After our second return to New York, Capt. Wilson assumed the command of one of the first clipper ships which carried passengers to California in those days. This was at the most stirring time of the gold fever, and the captain kindly offered to take me along and let me stay out there, an offer which thousands would have accepted. But I was never smitten with the gold fever, and, having a distaste for the sea, I said good-bye to the kind captain, never to see him again. My wages were to have been only five dollars a month, but he generously paid me eight dollars, so that I bad earned enough money to pay my way to Boston, whence my friend Eustrom had written me and urged me to come.
I arrived in Boston about the middle of December, and, when I returned to the old boarding house, I spoke English so well that my acquaintances hardly believed it possible that I could be the same person. Mr. Eustrom was now working as wood polisher. He had made many friends and lived happily and contented on $4 a week. By strict economy these wages sufficed for board, lodging, and clothes. It happened to be an unfavorable time of the year when I arrived, however, and many men who had been employed during the summer were now discharged at the approach of winter. Mr. Eustrom’s employer had a good friend in New Hampshire, an old Swedish sailor, Anderson by name, who was farming up there. He promised to let me come and live with him and do whatever chores I could until something might turn up the next spring.
A few days afterwards I went by rail to Contocook where I was met by Mr. Anderson, who took me out to his hospitable home a couple of miles from the town. This Anderson was a remarkable man. Having no education to speak of, he was a better judge of human nature and practical affairs of life than any other man I ever met. He was pleased with me, and said he wished I would sit down in the evening and tell him about Sweden, and explain to him what I had learned at school. Poor Anderson! He had one fault, rum got the better of him, and it was cheap in New England at that time, only sixteen cents a gallon. He bought a barrel of it at a time, and did not taste water as long as the rum lasted.
The day after my arrival he asked me if I would like to go with him into the woods to help cut some logs. Of course I would, and we took our axes and started off. It was a very cold December day, and I had thin clothes and no mittens. Mr. Anderson went to cut down a tree, and I commenced to work at one which was already felled. This was the first time I swung an axe in earnest, and after a short while I felt that my hands were getting cold. But I made up my mind not to stop until the log was finished. By holding the axe handle very tight it stopped the circulation of the blood through my fingers, and when I finally stopped and dropped the axe I could not move my fingers, for eight of them were frozen stiff. Mr. Anderson now took off his cap, filled it with snow, put my hands into the snow, and thus we ran to the house as fast as our legs would carry us. The doctor tried his very best; but, nevertheless, in a few days the flesh and the nails began to peel off, and two doctors decided to amputate all the fingers on my right hand. Fortunately I did not give my consent, but told them that I would rather die of gangrene than live without hands, for my future depended exclusively on them.
My friend Eustrom, having heard of my misfortune, soon came to visit me, and brought with him an old Irish woman who was something of a doctor, and cured my hands by means of a very simple plaster which she prepared herself. But I was forced into complete inactivity for more than three months, during which time I was entirely helpless, and had to be washed, dressed, and fed like an infant. But, as to me, the old proverb has always proved true: “When things are at the worst they’ll mend.” There were men and women in my accidental home who willingly tended to me in my trouble. May God bless them for it! In the latter part of March, Mr. Anderson, who had always treated me with the greatest kindness, quite unexpectedly told me that I was now able to work again and could try to get a place with some other family in the neighborhood, because he could not keep me any longer.
Our nearest neighbor was a genuine Yankee, Daniel Dustin by name. He was very rich, well read, liberal minded, respectable and honest, but so close that he would scarcely let his own family have enough food to eat, and his wife was even more stingy. Mr. Dustin agreed to let me work for my board until spring, and then he would give me five dollars a month, which offer I cheerfully accepted. He immediately took me out into the woods to chop wood for the summer, and he was to haul it home. The new, tender muscles and nails on my fingers made wood chopping very painful to me, and I could feel every blow of the axe through my entire body. Never has any man worked so hard for me, when I afterwards hired help for good wages, as I worked for my board here; and, by the way, this board consisted chiefly of potatoes and corn meal cake. When the spring work commenced I got five dollars a month, and had to get up at five o’clock in the morning to do the chores, and then work in the field from seven in the morning until dark.
In the beginning of June I got a letter from my parents, stating that my father and brother were going to leave for New York immediately, and they asked me to meet them there and go West with them. I had never complained in my letters to my parents, but, on the other hand, I had not advised them to come to America, either. They had been advised to do so by some of my fellow-passengers on the “Ambrosius,” who went to Illinois, and were highly pleased with their prospects. So I went to Boston again. My father’s voyage had been delayed, and I had to wait for him over a month, during which time I got sick, and would have been in a sorry plight, indeed, if it had not been for my friend Eustrom, who now felt like a rich man, with his six dollars a week. A couple of years later he became the partner of his employer.
[ CHAPTER III.]
The Arrival of my Father and Brother—Journey to Illinois—Work on a Railroad—The Ague—Doctor Ober—Religious Impressions—The Arrival of my Mother, Sister and her Husband—A Burning Railroad Train—We go to Minnesota—Our Experience as Wood Choppers and Pioneers.
Finally my father and brother arrived, and again I turned my course westwards in company with them and their friends. We traveled by rail to Buffalo and across the lake to Toledo, thence by rail again to Chicago. In the summer of 1852 there were no railroads west of Chicago, and our company had to take passage on a canal-boat drawn by horses to La Salle, and from this place we rode in farmers wagons to Andover and Galesburg. The country around there was as yet only in the first stages of development; there was very little money in circulation, and no demand for farm products. The immigrants suffered a great deal from fever and other climatic diseases.