he trust?"
We had a ministerial looking fellow with us, who gave his name as
Wilson from New Jersey. He had worked for us but a few months when one
morning three men came up and stopped one of our teams. Wilson, who was
driving a front team, looked back, and, dropping his rein, ran for the
woods, nearly a half mile distant, looking neither to the right or left
until he disappeared into the bushes. Next day, going through a piece
of woods, I heard Wilson's voice, "Is everything all right?" and when
told that the men only wanted to buy a horse, he still suspected that
he had seen one of them before. Although he was with us until near the
end of our travels he never told us why he ran so fast.
Of course, our lives were full of peculiar incidents. Mr. Young, who
deputized me to load the gun, delighted in telling the fortunes of
those who came around the camp fire in the evening, and it was rich to
listen to him when he had a fellow and girl on the string, who were
really serious.
MY RELATION
We camped over Sunday near the home of a distant relative of mine, who
had come out west many years before and had been prosperous. He was
a great big generous farmer of about seventy-five years, who enjoyed
our stories and songs hugely, while he supplied our camp with eggs,
ham, chicken, cream and vegetables. One of his neighbors told me a
secret about the old man's narrow escape from death, which I have not
forgotten.
It appears that after his first wife's death, the old chap married
a young woman of the neighborhood, who made him an excellent wife,
although there was a slight blemish of character on the family from
which she came. It seems that before the marriage he had agreed never
to twit her about her relation, but had broken over several times, for
which she had warned him to desist if he valued his life.
One day, as the story went, she was making pies and he was in the
kitchen tormenting her, for which she gave him tit for tat until he
remarked, "Well, thank the Lord I was reared in a family of God-fearing
and law-abiding citizens." She uttered an unprintable phrase, and drew
a butcher knife from the table drawer. It was the one which the old
gent had often used to slay pigs and calves, but he had never dreamed
it would one day be used to wind up his own earthly career.
A glance at the keen, ugly blade caused him to unceremoniously
discontinue the argument and rush out the back door crying, "Help!
Help!" Knowing the unscrupulous character of the family to which his
sweetheart belonged, and the heat to which he had fired her passion,
he, without stopping to either pray or swear, lit out for the orchard,
hoping to distance his fair pursuer and climb a tree.
In this horrid dilemma of running while looking, both before and
behind, he forgot about the old unused well without a curb, and just as
she was about to plunge the awful knife, he dropped into the well just
deep enough to save himself from decapitation.
"I was one," said the relator, "to help old John out of the well and
patch up an armistice, which I think he has held sacred, and twitted
his wife no more about her relation."
[Illustration: OUR EVERYDAY TRANSACTIONS, EXCEPT SUNDAY.]
HORSE JOCKIES
We had now abandoned our tin peddling business except as a means of
settling expense bills, and had become successful horse dealers.
Our fine horses gave us a sort of prestige and welcome in traveling
over the country. Our lookout for bargains was always in unmanageable
young horses, which usually became docile through kind treatment.
Of the three brothers, Collins was the best judge of a horse, while
Gordon and I were close buyers. Our method was to trade for or buy
unmanageable young sound horses and put them on the wheel of a
four-horse team. After they had fought and tired themselves out they
would come along and soon be working all right. In this way we could
tame the ugliest animals and never whip them. Then they were for sale
and would please the buyer. Sometimes we had more than one hundred
horses, which gave a good selection for the buyer.
A few of our men were on good salary, but many were hangers on.
Frank Button, from Vermont, was always on hand in the time of trouble.
He was kind-hearted, but when on a lark was always looking for the
bully of the town. The Aurora papers came out one morning with large
headlines, stating that Ben Grim, the "Terror or Terrier" of Aurora,
had tackled one of Richardson's horse jockies, named Button, who
although appearing like a common cloth-bound wooden-button, proved to
have been brass inside, but it was hoped that Grim would live.
At Davenport we camped over Sunday on the river just north of the town,
where the Methodist minister (a jolly good fellow) thought to invite us
to come and hear him preach. In coming up through the teams he chanced
to climb the six-horse van to see how things looked inside. Tiger, the
one-eyed brindle pup, could not stand for that, and when we all rushed
to see what the stranger was yelling about, we found the minister
swinging from the top bar of the Broad Gauge by both hands, while
Tiger was swinging from the seat of the minister's pants by his teeth.
Our liberal donation for his new pants virtually healed the breach,
but that evening, when in his sermon he lauded us for our Christian
benevolence and sympathy, he said nothing about the seat of his pants,
nor even mentioned the faithfulness of our beloved Tiger.
At Evansville I boarded an Ohio River steamer for Louisville, on which
there were four colored men, accustomed to singing old plantation
melodies at each landing. I took them with us through the hills of old
Kentucky for several weeks and we all learned to sing their songs. I
am wishing now I could be in that old camp once more, and hear those
voices again:
"Oh, Dearest May, You're Lovelier Than the Day," "Down on the Old P.
D.," "My Old Kentucky Home Far Away," "Darling Nelly Gray," and the
like.
Prosperity and joy were with us in every way, and never in all our
travels did we have a man get severely hurt. We three brothers were
strong, athletic and humorous and always made companions of our men.
Our foot and horse racing was often exciting. Our last foot race was in
Cleveland, Ohio, where after we three brothers had outdone all the men
we ran it off between ourselves on the Lake Shore, where Collins won,
but I told him it was just by the length of his nose.
Some of us were good marksmen, but when we run on to a backwoodsman in
Missouri, who had about a dozen squirrels he had killed that morning,
all shot in the eye except one, which was hit in the ear, for which he
apologized, as he declared that in the tallest tree he was able to hit
ninety-nine out of one hundred in the eye, we boasted no more about our
marksmanship.
If Frank and Jesse James, the notorious outlaws of the Wild West, ever
visited our camp, we did not know it. I visited their old home twice
while in Missouri, and listened to their mother's story about her boys
she loved so well. At that time the State of Missouri had out rewards,
in the aggregate of more than $50,000 for their capture, dead or alive.
LANDED IN CHICAGO
In the fall, Collins and Gordon returned to Connecticut, while
I, having spent much time in the South, laid up in Cleveland for
the winter. They returned to Cleveland in the spring, when at the
solicitation of our dear wives we decided to dispose of as many of our
teams as possible during the summer and locate permanently in some
large city, which we did, and in the fall of 1868, with about 100
horses and seventy-five men, we landed in Chicago.
We purchased the northwest corner of Canal and Lake Streets, running to
the alley each way. Besides some little stores on Lake Street, there
was an immense ice house and a large wooden structure occupied by
Garland, Downs & Holmes, as sales station of a carriage manufacturer
in Boston. These gave us ample room for all our teams, but before
our titles were perfected the city condemned most of the property
in opening Dutch Broadway (Milwaukee Avenue) into Lake Street, and
although we never came into legal possession of the property the city's
appraisement was such that our purchase left us a good bonus besides
our occupation of the building for over a year. We then lived over
stores on Canal Street, where the Chicago & Northwestern Depot now
stands.
In 1869 we bought property on both sides of Lake Street, in the second
block west of Western Avenue, where we built homes on the south and
a factory on the north side of the street. We then sold our teams,
mostly to our men on the installment plan, holding the property in our
name until paid for. Then we started manufacturing tinware, working
about fifty tinners, selling the ware to those who bought the teams.
It was a success. Soon all the teams were off our hands, and the once
prolific and romantic business and escapades of the three Richardson
brothers had entirely disappeared.
In 1872 Collins sold out to Gordon and me, he returning to Connecticut
and settling down on a farm.
In 1874 we sold out the tin factory, and Gordon, who had always been a
lover of fast horses, began dealing in them again.
I, who had all the time been exhorting and writing books, entered the
Evanston Theological Seminary, preparing for the ministry, but when
Dr. H. W. Thomas experienced his troubles with Rock River Conference,
I abandoned that course, but kept up, through private instructors, the
languages and scientific studies for five years, including one year of
experimental astronomy on the great telescope then at Cottage Grove.
DR. THOMAS
Thomas' ideas moulded my thoughts into lines of truth. He was a good
man, a profound scholar and deep thinker, but lived before his time.
The following I copy from his thoughts:
THE ORIGIN AND DESTINY OF MAN
BY H. W. THOMAS, D.D.
We say that this is the 12th day of December. We say that this is the
year 1870. We say that it is the Sabbath evening, and that we are
gathered here in the house of worship. We say that we look into each
other's faces, and that you hear my words. But is this a dream, or
is it reality? For in the night-time we have often dreamed that we
have seen large assemblages; we have heard music and singing; we have
listened to sermon or lecture; we have loved, we have hoped, we have
wept, we have been glad--and in the morning we have found it was only a
dream. There have not been wanting, in our world's history, those who
have held that all our day-life is only another kind of a day-dream.
And, when we come to think of it, it is not the easiest thing to
disprove this. I do not know how to prove that I am here better than
just to say so. I do not know how I can be much more certain of the
fact than I am of certain facts in my dreams. Yet somehow we feel that
there is something more in this life than simply an illusion, and I
guess that our senses do not deceive us. The revolving earth is beneath
our feet; the heavens are above our heads. But if this be so, how came
we here? How and whence did we come? Are we the results of some process
of material nature, the fortuitous concurrence of innumerable atoms,
or are we the creatures of a living God? Is there an order and a plan
about our being? Shall our days end with the autumn and the snow, or
will there be a spring time? and shall we wake in the long tomorrow and
be forever? Now we may ask, "Is this that we call death the end of our
being?" It seems to me, if we get a correct view of death, that it is
only another form of birth. Personally, I think that one coming down to
a point of dying may find it something like the setting of the sun. Had
we never seen the going down of our sun, we would dread the thought of
darkness coming on. Men would gather in the deepest alarm as the great
orb began to descend in the west. They would gaze anxiously at the last
lingering rays on the tree-tops and hilltops. But as the sun gradually
disappeared, and darkness began to settle over them, they would see
in the distance a twinkling star; and as they looked at this, another
would appear, and another, and another, till, as they stood gazing, the
whole starry heavens would shine out before them. Instead of the going
down of the sun being an eclipse, it only makes visible the splendor of
the heavens. So we should go down to dying, thinking of the change as
only revealing to us the vaster universe beyond.
[Illustration: H. W. THOMAS, D. D.
"I AM GLAD THAT IMMORTALITY IS NOT ONLY A FAITH BUT A GREAT FACT. I AM
GLAD THAT WHILE THE SNOWS OF WINTER MAY LIE OVER THE GRAVES OF LOVED
ONES, THEIR SPIRITS ARE UP WITH GOD."]
Socrates, before he died, said he expected soon to be with Homer, and
Hesiod, and Orpheus, and Musaius. Cicero apostrophized his departed
daughter, and said he would meet her in the realms of the blest. Dante
thought to find his Beatrice in the spirit-life.
As I stand here, it seems like a dream that I am talking to you in
the light of this beautiful room; that the time will soon come when
others shall be here and we shall be gone. Yes, my friends, the strange
mystery lies before us.
EARLY CHICAGO
Chicago, then about 300,000 inhabitants, was virtually in the hands of
the gang. The heelers from the assessors' office boldly reduced the
valuation on property to those who stood their assessments for what
they called electioneering purposes, while raising the assessment on
those who refused to bribe, until the burden on the honest taxpayer
became griveous to bear.
Cases are said to be on record where two vacant lots lying side by
side were assessed, one five times as much as the other, and that not
one of our aldermen paid personal property tax, while families whose
income was less than $400.00 per year, were heavily assessed on their
household effects.
John Wentworth ("Long John"), one of Chicago's early mayors, who had
fought the Indians at Fort Dearborn, with several other large land
holders, refused to pay their taxes until the court of last resort
decided they must pay as assessed, but the effect of the attempt was
good, for the following year the valuation on real estate was cut down
nearly one-half.
This so diminished the income of the Cook County wolves that a panic
ensued, which incensed the ever-irritable element and finally swelled
into anarchy, consummating in the Haymarket Riot, in 1886, in which
several officers were maimed or killed, and for which a few of the
chief conspiring anarchists were executed, and thus civilization was
restored.
Good men were then selected for responsible positions, while the dirty
constables and rotten, self-elected magistrates, who held courts in
extreme corners of the county, where victims were summoned to appear,
only to find that judgment had been rendered against them, were at last
stamped under the heels of decency.
Mr. Story, editor of the Chicago Times, who had amassed a large
fortune, as the story ran, became infatuated with a feminine spiritual
medium, who acted both as advisor and architect in the construction of
a marble mansion on Grand Boulevard, whose apparent cost would have
been four times his capital. The warmth of the medium did not offset
the chill of old age, and becoming weary, he laid down the burden of
life and the mansion was never completed.
Philip Hoyne was perhaps then the most noted criminal lawyer in
Chicago, and this was the story of how he first became famous.
A man had been arrested for horse stealing who had no lawyer and the
judge appointed Hoyne, then a young man, to defend him.
"What shall I do for him?" inquired Hoyne.
"Clear him if you can," said the judge.
Hoyne took the prisoner into the ante-room, used for counsel, and said
to him:
"Mr. O'Flerity, did you steal the horse?"
"I did, your honor."
"Do you expect to go to the penitentiary?"
"I do, sir."
"Do you want me to clear you?"
"If you can do it. I swear by the Holy Virgin Mary that I will come to
your wake and bring all me relations."
Hoyne raised the window and said, "Do you see those woods yonder?"
"Indade, I do, sir."
"Now, I will hold my watch and see how long it takes you to run there."
When Hoyne returned to court the judge inquired where his client was.
"I do not know."
"Did I not place him in your charge?"
"Yes, but you said, 'Clear him if you can,' and the last I saw of him
he was entering the woods about two miles away."
HORSE RACING IN CHICAGO
Mr. Billings, the original West Side gas monopolist, had a pacer which
could go on the street 2:40 or better, and my brother Gordon drove Tom,
the silver-tailed trotter, who could crowd 2:30 very close. Billings
lived on Lake Street, near Union Park, while we lived farther west, and
we used to race horses nearly every day.
One noon, on going home to lunch, Billings tackled us on Washington
Street for a race. Tom drawing us two was a little handicapped, so it
made the race about an even thing. Billings became so excited that he
did not turn off at Sheldon Street, to his home, but kept on through
Union Park. When at Robey Street we encountered a fat colored woman and
her dog crossing the street. A policeman saw us coming and tried to get
her out of the way, but we ran over the whole bunch.
We turned right back to the policeman, who knew Billings had been
instrumental in getting him his job. He said he was not much hurt, only
his shins ached terribly where we had run over them with both wheels.
The woman had been rolled over and over in the mud, but she said she
did not care, only for her dog.
We decided on the officer's advise that it was better to settle the
case out of court, so we gave the woman a dollar for her dog. The
next noon we had the race over again, and really it was rich to hear
Billings and my brother both tell how easily they would have won had
not their horses gone into the air.
We West Siders had what we called the gentlemen's race track, on the
south wing of Central Park (Garfield Park). Every Saturday afternoon
many of the prominent men with their wives and fast horses assembled
there, one to show the other how easy his horse could do the other
fellow's nag up.
Mr. Eighmy, a man past 75 years, usually had a fine stepper and he was
a good driver. One day in a race of five or six, we could see from the
grandstand that on turning into the back stretch they had purposely
enclosed the old gent in a pocket, allowing Wrigley with Fly-Away and
my brother Gordon with Tom to pass on the outside. Soon we saw the
sulky in front and the one at the old gent's side, together with his
own, all in a mixup and turning flipflops. When we reached the spot we
found them all bruised and bleeding, with their horses loose on the
prairie, but the old man was game, and this is what he said:
"I ran between them purposely. I knew it would top us all over, but
I said to myself, 'Old Eighmy, you haven't long to live at the best,
and if you must die you might as well kill a couple of these damn mean
cusses for the good of the community, after you're gone.'"
Isaac Waxwell and Jim Rawley were forever wrangling. Jim was usually on
the judge's stand and Isaac claimed that Jim did not give him a fair
show. He certainly should have had a fair show, for it was rich to see
him drive in the dead heat; he had a peculiar way of leaning forward
and sticking out his elbows so it looked as though he was pushing on
the reins.
John Brennock, a pioneer packer from the stockyards, was a unique
character. He was a big man with a large head, and his mouth was very
large in proportion to his head. Everyone liked Brennock and knew he
was rich, for he had told them so. His last resort, in a dead heat,
was to bawl so loud as to frighten the other drivers' horses off their
feet.
HOPEFUL AND RARUS