CHAPTER XXIII.
GRANDFATHER'S POWDER-HORN—WAR WITH PIRATES.
Time sped on. The earth had traveled its circuit many times since father sold his little place in Putnam County, State of New York, and bade adieu to all the dear scenes of his childhood and youth and came to battle, for himself and family in the wilds of Michigan. And he did his part bravely. He was a strong man; mentally and physically strong, and possessed just enough of the love of a romantic and strange life, to help him battle successfully with the incidents and privations common to such as settle in a new country, with but little capital. He worked his way through. He had a very retentive memory and possessed the faculty of pleasing his visitors, to no common extent.
Father at the close of the Tripoli war, 1805, was about the age that I was when we started for Michigan. He often told me of the war with Tripoli and trouble with Algiers. He gloried in the name of an American and often related the prowess and bravery of our soldiers, in defending their flag and the rights of American citizens, at home and abroad, on the land and on the sea.
Of course when the Fourth of July came round I went to celebrate the day. As cannon were almost always fired at Dearbornville, on that day, I would go out there to listen to the big guns and their tremendous roar, as they were fired every minute for a national salute. The sound of their booming died away beyond Detroit River, in Canada, and let the Canadians, and all others in this part of the universe, know that we were holding the Fourth of July in Dearbornville. When I went home at night I told father about it, and what a good time I had enjoyed, and that they fired one big gun in honor of Michigan.
On such days his patriotic feelings were wrought up and he talked much of wars, patriotism and so forth. On such an occasion he told me that his father, William Nowlin, was a captain of militia, in the State of New York, when he was a boy. That I was named for him and that, when he was done with it, I should have my grandfather's ancient powder-horn. It is red and carved out very nicely, covered with beautiful scrolls and old-fashioned letters. The two first letters of my grandfather's name, W. N., are on it, and toward the smaller end of the horn—my father's given name, John. These were inscribed on it long since the horn was made. It was made when Washington was about twenty-five years old, and, no doubt, saw service in the French and Indian war, in the defence of the English colonies of America. Its history, some of it, is shrouded in mystery. It has passed down through the revolutionary war, and the war of 1812, through four generations of men, and was given to me by my father as an heir-loom, a relic of the past.
Next to my father's given name is the inscription, E.b. Then follows these old lines:
"I, powder, with my brother ball,
A hero like, do conquer all."
"'Tis best abroad with foreign foes to fight,
And not at home, to feel their hateful spite,
Where all our friends of every sex and age,
Will be expos'd unto their cruel rage."
—Lieut. Abl Prindel's. Made at No. 4. June 30th, 1757.