It was during the war and sometime before Katherine's death that Mr. Hammond used to cross our orchard going to and from his work. One day Father said to one of the Hammond children, "Come over and get some apples to eat"; to which the child answered, "Oh, Papa brings us all the apples we want to eat. He gets them out of your orchard."
One day while my brother Harvey was passing through the orchard, he saw an apple caught in the fork of two limbs. Supposing that the apple had fallen from the tree and accidently lodged there, he ate it, and soon began to feel very sick. The doctor found upon examination that the boy was suffering from strychnine poisoning. From remarks that had been dropped, we thought we knew that a certain neighbor had poisoned the apple and that he had done it for spite. A visitor at our house remarked that she feared that the Union soldiers, who were then encamped near her home, would in their absence from home, get the strychnine they had bought for the rats and poison their meal or their water before they got home again. My brother suffered from the effects of the strychnine he had taken for a number of years before he fully recovered.
The husband of the woman of whom I have just spoken was a soldier in the Southern army. One time while he was out foraging, he went into a Union woman's house and asked for a pie. Finding out that she had her pies hidden under the puncheon floor, he raised a plank and proceeded to help himself. The woman, seeing her opportunity, threw the plank onto his neck and jumped on the plank. The man got a furlough, came home, and was confined to his bed for some time. It was reported about the neighborhood that he had a spell of fever.
The woman who brought the diphtheria to us sought our house as a place of refuge, because the house being "low and in a low place" the cannon balls would pass over it. After the Lord saved me, this incident came to my mind as a lesson in humility. "Low and in a low place." If we as God's servants keep humble and in a low place, the enemy may hurl his darts and shoot his cannon balls: they will go over us and will not harm us. If we don't want to be disturbed or crippled by the enemy of our souls, we should keep low at the feet of Jesus where he can continually shelter us. "He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most high, shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty."
Some time after these events the Southern soldiers, commonly known as "bushwhackers," came into our neighborhood and camped in the woods. One evening as it was growing dusk, my oldest sister and the one next older than I went after water to a well half way between our house and the house of our nearest neighbor on the west. From this well both families used water. The girls had to go down a steep hill to get to the well; and as they came back to the brow of the hill, they found our dog lying dead. While the girls were at the well, the soldiers had no doubt killed the dog with a club, as no one heard a gun fired. My sisters went home with the water and then went back to investigate; they wanted to be sure that it was our dog that had been killed. They heard men in the brush near the place where the dog was lying, and being very young and not realizing their danger, they talked rather loudly and boisterously, saying that if they could see the men in the brush, they would shoot them with their fingers. The crackling in the brush indicated that the men were very near.
That night a large number of these bushwhackers entered our neighbor's house and stole bonds, notes, and clothing estimated to be worth $2000. Mr. Douglas had just been to Sedalia, where he had procured a good supply of clothing. The soldiers pointed Mr. Douglas's own gun, which had never been known to miss fire before, at his head; but it failed to go off. Our house was not molested. The next day these same men caught one of Mr. Douglas's boys, made him take off his shoes, hat, and all his other clothing, except his underwear, and turned him loose. In this condition, he had to go about a quarter of a mile before reaching home.
It was probably some time after these events that the bushwhackers came to our house and wanted Mother to cook a meal for a dozen men. Mother was hardly able to be out of bed, but my sister Mehala, thinking that they were Union soldiers, said, "Mother, I can cook for them." "Well, Mehala," Mother said, "if you can, you may go ahead." Mother helped all she could. They baked two large pones of corn-bread in the oldfashioned fireplace and fried plenty of fresh beef. Although the soldiers had ordered food for a dozen men, only two of them came. One of them took the provisions and the other guarded the house until he thought we would have no chance to report them. Then they went to the home of a neighbor and with much bad language said that Mother was Union and therefore pretended to be sick and did not want to cook for them.
During the war, things we had to buy were very high and things we had to sell brought only a trifle. Father sold corn to the Union soldiers for 25 cents a bushel. In imagination I can see the government wagons coming to haul the corn away to their camp. The beds of the wagons were somewhat like those used today, only they sloped outward on either side until they would hold more than twice as much as our ordinary farm wagons.
At that time, flour cost $10.00 and upward, a barrel, calico from 35 to 45 cents a yard, and cotton yarn from $9.00 to $11.00 a bunch. This quantity of yarn would make only about 25 yards of jeans. Mother did her own spinning and weaving until some years after the war. We sheared our own sheep, washed and picked the wool, and sent it to the carding machine, where it was made into rolls. Then Mother and my older sister, who was nearly grown, spun the yarn and wove it into jeans and linsey, and also into flannel and blankets. Mother made all the clothing for the family—underwear, pants, vests, coats, and even overcoats. I well remember the old loom and spinning wheel and the little wheel on which I used to quill for my sister while she wove. Small as I was, I had learned to knit. I knit mittens for the soldiers, for which I got 50 cents a pair at Sedalia, the nearest army post, twenty miles away.
In the early part of the war Father was a militiaman. At one time he came very near being accidently killed in his own orchard by some of his own men. Some Federal soldiers who were passing came into our orchard, and seeing Father at a distance, thought he was a Southerner. Father, seeing his danger, started to run; but one of the soldiers who was near enough to recognize him, cried, "Cole, don't run or they'll shoot you"; but Father thought he said, "Cole run or they'll shoot you." Finally they got him to understand what they meant, and his life was saved.