A large sheet iron stove down stairs was kept red hot in the winter and a man was employed to prevent people, coming in from the icy out-of-doors, from rushing too near its heat and thus suddenly thawing out their frozen ears, cheeks or noses.
When in 1858 or '59 my father sold the hotel, its purchaser mortgaged it, paying an interest rate of twenty-four per cent a year.
On July Fourth, 1856 the Barron House was formally opened on such a scale of splendor that the days of the Faribault House were numbered.
The Scott brothers built the first saw mill in Faribault. It was located on the spot where the new addition to the shoe factory now is. The machinery was brought in from St. Louis and came up by boat to Hastings at an enormous cost and it took twelve yoke of oxen to haul the boiler from that point. They were a long time getting it from Cannon City, as they had to cut a road through the dense woods. A party whom they met after dusk, when he saw the huge cylinder, exclaimed, "Well that is the largest saw log I ever saw."
Mr. J. Warren Richardson—1854.
I came with my father and mother from St. Anthony where we had lived for a short time, to Faribault and settled in Walcott where we secured a log house and a claim for $75.00. This was on Mud Creek. While at St. Anthony my father had made us such furniture as we needed. From the saw mill he got plank fourteen feet in length, which he cut into strips. He then bored holes in the corners and inserted pieces of pine, taken out of the river, for legs, and thus we were provided with stools. For tables we used our trunks. We slept on ticks full of prairie hay on the floor. These were piled in the corner daytimes and taken out at night.
Our house on the farm contained one room twenty feet square and as my father used to say "A log and a half story high." We were ourselves a family of five besides three boarders and a stray family of three appearing among us with no home, my mother invited them also to share our scanty shelter. At night she divided the house into apartments by hanging up sheets and the two families prepared their meals on the same cookstove. We made our coffee of potatoes by baking them till there was nothing left in them but a hole, and then crushing them. It was excellent. In winter my father cut timber for his fences. He loaded it onto the bobs which I, a ten year old boy, would then drive back, stringing the logs along the way where they would lie till spring when father split them into rails and built the fence. I have often chased the timber wolves with my whip as I drove along. They would follow the team and then when I turned around to chase them they would turn and run in front of the team.
Finding that the snow blew in through our covered shake roof, we cut sod and covered the roof with it. The following summer, my father being away, I planted some popcorn, which we had brought from the east, in this sod roof. It grew about fourteen inches high and my father, upon his return, was greatly puzzled by the strange crop which he found growing on his roof.
When kindling was needed, my father would raise the puncheons which made our floor and hew some from these.
Our clothing consisted of Kentucky jeans and white shirts for best, with overalls added for warmth in winter. We also wore as many coats as we had left from our eastern outfit. These had to be patched many, many times. The saying always was "Patch beside patch is neighborly; patch upon patch is beggarly." I never had underwear or an overcoat until I enlisted.