We came to Dodge County in 1855. The first year we were hailed out and we had to live on rutabagas and wild tea. We got some game too, but we were some tired of our diet before things began to grow again. When that hailstorm came we were all at a quilting bee. There was an old lady, Mrs. Maxfield there, rubbing her hundred mark pretty close. She set in a corner and was not scared though the oxen broke away and run home and we had to hold the door to keep it from blowing in. We said, "Ain't you afraid?" She answered, "No, I'm not, if I do go out, I don't want to die howling."
The first time I worked out, when I was fourteen years old, I got 50c a week. There was lots to do for there were twin babies. I used to get awful homesick. I went home Saturdays and when I came over the hill where I could see our cabin, I could have put my arms around it and kissed it, I was that glad to see home.
Mr. Theodore Curtis—1855, Minneapolis.
When I was a little boy my father was building some scows down where the Washington Avenue bridge now is at the boat landing. There were five or six small sluiceways built up above the river leading from the platform where the lumber from the mills was piled, down to where these scows were. These sluices were used to float the lumber down to the scows. A platform was built out over the river in a very early day and was, I should say, three hundred feet wide and one thousand feet long. As the lumber came from the mills it was piled in huge piles along this platform. Each mill had its sluiceway but they were all side by side.
It was very popular to drive down on this platform and look at the falls, whose roaring was a magnet to draw all to see them.
We boys used to play under this platform jumping from one support to another and then finish up by running down the steps and cavorting joyously under the falls. I used to get the drinking water for the workmen from the springs that seeped out everywhere along near where my father worked. Once he sent me to get water quickly. I had a little dog with me and we unthinkingly stepped in the spring making the water roily. Childlike, I never thought of going to another but played around waiting for it to settle, then as usual took it on top of the sluiceways. It seemed father thought I had been gone an hour and acted accordingly. I shall always remember that whipping.
Mrs. Charles M. Godley—1856.
My father, Mr. Scrimgeour, came to Minneapolis in 1855 and built a small home between First and Second Avenues North on Fourth Street. When my mother arrived she cried when she saw where her home was to be and said to her husband, as he was cutting the hazel brush from around the house, "You told me I would not have to live in a wilderness if I came here."
Mr. Morgan lived across the street. He and my father decided to dig a well together and put it in the street so that both families could use it. My father said to Mr. Morgan, "Of course, there is a street surveyed here, but the town will never grow to it, so the well will be alright here."
Mr. Morgan was a great bookworm and not at all practical. If his horse got out and was put in with other strays, he could never tell it, but had to wait until everyone took theirs and then he would take what was left.