I wrote yesterday about Sumner Smith's response in 1910 to a question from Chariton Leader editor Henry Gittinger about the timing and circumstances of his birth to Cynthia (Porter) and William Smith, very early Iowa pioneers, during the late 1830s.
Looking further into that, I stumbled upon a memoir that Sumner wrote two years later, published in The Albia Republican of March 14, 1912. Horace Barnes, the editor, devoted a full broadsheet page to the memoir --- plus two columns on the next page. It is very long. But it's well written, loaded with the details of pioneer life in Iowa and quite funny now and then. I especially enjoyed Sumner's story of how he learned to stop blushing every time he sighted calico and another story, this one about a near fatal encounter with chewing tobacco.
Sumner was born on the current site of Keosauqua, Van Buren County; moved when very young to the vicinity of Mount Sterling, also in Van Buren, then to the vicinity of Montrose in Lee County, where his father died. The family's next home was Louisa County, where he enlisted for service during the Civil War and married Louie Stewart once the war was over. The couple, both of whom were school teachers, brought their family to Melrose in 1873. Sumner went into business there and Melrose remained their home until his death during 1913.
That's Louie and Sumner, above, in a somewhat battered snapshot probably taken near Chariton with their granddaughter, Beatrice Rickey, and daughter, Diantha Mae (Smith) Rickey. The Rickeys moved to Montgomery County, Kansas, not long after the photo was taken.
I've divided the memoir into two installments and hope to post the second tomorrow. If this seems to you a bit much, I'll offer the same advice Sumner did more than a century ago: "If anyone who attempts to read these memories should get real drowsy and sleepy, I would suggest that you put the paper down and take a good nap and you will feel lots better."
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For a long time I have observed that most books, and papers like these, have something to start with, which is called a preface, so in order to be in correct fashion, I will write one, too.
On January 3rd, I received a letter from Horace Barnes, editor of The Republican, asking me to write a sketch of my life, for use in The Republican. At that time we were having zero weather right along, and it kept me very busy toting in the wood and keeping up the fires, and I wrote him that as soon as the weather got good and warm, I would try to write a short sketch for him, thinking that I could possibly get about half a column that would be readable. So I began to make a memoranda of certain things which I wanted to write, and soon had about 12 pages made, which I put away for future use, and when I began to write, and wanted those notes, I couldn't find them anywhere. I just went ahead and wrote, and soon found that I would have to whittle it down, or it would all be dumped into the waste basket, and I am not certain but that is where it will land anyway. If anyone who attempts to read these memories should get real drowsy and sleepy, I would suggest that you put the paper down and take a good nap and you will feel lots better. Now in concluding, I wish to say that if I have said anything in these ketches to hurt the feelings of anyone, I freely forgive you.
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The first year I resided in Iowa, I was engaged in the dairy business, and made a great success of it, as I more than doubled my original capital, which was seven pounds avoirdupois weight; and right here I want to observe that it was all wrong to calculate my wright by that table, as all real precious things are calculated by troy weight.
I was born on the 25th day of April 1838 in the first log cabin built where the town of Keosauqua in Van Buren county is located. This event occurred before all the roof was on the house; of course I don't have any recollection of this and am telling it from hearsay.
At this time the country was new and sparsely settled, and probably not more than 150 people lived in the county. Iowa at that time was a part of Wisconsin territory, and there was not a railroad or a flouring mill within its boundary and even the little corn grinding mills were very scarce and the people had to live on such things as they could get. Game was plentiful, such as turkey, deer, prairie chicken, quail, pheasant, etc.; and those who were expert with the gun had plenty of that kind of food.
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When I was about two years old, my father moved to the south side of the county, near the little village of "Dog Town" (what a beautiful name). It's name has been changed to the more appropriate one of Mount Sterling. If I remember correctly, it is located about one-half mile from the Missouri line; at that time there was a blacksmith shop run by a man by the name of Pfoutz, a little store run by a man by the name of Andrews, and a saw mill run by George and Horace Woods. This mill could not run except when the water in the Fox river on which it was located was at a high stage. A year or so before we moved from there, they had added a pair of small buhrs (about 18 inches in diameter) on which they ground corn into meal; this was thought to be a great convenience to the people, who formerly had to go to Augusta, near the mouth of the Skunk river, to get any grinding done.
I well remember when I was about 4 years old, there was at one time quite a number of Indians came and camped near our house; they were quite friendly and brought with them a great many things to trade for corn and pork. They had buckskin hunting shirts, buckskin trousers, moccasins, dressed buckskins, and furs of various kinds, all dressed. They had no trouble in disposing of their goods and when they left, they seemed well pleased with their bargains. One of the chiefs had a little boy about my age, and we played together every day. One day, the chief asked my father to trade papooses with him, and I don't know which of us was the worst scared, the little Indian lad or myself. I have often thought that if I had been traded to the chief, I would long since have been a big chief.
We lived about a mile east of Dog Town, and the school where my brothers and sisters attended was two miles northwest from the village, so they had to go three miles to school. Among those who attended that school were the children of the late Dr. John D. Elbert, the mother, uncle and aunt of Hon. Fred Townsend. This school was so far away that I could not attend, but I was taught at home, as I was the youngest of six children, and my brothers and sisters gave me a great deal of help, as well as my father and mother; and before I ever attended school, I was a good speller and could read well in McGuffey's third reader, which was the book I began to use when I started to school.
In those days there would be a spelling school at the school house one night in every week during the time the school was running and then there would be spellings at private houses at which a few of the nearest neighbor children would go. We used the old blue-backed elementary spelling book, in which there were a number of pages of reading matter. About eight or ten pages in the back of that old book were taken up with Latin words and phrases, with their meaning in English; and I expect that nearly all the boys and girls who studied those Latin words and phrases got all their knowledge of Latin right there.
Almost every family kept some sheep, the main object being for their wool with which to make our clothing, and the secondary consideration being their meat for food. We kept two looms and two big wheels and one small wheel. My mother and sisters spun the yarn from rolls made at a carding mill, then wove the yarn into various kinds of cloth, such as flannel for dresses for mother and the girls, and for blankets for the beds, and jeans for clothing for father and the boys. There was nothing shoddy about the kind of goods they made, as for instance I have today a coverlet, or bed cover, which was made 69 year ago, and it has been in use every winter from that time to the present, and I have slept under it every night this winter. It is is a good state of preservation, considering the time it has been used. My mother and sisters spun the yarn from which it was made.
Wolves were a great menace to those who kept sheep, and during the summer time we children had to watch the sheep during the daytime and at night they were placed in pens made of rails. These pens were quite high, probably seven or eight feet, then staked and double ridered, and the wolves could by not possibility get into the pens; for about three or four feet from the ground, the rails were notched down, so the wolf could not get at the lambs. One night a little lamb got up against the fence where there was a small crack and a wolf killed it; so father made a small pen, about 4x6 feet, and had it notched close. It was about three feet high and covered with heavy logs laid lose together. Then he made a very curious shaped pen around it, being circular in form and about forty feet in diameter, and it was drawn in from the ground so a wolf could run up on the fence and jump over, but by no possibility could get out.
Just about dusk, father caught a young lamb and put it in the small pen and its bleating could be heard for quite a distance. We then shut our dog up and everything was in readiness to receive Mr. Wolf. As soon as the day began to break, we boys were out to see how it worked and we found three of the biggest kind of timber wolves in the trap. Father took his gun and soon disposed of the wolves; those big black timber wolves are about twice the size of the common prairie wolf, and it takes a mighty good dog to kill one of them.
While we still lived in Van Buren county, one of our neighbors, who was a great hunter, was out in the timber with his gun when all at once he heard a great noise and commotion near where he stood and began to investigate and soon found a big timber wolf and an old male hog with long tusks in a very hard combat. He could have shot the wolf, but thought he would wait and see how it would terminate. He said it was the hardest fight he every saw. The wolf would try to get the hog by the throat, but as the skin was very tough, he could make but little headway, and the hog would gash the wolf at every chance with his long tusks. Finally the hog gave the wolf a terrible slash in the side, when he fell over dead. The hog was not yet satisified, but kept on goring the wolf, and he said he had never seen anything like it before.
Every farmer had an ear mark for his stock, as all stock were allowed to run at large, and in the spring we would turn out our hogs and a great many would not see them again till time to butcher, when they would start out and hunt them up, and all those which had the right ear mark would be caught by the dogs and taken home and butchered.
My father would look after his hogs, and keep them from going wild by giving them some corn during the summer, and would get them up in the fall and feed them about four or five weeks before killing them. We had pork in plenty, and lots of corn bread, and how I would love to have a good fill up on some of the sweet pone like my mother used to make. We did not have any wheat bread for quite a while as there were no mills where we could get the wheat ground, but finally there was a mill built at Farmington, and after that we had wheat bread part of the time.
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My father moved to Lee county in the spring of 1846, when I was eight years old, and settled about four miles a little southwest from the town of Montrose, which is opposite the Mormon town of Nauvoo, Illinois. These towns are on the Mississippi river.
The house into which we moved was a round log cabin, about twenty feet square, with a fireplace occupying about seven feet at one end the the room. It had a puncheon floor, with clapboard roof and a clapboard door. The fireplace not only answered the purpose of warming the house, but by its fire all of our cooking was done, both in winter and summer. There was no such a thing as matches and we had to cover the fire in warm weather, till we wanted to do some more cooking; and if the fire went out, one of us children had to go to one of the neighbors to get some to start up again.
In that house there was not a particle of nails or other metal; there was a window of six glasses, each glass being 8x10 inches in size, and they were held in place by short pieces of sharp thorns driven in the sash. We three boys slept up in the loft, but there was no light, except what came through the roof, and in summer we would knock out some of the chinks, and when it began to get cold we would put them back and get some mud and daub them over. I well remember one morning when it had snowed quite hard the night before. When we went to get up, we stepped in snow nearly up to our knees, which had been blown through the roof during the night.
In 1847, my father built a two-story hewed log house, being 18x24 feet, and he had shingles for the roof, and they were nailed on. This was the best house in the neighborhood and we felt mighty proud of it. I was 10 years old before we ever had a cook stove in the house, and I thought it was something wonderful that we could have hot biscuits without using the old dutch oven.
From where we lived we could see the cupola of the Mormon temple at Nauvoo, and when the temple was burned down in about 1847 or 1848, we could see the fire very plainly. The fire lasted for two days and nights, and it was a great sight, and nearly all the people were mighty glad it was burned. When my father moved to Lee county, he bought out a Mormon by the name of Crow. This man Crow had three wives, and they all lived in that log cabin, which was about 20 feet square. I don't remember how many children they had, but there were a lot of them.
Up to this time I had never gone to school, as there were no free schools as we now have, and few school houses. In the winter of 1846-47, I started to my first school. I was then nearly nine years old. My first teacher's name was John A. Nunn. He was about 45 years old and he was as bald-headed as any person I ever saw. the house was made of round, or unhewn, logs about 20 feet square and had a puncheon floor, a clapboard roof and the door was made of clapboards; not a particle of metal of any kind entered into its construction. It had two widows, each having six glasses, 8x10 inches in size. The seats were made by splitting basswood logs and hewing the split sides, and boring four holes in the half logs, two at each end. Into these holes were driven pegs about 18 inches long which were the legs of our seats. Now when one had been seated on one of those benches for three or four hours at a time, with no rest for the back, he got pretty tired. There was nothing above in the room except the roof, and when it would come a good snow, with a good strong wind, there would be plenty of snow in the room.
The books used in those days were the old elementary, or blue back spelling book, McGuffey's readers up to the fourth and there were a few who had slates and arithmetics. We had to pay the teacher a stipulated sum for our instruction, as there were no free schools at this time.
The next year, or in 1847, the people concluded to build a hewed log school house, which should also be used for meeting purposes for the different churches or denominations. There was a floor of sawed lumber and a shingle roof, nailed on, and the people were mighty proud of that new school house, for it was a dandy at that time. Up to the time I was 14 years old I had never studied anything except reading and spelling, and had done a little writing. My greatest ambition at that time was to be the best speller in any of the schools near where I lived, and when I was 14 years old I could spell correctly every word in the old blue back book, and was thought to be a good reader, as I was selected to read the Declaration of Independence at a 4th of July Sunday school celebration where there were several schools met when I was but 16 years old.
I got an old speller, in which I found the declaration, and committed it to memory; but as I had never yet appeared before a large audience, I thought it would be well to have the book with me. After the committee had apprised me of what I had to do, I began to think of my clothes, as my old shoes were about worn out, but I took them down to the shoemaker and asked him to patch them up as good as he could and told him why I wanted them, as I had always gone bare-footed to such places before then. He told me that I could get them by Saturday night, so when I went for them he said the old ones were not worth fixing, so he had made me a new pair, as he had my measure, and quite a good deal of our leather, as we always left the leather with him; and when the 4th came, I was about the proudest boy of the whole bunch, and when we got to the ground where the celebration was to be held, I thought there was a terrible big crowd.
First there was some singing, then more singing, then one of the preachers prayed, and I kept repeating the declaration to myself, till I really think I had said it about 223 times. After the prayer was over, the head push got up on the platform and said in a very loud voice, "now the Declaration of Independence will be read by Sumner Smith."
I got on the platform, and stepped to the front, and as I looked around, It seemed to me that there were at least two million people present. I kept my eye on the book and began to read, and as I heard the sound of my voice, all fear left me and after that I never looked at the book again. After the reading, came the dinner, and there were lots of folks wanted me to eat with them. I tell you that was a proud day for me.
I took a great deal of delight in going to spelling schools, and when I was 15 years old, a boy who had formerly lived in our neighborhood, but who then lived about six miles away, told me there was going to be a spelling at their school on the following Monday night and asked me to go down, which I agreed to do. Now this boy was larger than I was, but he could not spell the simplest words. When we got to the school house, there were two young ladies choosing sides, and had got about all chosen, and as we went in, one of them asked if we wanted to spell. I told her that was what we came for, so she looked at us, and since my friend was the largest, she chose him, so I was Hopkins choice for the first time in my life, but thought I would wake them up before they got done spelling.
They began by standing up, one on each side, and when a word was missed, the one missing had to sit down. The girl on the other side from which I was to spell had the first choice, and she got the best speller in that neighborhood, and it was not long till they began to go down on my side like sweet potato vines after a frost. When the poor spellers were reached on my side, the teacher began to pronounce easy words; when it came my time, I got up and walked right up to the teachers's desk, placed my hands behind my back, and told the teacher he could pronounce any of the words in the book. The young man who had spelled all the others on my side down was about six feet tall and was very large. He looked at me with a good deal of contempt and thought I would go down like the rest. The teacher began to pronounce the hardest words he could find, and gave to my opponent the word "separate," which he missed, and I caught it. He looked rather dazed, but the teacher said, "John, you missed it." Then he sat down and I had my own fun.
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The day I was 14 years old, I went to work (they didn't call it accepting a position in those days) for my brother-in-law, A.F. Bemis. I was to work for him till I was 21 years old, but after working for four and a half years, I quit to go to school. I had contracted to work the seven years for one hundred dollars and a good horse, which at that time was probably worth about $65, and was to get nine months schooling.
Up to the time I was 16 years old, I was the most bashful boy that ever came down the pike, couldn't even look at calico, even if it was on the counter in a store, without blushing a scarlet red, and this is the day I was cured of that terrible disease. One of our neighbors had a girl about 17 years old who was very large and strong as an ox and one day she came over to our house when there was no one present but my sister and as she passed me, she caught me around the body with both her arms and pinioned my arms as though they were in a vise and then kissed me in the mouth.
I yelled like a whipped pup, but she continued to kiss me and called me her little darling. I found it was no use to try to get away from her and my sister told me if I would kiss the girl she would quit, so I tried it and found it was the sweetest thing I ever tasted, and from that time on, I could look at calico without blinking an eye.
I was a slender stripling of a boy, but was always in good health, was not strong physically, but could run as far in a day as the road was cut out; the day I was 14 years old, I weighed 70 pounds, a little more than half the weight of most boys of that age.
I was a great hand to trap quails and prairie chickens and one winter I had fifteen quail traps and four chicken traps and caught over five hundred quails and about fifty chickens. I sold all the quail that we didn't use, and got 15 cents per dozen for them. It is amusing to me to hear people say a person cannot eat a quail a day for 30 days in succession. I would eat one for my dinner every day I was in school, then one for my supper, and another one for breakfast; but I was then a growing boy, and was always hungry.
About all the people went bare-footed from six to eight months of the year. As soon as the grass began to show, we would turn our feet out, and most of us would not put our shoes on again till the ground began to freeze, and sometimes I would have to go without shoes till nearly Christmas, as I was the youngest and we had to have our shoes made by a shoemaker. There were from one to three of them in every neighborhood, and when they were not busy making shoes, they would work at anything they could get to do. We had to get the hides from the cattle which had been butchered for beef and have them tanned at the tannery, as there were a number of them in the country. It took about a year to tan a hide; there was no such thing as going to a store to get a pair of shoes or boots, as there was not in all Iowa a store that kept them for sale. When we went bare-footed so long, the skin on the bottom of our feet was nearly as thick as common sole leather and I could go into a blackberry patch and tramp down the bushes and never get my feet hurt. Those were joyous days, never to return. I and about every other boy had our share of stone bruises on our heels, and frequently we would stub our toes against a rock or the root of a tree, and very likely the nail would come off, and then we would have to have our toe tied up for some time. I will say right here that no boy knows how to enjoy life till he has had his toes stubbed a few times and lost the nails.
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Some time ago I gave The Republican an account of my experience in smoking tobacco, and since then I have been asked many times if I ever learned to chew, and if so if I had quit, and if it was as hard to quit chewing as it was to quit smoking. Now I am going to answer those questions in their order. First --- I learned to chew tobacco. Second --- Yes, I quit its use. Third --- You judge for yourself.
When I was past 12 years of age, there were several boys in our neighborhood, from 15 to 18 years of age, who thought they would soon be men if they learned to chew tobacco and could spit at a fly a rod away and hit it nine times out of ten. Among those boys was one of my brothers and another boy by the name of Ed Petty. I had watched those boys for a long time, and it seemed to me as though they were getting a whole lot larger, and it occurred to me that it might be a good idea for me to begin to learn, as I was in a mighty big hurry to be a man.
So one Sunday evening about the first of January when it was real cold, Ed Petty came along and asked me if my brother was at home and I told him, no, so I thought as Petty was going to church I would go along. Just as we got down the road, he was taking a chew of tobacco and I asked him if I couldn't have a chew, too. He handed me the plug and I took a good big bite and that was my first experience. I found it was very sweet, being sweetened with licorice and up to that time I was very fond of licorice, nearly all the time having some licorice root in my pocket. I chewed away at that tobacco and of course I swallowed a good deal of it.
As we went into the house, I was pretty cold and sat down near the stove, which was red hot. In less than two minutes everything began to turn green and I got real dizzy and started for the door and just as I reached it I concluded I had more supper than I needed and began to give some of it away. Oh, no, I wasn't sick --- but just felt bad, that was all.
About that time some of the boys had found out what the matter was, and began to console with me, but I just told them to go away and leave me alone. Then I started for home, but every little bit I would have to stop and give away some more of my supper, but it was soon all gone. Then, I began to give away my dinner, but I finally got home, all the time trying to throw up, and when Mother saw me she asked what was the matter and I lied right there and told her I didn't know but I was awful sick. The last part of my story was true.
I got to bed and every little while would try to give away my breakfast; my poor loving mother sat by my bed all night, trying to comfort me, as she thought I would surely die before morning, and I was awfully afraid I wouldn't die. I was so sick and believed I would ever be real well again. From that day to the present time I have never had a chew of tobacco in my mouth, but there are times when I think I can taste that tobacco. The kind of tobacco used was called dog leg; it was about as black as could be and the plugs were about 10 inches long and as crooked as the hind leg of a dog, from which it derived its name.
To be continued
1 comment:
Very interesting !
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