The farm was in the heavy woods near the shores of Lake Michigan. A stream of water ran through a deep gully near the house, and there father caught an abundance of fish, while there was plenty of game in the woods. One day he came in and said he had found a deer-lick, and that night he prepared a bundle of hickory bark for a torchlight, and with that and his rifle he left us for the night, and came in early in the morning with a deer. It was the first venison I had ever eaten, and the best. My father's gun supplied our table with venison, wild duck, and squirrel in abundance. Mother, who had brought a collection of garden seeds from the East, managed the garden, and we had corn, beans, cucumbers, and pease, while tomatoes we raised as ornamental plants and called "love-apples." They were then considered poisonous, and it was some years later before we found out that they were a wholesome table delicacy.
We spent only one summer in this place, and then my father rented a farm on the prairie, in the township of Brooklyn, Lake County, about five miles west of Little Fort (now Waukegan, Illinois), and we went there early in the autumn of 1845. It was a happy day for my mother when we moved from our ague-stricken gully, for she prophesied that out on the prairie, where there was pure air, we might possibly escape fever and ague. Only two years before, mother had come from a refined home in western New York, and she had been shut up in these dreary woods in a log house all summer, living on game and boneset tea.
We were up early, and started at sunrise for the eight-mile ride to our new home. Father had come the day before with two teams and a hired man. The chickens had been caught and put into coops that were fastened on the rear end of the wagon, the "garden sauce" was gathered, and two pigs were put into one of the packing-boxes originally brought from the East. The new home was another log house, but a good one, built of hewn logs, and a story and a half high. The owner had built a tavern and was not going to work his farm any longer, so he rented it to father and kept his tavern across the way.
The minister from Little Fort called, and arrangements were made for a church home, and we used to drive five miles every Sunday to "meeting." There was a school for the children, and surrounded as we were by intelligent and thrifty neighbors, my mother began to wear a cheerful look. At this time the family consisted of six children, of whom I was the second, and the eldest son.
Here father began to utilize me, and I saved him many steps; for he seemed to have something for me to do all the time, both when he was at work and when he was resting. On Mondays I was allowed to stay about the place and help mother, pounding clothes, tending baby, and bringing wood and water. I was able to carry only about a third of the pail of water, but my young legs were expected to make frequent journeys to and from the spring, which was over in the cow-pasture, about thirty rods from the house. It was protected from encroachment of cattle and hogs by a three-cornered rail fence, which I had to climb and lift my pail over every time I went for water.
My brother Homer was my constant companion, and he used to help me with my work. Once I had lifted him over the fence to dip up water for me, when he lost his balance, and fell into the spring. The water was about up to his chin, and very cold. He screamed, and mother ran to help him out, dripping with water and dreadfully frightened. We got into the house as father came in to dinner. I was so sorry and frightened over what had happened that I was already severely punished; but father began to scold, and then decided to give me a whipping. He went out to the pasture near the spring and cut some willow switches, and after giving me a severe talking to, began laying the switches on my back and legs. I feared my father ever afterward. Nothing that I could do to please him was left undone, but it was always through fear.
EMIGRANTS.
We lived on a public thoroughfare where hundreds, and I may say thousands, passed on their way to take up new homes in Wisconsin, then the extreme outskirt of civilization in the Northwest. There was not a day in which several wagon-loads of emigrants did not pass our door, and the road was a cloud of dust as far as one could see over the level prairie country. The usual emigrant wagon contained an entire family, with all its earthly possessions, and in some of them families had lived for many weeks. Occasionally a length of stovepipe protruded through the canvas cover, and it was known that this wagon belonged to an aristocratic family, such a one usually having two wagons, one being used as a living-room. Nearly every family had from one to four cows, a coop of chickens attached to the tail-gate, from two to five pigs traveling under the wagon, and occasionally a drove of sheep and a loose colt near by. There was sometimes a rich caravan, or association of families, which had entered a large tract of land and was moving in a body, with horse-teams, droves of cattle, and horses.
As we lived near the road, people usually stopped at our house, either for a drink of fresh spring-water (a scarcity in those days), or to purchase milk, butter, garden-stuff, or anything that we could spare. These were the pioneers of Wisconsin, and were mostly from Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and Michigan. They were the second generation of pioneers of their native States. In asking where they were from we generally asked, "What are you?" If from New York, it was "Empire State"; if from Pennsylvania, "Keystones"; if from Ohio, "Buckeyes." Many more Illinois pioneers moved on to Wisconsin in those days than remained, owing to the dread of fever and ague. In this endless train of "movers" it was not uncommon for my mother to meet people whose families she had known in western New York.
THE LAND-LOOKER.