One day one of our farther-off neighbors, who lived more than four miles away, came to visit us. Naturally the children flocked around him to hear his stories in broad Scotch and to ply him with questions. In his turn, he began to ask them questions. One of these was, "When do you expect to go to school?"
"Oh, we have school now," responded the children. "We have school every day."
"And pray, who is your teacher, and where is your schoolhouse?"
"Father teaches us at home every morning before breakfast. He hears the lessons then, and mother helps us too."
"Your father told me a while ago that you had your breakfast at six o'clock. What time do you get up?"
"Why, father sets the clock for half-past four, and that gives us an hour while mother gets breakfast, you know."
Boys and girls of today may pity those poor pioneer children who had to get up so early. They may as well dismiss such feelings from their hearts. The children were cheerful and healthy; they did some work during the day in addition to studying their lessons; and besides they went to bed earlier than some boys and girls do these days.
In January 1861 the wreck of the steamer Northerner brought great sorrow to us, for my brother Oliver was among those lost. The ship struck on an uncharted rock.
During the stay at Steilacoom in the time of the Indian troubles, we had begun a trading venture, in a small way. The venture having proved successful, we invested all our savings in a new stock of merchandise, and this stock, not all paid for, went down with the ship. Again we must start in life, and we moved to a new location, a homestead in the Puyallup valley. Here we lived and farmed for forty-one years, seeing the town of Puyallup grow up on and around the homestead.
In the Puyallup valley there were more neighbors—two families to the square mile. Yet no neighbors were in sight, because the timber and underbrush were so thick we could scarcely see two rods from the edge of our clearing. But the neighbors were near enough for us to provide a public school and build a schoolhouse.