In the autumn of 1843 I was four years old and living in a log house in
the town of Hector, Tompkins (now Schuyler) County, New York. One of
my earliest recollections is of a conversation between my father and
mother regarding the expected visit of an uncle and his family, who
were coming to bid us good-by before moving to Illinois. My uncle had
the "Illinois fever"; he had just returned from a "land-looking" in
Illinois, where he had preëmpted a new farm. I remember listening to
my uncle's glowing description of the new country out in the far West
beyond the Great Lakes, where he was going to make a new home. When he
had gone my father talked constantly of Illinois, and the neighbors
said he had Illinois fever.
We passed the long winter in our log house adjoining my grandfather's
farm. All the clothing and bedding people had in those days was
home-made, and every household had its loom. In our home, in the
single room on the first floor were father's and mother's bed, the
trundle-bed, where four of us children slept (lying crosswise), the
loom, the spinning-wheel for wool and tow, the flax-wheel, the swifts,
reeling-bars, and the quill-wheel, besides the table and chairs. We had
two rooms in the attic, one a spare room and the other for the hired
help. Frequently during the long evenings my grandmother and other
neighbors would come in with their knitting and their tow-cards, and
either knit or card tow or heckle flax, talking about Illinois, where
my uncle had gone. That mysterious word was unfathomable to me. It was
finally decided that we should go there too, and all our furniture,
with bedding, spinning-wheels, loom, and crockery, was packed up, and
on Monday morning, March 20, 1844, we started for the new country. At
Ithaca our goods were put on board a canal-boat, and the next morning I
awoke to find myself on Cayuga Lake, in tow of a steamer. For days we
traveled slowly on the Erie Canal, with no memorable incidents except
an occasional "low bridge," one of which swept our provision-chest
nearly the length of the deck.
One evening my uncle, he of the Illinois fever, met us with his
horses and farm-wagon. Father hired another team, and we started for
my uncle's new home near Libertyville, Lake County, Illinois, where
we arrived the following morning. The house was a log hut with one
room and an attic. We found my aunt sick with fever and ague. She was
wrapped in thick shawls and blankets, sitting by the fireplace, and
shaking like a leaf. Before supper was over, mother had a chill and a
shake which lasted nearly half the night. The next day it rained hard,
and we all had chills, and my father and uncle went to town, two miles,
for some medicine. They returned with a large bundle of thoroughwort
weed, or boneset, a tea made from which was the order of the day. It
was very bitter, and I used to feel more like taking the consequences
of the ague than the remedy.
It was too late for father to secure a farm during that first
summer in Illinois, and he obtained work in the blacksmith's shop
in Libertyville, hiring two rooms for his family in the frame
court-house, a half-finished building on a high spot of ground. It was
neither plastered nor sided, only rough boards being nailed on the
frame, and when it rained and the wind blew we might as well have been
out of doors. Here our first summer and winter in Illinois were spent.
As father had a shake every other day, he could work only half the
time, and we were very poor. The ague was in the entire family, my
sister and I invariably shaking at the same hour every alternate day,
and my mother's and father's shakes coming at about the same time. I
have known the whole family to shake together; nor did the neighbors
escape. There were few comfortable homes and few well people. Boneset
tea was a fixture on every stove fireplace. When my morning to shake
arrived, I used to lie down on the floor behind the cook-stove and
almost hug the old salamander, even on the warmest summer days, my
sister on the opposite side, my younger brothers snuggling up close to
me, and my mother sitting as near the fire as she could get, all of us
with our teeth chattering together.
So the long, dreary, rainy, ague summer passed away, to be followed
by a wet and open winter. Father's scanty earnings were our only
support, and my uncle and his family, who were on a new farm two
miles away, were even poorer; for my father occasionally had a few
dollars in money, while uncle had nothing but what a farm of "new
breaking" produced the first year, and with no market for even the
slightest product. My aunt, who was broken down and discouraged, would
occasionally walk the two miles to see us, and my mother and she would
talk about the false hopes and glittering inducements that had led
their husbands to become victims to the Illinois fever.
The spring came early, and father rented a farm with ten acres already
plowed and a log house, about three miles east of the village, and
there we moved. He had the use of a yoke of oxen, farm-utensils, one
cow, seed-grain, and he was to work the farm for half of all it could
be made to produce. He filled in odd moments by splitting rails and
fencing the ten acres with a seven-railstaked and ridered fence.
The farm was in the heavy woods near the shores of Lake Michigan. A
stream of water ran through a deep gully near the house, and there
father caught an abundance of fish, while there was plenty of game in
the woods. One day he came in and said he had found a deer-lick, and
that night he prepared a bundle of hickory bark for a torchlight, and
with that and his rifle he left us for the night, and came in early in
the morning with a deer. It was the first venison I had ever eaten, and
the best. My father's gun supplied our table with venison, wild duck,
and squirrel in abundance. Mother, who had brought a collection of
garden seeds from the East, managed the garden, and we had corn, beans,
cucumbers, and pease, while tomatoes we raised as ornamental plants and
called "love-apples." They were then considered poisonous, and it was
some years later before we found out that they were a wholesome table
delicacy.
We spent only one summer in this place, and then my father rented a
farm on the prairie, in the township of Brooklyn, Lake County, about
five miles west of Little Fort (now Waukegan, Illinois), and we went
there early in the autumn of 1845. It was a happy day for my mother
when we moved from our ague-stricken gully, for she prophesied that out
on the prairie, where there was pure air, we might possibly escape
fever and ague. Only two years before, mother had come from a refined
home in western New York, and she had been shut up in these dreary
woods in a log house all summer, living on game and boneset tea.
We were up early, and started at sunrise for the eight-mile ride to our
new home. Father had come the day before with two teams and a hired
man. The chickens had been caught and put into coops that were fastened
on the rear end of the wagon, the "garden sauce" was gathered, and two
pigs were put into one of the packing-boxes originally brought from the
East. The new home was another log house, but a good one, built of hewn
logs, and a story and a half high. The owner had built a tavern and was
not going to work his farm any longer, so he rented it to father and
kept his tavern across the way.
The minister from Little Fort called, and arrangements were made for a
church home, and we used to drive five miles every Sunday to "meeting."
There was a school for the children, and surrounded as we were by
intelligent and thrifty neighbors, my mother began to wear a cheerful
look. At this time the family consisted of six children, of whom I was
the second, and the eldest son.
Here father began to utilize me, and I saved him many steps; for he
seemed to have something for me to do all the time, both when he was at
work and when he was resting. On Mondays I was allowed to stay about
the place and help mother, pounding clothes, tending baby, and bringing
wood and water. I was able to carry only about a third of the pail of
water, but my young legs were expected to make frequent journeys to and
from the spring, which was over in the cow-pasture, about thirty rods
from the house. It was protected from encroachment of cattle and hogs
by a three-cornered rail fence, which I had to climb and lift my pail
over every time I went for water.
My brother Homer was my constant companion, and he used to help me with
my work. Once I had lifted him over the fence to dip up water for me,
when he lost his balance, and fell into the spring. The water was about
up to his chin, and very cold. He screamed, and mother ran to help him
out, dripping with water and dreadfully frightened. We got into the
house as father came in to dinner. I was so sorry and frightened over
what had happened that I was already severely punished; but father
began to scold, and then decided to give me a whipping. He went out to
the pasture near the spring and cut some willow switches, and after
giving me a severe talking to, began laying the switches on my back and
legs. I feared my father ever afterward. Nothing that I could do to
please him was left undone, but it was always through fear.