Part 43

During that summer some fifteen acres were broken up and the two acres which had been previously made ready for seed by Mr. Gorman, were planted to corn and potatoes. Father hired a yoke of oxen to use during the summer and kept one cow.

Father returned to Massachusetts and in the winter we came to Buffalo by rail. In early May we embarked on the steamer "Nominee," which was then the fastest boat on the river. At the head of the flagstaff was a new broom which indicated that the boat had beaten every other vessel then running on the river north of Galena. The Captain was Russell Blakeley who for many years commanded the best boats belonging to the Packet Company.

We reached St. Paul about ten o'clock on May seventh and I remember very well that the thing which attracted my attention more than any other was the newly trimmed cupola of the Territorial Capitol building. There were at least fifteen steamboats at the lower levee when we arrived there, all busy in unloading. They were packed with passengers and freight coming up the river, but going down they carried very little, for there was nothing to ship. The first shipments of any consequence were potatoes in the spring of 1855. For two or three years after that nearly all the flour and grain used in the territory was brought from Galena.

Father took a pair of oxen and his wagon from the boat and we made our way up a very steep hill from Jackson Street to Third. From there we went up Third to the corner of Wabasha, where father bought some flour and feed and we drove back to the boat. About five o'clock in the afternoon the Nominee steamed up the river as far as Fort Snelling, taking at least one-fifth of its passengers and freight. We tied up at the ferry boat landing, at the foot of the hill under the old fort, and began to take off our cattle and freight. The hill was very steep leading up to the fort and father, aided by the boys, began to take our goods in small wagon loads to the top of the hill, so that we could properly load them. Uncle William, my mother, Aunt Isabel and the small children had been transferred at St. Paul to a small steamboat called the "Iola," which was to take them up the Minnesota river to Hennepin Landing, a mile or two from our claim at Eden Prairie.

One of the wagons was left at the top of the hill while father went back for more of the goods. I was told to take care of the cattle. Among the cattle was a white heifer, a very wild animal. Father put a rope around her horns and gave me the rope to hold, while he went down the hill. I put the rope around one hind wheel of the wagon thinking I could hold the animal that way. While I was standing there in the twilight, six or seven soldiers came out of the fort for guard duty and when they passed me the heifer became frightened, gave a jerk upon the rope and necessarily upon the wheel. The wagon had not been properly coupled, and when the animal at one end of the rope and myself at the other brought pressure upon the wheel, the hind wheels separated from the front, and the wheels, the heifer and the boy, went very hastily to the foot of the hill. Part of the time the wheels were off the ground, some of the time it was the heifer, but it seemed to me it was the boy who filled air space the greater portion of the period consumed in the descent. This mishap created great consternation not only among the representatives of Uncle Sam, but among the people who had just left the boat. It was my first encounter with the United States Army and I was badly scared.

About ten o'clock after we landed, we started three wagons with a pair of oxen for each and about ten head of cows and young stock. It was a beautiful night, with full moon and after traveling a mile to what was known as Bloomington Creek, we stopped to graze the cattle and to rest. We all got more or less sleep and it was eight in the morning before we were able to start the cavalcade. We arrived in sight of our future home, under most auspicious circumstances. The weather was mild and the sun shining brightly when we came to a place from where father pointed out the log house in the edge of the woods, with a stovepipe through the roof and the smoke coming out. My uncle Sherbuel had remained an occupant of this house all winter, that he might hold this claim of my father's and the one next to it, which had been selected for my Uncle William. Uncle Sherbuel was something of a hunter and trapper, and had made good use of his time during the winter and had a good assortment of furs, otter, wolf, mink, fox and those of smaller animals. He had killed several deer and was tanning the hides at the time we arrived. He had also caught and salted several hundred pounds of bass, pike and pickerel.

Father had little money left and we were without seed, except potatoes, for about three acres of our land. Potatoes were of very little value and it was doubtful if it would pay to plant them, but as we had nothing else to put into the ground father concluded that he would seed the three acres with potatoes, of which he had plenty of the kind known as Irish Reds, a round potato of exceedingly fine variety. He sowed a few acres of wheat, two or three acres of oats and planted two or three acres of corn and of course, we had a garden. We had to build a yard for the cattle at night, some sort of shelter for them, and we also had to build pig-pens. Lumber was almost unobtainable so these structures were largely of logs. They had to be very well built, strong as well as high, in order to keep cattle and hogs out of the fields. I remember that we had one hog that would climb anything in sight and what she could not climb she would dig under. Many a time in the summer of '54 and '55 did I chase that animal and her offspring back into the pig-pen.

I had a most tremendous appetite. Our food consisted mostly of potatoes, bread, wheat or corn, beans and plenty of game. Ducks, chickens or fish could be had by going a few hundred feet in almost any direction. We had no well and all the water we used was hauled from the lake, nearly a half mile distant. Father rigged up a crotch of a tree upon which was placed a water barrel and this was dragged back and forth by a yoke of cattle. Starting from the lake with a full barrel we had good luck if we reached the house with half of it.

In the summer when the corn began to get into the milk stage, we had a great fight with the blackbirds. They would swarm down upon the fields and picking open the heads of the ears, would practically spoil every ear they touched. Scare-crows were of no service in keeping the birds off, and finally the boys were put into the fields, upon little elevations made of fence rails, with guns loaded with powder and shot. We killed hundreds of birds in order to save the corn and had good crops of wheat and oats and we also had a most remarkable yield of potatoes; so large in fact, that we had to build a root-cellar in the hillside out of logs. We dug potatoes and picked them up that fall until I was nearly worn out, but in the spring the demand for potatoes was so great that father sold bushels at $1.05 a bushel. This gave him a large amount of ready money and he bought a pair of horses.

There were plenty of Sioux Indians living in the vicinity of Shakopee. A reddish colored stone, about two feet high stood a half mile west of our place on the Indian trail leading from Minnetonka to Shakopee. Around this stone the Indians used to gather, engaged apparently in some religious exercise and in smoking kinni kinic.

My cousin William and I raised that summer a quantity of nice watermelons, the seeds having been brought from Springfield. In the fall we loaded up two wagons with them and with oxen as the motive power started one afternoon for St. Anthony. We had to make our way down towards Fort Snelling until we came within two miles of the fort. Then we turned towards our destination. It was a long and tedious trip. We camped out over night and did not reach the west bank of the Mississippi River opposite St. Anthony until three o'clock the next afternoon. We fed our cattle in a grove not far from where the Nicollet House now stands, then started for the ferry, which swung across the Mississippi River about where the stone arch bridge now is. The island was heavily timbered and the road ran across at an angle, coming out at a bridge on First Street South. We got up onto the street just about the time the men were coming out of the mills, sold our watermelons and went home with $10.00 each, the proceeds of our first farming. It was a three days trip and a very tiresome one for the boys as well as for the cattle.

A friend by the name of Shatto and I took up a claim but were hailed out. When the storm ceased, I crawled out and looked around. My stove was broken, everything was water soaked, except some provisions which I had in a bucket which had a cover and my cattle had disappeared. I considered matters for a few minutes and concluded that the only thing I could do was to start for the hotel at Kenyon, some three miles away. I was drenched. My boots, all wore boots in those days, were soaked with water and very soon hurt my feet so I had to take them off. I made my way into Kenyon and there saw the great destruction which had been done by the hail. There was not a whole pane of glass in the little village and the inhabitants were engaged in patching up their windows with boards and blankets, as best they could. The crops were entirely destroyed. Many people had suffered by being struck by hailstones, some of which were as large as hens eggs.

I had in my pocket $1.50, and I told the landlord, Mr. Bullis, my condition and that I wanted to stay all night.

When supper was ready I went to the table and much to my surprise met a Hastings lawyer with whom I had some acquaintance, our Seagrave Smith. Smith urged me to give up the idea of becoming a farmer and take up the study of law. So it was this hail storm that made me a lawyer.

In the fall of 1858 I secured a school and was initiated as a country school-master. The school house was a log building, about two and a half miles up the river from Cannon Falls. The neighborhood was largely Methodist and the pupils were all boys, about twenty-five in number. There was not at that time in the district a single girl over six years of age and under sixteen. Mr. Hurlbut had one boy Charles about fourteen years of age. Very soon after my school commenced for a four months term the Methodists concluded they would have a revival. They used the school house every evening for that purpose and on Sunday it was occupied all day. Nearly all of the pupils attended these meetings, began to profess conversion and in three or four weeks had become probationists.

I had adopted the New England custom of having each pupil read a verse from the New Testament at the opening of school in the morning, and in a short time Deacon Morrill and Elder Curray came to me with the suggestion that I open the school with prayer. I replied that it would not be just the thing for me to be very active in this for I was not a professor of religion but that I had considered the matter and if the boys were willing I should be very glad to call upon them in alphabetical order for a prayer each morning. I submitted this question to the pupils and found that, without exception, they were anxious to adopt the plan. I then said that if it was adopted it would have to be followed to the end of school, no matter what their wishes might be.

I made out a roll, putting the names down in order and called upon one boy each morning for prayer. This worked well for a few weeks, but one evening Mr. Hurlbut said to me that Charlie had told him, while they were feeding the cattle, that night, that he would refuse to pray next time I called upon him. I had found it unnecessary to inflict corporal punishment upon a single pupil up to that time, but had in my desk a good stout switch. A few mornings afterwards when it was Charlie's turn to open the school with prayer, I called upon him and met a point blank refusal. I directed his attention to what had been said at the outset about continuing this as a school exercise when once adopted, and he still refused. It became necessary for me to stop the insurrection without delay. I took the switch, seized Charlie by the coat collar, as he was attempting to get out of his seat, switched him around the legs pretty smartly and the rebellion was at an end. Charlie prayed briefly, but fervently. After that there was no more trouble but many of the boys had somewhat fallen from grace before school ended. Yet they kept up their devotional exercises without any urging on my part. Mr. Hurlbut was something of a scoffer at religion and my prompt action with his boy made me extremely popular in the district.

I boarded around as was the custom in those days and built my own fires in the schoolhouse. Some of the pupils are still residents of that neighborhood and I rarely meet one who does not remind me of my whipping Charlie Hurlbut until, as they say, he dropped on his knees in prayer.

For my four months teaching I received a school district order for $60.00 and in the fall of '59 with this as my sole asset, I commenced the study of law in Hastings, with the firm of Smith and Crosby. It is hardly necessary for me to say that we were all poor in those days. There was no money and no work except farming, but in this way we could earn enough to live upon in a very humble manner.

I first saw the late Judge Flandrau at Lewiston, he was then Indian agent and was making his way on horseback from Faribault to Hastings. He had a party of twelve or fifteen men with him, all full blood or mixed blood Indians, and they stopped for dinner. Judge Flandrau was very tanned and clad in the garb of the Indian as were his associates; it was with difficulty that I determined which one of the party was the white man Flandrau.

(See pages 19 and 158.)

Presented by Mrs. P. V. Collins.]

CHARTER OAK CHAPTER

Faribault

MISS STELLA COLE

Mr. Elijah G. Nutting--1852.

My father's hotel, the Hotel de Bush, as we derisively called it, was the first hotel in Faribault. It may perhaps be called a frame house by courtesy, rather than technically, as it was made by placing boards vertically side by side, battened together by a third board. On the first floor were the family apartments, separated from the dining room and the "office" by partitions of cotton cloth hung on wires. The office, ten feet by twelve, boasted an improvised desk, a stool and a candle. The second floor was called the "school section," a large apartment filled with bedsteads rudely made of boards and supporting straw, hay or coarse grass ticks. Here the fortunate early bird took his rest, fully clothed, even to his boots, protected from the snow, which blustered in at the unglazed windows by his horse blankets. Later comers took possession of the straw ticks on the floor and made no complaint next morning when, after a breakfast of salt pork, black tea with brown sugar and butter so strong it could seldom be eaten, they were presented with a bill of $2.00. In one corner of this "school section" was a tiny enclosure, screened with a cotton cloth partition, containing a bed and two soap boxes, one for a dressing table and the other for a chair. This was called the "bridal chamber" and was to be had at a suitable price, by those seeking greater privacy. We had bread and pork for breakfast, pork and bread for dinner, and some of both for supper.

A large sheet iron stove down stairs was kept red hot in the winter and a man was employed to prevent people, coming in from the icy out-of-doors, from rushing too near its heat and thus suddenly thawing out their frozen ears, cheeks or noses.