DRAWING CORD-WOOD--HOW THE RAILROAD WAS BUILT--THE STEAM WHISTLE.
Father commenced chopping cord-wood and he said I could draw it as fast
as he could chop it. I was so much engaged that, when the moon was in its
full, I often started with my load of wood a little before plain
daylight. Of course I felt cheerful, I thought we were doing some
business. Sometimes I walked by the side of the team and load and
sometimes behind them. Hallooing at my team, driving them, singing,
whistling and looking into the woods occasionally, occupied my time until
I got to Dearbornville.
One morning I met William Ozee. I told him I had seen two or three deer
as I was coming along. Told him where they stood and looked at me and the
team, until we were out of sight, and that I thought they were there yet.
He said he would attend to them. He had his rifle on his shoulder, and he
said he would go for them. I saw him afterward and he said he had taught
them better than to stand and look at anybody so impudently as that. He
had killed some of them.
I made up my mind that if I could get a good rifle, I could make as
much, or more, with it than father and I both could make cutting and
drawing wood. Father said I might have a new one made. Accordingly I went
to John W. Alexander and selected a rifle barrel, from a pack of new
barrels that he had. I tried to select as soft a one as I could, as I
considered those the best in frosty weather. I selected what I thought
was about the right calibre, and told him I wanted him to make it with a
raised sight so I could shoot any distance. I told him to make a buster
for me, one that couldn't be beat. He said he would try and do it for
twenty dollars. I told him I wanted him to make it as quickly as he
could; in a short time he had it done. I thought it was a beautiful
rifle. The name of the maker was inscribed on the barrel. I took it home
feeling very good. I tried it shooting at a mark; shooting the distance
of ten rods at a mark the size of a two shilling silver piece. With a
rest, when there was not much wind, I could hit it every time and did do
it five or six times in succession. Frequently when shooting the bullet
holes would break into one another, and sometimes two bullets would go
into the same hole. The only way I could tell where the last shot struck
was by plugging up the old holes. Often the little white paper would fly
away, the pin in the center having been shot away.
I made up my mind I had a splendid rifle, one that it would be hard to
beat. That same rifle now stands in my bedroom. It was made over
thirty-five years ago, with the bright name of John W. Alexander on it.
He is now an old resident of Dearborn, a useful and ingenious man, and
fills a prominent place in society; if he were gone it would be
difficult to find a man capable of filling his place.
But I must return to my drawing wood. The place where we heaped it was on
the north side of the railroad, about fifteen rods east of where the
postoffice is now kept. The woodyard, including the depot, I should
judge, was not more than one hundred feet square. Here we piled our wood,
sometimes ten feet high. We were to have seven shillings a cord for it
and if we chopped and hauled three cords a day we thought we did well. I
drew it as fast as I could, sometimes I got to Dearborn just as the old
Solar made his appearance in the east. The Lunar had already done her
work toward helping me, veiled her face and disappeared. When we had
drawn a lot of wood in father had it measured up and got his voucher for
the amount. One time when he went to Detroit to get his money I went with
him. We went on the cars. The depot and railroad office, where father did
his business, stood where the City Hall now stands. I thought the
railroad was a splendid thing. We went in so much nicer, easier and
quicker than we could have gone on foot, or with our ox-team.
Now we were going to get some money of the railroad officers, I thought
we would have money to pay the interest on our mortgage and help us
along. Father got his pay in Michigan State scrip, a substitute for
money. It was good for its face to pay State taxes; but to turn it into
money father had to sell it for six shillings on a dollar. Here it will
be seen, that what we really received for our wood, was a little over
sixty-five cents per cord, and that when we drew in three cords a day
(which was as much as father could chop, and all that I and the team
could draw) we made a little over a dollar and ninety-five cents per day.
What would some of the workingmen of the present day who get together and
form "Union Leagues," "Trade Unions," strike for higher wages and
conspire against their employers and their capital, doubtless thinking
such a course justifiable, think of such wages as that, and provisions
very dear, as they were at that time? I began to think myself rough and
ready and was able to grapple with almost anything and do a good days'
work. Father, I and the team all worked hard and with the wood thrown in
we all together did not make two dollars a day.
As father had a small job in the building of the railroad and some of the
time I was with him, I will describe as well as I can, how the railroad
was built. They first graded the road-bed and made it level, then took
timbers as long as the trees would make them, hewed them on each side and
flattened them down to about a foot in thickness, then laid them on
blocks which were placed in the bed of the road. They were laid
lengthwise of the road, far enough apart so that they would be directly
under the wheels of the cars, and the ground graded up around them. In
this manner they continued until the road-bed was finished.
The next thing was to get out the ties. These were made from logs nine
feet long, which were split open through the heart, then quartered and
split from the heart to the center of the back, until the pieces were
about six or seven inches through on the back. Then the backs of the ties
were hewed flat, making them about three square, when they were ready to
be used on the road. They were placed back down across the bed pieces and
spiked fast to them. They were laid about three feet apart the length of
the road. Over those sills, in the upper edge of the ties, they cut out
two gains. In those gains they laid two stringers running directly over
the sleepers. These stringers were sawed out about four by six inches
square. They were laid in the gains of the ties, spiked fast and wedged
with wooden wedges. Then the woodwork was finished and everything ready
for pulling on the iron. They used the strap rail iron. The bars were two
inches and a quarter wide and half an inch thick. These bars were laid
flat on top, and next to the in-edge, of the stringers and were spiked
fast to them. In this way our railroad was built. The cars running away
west on it, penetrating Michigan as the harbinger of civilization, opened
up a way for the resources of the country.
The strap iron which they used first proved to be very poor iron. In
after years, if a spike came out or the bar cracked off at the spike
hole, the bar would turn up like a serpent's head and if not seen in time
it was liable to throw the train off the track and do damage. I was at
Dearborn at one time when an accident, of this kind, happened to a
freight train, a little west of the village. There was considerable
property destroyed, barrels broken in pieces and flour strewed over the
ground, but no lives were lost.
Father said the railroad was a good thing for us and our country, and
that they would soon have one, and the cars running on it to the State of
New York. Then I reiterated my promise to mother. I said if the cars ran
through our native place, we could go back there without crossing Lake
Erie, the thought of which chilled me every time I spoke to mother about
going back to make a visit. Time sped on, days, months, and some years
had passed, since the first of the Michigan Central Railroad was built,
and the cars running east and west loaded with passengers and freight,
when one morning I heard a strange noise. It was terrible and
unaccountable to me, as much so as it would have been if I had heard
heavy thunder at mid-day, from a clear sky. I heard it from the direction
of Dearbornville; It appeared to originate there, or in the woods that
way. I heard it two or three times, several days in succession.
If there had come a herald from Dearbornville and told me that the man of
the moon had stepped out of his old home, and down on to our earth, at
Dearborn, and that he had a great horn, twenty feet long, in his hand,
and that it was him, I had heard, tooting on his horn to let us know, and
the inhabitants of his own country, that he had arrived safe on the
earth, I might not have believed what he said in regard to the arrival of
the supernatural being and his visit to us; but I could have believed
almost anything wonderful in regard to the horn for I had heard its
thrilling blast myself.
Father, mother and, in fact, none of us were able to think or imagine
what it could be. It came through the woods as swift as lightning and its
shrill and piercing voice was more startling than thunder. It echoed and
re-echoed across our clearing, from woods to woods and died swiftly away
in the distance. What on earth could it be? Could it be the voice of a
wild animal? That seemed impossible, it was too loud. I thought such an
animal would need lungs as large as a blacksmith's bellows, and a voice
as strong as a steamboat, to have raised such an unearthly yell.
It was enough to scare all the bears and wolves to death, or at least,
enough to make them hide away from the voice and face of the dragon. But
there was a man, who lived one mile south of Dearbornville, by the name
of Alonzo Mather; he was a little more sensible and courageous. He
thought he knew what made the strange noise. When he came out of his
house one morning, all at once, the terrible sound broke upon his ear. He
had heard it two or three times before, about the same place in the
woods, toward Dearbornville. He said to his hired man, a Mr. Whitmore,
who was utterly astonished and seemed to be all in a fright, "Hear that!
I know what it is! It is a bear, and he lives right over there in the
woods. I have heard him two or three times in the same place. Don't say a
word to anyone; not let the hunters know anything about his being there
and I'll shoot him myself.'" He took down his rifle immediately, and
started on the double quick, followed by the hired man, who could help
him in case of trouble.
He went through the woods looking carefully in every direction, scanning
the old logs and large hollow trees and searching from top to bottom to
see if he could find a hole large enough for a bear to crawl in. In this
way he looked all around, near the railroad, where he thought the noise
originated, but he could not find a track or sign of Mr. Bruin, for the
bear wasn't there, so, in disgust, he gave up the hunt.
About the next day after Mr. Mather's hunt, he and all the rest of us
learned what had caused the excitement. It was a new invention, the steam
whistle of the cars; something we had never heard before.