One day I was plowing with a double yoke of oxen. I was driving while Mr. Whitney was guiding the plow. Mr. Whitney's brother was across the river hunting for a lost horse. For a long time we heard him shouting, but paid no attention until at last we saw him retreating slowly down the opposite bank before a big bear. He called for help. We got over there in short order. Mr. Whitney said that the bear had three small cubs up a tree, but when we reached there she had disappeared with one cub. He climbed the tree while his brother and I kept guard below. He caught the two cubs by their thick fur and brought them down and kept them.
In 1856, we came into town and I often played with the Indian boys, shooting with bows and arrows in "Frogtown," which was lined with Indian tepees. They always played fair.
Our log schoolhouse had rude desks facing the sidewall.
Mrs. Henry C. Prescott—1855.
My father, Dr. Nathan Bemis, came to Faribault where his father and brother had already settled when I was eight years old. We went first to the Nutting House, but as there was only the "bridal chamber" with its one bed for the use of women, Mr. John Whipple, although his wife was ill, invited my mother, with my baby sister, to stay at his house, which was across the street. My sister, and a young lady who had come with us, slept in the bed in the "bridal chamber." My father and brother laid their straw ticks on the floor outside and I occupied a trundle bed in Mrs. Nutting's room.
We soon moved out to the Smallidge House, east of town, where our family consisted of our original seven and four men who boarded with us. There was but one room, and only a small part of the floor was boarded over and on this, at night, we spread our cotton ticks, filled with "prairie feathers" or dried prairie grass, and the men went out of doors while the women went to bed. In the morning the men rose first and withdrew. The ticks were then piled in a corner and the furniture was lifted onto the floor and the house was ready for daytime use. Gradually by standing in line at the sawmill, each getting a board a day, if the supply held out, our men got enough boards to cover the entire floor.
The next winter General Shields offered us his office for our home, if we could stand the cold. He, himself, preferred to winter in the Nutting Hotel. This winter was a horror to us all. We all froze our feet and the bedclothes never thawed out all winter, freezing lower each night from our breath. Before going to bed my brother used to take a run in the snow in his bare feet and then jump into bed that the reaction might warm them for a little while. All thermometers froze and burst at the beginning of the winter so we never knew how cold it was. Someone had always to hold my baby sister to keep her off the floor so that she might not freeze. At night my mother hung a carpet across the room to divide the bedroom from the living room. Dish towels hung to dry on the oven door would freeze.
That winter my father's nephew shot himself by accident and it was necessary to amputate his leg. My father had no instruments and there were no anesthetics nearer than St. Paul, so my cousin was lashed to a table while my father and Dr. Jewett took off the leg with a fine carpenter's saw and a razor. He was obliged to stay in bed all winter for fear the stump would freeze.
Later we lived, for a time, in a log house. The rain penetrated the chinks, and I remember once when my sister was ill the men had to keep moving the table around, as the wind shifted, to screen her from the rain.
There was no butter, eggs, milk or chickens to be had; no canned things or fresh vegetables. My mother once bought a half bushel of potatoes of a man who came with a load from Iowa, paying $3.00 a bushel. When she came to bake them, they turned perfectly black and had to be thrown away. The man was gone. Again my father bought half a hog from a man who brought in a load of pork, but my mother had learned her lesson and cooked a piece before the man left town and, as it proved to be bad, my father hunted him up and made him take back his hog and refund the money.