A little later this first home was sold and another in a southern county better adapted to cattle raising was bought and thither we moved. With a good beginning in horses and cattle and an experience in farming, better than all else, the future held high hopes and bright promises, but, alas for human expectations, the Civil War come. Already one call had thinned the county of the younger and unmarried men. The second call sounded. The call was urgent,
"Cease to consult, the time of action calls.
War, horrid war, approaches to your walls."
All able-bodied patriots enlisted, my husband among the number, with a promise from the stay-at-homes to take care of the crops and look out for the interests of the family.
Then came hardships and troubles to which pioneer life could not be compared. I was obliged to see crops lost for lack of help to harvest them; cattle and horses well nigh worthless as there was no sale for them, neither was there male help sufficient to cultivate the farm, which went back to former wildness. The government was months behind in paying the soldiers, who at best received only a beggarly pittance. One night, alone with my children, I was awakened by a knock on the window and a call, "Hurry! Leave at once. The Indians are upon us, scalping as they come." With the little ones I fled across the fields to the nearest house, a half mile away, later, to find this a false alarm. Another time the alarm was given and again it proved false, but was no easier borne for it was believed the truth. All night long we were kept to the highest pitch of terror expecting every minute to hear the awful war-whoop. The night dragged on without this culmination.
My husband died just before the war closed. His nurse at the hospital wrote me of his serious condition and I started at once for the hospital in Louisville. There were no railroads in the country at that time, stages and boats were the only means of reaching that point. To show the contrast between traveling then and now, it took me over two weeks to reach Louisville and when I arrived at the hospital found that my husband had been buried a week before my arrival. The nurses and officials at the hospital, while exceedingly busy, were most kind and sympathetic in relating to me pleasant recollections of my husband's last days.
I recall only two pleasant instances in the otherwise unhappy experience of our separation occasioned by the war. These were the furloughs which brought him home, one while he was stationed at Fort Snelling lasting for a few days, and later when he was sent home for two or three months as a recruiting officer for his regiment.
Does the luxurious life men and women of today enjoy, develop character, consideration for others, generosity and sympathy towards the less fortunate neighbor as did the trying pioneer days? If not, where lies the blame? What is the cure?
Judge Loren W. Collins—1852.
In 1853 my father visited Eden Prairie. On arriving they found a lynch court in session. A man named Gorman who had squatted upon a very desirable piece of land had gotten into an altercation with a squatter by the name of Samuel Mitchell. These men were Irishmen, Gorman a Catholic and Mitchell a Protestant. Gorman had filled Mitchell's left arm full of shot, and the court gave its judgment that Gorman must get out of the country with his family, within twenty-four hours. He had staked out the claim, had built a log house and had ready for crop about two acres of land. My father had $100.00 in gold with him, probably more money than any other man in the community possessed at that time. Gorman sold out to him for the $100.00 and father took possession.
There were then a dozen or fifteen settlers in that vicinity, among them the Goulds, the Mitchells, Mr. Abbott and Mr. Gates. There came about that time, Mr. Staring, who lived immediately east of us.