Mrs. Loyd Benson, Committee.
Waterford, March 24, 1884.
Dear Miss Barton:
We read your nice letter in the Dispatch, and we would like very much to see that house called “The Little Six,” and we are so glad we little six helped six other little children, and we thank you for going to so much trouble in putting our money just where we would have put it ourselves.
Sometime again when you want money to help you in your good work, call on the “Little Six.”
Joe Farrar, twelve years old.
Florence Howe, eleven years old.
Mary Barton, eleven years old.
Reed White, eleven years old.
Bertie Ensworth, ten years old.
Lloyd Barton, seven years old.
It could not fail to have been a satisfaction to me to know that I had done my work as they would have “done it themselves.”
As long as we remained on the river this family was occasionally visited by our boat. On one occasion a strong flagstaff twenty feet in length was taken and firmly set upon the bank near where they would place their house. Its well-lettered cross board at the top showed “Little Six Red Cross Landing,” and this point has remained a landing on the Ohio River probably unto this day.
During this trip on the upper Ohio, which was even yet scarcely safe for running at night, we had, after a hard day’s work, found a cove and tied our boat for the night. It was a rather sequestered spot, and the appearance of a full-size river steamer, halting for the night on one of its banks, attracted the attention of the few people residing there, and at dusk a body of five or six men came to the boat to ask if we were in trouble that we stopped there, and if there were anything they could do for us. We quieted their kindly apprehensions and invited them on board. The lights revealed a condition of personal poverty which should have more naturally asked help than offered it. On the entire trip with its thousands of miles, among white and black, we had never seen such evidences of destitution. They scarcely could have decently gone among civilized people, and yet as they spoke, there was no lack of sense. On the contrary, they seemed in many ways to be men of the world. Their language, while provincial, had nothing uncommon in it, and altogether they were a study to us. We gave them some supper, and while eating, learned the facts of their lives.
Either by blood or marriage, they were all relatives, consisting of six families, making in all about thirty people. They all lived together—such living as it was—and there seemed to be among them a perfectly good understanding. They had always lived on the river banks, probably more on the river than off of it. They were not farmers, never planted or raised anything, subsisting mainly upon fish and the floating drift to be picked up. Thus, they clung to the river like the muskrat and beaver, and were washed out with every flood. Sixteen of them at that time were living under some slanting boards.