As I have read the journal I have been impressed with the idea that while it took vision, health and character on the part of the young pioneers to accomplish their object, the burdens came only day by day and would not be refused by the vigorous young grandsons whom I know now, were the same rewards offered for enterprise and endurance.
The railroad journey from Boston to Terre Haute, the western terminus of the road, was a very different one from that of today, taking then a week instead of a few hours.
They went down from Anson and Norridgewock to Boston where they exchanged their “money at Suffolk Bank for their bills, as they were good anywhere West, and none others were.”
Leaving Boston at 8 A.M., an all day ride took them to Albany, where they spent the night at the Delavan House. They went on early the next morning to Buffalo, which was reached at 11 P.M. Here they “put up at the Clarendon House. Tired. Sleepy.” At eleven in the forenoon they left for Cincinnati, reaching Cleveland at 8 P.M., Columbus at 4 A.M., where they changed cars, and arrived at their destination late at night, after a thirty-six hour ride in day coaches. They rested at Cincinnati until the next afternoon, when they went over to Dayton for the purpose of making an early start on the last lap of the railroading. The entry for March 16 reads:
“Called at 2 o’clock A.M., went aboard cars at 2 1/2. No breakfast, nor could we get a mouthful until we arrived in Indianapolis, at 2 1/2 o’clock P.M. The R. R. was new, rough and no stations by the way. Arrived in Terre Haute about 5 P.M.”
Here they stopped for a week at the Prairie House. They organized their firm of Flint, Bixby & Co., in which Benjamin, who had been longer in California, had four parts to three each for the others. They wrote letters, bought three horses, fitted saddles to them, and, on March 19th, started west for Paris, Illinois, over “roads as bad as mud can make them.”
They went across the state, a few miles a day, calling occasionally on an old friend or on one of their many cousins who had settled in the Middle West. Once they stopped over night in Urbana at the Middlesex House, where they found six beds in a 6 x 9 room, and had for breakfast “fried eggs swimming in lard, the almost universal food in this part of the world.”
By April first they had arrived in Quincy. “Had a hard time finding the town,” says Dr. Flint. “Most of the way through oak-wooded prairie, uncultivated.... Horseback distance from Terre Haute, 348 miles.”
Quincy was their headquarters while they were seeking and buying sheep, finding a few at one place, a few at another. Father once told me of the vexations they had at first, trying to drive in one homogeneous band all these little groups of sheep, each with its own bell wether.
During the last of April and the first of May, while still buying stock, they sheared their sheep at Warsaw, Illinois, selling the wool, 6,410 pounds, for $1,570.45 to Connable-Smith Co., of Keokuk, Iowa. At this time it is recorded that father received a remittance of $1,000.00 from a California acquaintance, undoubtedly a welcome addition to their funds with such an undertaking ahead of them. They must have had their trip well planned before they left Volcano, for Pacific Coast mail to meet them thus.