It was to be a new life for them and since business had slacked off to such a point that he could barely make a decent living, both Mr. and Mrs. Curwood felt that he had made a good investment.
The next day Mrs. Curwood, Jimmie, his sister Cora and brother Edward began preparing to leave their old home. With what money he had received from the sale of his shop, Mr. Curwood paid all of his debts and at last had all of his business interests straightened out. Even though he was left with very little to begin his new life, he paid every bill which the family owed in Owosso.
A few days later the family began its pilgrimage to the new land of Ohio.
The little backwood’s town of Owosso thought a great deal of James Moran and Abigail Griffen Curwood and sorely hated to see them depart, despite the fact that they were taking with them one of the town’s biggest trouble makers. Still, regardless of what their outward appearances were toward Jimmie, deep within their hearts the neighbors and all who knew him, loved him.
The move from Michigan into Ohio was later to prove the most important change in all of young Jim Curwood’s life. Many things were to happen, many events to take place within the next five years that none of the Curwood family ever dreamed would happen.
When the family of five arrived at their little farm located not far from the cross-roads village of Joppa, it was in deep winter and their forty acres were covered with snow. The head of the family was highly elated over the prospects of his “sight-unseen” purchase and at once began making plans for it.
It was not until the arrival of spring, when the snows had cleared away, that Jimmie’s father found that he had purchased something which more closely resembled a stone quarry than a farm. As far as one could see there were nothing but stones and boulders all over the forty acres of his land.
One can easily imagine the thoughts that came into the elderly Mr. Curwood’s mind as he gazed out upon what he thought was to be his salvation. Instead of rich, fertile farmland, he had purchased a practically worthless land of stones.
One night at the supper table Mr. Curwood called upon his children to help him more than he had expected them to. The stones must be picked up and stacked in piles and the work of doing so must be left to the two young sons, monotonous, laborious and endless as it must have seemed to them.
Jimmie hated his daily task of picking up rocks from sunup to sundown, but he had enough foresight to realize that he had a job to do that must be done. So together, day in and day out, Jimmie and Ed picked up stones. Picked them up so their father could plough the fields and till the soil.