Anthony. At that time, he was the only one buying corn. Two bushel
baskets made a bushel. This sold for 15c. Mr. Moore had much larger
baskets than those ordinarily in use and measured the corn in these.
When the farmers demurred, he said, "If you don't like my measure, take
your corn home." He knew there was no one else for us to take it to, so
was very brave. There were very few scales so farm produce was generally
sold by measure.
I never saw a pair of shoes until after the war. Everyone wore boots.
In the northern part of the State I have seen men start out in the
morning with an ox team and return at night, blind themselves and the
oxen, too, from the sting of the buffalo gnat. The mosquitoes came in
great clouds and were everywhere.
Every little clear space of a hundred acres or more was called a
prairie.
When I first saw Duluth it was only a cotton-town. That is, log houses
with canvas roofs or tents. Most mail carriers used dog teams. Three
dogs hitched tandem was the common sight. I have seen three dogs haul a
dead horse.
In our expedition against the Indians only thirty-seven of the eight
hundred horses we took, came back with us. The rest starved to death.
Unlike the Red River stock which would paw through the deep snow to the
long grass, fill themselves and then lie down in the hole and sleep,
they knew nothing of this way and so could not forage for themselves.
This campaign was with Hatch's Independent Battalion.
Lieut. Grosvenor who was new to the Red River country was married and on
his wedding trip was to stop at McCauleyville. He sent word ahead that
he wanted a private room. When he got there, he was shown into the only
room there was--full of half breed sleepers. He hastened to the
proprietor and said, "I ordered a private room." His answer was, "There
are only six beds in there, what more could you want?"
Mr. Austin W. Farnsworth--1851.
We came to Fillmore County in the Fall of 1851 from Vermont. We were
strapped. Not one cent 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.
I used to run the ferry with Captain Tapper. It was a large rowboat.
Once I had eight men aboard. When I got out in the river, I saw the load
was too heavy and thought we would sink. "Boys", I said, "don't move. If
you do, we'll all go to the bottom." The water was within one inch of
the top of the boat but we got across.
I graded some down town, on Hennepin Avenue when it was only a country
road. There was a big pond on Bridge Square. The ducks used to fly
around there like anything early in the morning.
I cut out the hazelbrush on the first Fair Ground. It was on Harmon
Place about two blocks below Loring Park. We cut a big circle so that we
could have a contest between horses and oxen to see which could draw the
biggest load. The oxen beat. I don't remember anything else they did at
that Fair.
Mr. James M. Gillespie--1853.
I remember that our first crop on our own farm at Camden Place in 1853
was corn and pumpkins. The Indians would go to the field, take a
pumpkin, split it and eat it as we do an apple with grunts of
satisfaction.
There was an eight acre patch of wild strawberries where Indians had
cultivated the land on our new claim about where our house stands today.
They were as large as the small cultivated berries with a most delicious
flavor. Everyone that we knew picked and picked but wagon loads rotted
on the ground.
A good strong, quick stepping ox could plow two acres a day but much
oftener they plowed one and one half acres only. The pigeons flew so low
in '54 that we could kill them with any farm implement we happened to be
using. They seemed to be all tired out. We killed and dried the breasts
for winter.
Miss Nancy Gillespie--1853.
I remember a pear shaped wild plum which grew along the river bank. It
was as large as the blue California plum and of a most wonderful color
and taste. I have never seen anything like it and have not seen this
variety of late years.
Mr. Isaac Layman--1853.
My father came to Minnesota in '52 and bought the land where Layman's
Cemetery now is for $1,000.00 of Mr. Dumar. He returned for us January
first '53. Snow was two feet on a level and the cold was terrible.
We went with our horses and wagon to Chicago from Peoria. There we
bought a bobsled and put the wagon box on it, adding a strong canvas
top. We put in a stove and made the twenty-one day journey very
comfortably. We came up through Wisconsin. The only spot I remember was
Black River Falls. The woods abounded with game. There were thousands of
deer and partridges. We killed what we could eat only. We saw many bear
tracks. We crossed the Mississippi at St. Anthony and arrived at our
cabin.
Our house was only boarded up but father got out and banked it with snow
to the eaves, pounding it down hard so it would hold. It made it very
comfortable.
In the early days ammunition was very expensive for the farmer boys who
loved to shoot. They found that dried peas were just as good as shot for
prairie chicken, quail and pigeons, so always hunted them with these.
The passenger pigeons were so plentiful that the branches of trees were
broken by their numbers. They flew in such enormous flocks that they
would often fly in at open doors and windows. They obscured the sun in
their flight. Looked at from a distance, they would seem to extend as
far up as the eye could reach. I have brought down thirty at a shot.
They could be knocked off the branches with a stick while roosting and
thousands of them were killed in this way. In these early days, they
brought only 10c or 20c a dozen. The ducks used to congregate in such
large numbers on Rice Lake that their flight sounded louder than a train
of cars.
Mrs. Mary Weeks--1853, Ninety years old.
We came to Minnesota in 1853. My husband went up to our claim and broke
from twenty-five to forty acres and sowed rutabagas. It was on new
breaking and virgin soil and they grew tremendous. We moved there and
bought stock. They seemed never to tire of those turnips and grew very
slick and fat on them. We, too, ate them in every form and I thought I
had never tasted anything so good. They were so sweet and tasty. The
children used to cut them in two and scrape them with a spoon. We said
we had "Minnesota apples" when we took them out to eat. It did seem so
good to have real brooms to use. In Maine, we had always made our brooms
of cedar boughs securely tied to a short pole. They were good and
answered the purpose but a new fangled broom made of broom straw seemed
so dressy. I can well remember the first one of this kind I ever had. It
was only used on great occasions. Usually we used a splint broom which
we made ourselves.
I used to do all the housework for a family of seven besides making
butter and taking care of the chickens. If help was short, I helped with
the milking, too. I made all the clothes the men wore. A tailor would
cut out their suits and then I would make them by hand. I made all their
shirts too. You should have seen the fancy bosomed shirts I made. Then I
knit the stocking and mittens for the whole family and warm woolen
scarfs for their necks. My husband used to go to bed tired to death and
leave me sitting up working. He always hated to leave me. Then he would
find me up no matter how early it was. He said I never slept. I didn't
have much time to waste that way. We lived on beautiful Silver Lake. In
season the pink lady-slippers grew in great patches and other flowers to
make the prairie gay.
For amusement we used to go visiting and always spent the day. We would
put the whole family into a sleigh or wagon and away we would go for an
outing. We had such kind neighbors--no one any better than the
other--all equal.
Mrs. E. A. Merrill--1853, Minneapolis.
My home was where the old Union station stood. In 1853 my father, Mr.
Keith, learned that the land near where the Franklin Avenue bridge now
is was to be thrown open to settlement. He loaded his wagon with lumber
and drove onto the piece of land he wanted and stayed there all night.
In the morning he built his home. In the afternoon the family moved in
and lived there for three years.
Mrs. Martha Thorne--1854.
We started from Davenport, Iowa, for Minnesota Territory in 1854. We had
expected to be only two weeks on the trip to the junction of the Blue
Earth and Minnesota rivers, but were six weeks on that terrible trip
with our ox teams. There had been so much rain that all dry land was a
swamp, all swamps lakes, and the lakes and rivers all over everywhere.
Sometimes we worked a whole day to get one hundred feet through one of
the sloughs. We would cut the tallest and coarsest rushes and grass and
pile in to make a road bed. We would seem to be in a sea, but finally
this trip ended as all trips, no matter how bad, must, and we came to
Lake Crystal where we were to stay.
Such a beautiful spot as it was, this home spot! We camped for three
weeks, living in our prairie schooner, while the men put up the wild
hay.
We built a log cabin with "chinkins" to let in the air. We filled in the
cracks except where these chinkins were, with mud. The roof was made by
laying popple poles so they met in the middle and fastening them
together. Over this we laid a heavy thickness of wild hay, and over that
the popple poles again well tied with hand twisted ropes of wild hay, to
those below. It was a good roof, only it leaked like a sieve. The floor
was just the ground. Over it we put a layer of the wild hay and then
staked a rag carpet over it. A puncheon shelf to put my trunk under, and
the furniture placed, made a home that I was more than satisfied with.
It took my husband over two weeks with a pair of trotting oxen to go for
the furniture to St. Paul.
My baby was born three weeks after we moved in. There was no doctor
within a hundred miles. I got through, helped only by my sister-in-law.
What do you women nowadays, with your hospitals and doctors know of a
time like this? When it rained, and rain it did, plenty, that October,
the only dry place was on that trunk under the shelf and many an hour
baby and I spent there. Whenever there was sunshine that carpet was
drying.
We were much troubled with what the settlers called "prairie dig." It
was a kind of itch that seemed to come from the new land. It made the
hands very sore and troublesome. We did everything but could find no
cure. The Dakota Sioux were our neighbors and were very friendly. They
had not yet learned to drink the white man's firewater. A squaw came in
one day and when she saw how I was suffering, went out and dug a root.
She scraped off the outer bark, then cooked the inner bark and rubbed it
on my hands. I was cured as if by magic. She buried all parts of the
root, so I think it was poison.
The next year we raised the first wheat on the Des Moines River. We put
the sacks in the bottom of the wagon, then our feather beds on top of
them. The children were put on these and we started for the mill at
Garden City, one hundred and thirty miles away. We had two yoke of oxen;
the leaders were white with black heads and hoofs and great, wide
spreading horns. They were Texas cattle and were noble beasts, very
intelligent and affectionate. I could drive them by just calling "Gee
and Haw". They went steadily along. My husband and I spelled each other
and went right along by night as well as day. We were about forty hours
going. The moonlight, with the shadows of the clouds on the prairie was
magnificent. We never saw a human being. We had our wheat ground and
started back. As I was walking beside the oxen while my husband slept, I
started up a flock of very young geese. I caught them all and they
became very tame. They once flew away and were gone three weeks, but all
returned. When we got home, we had a regular jubilation over that flour.
Twenty of the neighbors came in to help eat it. They were crazy for the
bread. I made three loaves of salt rising bread and they were enormous,
but we never got a taste of them.
The Indians were always kind neighbors. They learned evil from the
whites. The father of Inkpadutah used to hold my little girl and measure
her foot for moccasins. Then he would bring her the finest they could
make and would be so pleased when they fitted. The Indians always had
wonderful teeth. They did not scrub the enamel off. They used to ask for
coffee and one who had been to school said, "Could I have a green
pumpkin?" and ate it raw with a relish.
We had a carpet sack for stockings. An Indian orator used to look at it
with covetous eyes. One day he came in, laid two mink skins on the
table, took the stockings out of the bag and stepping right along with
victory in his eye, bore that sack away.
We lived on salt and potatoes for five weeks that first winter. We paid
$1.00 for three pounds of sugar and $18.00 for a barrel of musty flour
that we had to chop out with an ax and grate. That was in the winter of
'55. During the Inkpadutah outbreak, the soldiers ate everything we had.
During the outbreak of '62 we moved to Mankato. I belonged to the ladies
aid and we took care of the wounded and refugees sent from New Ulm. We
made field beds on the floor for them. One poor German woman went to
sleep while carrying a glass of water across the room to her husband,
who was wounded. She just sank down in such a deep sleep that nothing
could arouse her. I never could imagine such exhaustion. Old man Ireland
had sixteen bullet holes, but had never stopped walking until he got to
us. Mrs. Eastlake, that wonderful woman, was in this hospital. She was
the woman who crawled all those miles on her hands and knees.
Mrs. Nancy Lowell--1854.
I came to Faribault in 1854 and boarded at the hotel kept by the
Nuttings the first winter.
One evening I stepped to the door to throw out a washbasin of water and
saw a large dog standing there. I put the dish down and was going out to
call him. When my husband saw me going toward the door he said, "What
are you going to do?" I said, "Call in a dog." It was bright moonlight.
He said, "Let me see him." He looked and hastily closed the door saying,
"The biggest kind of a timber wolf. Be careful what kind of pets you
take in here."
The upper part of the hotel where we lived the first winter, was all in
one room. I was the only woman, so we had a room made with sheeting.
Sometimes there were twenty people sleeping in that loft. We did not
have to open the windows. Most windows in those days were not expected
to be opened anyway. The air just poured in between the cracks, and the
snow blew in with gusto. It was not at all unusual to get up from under
a snow bank in the morning.
I brought many pretty dresses and wore them too. Those who first came,
if they had money and were brides, were dressed as if they lived in New
York City.
We had a dance one night in our little log hotel. It was forty degrees
below zero, and very cold anywhere away from the big stove. The women
wanted to dance all the time and so set the table and put on the bread
and cake before the company came. Five hours afterward when we went to
eat, they were frozen solid. The dish towels would freeze too, as they
hung on the line in the kitchen over the stove, while the stove was
going, too.
One morning, after we were keeping house, my husband said, "I guess we
have some spring company. You better go in and see them." I did and in
the parlor was the biggest kind of an ox standing there chewing his
quid. He had just come in through the open door to make a morning call.
All kinds of animals ran at large then.
Mrs. William Dow--1854, Little Falls.