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THE LIST PRICE
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© The Curtis Publishing Company, from a Copley Print. © Curtis & Cameron, Boston PRISCILLA AND JOHN ALDEN
REAL STORIES FROM OUR HISTORY
ROMANCE AND ADVENTURE IN
AUTHENTIC RECORDS OF
THE DEVELOPMENT OF
THE UNITED STATES
BY
JOHN T. FARIS
AUTHOR OF "WINNING THE OREGON COUNTRY "THE ALASKAN PATHFINDER," ETC.
GINN AND COMPANY
BOSTON • NEW YORK • CHICAGO • LONDON ATLANTA • DALLAS • COLUMBUS • SAN FRANCISCO
COPYRIGHT, 1916, BY JOHN T. FARIS ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
216.9
r
QEfte gtftenaum
G1NN AND COMPANY • PRO PRIETORS • BOSTON • U.S.A.
In its report to the National Education Association, the Committee of Eight on the Study of History in the Elementary Schools, appointed by the American Historical Society, said, " Our history teaching in the past has failed largely because it has not been picturesque enough."
The committee also outlined a method by which the lacking element could be supplied. Among other things this was said, " Only typical events should receive em phasis, and these should be so grasped and so presented as to make definite impression."
Emphasis was laid on "the giving of a sense of reality and appealing to the feelings" by " reading source material like letters, journals, diaries and other personal accounts from the pens of men and women who took part in the events they narrate or witnessed the scenes they portray," and by the interpretation of these sources.
In preparing " Real Stories from Our History " the author has kept in mind this report which voiced the plea made by teachers for books that would give human interest to facts that to many seem remote and colorless.
In many cases the facts in this volume have been drawn from original sources. Parts of journals and diaries have been presented and interpreted. The effort has been made to give vivid pictures of the life of the colonists, to tell stories of the pioneers, and to suggest stages in the development
544232
vi REAL STORIES FROM OUR HISTORY
of the country by describing the changing means of trans portation and communication. In most cases the stories center} about/ $%":iiiah or the woman who is vitally con nected .with,. the incicleJits told.
\ : tfe" author igritpfyliy acknowledges his indebtedness to the following publishers and authors for the use of copy righted material : G. P. Putnam's Sons : " Life and Jour nals of J. J. Audubon " ; Bonsai's "Edward Fitzgerald Beale." Charles Scribner's Sons : Bowne's " A Girl's Life Eighty Years Ago" ; Scribners Magazine : Vaughn's " The Thirtieth Anniversary of a Great Invention." The Mac- millan Co. : Schafer's " History of the Pacific Northwest " ; Johnson's " Old Time Schools and School Books " ; Chan- ning and Lansing's " Story of the Great Lakes " ; Spears' " Story of the New England Whalers." The Burrows Brothers Co. : Wagner's " Adventures of Zenas Leonard." Preston and Rounds Co. : Isham and Brown's " Early Connecticut Houses." A. C. McClurg & Co. : Houghton's Expedition of the Donner Party " ; Bradley's " Story of the Pony Express." The Arthur H. Clark Co. : " Fordham's Per sonal Narrative " ; Hulbert's '" The Cumberland Road." Houghton Mifflin Co. : " Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals." The Yale University Press : Farrand's " A Journey to Ohio in 1810." The Grafton Press : Buckman's " Old Steamboat Days on the Hudson." J. B. Lippin- cott Co. : Talbot's "The Railway Conquest of the World.". Little, Brown, and Co. : Crawford's " Social Life in Old New England." Sachse's " The Wayside Inns of the Lan caster Roadside." Henry Holt and Co.: Carter's "When Railroads were New." Hurst and Co. : Kennedy's "Won ders and Curiosities of the Railway."
CONTENTS ] •-
CHAPTER PAGE
I. COMING TO THE COLONIES 3
II. FIRST EXPERIENCES IN THE NEW LAND .... 10
III. THE HOUSES OF THE COLONISTS 17
IV. WITH THE CAROLINA EXPLORERS 24
V. GOING TO CHURCH IN EARLY DAYS 29
VI. GOING TO SCHOOL IN OLD NEW ENGLAND ... 38
VII. CARRIED AWAY BY THE INDIANS 45
VIII. THE BEGINNINGS OF A GREAT CITY 52
IX. AN EARLY HOME NEAR PHILADELPHIA .... 60
X. THE OLDEST LIBRARY IN AMERICA 66
XI. A ROMANCE OF COLONIAL DAYS 71
XII. THE HEART OF AN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY GIRL . 77
XIII. WHALE-FISHING IN COLONIAL DAYS 85
XIV. ADVENTURES OF AN EARLY FUR TRADER ... 93 XV. WHEN THE WEST WAS NEW 98
XVI. WHEN LOUISIANA WAS BOUGHT FROM FRANCE . 104
XVII. AN ENGLISH IMMIGRANT'S JOURNEY TO ILLINOIS
TERRITORY no
XVIII. GLIMPSES OF WESTERN PIONEER LIFE . . . . 116
XIX. THE RED RIVER RAFT 121
XX. A DAY IN THE REPUBLIC OF TEXAS 127
XXI. ON AN OLD STAGE ROAD 134
XXII. A PIONEER TRAVELER ON THE ROAD 141
XXIII. GEORGE WASHINGTON, CANAL BUILDER .... 147
vii
viii 'REAL STORIES FROM OUR HISTORY
CHAPTER PAGE
XXIV. WHEN THE CANAL WAS IN ITS GLORY .... 154
..XXV. ,TjiE.G,REA-r NATIONAL ROAD 161
*ACK.GS£ T-H'E PLAINS IN 1846 169
": '*• :Tter Jofrrney 169
! II. S-tanvittg in the Snow 176
III. Finding a Home 182
XXVII. THE FIRST BEARER OF CALIFORNIA GOLD . . 191
XXVIII. THE PONY EXPRESS 196
XXIX. THE FORGOTTEN CAMEL CORPS 201
XXX. FREIGHTING ON THE PLAINS 207
XXXI. THE FIRST VESSEL ON THE GREAT LAKES . . 213
XXXII. A DISAPPOINTED INVENTOR 220
XXXIII. THE FIRST PRACTICAL STEAMBOATS 229
XXXIV. EARLY STEAMBOAT DAYS ON THE GREAT LAKES 236 XXXV. THE FIRST STEAMBOAT ON THE OHIO .... 242
XXXVI. EARLY RAILROAD DREAMERS 250
XXXVII. TESTING EARLY STEAM LOCOMOTIVES .... 256
XXXVIII. A PIONEER RAILROAD 262
XXXIX. THE BUILDING OF ft OLD IRONSIDES " . . . . 269
XL. PRIMITIVE RAILROAD CONTRIVANCES .... 276
XLI. THE FIRST TRANSCONTINENTAL RAILROAD . . 283
XLII. THE STORY OF THE TELEGRAPH 290
XLIII. THE MARVELOUS HISTORY OF THE TELEPHONE . 295
INDEX 3°3
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
Priscilla and John Alden Frontispiece
The Company of the Pilgrims 4
Model of the Half Moon, Henry Hudson's Ship 6
John Winthrop 1 1
Indian Village 14
Cellar-Houses 18
Primitive Sleeping Quarters 20
In the Kitchen 21
A Seventeenth-Century House 22
A Landing in the Province of Carolina 26
St. David's Church, Radnor, Pennsylvania 30
Pilgrims going to Church 33
Interior of St. Peter's Church, Philadelphia 35
Old Swedes Church, Philadelphia 36
An Old Schoolhouse 39
The Plantation School where Thomas Jefferson learned to Read 41
Interior of a Colonial Schoolhouse at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania 43
The Garrison House 46
The Dustin Memorial 48
Hannah Dustin's Application for Church Membership .... 49
Type of William Penn's Ship, Welcome 53
Penn's Treaty with the Indians 54
The Old Courthouse, Philadelphia 56
The Letitia Penn House 57
An Early Treaty with the Indians 58
The Home in the Garden of Delight 61
The Cypress in Bartram's Garden as it was in 1875 63
William Penn's Desk 68
Brainerd preaching to the Indians 72
On the Way to her Marriage 75
x REAL STORIES FROM OUR HISTORY
PAGE
A Belle of the Colonies 79
A Sampler done by Clarissa Emerson 8 1
The Chase 86
" Cutting in " a Whale 87
Abandoned Whaling Ships in the Ice 90
The Whaling Fleet 91
Interrupted 94
Lewis and Clark on the Upper Missouri . . . . • . . . . 101
New Orleans in 1803 105
The Cabildo, the Spanish Courthouse in New Orleans .... 108
On the Road in Early Days. The Conestoga Wagon . . . . in
Pioneers on a Flatboat 113
A Pioneer Gristmill 119
Tearing away the Raft 1 23
General Sam Houston 128
The Alamo, San Antonio, Texas 130
At the Philadelphia Terminus 135
Model of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh Stagecoach 138
Conestoga Wagon. " Philadelphia to Pittsburgh 20 Days " . . 139
Crossing the Alleghenies 143
On the Old Patowmack Canal 148
Within Sight of Washington 149
George Washington's Coach 152
A Packet Boat on the Erie Canal 156
The Iron Steamboat R. F. Stockton 158
Mail Coach, Washington to Columbus 163
One of the Massive Bridges 165
Pioneers on the Plains 171
At the End of the Day 174
A Rest by the Way 177.
rf Westward the Course of Empire takes its Way " 185
San Francisco in 1849 193
A Pony Express Rider on the Lookout for Indians 199
The Camel Corps in the Desert 203
Freighting Provisions across the Plains 208
Part of the Caravan 210
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xi
PAGE
Niagara Falls .215
Building of the Griffon 216
Bowlder and Tablet on the Site of the Griffon Shipyard . . . 218
Fitch's Steamboat 222
Fitch's Third Steamboat, 1 788 226
Fulton's First Experiment with Paddles, 1779 230
The Clermont 233
The Walk-in-the-Water 239
The New Orleans 243
Review of Steamers, Pittsburgh, 1911 247
Horse-driven Locomotive 251
Junction of Pennsylvania State Canal and the Railroad . . . . 253
Stagecoach on Rails 254
Canal Barge at the Summit of the Allegheny Portage . . . . 259
Old State Portage Railway, crossing Alleghenies 259
The Tom Thumb 260
The De Witt Clinton and the First Train in New York State . . 264
Passenger Station and Hotel in the Allegheny Mountains . . . 266
" Old Ironsides " 270
" The Traveler," Baltimore and Ohio Railroad 272
" The York," Baltimore and Ohio Railroad 272
An Early Transportation Announcement 273
"John Bull" Locomotive and Train 277
Freight Car, 1832 278
The First Train from Baltimore to St. Louis, 1857 279
" The Atlantic," Baltimore and Ohio Railroad 280
" The Costell," Baltimore and Ohio Railroad 281
The Evolution of Transportation in Four Stages 285
Driving the Last Spike. Union Pacific and Central Pacific Railroads 287 Recording Instrument on which the First Telegraphic Message
was Received 291
An Early Telephone Switchboard . 296
A Modern Bell-Telephone Switchboard 297
Salem to Boston 298
Philadelphia to San Francisco 299
REAL STORIES FROM OUR HISTORY
Somehow a boy about whom we have simply heard does not seem very real. We may be told that he lives only a thousand miles away, but he seems like a myth, until, perhaps, we have a letter from him. Then he seems like a real boy.
In like manner, it is hard to realize that the first settlers in the American Colonies were real people, they lived so long ago.
But a peep into the diary kept by Captain John Winthrop, one of the first settlers, will make him seem as real as the boy a thousand miles away when the first letter is received from him.
^
CHAPTER I
COMING TO THE COLONIES
Our children and others that were sick, and lay groaning in the cabin, we pitched out, and having stretched a rope from the steerage to the mainmast, we made them stand, some of one side and some of the other, and sway it up and down till they were warm, and by this means they soon grew well and strong.
Thus John Winthrop wrote, in his diary, of the treatment given to the passengers on the good ship Arbella, which sailed with other vessels from Southampton, England, on March 22, 1631, bear ing toward the longed-for American home many of those who had cast in their fortunes with the Company of Massachusetts Bay.
Of the four ships in the fleet the Arbella was the largest. A vessel of three hundred and fifty
..4-: 5
REAL'. STORIES FROM OUR HISTORY
tons, carrying twenty-eight guns and fifty-two men, would not seem large in this clay when a steamer of ten thousand tons burden, carrying a crew of hun dreds of men, seems small ; but it was a fair-sized vessel for the days when the first colonists came.
THE COMPANY OF THE PILGRIMS From a film by Thomas A. Edison, Inc.
The departure of the fleet was an important event. As the vessel approached Yarmouth Castle a salute was given and returned, and Captain Burleigh, captain of the castle, went aboard the Arbella. When he left the vessel the captain of the Arbella " gave him four shot out of the fore castle for his farewell."
COMING TO THE COLONIES 5
But the twenty-eight guns were not for salutes only. Fearing that it might be necessary to fight some enemy on the high seas, the men were care fully trained to take their places at the guns. One of the first duties of the captain was to learn who could be depended on to handle a musket.
Two days later everybody on board thought that the expected enemy was about to attack the Ar- bella. Eight sail were sighted, which were thought to be Spanish vessels. As Spain was then at war with England, the decks were cleared for action, and the guns, powder chests, and fireworks were made ready. Cabins which were in the way of the guns were taken down ; bedding, which might catch fire, was thrown overboard, and a ball of wildfire fastened to an arrow of a crossbow was sent far out on the water, where it burned a long time.
The women and children were hurried to the lower 'deck, where they would be safe. Not one of these showed fear, though all knew the danger, "for," as John Winthrop wrote, "our trust was in the Lord of Hosts ; and the courage of our cap tain, and his care and diligence, did much to encourage us."
Yet there was no reason for the warlike prepa rations. When the ships drew near, it was seen that they were all friendly vessels. Shots were
REAL STORIES FROM OUR HISTORY
fired as salutes, and "fear and danger was turned into mirth." Thus relieved, the captain of the Ar- bella paused to buy fresh fish of passing fishing boats. The Governor and his company wished to put off as long as possible the days when the ship's company would be dependent on salt meat.
MODEL OF THE HALF MOON, HENRY HUDSON'S SHLP
That there was strict discipline on the vessel may be seen from an entry in John Winthrop's journal:
This day two young men falling at odds and fighting, contrary to the orders which we had published and set up in the ship, were adjudged to walk upon the deck till night with their hands bound behind them ; and another man, for using contemptuous speeches in our presence, was laid in bolts till he submitted himself.
COMING TO THE COLONIES 7
The vessels of the fleet managed to keep close together, in spite of stormy weather. Sometimes, when the sea permitted, the captains would gather on one of the ships for a feast, while the women and children ate apart in the cabin. In this way the monotony of the voyage was broken.
When more than three weeks had passed, there was an unusually stormy Sunday, but the storm was not made an excuse for omitting the regu lar services. Two long sermons were preached that day.
Every day or two there was trouble with some passenger or member of the crew. Once two lands men broke into a vessel of " strong water," and stole some of it ; for this they were put in irons, one of them was whipped, and they were fed for a day on bread and water. It was thought worth noting that not all those on board were trouble some. " We have many young gentlemen in our ship, who behave themselves well," was once written in the journal.
As the vessels drew nearer to the new home, the Governor was watching for unusual sights. He noted the fact that the moon looked much smaller than he had ever seen it, that many " fowls " were seen flying and swimming, and that the sun was not so warm as in England. Because of this
8 REAL STORIES FROM OUR HISTORY
last fact he urged that others who might come on later vessels should carry warmer clothing than the passengers on the Arbella had thought necessary.
Usually the passengers and their servants were cheerful and happy, even though they were con fined to narrow quarters and had comparatively little to eat. It was necessary to have strict rules for the distribution of the food, and those who disobeyed had to be punished. One case men tioned is that of a servant who had promised a child a small present if the child would give him three biscuits a day during the voyage. In this way he received about forty biscuits, which he sold to other servants. When his action was dis covered, his hands were tied to a bar, a basket filled with stones was hung about his neck, and he was made to stand thus for two hours.
Food was so scarce when Cape Cod was near that the Arbella was anchored and lines were put out. In two hours sixty-seven codfish were taken, " near a yard and a half long, and a yard in com pass." ' This came very seasonably," the record is made, " for our salt fish was now spent, and we were taking care for our victuals for this day."
At Cape Ann most of the people went ashore, and came back with many fine strawberries.
COMING TO THE COLONIES 9
A few days later the vessel went on to " Mat- tachusetts, to find out a place for our sitting down." This was found after sailing up Boston Harbor and six miles up the Mystic River.
Other vessels of the fleet arrived a few days later. When the Talbot came, it was reported that fourteen passengers had died during the voyage. The captain of the Success reported that many of his passengers " were near starved." But the hardships of the long voyage were forgotten when men, women, and children left the vessels for a new home in the land of their dreams.
Source. JOHN WINTHROP. The History of New England from 1630 to 1649, Vol. I. Phillips & Farnham, Boston, 1825.
What did the colonists do when they landed ? What did they think of the new country? Were they sorry they had come? How did they stand the severe winter weather ? How did they secure needed supplies ? What did they wear, and what did they eat? How did they get along with the Indians?
CHAPTER II
FIRST EXPERIENCES IN THE NEW LAND
Three weeks after the landing of the Arbella's company in Massachusetts, John Winthrop wrote to his son in England :
For the country itself, I can discern little difference be tween it and our own. We have had only two days which I have observed more hot than in England. Here is as good land as I have seen, but none so bad as there. Here is sweet air, fair rivers, and plenty of springs, and the water better than in England. Here can be no want of anything to those who bring means to raise out of the earth and sea.
In another letter he said :
We are here in a paradise. Though we have not beef and mutton, &c., yet (God be praised) we want them not, our Indian Corn answers for all. Yet, here is fowl and fish in great plenty.
In September, after there had been many hard ships, he wrote to his wife:
EXPERIENCES IN THE NEW LAND II
I like so well to be here as I do not repent my coming ; and if I were to come again, I would not have altered my course, though I had foreseen all these afflictions. I never fared better in my life, never slept better, never had more content of mind, which comes only by the Lord's good hand ; for we have not the like means of those comforts here, which we had in England.
The colonists soon found that there were many things they lacked, although they had tried to foresee all pressing needs when preparing for their voyage. And so, when John Winthrop, Jr., was planning to come out from England, he was asked to bring certain supplies:
Bring . . . meal, and peas, and some oatmeal, and sugar, fruit, figs, and puffs, and good store of saltpetre, and con serve of red roses and mithridate, good store of pitch, and ordinary suet or tallow. Bring none but wine vinegar, and not much of that, and be sure that the cask be good ; store of oiled calves-skins of the largest ; and the strongest
JOHN WINTHROP
12 REAL STORIES FROM OUR HISTORY
welt-leather shoes and stockings for children ; and hats of all sizes. If you could bring two or three hundred sheep skins and lamb-skins with the wool on, dyed red, it would be a great commodity here ; and the coarsest woolen cloth . . . of sad colors, and some red ; millstones, some two foot and some three foot over, with bracings ready cast, and rings and pull-bells ; store of shoemaker's thread and hobnails ; chalk and chalkline ; and a pair or two, or more, of large, steel compasses ; store of coarse linen, and some birdlime.
Many of these items were in demand because of the severe winters, which were a surprise to the colonists. On one occasion John Winthrop wrote to his son :
Winter hath begun early with us. The bay hath been frozen all over, but is now open again ; and we had a snow last week of much depth in many places. It came with so violent a storm, as it put by our lecture for that day.
A letter dated "Xlth, 22, 1637," and signed "JO.W." gives another vivid picture:
We had letters from Conectacott, where they were shut up with snow above a month since, and we at Boston were almost ready to break up for want of wood, but that it pleased the Lord to open the bay (which was so frozen as men went over it in all places,) and mitigate the rigour of the season ; blessed be his name. On Friday was fortnight, a pinnace was cast away upon Long Island by Natascott, and Mr. Babbe and others, who were in her, came home upon the ice. We have had one man frozen to death, and some others have lost their fingers and toes.
EXPERIENCES IN THE NEW LAND 13
Another company of shipwrecked colonists kin dled a fire on a barren shore, "but, having no hatchet, they could get little wood, and were forced to lie in the open air all night, being extremely cold." In the morning they were seen by two Indian squaws, who brought their husbands. The men took the refugees to their wigwams, minis tered to them, and built a wigwam for their own use. When one of the company died as a result of the exposure, the Indians hewed a hole in the frozen ground, buried the body, and covered it with a great heap of wood, to keep it from the wolves.
Other evidences of friendliness on the part of the Indians are recorded in the letters. Once " Wahginnacut, a sagamore upon the River Quo- nehtacut, which lies west of Naragancet, came to the governour at Boston, with John Sagamore, and Jack Straw and divers of their sannops, and brought a letter to the governour from Mr. Ende- cott to this effect: That the said Wahginnacut was very desirous to have some Englishmen to come plant in his country, and offered to find them corn and give them yearly eighty skins of beaver, and that the country was very fruitful, &c., and wished that there might be two men sent with him to see the country."
14 REAL STORIES FROM OUR HISTORY
This invitation was not accepted, for already the colonists had reason to suspect treachery. They feared the Indians, perhaps many times without
reason.
In his jour nal Governor Winthrop re corded an ad venture which revealed this fear:
Thegovernour, being at his fine house at Mistick, walked out after supper, and took a piece in his hand, supposing he might see a wolf (for they came daily about the house, and killed swine and calves, &c. ;) and, being about half a mile off, it grew suddenly dark, so as, in coming home, he mistook his path, and went till he came to a little house of Sagamore John, which stood empty. There he stayed, and having a piece of match in his pocket, (for he always carried about him match and a compass . . . ) he
INDIAN VILLAGE
EXPERIENCES IN THE NEW LAND 15
made a good fire, . . . but could not sleep. It was (through God's mercy) a warm night, but a little before day it began to rain, and, having no cloak, he made shift by a long pole to climb up into the house. In the morning, there came hither an Indian squaw, but perceiving her before he had opened the door, he barred her out ; yet she stayed there a great while essaying to get in, and at last she went away, and he returned safe home, his servants having been much perplexed for him, and having walked about, and shot off pieces, and hallooed in the night, but he heard them not.
Dread of the Indians led to the desire for a fortified town. On December 6, 1631, "the gov- ernour and most of the assistants, and others, met at Roxbury, and there agreed to build a town for tified upon the neck between that and Boston, and a committee was appointed to consider of all things requisite, &c."
On December 14 " the committee met at Rox bury, and upon further consideration, for reasons, it was concluded that we could not have a town in the place aforesaid : i . Because men would be forced to keep two families. 2. There was no running water ; and if there were any springs, they would not suffice the town. 3. The most part of the people had built already, and would not be able to build again." " So we agreed to meet at Watertown that day sen'night," John Winthrop concluded, "and in the meantime other places should be viewed."
16 REAL STORIES FROM OUR HISTORY
On December 21 the company met at Water- town, " and there upon view of a place a mile be neath the town, all agreed it a fit place for a fortified town, and we took time to consider fur ther about it."
A tax of £60 was ordered for the expenses of fortifying the new town. But there was difficulty in raising the amount. At a public hearing in Boston, citizens of Watertown declared that "it was not safe to pay money after that sort, for fear of bringing themselves and posterity into bondage."
This objection was speedily answered, the taxes were paid, and the work of town building was continued.
Source. JOHN WINTHROP. The History of New England from 1630 to 1649, Vol. I. Phillips & Farnham, Boston, 1825.
Step over the threshold into the homes of some of the early colonists, and see how they lived. Of course the first shelters were crude, but they were homes, and many who lived in them were as happy there as when they were able to replace them with fine houses.
Y^^
CHAPTER III
THE HOUSES OF THE COLONISTS
It is known that many of the first settlers in Connecticut, especially the poor people, lived for a time in what were called cellars. These were built in much the same way as the outside vegetable cellars used by farmers to-day.
When preparing to build a cellar-house, the colonist looked for a hillside or a bank of earth, and in the side of this dug a shallow pit. The excavation in the bank was about seven feet deep at the rear, the earth walls sloping to the ground level at the front. The next step was to line the sides of the excavation with rough stones or with logs set upright and close together; these walls reached to a height of perhaps seven feet on all sides. Thus the earth bank at the rear was as high as the walls. Sometimes the earth was banked high on the sides also.
i8 REAL STORIES FROM OUR HISTORY
The roof was made either of logs, plastered with clay, or with bark or thatch on poles. While no drawings of such houses are known, it is thought from descriptions written at the time that the roof was somewhat steep.
Many of the well-to-do colonists built more ambitious houses. Skilled artisans came to the
CELLAR-HOUSES
colonies with the first immigrants, and from the beginning they had plenty of work. Nicholas Clark was one of these early Connecticut builders. He constructed a house for John Talcott, of which the owner's son wrote as follows:
The kitchen that now stands on the north side of the house that I live in was the first house that my father built in Hartford in Connecticut Colony, and was done . . .
THE HOUSES OF THE COLONISTS 19
in the year 1635. My father and mother and his family . . . lived first in said Kitchen, which was first on west side of chimney. The great barn was built in the year 1636, and underpinned in 1637, and was the first barn that was raised in the colony. The east side of this house . . . was built with the porch that is, in the year 1638, and the chimneys were built in 1638
By ''chimneys," the writer probably meant "flues." ,At first there was a wooden chimney, at the end of a single room. When the stone chimney was built, another room was added against the chimney. Later additions made the house a story-and-a-half structure, with two rooms on each floor, and a lean-to kitchen.
In most two-story houses the rooms above were larger than those below, since the -wall of the upper story often projected about eighteen inches, after the style of houses in which some of the colonists had lived in England. Such houses may be seen to-day in old sections of Hartford, Boston, and Philadelphia.
These houses were made warm by filling the wall spaces with mixed hay and clay. Clapboards hewn by the builder's ax were nailed outside this protecting mixture.
A study of the last wills of several of the colo nists reveals curious facts as to the houses. For
20 REAL STORIES FROM OUR HISTORY
instance, the will of Thomas Nowell of Windsor, who died in 1648, showed that he was the proud owner of a frame house of two stories, for, in speaking of the parlor and the kitchen, he men tioned also the " parlor loft," and the " kitchen Lofts
PRIMITIVE SLEEPING QUARTERS
and Garrits." The parlor loft contained a bed, worth ^5. Evidently this was the best bedroom. Another will declared that the house occupied by the testator should be divided among the chil dren. This was done, not by selling the building and dividing the proceeds, but by actually dividing the house! This was possible because the houses
THE HOUSES OF THE COLONISTS 21
of that day were built to last for centuries, their timbers being many times larger than those used in houses of similar size to-day. The halves of a house thus divided would be placed on separate lots. A house in Farmington, Connecticut, built
IN THE KITCHEN
between 1650 and 1660, was thus divided; the halves were occupied as separate tenements as late as 1910.
The Whitman house, in the same town, built probably about 1660, was in use two hundred and fifty years later, almost unchanged. Chimney, roof, clapboards, and some other parts have been
22 REAL STORIES FROM OUR HISTORY
renewed, but " otherwise the venerable house is in the shape in which the carpenter and the mason left it, even to the two flights of stairs which ascend from the first floor to the garret, and the stone steps from the hall by which you may still reach the cellar under the parlor."
A SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY HOUSE
While the houses built at this period varied in size, they did not vary much in plan. The main rooms were practically the same in all the houses. The great stone chimney was the central feature. On one side was the hall, or living room, on the other side the parlor, of equal size. At the back
THE HOUSES OF THE COLONISTS 23
was the lean-to addition, the kitchen, with its fire place in the side of the chimney. At the front was the entry hall, in those days called the porch. The stairway was against the chimney, which, of course, had no opening on that side.
The Joseph Whiting house, which long stood on Main Street in Hartford, near the corner of Charter Oak Avenue, had an unusually steep roof, under which were the following rooms, as named in a document on file at Hartford : On the first story were parlor, dwelling room (the hall), kitchen, little bedroom. In the second story were the parlor chamber, the little chamber, the middle chamber, the lean-to chamber, and the kitchen chamber. Then there were the garret and the cellar. All these rooms except the hall and the parlor were added to the original dwelling at a later date. In the grounds were the workshop and the " old shopp."
The document gives also the value of this large house : " The Mantion House and homestead on rood with the barn stable and outhouses ^"155."
Property was not high in those days.
Source. NORMAN M. ISHAM and ALBERT F. BROWN. Early Con necticut Houses. Preston and Rounds Co., Providence, R. I. The illus tration of cellar-houses on page 1 8 is adapted from this volume.
Hundreds of miles to the south of the land which seemed so strange to John Winthrop and his little company, and a little after the time of the landing of those early home-seekers, an explorer kept his eyes open for marvels. Once he wrote to England of " fireflies who carry their lanthorns in their tails."
CHAPTER IV
WITH THE CAROLINA EXPLORERS
On October 16, 1663, William Hilton sailed up " Cape Fair River," as he called it, for a dis tance of one hundred and fifty miles. He said of his exploration :
We found a good tract of land, dry, well-wooded, pleas ant and delightful, as we have seen anywhere in the world, with great burthen of grasse on it, the land being very level, with steep banks on both sides the river, and in some places very high, the wood stored with abundance of deer and turkies everywhere ; we never going on shoar, but saw of each, also partridges, great store, cranes abundance, conies, which we saw in several places ; we heard several wolves howling in the woods, and saw where they had torn a deer in pieces. Also in the river we saw great store of duck, teils, widgeon, and in the woods great flocks of parrakeetos (a species now almost extinct) ; the timber that the woods afford for the most part consisting of oaks of four or five sorts, all differing in leaves, but all bearing akorns very good ; we measured many of the oaks in several
24
WITH THE CAROLINA EXPLORERS 25
places, which we found to be in bignesse some two, some three and others almost four fathoms ; in height, before you come to boughs or limbs, forty, fifty, sixty foot, and some more.
In 1666 Robert Horns printed a similar descrip tion of the country, and added a striking appeal for immigration :
Such as are here tormented with much care how to get worth to gain a livelyhood, or that with their labor can hardly get a comfortable subsistence, shall do well to go to this place, where any man whatever, that is but willing to take moderate pains, may be assured of a most comfortable subsistence, and be in a way to raise his fortunes far be yond what he could ever hope for in England. Let no man be troubled at the thoughts of being a servant for four or five years, for I can assure you that many men give money with their children to serve seven years (as appren tices), to take more pain and fare nothing so well as the servants in this plantation will do.
For fear men only would listen to these fer vent appeals, the following was added :
If any maid or single woman have a desire to go over, they will think themselves in the Golden Age, when men paid a doury for their wives ; for if they be but civil, and under 50 years of age, some honest man or other will purchase them for their wives.
In 1666 Robert Sandford made a voyage to the province of Carolina. When in the vicinity of
26 REAL STORIES FROM OUR HISTORY
Bohicket Creek, he left his boat, with a small party, in search of the "Towne" of the Indian " Casique " l of the neighborhood. He told of his trip thus :
Wee crossed one meadowe of not less than a thousand acres, all firme, good land and as rich a soyle as any, clothed
A LANDING IN THE PROVINCE OF CAROLINA
with a fine grasse and not passing knee deepe, but very thick sett and fully adorned with yeallow flowers ; a pasture not inferior to any I have seen in England. . . . Being entered the towne wee were conducted into a large house of a circular forme (their general house of state). Right against the entrance was a high seate of sufficient breadth for half a dozen persons on which sate the Cassique himself
1 A cacique (modern spelling) was a chief or prince among the Indians.
WITH THE CAROLINA EXPLORERS 27
with his wife on his right hand. He was an old man of large stature and bone. Round the house from each side of the throne quite to the entrance were lower benches filled with the whole rabble of men, women and children. . . . Capt. Gary and my selfe were placed on the highe seats on each side of the Casique, and presented with skins, accompanied with their ceremonies of welcome and friend- shipp (by stroking their shoulders with their palmes and sucking in their breath the whilst). The town is scituate on the side or rather in the skirts of a faire forest, in which at several distances are diverse fields of maiz with many little houses straglingly amongst them. . . . Before the doore of their statehouse is a spacious walke rowed with trees on both sides, tall and full branched, not much unlike to elms, which serves for the exercise and recreation of the men, who by couples runn after a marble bowle troled out alter nately by themselves, with six foote staves in their hands, which they tosse after the bowle in the race, and according to the laying of their staves win or loose the beeds they contend for ; an exercise approviable enough in the winter, but somewhat too violent (mee thought) for that season and noontide of the day. From this walk is another house aside from the round house for the children to sport in.
In 1682 Thomas Ashe wrote wonderingly of "great numbers of fire flies, who carry their lant- horns in their tails in dark nights, flying through the air, shining like sparks of fire, enlightening it with their golden spangles." This bit of de scription concluded in an even more startling
28 REAL STORIES FROM OUR HISTORY
manner: "Amongst large orange trees in the night, I have seen many of these flies, whose lights have appeared like hanging candles, or pendent flambeaus, which amidst the leaves and fruit yielded a light truly glorious to behold ; with three of these included in a glass bottle, in a very dark night, I have read very small characters." By descriptions like these the English people of the seventeenth century were lured to America.
Source. Manuscripts, etc., of the South Carolina Historical Society.
Think of a church building without a floor, without heat in the coldest weather, whose seats had no backs, and whose walls were thirty inches thick, because built for defense against the Indians. This was the sort of building in which many of the colonists worshiped on Sunday.
CHAPTER V
GOING TO CHURCH IN EARLY DAYS
When the first settlers came to America from England, they usually tried to secure a church building as soon as possible. Frequently they in sisted on having a place in which to worship God while their own houses were still incomplete. They were often content with primitive buildings, but as soon as possible the first structures were replaced.
These early settlers did not like to have a debt resting on the houses in which they were to wor ship. So, frequently, it was necessary to leave them unfinished. St. David's Church, at Radnor, Penn sylvania, begun in 1715, was long a mere shell. The people in the pews coulcl look up to the bare rafters which bore the marks of the woodsman's ax. For fifty years there was no floor; men and women were glad to stand on the bare ground. To-day
a congregation is proud to worship in this old
29
30 REAL STORIES FROM OUR HISTORY
building, which, except for a few minor features, looks nearly as it did almost two hundred years ago. Of course there were no stoves in those colonial churches. Foot stoves, full of hot embers, were carried into the pews by the members of the
ST. DAVID'S CHURCH, RADNOR, PENNSYLVANIA
congregation who could afford the luxury. Those who had slaves sent them with the stoves a little early. In many places there would be a company of these slaves waiting for their masters at the church door. When, one by one, the masters arrived a slave would separate himself from his
GOING TO CHURCH IN EARLY DAYS 31
fellows, precede his master to the pew, arrange the foot stove and respectfully retire to a seat in the gallery. At the close of the service he would return, take up the stove once more and carry it home that it might be in readiness for another Sunday. At a church in Albany, New York, it was a common thing to see from fifty to seventy- five of these slaves at the church door. It is said that at this same church in cold weather the men kept their hats on their heads, and protected their hands by burying them in muffs.
The introduction of stoves came slowly. In some places the foot stoves were still in use in 1825. When iron stoves were admitted to the churches, many of the worshipers did not like to give up their old ways. In the First Church of Hartford, Connecticut, worshipers insisted on bringing foot stoves long after the heating stoves were installed. Then warning was given that the sexton would carry from the building any foot stove found lighted after the beginning of service. In Albany, New York, heating stoves were placed on platforms level with the gallery, and from the gallery bridges ran across to the platforms, so that the sexton might reach the fires. It is no wonder that there was at first a preference for the old method of securing heat.
32 REAL STORIES FROM OUR HISTORY
The men were often seated on one side of the church while the women were across the aisle, but in many places it was thought best to have entire families sit together. For this purpose pews with high backs, each pew as large as a fair-sized closet, were provided. Seats were arranged on three sides of the interior of the pew.- Sometimes the seats were hinged and could be lifted up, thus giving the worshipers more standing room. The fourth side of the pew was devoted to the door. In some primitive churches, however, there was no such luxury. The seats were plain puncheon, without backs.
At Trinity Church, Wilmington, Delaware, the pews were allotted to the heads of families who had been most helpful in the work of building, the choicest pew to the best giver and worker. The occupants not only had a right to the pews thus allotted, so long as they lived, but they were privileged to sell them, or to bequeath them to their children after them. In King's Chapel, Boston, the two best pews were reserved for the rector and the governor. The next best were for " masters of vessels," and for the old men of the church. At Saybrook, Connecticut, the seats were plain, back less benches, and were assigned "according to rank, age, office, and estate." It was thought that the
33
34 REAL STORIES FROM OUR HISTORY
backless benches would restrain occupants from sleeping. Some wealthy members, not satisfied with this arrangement, were given permission to build pews at the sides of the pulpit.
The form of pulpit used in many of these old churches was a drum-shaped inclosure, perched on a pillar, with a sounding board, like a canopy, above it. A winding stair led to the pulpit. On the steps the boys were sometimes seated, the top step being the coveted position, for its occupant could proudly open the door for the minister when he entered the pulpit. From this pulpit the minister could look down on his entire congregation, while the people could see him only by craning their necks.
It was a problem how to get notices to the minister, for it was not always convenient to climb the long stairs. In the Dutch Reformed Church at Kingston, New York, an ingenious clerk, when receiving the notices of funerals, christenings, wed dings, or merrymakings, reached them up to the dominie on the end of a bamboo pole.
The colonists were poor, but they were liberal. Until 1795, in the Old Dutch Church at Albany, New York, the deacons would take up the collec tion in the midst of the dominie's sermon. They used bags at the ends of poles. Bells were attached to the bags to arouse any who were sleeping. At
GOING TO CHURCH IN EARLY DAYS 35
Hartford the members of the church were expected to march with their gifts to the deacons' table.
Money was not always at hand ; gifts were then made in produce. Christ Church, at Alexandria,
INTERIOR OF ST. PETER'S CHURCH, PHILADELPHIA
Virginia, was built by the sale of thirty-one thou sand pounds of tobacco. The pastor's salary was also paid in tobacco, while the poor of the church were supported by fines, paid in tobacco, for such offenses as "killing deer out of season," or "hunt ing on the Sabbath." In Kingston, New York, the pastor's salary was paid in wheat.
36 REAL STORIES FROM OUR HISTORY
Of course the early settlers had to be on their guard against Indians on Sunday as well as during the week. For this reason the Old North Church at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, was built on a hill. The First Dutch Reformed Church of New
OLD SWEDES CHURCH, PHILADELPHIA
York was built within the fort. In Schenectady a gallery was built solely for the use of those who watched for the Indians. Center Church, New Haven, had a turret, in which stood a sentinel every Sunday ; armed guards were stationed near at hand on the road. Two cannons were charged before
GOING TO CHURCH IN EARLY DAYS 37
each service. At Dover, New Hampshire, log forti fications surrounded the meetinghouse. Traces of the earth embankments, .raised for additional pro tection, are still to be seen. A drum was beaten to call the people to church, for fear the sound of a bell would tell the Indians that the people were absent from home. At Tarrytown, New York, the walls of Pocantico Church were thirty inches thick, to resist Indian attacks, while the church at Herkimer, New York, was buttressed for the same reason.
So well were these seventeenth-century churches constructed that a few of them are still in use. The Old Swedes Church, in Philadelphia, built in 1697, is occupied regularly. The Old Ship Church at Hingham, Massachusetts, though finished in 1682, is as stanch as ever and bids fair to last another century. No such buildings are erected to-day. While men have improved on some of the primitive methods of their forefathers, they do not seem to have learned to build for the centuries.
Source. NELLIE URNER WALLIXGTON. Historic Churches of America. Duffield & Co., New York.
J>ttUUU<AU^AVUKU^
First the church, then the school. Furniture was primitive, books were few, and every boy and girl had to pay tuition. Masters were stern and boys were whipped every day. And not even the wealthiest parent in the town was allowed to find fault
with the master.
CHAPTER VI
GOING TO SCHOOL IN OLD NEW ENGLAND
The boys of New England had a chance to go to school about as soon as they could go to church. Indeed, they were given more than a chance; they were compelled to attend under severe penalty for failure. Their parents had to pay the penalty, and in many cases they had to pay the tuition of the truants, too ; for this was the rule adopted by one town meeting, " Boys from six to twelve years of age shall pay the Schoolmaster, whether they go to school or not, four pence a week for Wrighters, and three pence a week for Readers."
The schoolhouse to which the " Readers and Wrighters " found their way for the few months in each winter when the teacher was provided, can not have been unlike the little one-room district schoolhouse still common in many parts of the country. The primitive schoolhouse " was usually a
38
SCHOOLS IN OLD NEW ENGLAND 39
small, one-room building which was entered through a shed-like hallway in which wood was piled and where hats, coats, and dinner-pails were also stored," says the author of " Social Life in Old New England." " Sometimes wood was furnished by the parents, the child of a stingy father being then, by
AN OLD SCHOOLHOUSE
common consent, denied intimate relations with the fire. After the time of fireplaces a large square stove in the center of the room was the usual method of heating. From this a long pipe, sus pended by chains, reached to the end of the building, where the chimney stood. Frequently the primitive heating-plant had to cope with the
40 REAL STORIES FROM OUR HISTORY
problem of raising the temperature from twelve below zero, when school opened, to a temperature favorable to ' wrighting.' "
In Dorchester, Massachusetts, in 1643, ^ was ordered that on summer days school should be in session from seven in the morning until five in the afternoon. In the winter the time was re duced one hour in the morning and one hour in the afternoon. The noon recess lasted two hours, from eleven to one, five days in the week. On Monday, for school kept six days in the week, there was another program. The to\vn selectmen told what wras to be done during these two hours on Monday:
The master shall call the scholars together between twelve and one of the clock to examine them what they have learned, at which time also he shall take notice of any mis demeanor or outrage that any of his scholars shall have com mitted on the sabbath, to the end that at some convenient time his admonition and correction may be administered.
He shall diligently instruct both in lessons and good liter ature, and likewise in point of good manners and dutiful behavior towards all, especially their superiors. Every day of the week at two of the clock in the afternoon, he shall catechize his scholars in the principles of the Christian religion.
He shall faithfully do his best to benefit his scholars, and not remain away from school unless necessary. He shall
SCHOOLS IN OLD NEW ENGLAND
equally and impartially teach such as are placed in his care, no matter whether their parents be poor or rich.
It is to be chief part of the schoolmaster's religious care to commend his scholars and his labors amongst them unto God by prayer morning and evening, taking care that his scholars do reverently attend during the same.
The rod of cor rection is a rule of God necessary some times to be used upon children. The schoolmaster shall have full power to punish any or all of his scholars, no mat ter who they are. No parent or other person living in the place shall go about to hinder the master in this. But if any parent or others shall think there is just cause of com plaint against the master for too much severity, they shall have liberty to tell him so in friendly and loving way.
The school in which these rules were observed was perhaps the first public school in America supported by general taxation. In 1637, when the
THE PLANTATION SCHOOL WHERE THOMAS JEFFERSON LEARNED TO READ
42 REAL STORIES FROM OUR HISTORY
town was less than two years old, arrangements were made to build a meetinghouse. Seven years later, in 1644, a school was arranged for, the vote of the town being as follows:
The said inhabitants, taking into consideration the great necessitie of providing some means for the Education of the youth in our s'd Towne, did with an unanimous con sent declare by voate their willingness to promote that worke, promising to put too their hands, to provide mainte nance for a Free School in our said towne.
And further did resolve and consent, testifying it by voate, to rayse the summe of Twenty pounds pr annu towards the maintaining of a School Mr. to keep a free School in our s'd towne.
And also did resolve and consent to betrust the s'd 20 pound pr annu & certain lands in our town previously set apart for publique use, into the hand of Feoffes to be per sonally chosen by themselves, to supply the s'd 20 pounds and the land afores'd to be improved for the use of the said School : that as the profits shall arise from ye s'd land, every man may be proportionately abated of his share of the s'd 20 pounds aforesaid, freely to be given to ye use aforesaid.
Five years later the fathers decided that their children must not go to school any longer in the church building ; they would build a schoolhouse for them. So the schoolhouse was made ready, a building fourteen feet long, with a great chimney four feet deep at one end, and fifteen feet wide.
SCHOOLS IN OLD NEW ENGLAND 43
Against the rear end of the chimney was to be a lean-to watch-house, six feet wide. In this watch- house a sentinel was always to be on guard at night, lest the town be surprised by Indians.
In the early schools little children learned the alphabet from a hornbook, which is described as
INTERIOR OF A COLONIAL SCHOOLHOUSE AT VALLEY FORGE, PENNSYLVANIA
" a rough piece of paper fastened on a slab of wood and covered with a transparent sheet of horn." As early as 1691 the hornbook was dis placed by the famous " New England Primer."
Unfortunately, girls were not admitted to the privileges of these early public schools. Many schools were not open to them until toward the close of the seventeenth century.
44 REAL STORIES FROM OUR HISTORY
Even the boys in many districts found little opportunity to go to school. Their school was in the open air, where hard work was to be done. ' They spent most of their time in the fields and the forests and along the rivers and the sea, hunt ing bears and deer, trapping foxes, shooting wild turkey, wild geese and wild ducks ; or fishing, riding, driving, swimming, rowing and sailing; or at work with those who were laying out roads through the woods, digging wells and ditches, mak ing walls and fences, assisting in building houses, barns, fortifications, churches, boats; laying out and cultivating gardens and planting orchards. They thus became hardened to the climate, and gained good constitutions, and moreover became acquainted with natural objects — rocks and soils ; animals wild and tame ; the trees and shrubs of the woods and the flowers and herbs of the garden and the fields."
Sources. MARY CAROLINE CRAWFORD. Social Life in Old New England. Little, Brown, and Company, Boston.
CLIFTON JOHNSON. Old Time Schools and School Books. The Macmillan Company, New York.
GEORGE B. EMERSON. Education in Massachusetts (Chapter XIII in " Massachusetts and its Early History." Lowell Institute Lectures, published by the Society).
X^U^
While Thomas Dustin, of Haverhill, Massachusetts, was build ing his second house, he was attacked by hostile Indians. The tragic story of the capture of his wife, of her trying experience in captivity, and of her escape from the red men, is one of the thrilling tales of the early days.
^
CHAPTER VII
CARRIED AWAY BY THE INDIANS
When Thomas and Hannah Dustin were mar ried in 1677, they built, near Haverhill, Massa chusetts, and not far from the left bank of the Merrimack River, a little house of imported brick. The house has disappeared, but frequently a visitor to the spot uncovers one of the bricks and marvels at the building material brought across the sea.
Later Thomas Dustin found deposits of clay near his home which led him to make experi ments in brickmaking. He was so successful that his product was in demand ; villagers said that the Haverhill bricks were fully as good as those brought from England.
Strong building material was needed, for hostile Indians were continually making attacks on the villagers. To afford protection against the savages, Mr. Dustin began to build a new house. As this
45
46 REAL STORIES FROM OUR HISTORY
house is still standing, it is possible to tell of its construction. A Haverhill resident says that " white oak, which is to-day well preserved, was used in its massive framework, and the floor and roof
timbers are put to gether with great wooden pins. In early days the win dows swung outward, and the glass was very thick, and set into the frames with lead."
On March 15, 1697, Mr. Dustin was at some distance from the old house, cut ting wood. All his children except the youngest, a baby, were playing near
by. Suddenly there was a war whoop. A company of Indians in war paint, brandishing tomahawks, burst from the forest. Gathering his children about him, Mr. Dustin started with them for the old house, to save his wife and baby. But he was too late. Another party of Indians had killed the
THE GARRISON HOUSE
CARRIED AWAY BY THE INDIANS 47
baby, and had carried away Mrs. Dustin and the nurse into the forest.
During the fifteen-day journey of one hundred and fifty miles to the stronghold of the Indians in the wilderness between the Contoocook and Merri- mack rivers, the captives endured untold hardships. Mrs. Dustin had but one shoe, and neither woman was clad for the journey. Snow and ice had not yet entirely disappeared, and the exposure was trying. At night they were closely guarded by two watchful Indians, so that the longed-for opportunity to escape did not present itself.
When they reached what is now known as Dustin Island, they found other captives there - two men, one woman, and seven children. There was also a boy, Samuel Leonardson, who had been captured a year before at Worcester, Massachusetts.
During the last day's march they learned from the conversation of their captors that when they arrived at the permanent camp they were to be stripped, scourged, and made to run the gauntlet. Through two files of Indians, of both sexes and all ages, they would have to go, being beaten by each Indian as they passed. But the day of the execution of their sentence was postponed. Mrs. Dustin determined that she would not be there at the appointed time, but would escape the
48 REAL STORIES FROM OUR HISTORY
indignity or die in the attempt. For five weeks she watched for her chance. The boy Samuel prom ised to help her. At her suggestion he learned
from one of the Indians how to scalp a man.
At last the day came when the attempt to escape was to be made. Thinking that es cape was impos sible, the Indians let the prisoners sleep unguarded, for they did not know that provi sions and a canoe had been hidden in readiness.
In the silence of the night Mrs. Dustin, her nurse, and the boy stole on the Indians and succeeded in killing ten of them. One old squaw and a boy of eleven escaped. After Mrs. Dustin and her companions had reached their canoe, she went back and scalped the Indians, that
THE DUSTIN MEMORIAL
CARRIED AWAY BY THE INDIANS 49
she might claim the bounty offered by the colony for such trophies. Then they scuttled the Indians' canoes and started down the river.
Day after day they paddled down the Merri- mack, the three taking turns at the paddle. At night they paused to rest, and cautiously a fire
'" %**»--tr*;-iL~*fe:; tof:~,^^Jtf£2^~**J*^AZ ^£ **fyi-y «*&s -^ £&«^_ <i ^ jW,r, £'2£T*i^cwu /^-^ ^^ X_ fe-^V-A/^ •f*r~%~^./J-Mj g^y^ «^&n0^ee^ <t^
Wf^^tM^'' /*-*t ^/^^ ip ~^^ ^ KZ3 (t,^**^ {* r^/t^^^f ^y M H&-- a*'» t£-ff^***tJ <**,**-> i+-#xj tnirt*.- •>/ »••«•. »7 j,,, >'£»v<2 £3 <^f*4_
~ ' •
HANNAH DUSTTN'S APPLICATION FOR CHURCH MEMBERSHIP, IN WHICH REFERENCE IS MADE TO HER CAPTIVITY
was kindled, that food might be cooked. They were in constant fear of pursuit. While two slept a third stood guard. But no Indians appeared.
After many hardships they came to the home village. The wondering people, wrho had thought they should never see the captives again, came out to see who the visitors could be. But, instead
50 REAL STORIES FROM OUR HISTORY
of strangers, they found their own old neighbors, and their hearts were glad.
The General Assembly of Massachusetts voted to give Mrs. Dustin a reward of twenty-five pounds, while a similar amount was divided between Mrs. Neff and the boy Samuel. Later the Governor of Maryland sent Mrs. Dustin a silver tankard, which is still treasured by her descendants.
Some time after Mrs. Dustin's return the family moved into the strong new house. This was made a garrison by order of the committee of the militia, organized by the alarmed villagers. The order, which was dated April 5, 1697, was as follows :
To Thomas Dustin, upon the settlement of garrisons. You being appointed master of the garrison at your house, you are hereby in His Majesty's name required to see that a good watch is kept at your garrison both by night and by day by those persons hereinafter named, who are to be under your command and inspection in building or repairing your garrison ; and if any persons refuse or neglect this duty, you are accordingly required to make return of the same under your hand to the committee of the militia in Haverhill.
The garrison was completed by men who worked under guard. The Indians were so bold that a file of soldiers had to be detailed to protect those
CARRIED AWAY BY THE INDIANS 51
who brought the clay from the pits to the yard, where it was made into bricks.
Sources. ROBERT B. CAVERLY. Heroism of Hannah Dustin. B. B. Russell, Boston.
Hannah Dustin Papers (furnished by George F. Bosworth, descend ant of Hannah Dustin, Montpelier, Vermont).
4^>(MJ<*UWL^U^!UXVU^
Not all the Indians were hostile. " The Indian and the English must live in Love, as long as the Sun gives light " ; thus it was de cided by William Penn and the Indians with whom he made the treaty that secured for him the land on which the city of Phila
delphia was built.
CHAPTER VIII
THE BEGINNINGS OF A GREAT CITY
Of all the many Places I have seen in the World, I re member not one better seated ; so that it seems to me to have been appointed for a Town.
This was the judgment concerning the new town of Philadelphia, expressed by William Penn to those interested financially in the venture. The message may be read in full in the quaint book entitled : " A Letter from William Penn, Proprie tary and Governour of Pennsylvania in America, to the Committee of the Free Society of Traders of that Province, residing in 'London. Containing a General Description of the said Province, its Soil, Air, Water, Seasons and Produce, both Nat ural and Artificial, and the good Encrease thereof. Of the Natives or Aborigines, their language, Customs and Manners, Diet, Houses or Wigwams, Liberality, easie way of Living, Physick, Burial,
52
THE BEGINNINGS OF A GREAT CITY 53
Religion, Sacrifices and Cantico, Festivals, Govern ment, and their order in Council upon Treaties for Land, &c. and their Justice upon Evil Doers. To which is added, An Account of the City of Phila delphia, Newly laid out. Its Scituation between two Navigable Rivers, Delaware and Skulkill, with a Portraiture and Plat-form thereof. Sold by Andrew Sowle, at the Crooked-Billet in Holloway-Lane in Shoreditch,and at several Stationers in London, 1683."
Those who have the opportunity of reading this curious document are able to put themselves in the place of the staid Englishmen who sought in formation about the strange land beyond the sea. The writer regaled them with information that must have seemed somewhat startling.
Writers of prospectuses in these late days would read with disdain the proprietor's introductory
TYPE OF WILLIAM PENN'S SHIP, WELCOME From a contemporary engraving
54 REAL STORIES FROM OUR HISTORY
words concerning his province of Pennsylvania: :f The Country itself in its Soyle, Air, Water, Seasons and Produce both natural and artificial is not to be despised." Later, however, he be came almost enthusiastic when writing of the
PENN'S TREATY WITH THE INDIANS
natural beauty of the country. " The Woods are adorned with lovely Flowers, for color, greatness, perfume and variety. I have seen the Gardens of London best stored with that sort of Beauty, but think they may be improved by our woods. I have sent a few to a Person of Quality this year for tryal."
THE BEGINNINGS OF A GREAT CITY 55
Of the Indians he wrote rather fully. His de scriptions of their ways show how easy it was to deal with them till they learned that the white man could be treacherous.
One paragraph reads:
If an European comes to see them or calls for Lodging at their House or Wigwam, they give him the best place and first cut. If they come to visit us they salute us with an Itah which is as much as to say, Good be to you, and set them down, which is mostly on the Ground close to their Heels, their Legs upright ; may be they speak not a word more, but observe all Passages : If you give them any thing to eat or drink, well, for they will not ask ; and be it little or much, if it be with Kindness, they are well pleased, else they will go away sullen, but say nothing.
Here is another statement :
In Liberality they excell, nothing is too good for their friend ; give them a fine Gun, Coat, or other thing, it may pass twenty hands, before it sticks ; light of Heart, strong Affections, but soon spent ; the most merry Creatures that live. Feast and Dance perpetually ; they never have much, nor want much. Wealth circulateth like the Blood, all parts partake, and though none shall want what another hath yet exact Observers of Property. Some Kings have sold, others presented me with several Parcels of Land ; the Pay or Presents I made them, were not hoarded by the partic ular Owners, but the neighbouring Kings and their Clans bring present, when the Goods were brought out, the parties chiefly concerned consulted, what and to whom they should
56 REAL STORIES FROM OUR HISTORY
give them : To every King then, by the hands of a Person for that work appointed, is a proportionment so sorted and folded, and with that Gravity, that is admirable. Then that King sub-divideth it in like manner among his Dependents, they hardly leaving themselves an Equal share with one of their Subjects ; and be it on such occasions, at Festivals, or
THE OLD COURTHOUSE, PHILADELPHIA, BUILT IN 1707
at their common Meals, the Kings distribute, and to them selves last. They care for little, because they want but little ; and the Reason is, a little contents them : In this they are sufficiently revenged on us ; if they are ignorant of our Pleasures, they are also free from our Pains.
Concerning a council for treaty-making, Penn wrote :
Their Order is thus : The King sits in the middle of a half Moon, and hath his Council, the old and Wise on each
THE BEGINNINGS OF A GREAT CITY 57
hand. Behind them, or at a little distance, sit the younger Fry, in the same figure. Having consulted and resolved their business, the King ordered one of them to speak to me ; he stood up, came to me, and in the Name of his King saluted me, then took me by the hand and told me, that he was ordered by his King to speak to me, and that now it
THE LETITIA PENN HOUSE Now in Fairmount Park, Philadelphia
was not he, but the King that spoke, because what he should say, was the King's mind. . . . Having thus introduced his matter, he fell to the Bounds of the Land they had agreed to dispose of and the Price, (which now is little and dear, that which would have bought twenty Miles, not buying now two). . . . When the Purchase was agreed, great Prom ises past between us of Kindness and good Neighbour hood, and that the Indians and English must live in Love, so long as the Sun gave light Which done, another made
AN EARLY TREATY WITH THE INDIANS
THE BEGINNINGS OF A GREAT CITY 59
a Speech to the Indians, in the Name of all the Kings, first to tell them what was done ; next, to charge and com mand them to Love the Christians and particularly live in Peace with me, and the People under my Government : That many Governours had been in the River, but that no Gov- ernour had come himself to live and stay here before ; and having now such a one that had treated them well, they should never do him or his any wrong.
Perm pointed with pride to the record of the city built on part of the ground thus bought from the Indians. He wrote: "It is advanced within less than a year to about Four score Houses and Cot tages, such as they are, where Merchants and Handicrafts are following their vocations as fast as they can, while the Country-Men are close at their farms."
In conclusion he gave this message: "I bless God, I am fully satisfied with the Country and Entertainment I can get in it; for I find that peculiar content which hath alwayes attended me, where God in his Providence hath made it my place and service to reside."
Source. A Letter from William Penn, Proprietary and Governour of Pennsylvania in America. Andrew Sowle, London, 1 683 ; reprinted by James Coleman, London, 1881.
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Shall we enter the house of one who lived, with his wife, near old Philadelphia, in the midst of " a garden of delight," of which he dreamed when he was still a boy ? That garden and that house may be seen to-day on the banks of the Schuylkill, within three miles of the center of the city.
CHAPTER IX
AN EARLY HOME NEAR PHILADELPHIA
There is still standing, now within the city of Philadelphia, a house built in 1731 by John Bar- tram, who was born in 1699. When a boy, he dreamed of building a home which should be set in the midst of a garden of delight. As he plowed his fields and mowed his meadows he pictured to himself what his garden would be like. And when he became a man he found the way to begin the work.
First he built a large house. Next he hewed out of stone a great watering trough, and made a wonderful cider mill in a ledge of rock on the bank of the Schuylkill. Then he was ready to plant his garden.
But this colonial dreamer was not content to have a garden like those of his neighbors. He
wanted a garden that would be a pleasure to him,
60
AN EARLY HOME NEAR PHILADELPHIA 61
should see it. He plants and trees
and a wonder to all who wished to bring to it curious from all parts of the world.
If he had told his neighbors of his plans, they would probably have laughed at him. But he did
THE HOME IN THE GARDEN OF DELIGHT
not talk of what he intended to do. As he had not gone to school much, he did not know many things which would be necessary in his work. So he studied at home, teaching himself Latin and Greek, as well as more ordinary subjects. It was hard to study alone, but he persevered.
62 REAL STORIES FROM OUR HISTORY
First he wished to get plants from other parts of America. As the only way to do this was to go after them, he decided to give a part of each year to journeys far from home. He knew that it would be dangerous to travel through the mountains and the wilderness, but he was not afraid. He went as far north as Lake Ontario and as far south as Florida. Many times he narrowly escaped death by exposure or at the hands of Indians. Yet always he took home with him some precious specimen of tree or shrub or plant.
Soon his garden became famous throughout the colonies. The king of England heard of him, and asked him to send to England word of his explora tions and samples of the plants found.
In 1769 a man from England visited him at his Philadelphia home. After looking in amazement at the five acres of garden, the visitor asked him how he learned to love botany-. This was the answer:
One day I was very busy in holding my plow (for thou seest I am but a plowman), and being weary I ran under the shade of a tree to refresh myself. I cast my eye on a daisy. I plucked it mechanically, and viewed it with more curiosity than common country farmers are wont to do, and observed therein very many distinct parts — some perpendic ular, some horizontal. "What a shame," said my mind, or something that inspired my mind, " that thou shouldst have
AN EARLY HOME NEAR PHILADELPHIA 63
employed so many years in tilling the earth and destroying so many flowers and plants, without being acquainted with their structure and their uses." I returned to my team, but this new desire did not quit my mind ; I mentioned it to my wife, who greatly discouraged me. I thought about it con tinually — at supper, in bed, and wher ever I went. At last I could not resist the impulse ; for on the fourth day of the follow ing week, I hired a man to plow for me, and went to Phila delphia. Though I knew not what book to call for, I told the bookseller my errand, who pro vided me with what he thought best, and a Latin grammar beside. Next I applied to a neighboring schoolmaster who, in three months, taught me Latin enough to understand Linnaeus, which I purchased afterward. Then I began to botanize all over my farm. In a little while I became
THE CYPRESS IN BARTRAM'S GARDEN AS IT WAS IN 1875
64 REAL STORIES FROM OUR HISTORY
acquainted with every vegetable that grew in my neighbor hood, and next ventured into Maryland. In proportion as I thought myself more learned, I proceeded forth and by a steady application of several years, I have acquired a pretty general knowledge of every tree and plant to be found in our continent. In process of time I was applied to from the old countries whither I every year send many collections.
Bart ram's garden was one of the wonders of colonial days. There Washington and Franklin and Jefferson used to go for rest and refreshment, and there tens of thousands of others have had that intimate communion with nature which the proprietor of the garden made possible for them by his years of loving toil.
When he was dying, he feared that his garden would be laid waste by the British army, which was advancing from the Brandywine. But he did not live to see the soldiers. He died, September 22, 1777, before they reached Philadelphia. When the soldiers finally came and saw the garden, they passed it by, leaving it unharmed.
To-day the garden is a park belonging to the city of Philadelphia. Many of the trees have perished. One relic of the past still stands, the great trunk of a cypress planted about 1735. On one of his trips into Delaware the botanist pro cured the cypress slip, which he carried home in
AN EARLY HOME NEAR PHILADELPHIA 65
his saddlebags. It grew to be one hundred and fifty feet high and twenty-seven feet in circum ference. In 1899 it still bore a few live twigs. Now the dead trunk, surrounded by an iron rail ing to protect it from vandals, is all that is left.
Yet many of the trees and shrubs planted by the colonial botanist are still green. Above the house waves a jujube tree, planted in 1735, and over the arbor hangs a trumpet vine which was sent from North Carolina in 1749.
Sources. WILLIAM DARLINGTON. Memorials of John Bartram. Lindsay and Blackiston, Philadelphia, 1849.
John Bartram. Issued by the John Bartram Association, Philadelphia.
What should you think of paying a basket of wheat as the membership fee in a library ? At one time this was the appointed fee for those who used the oldest library in America, the Library Company of Philadelphia. On the shelves of this library may be found many of the diaries and other volumes quoted in this book.
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CHAPTER X
THE OLDEST LIBRARY IN AMERICA
One of the interesting things mentioned by Benjamin Franklin in his autobiography is a meet ing of the Junto, a club of which he was a mem ber. It was decided that the club should have a library, and each member was to bring a number of books for the purpose.
The plan did not work very well, and after a year Franklin proposed a subscription library in stead. On July i, 1731, one hundred members formed the first American subscription library.
The list of books ordered from London in 1732 would not attract many readers to-day. There was not one book that a child would care to read. The day of attractive books for children was yet far distant.
The volumes were taken to the home of one of the members in Pewter Platter Alley. Soon
66
THE OLDEST LIBRARY IN AMERICA 67
afterwards this record was made in the minute book of the new library:
Louis Timothee was contracted with to be Librarian. The order was made that Mr. Timothee 's term of office should be for three months, that he should receive for the use and care of the room and for his services " Three Pounds " lawful money certain, and such a further allowance as then after such time of experience shall by the parties here be thought and concluded to be a reasonable reward.
When Mr. Timothee's term expired, Benjamin Franklin became librarian for a like term and at the same salary.
On December n, 1732, " B. Franklin was asked what his charge was for printing a catalogue . . . for each subscriber, and his answer was that he designed them for presents, and should make no charge for them."
In January, 1738, John Penn wrote to the Library Company offering to send "an air-pump, with some other things to shew the nature and power of the air." It was " ordered that B. Franklin get a frame and case made, with glass lights in the door, to receive and preserve the air-pump with its appendages, and to look ornamental in the Library room." This case still stands in the library, with the remains of the air pump in it, a rare specimen of the hand carving and woodwork of the period.
68 REAL STORIES EROM OUR HISTORY
In 1740 the "books and air-pump" were re moved to the " upper room of the westernmost office of the State House" (now known as Inde pendence Hall). The monthly meetings of the di rectors were held first at the home of the Widow Roberts, then, suc cessively, with the Widow Breitnals, the Widow Pratt, and the Widow Biddle.
In 1773 the li brary was moved from the State House to quar ters in Carpen ter's Hall. A few months later, when Congress was in session in the State House, the
librarian was directed to permit the members to bor row books. In 1791 also this courtesy was shown to Congress, then meeting in the city, a letter of thanks for the service being sent by George Washington.
WILT JAM PKNN'S DESK
THE OLDEST LIBRARY IN AMERICA 69
When the British were in Philadelphia officers borrowed the books, always leaving the required deposit.
In 1777, when the library's quarters were used by the British as a hospital, the secretary was ordered to insert this advertisement in the Pennsylvania Gazette :
The members of the Library Company of Philadelphia are hereby notified that books may be procured from the said Library by application at the house of the Librarian on the south side of Market Street, four doors below Fourth Street, between the hours of five and seven in the afternoon of every day, and leaving a signed note for such books as they may respectively want. The lower part of the Library being at present used as an infirmary for the sick soldiery, renders it inconvenient for the Librarian to attend at the Library Room as usual.
Two minutes entered in the record book during the war give hints of the poverty of the residents of the Quaker City :
NOVEMBER, 1778. The Directors taking into consider ation the high prices of firewood, candles, etc., agreed that the Library be open during the winter months only upon Wednesday and Saturday from two till eight.
MAY 4, 1781. The Directors agree that thirty shil lings, State money, be received in lieu of a basket of wheat, by which the annual payments were last year directed to be made.
70 REAL STORIES FROM OUR HISTORY
In 1797 President Washington was invited to use the library, a specially bound catalogue of the books being presented to him for his use. In 1824 the free use of the library was tendered to Genera] Lafayette.
To-day the library contains nearly two hundred and fifty thousand volumes. But more precious than the books are the souvenirs of the past. One of these is an oil painting some eight feet long, entitled " A South East Prospect of the City of Philadelphia, by Peter Cooper, painter." It is sup posed to have been painted in 1720, and is inter esting as showing the houses on the water front with the names of the owners. The picture was found in a secondhand dealer's shop in London and given to the library.
Source. GEORGE M. ABBOT. A Short History of the Library Company of Philadelphia. Compiled from the minutes.
For our knowledge of early days in the colonies we are not de pendent altogether on the writings of men and women. Fortunately there have come down to us records made by boys and girls as well.
Esther Edwards of Northampton, Massachusetts, began her diary on her ninth birthday. Let her tell her own story.
CHAPTER XI
A ROMANCE OF COLONIAL DAYS
This is my ninth birthday, and Mrs. Edwards, my mother, has had me stitch these sundry sheets of paper into a book to make me a journal. Methinks, almost all this family keep journals ; though they seldom show them. But Mrs. Edwards is to see mine, because she needs to know whether I improve in composing ; also, whether I am learning to keep my heart with all diligence ; in which we are all constrained to be engaged.
These lines, written under date of February 13, 1741, were the first entry in the journal of Esther Edwards, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Jona than Edwards, of Northampton, Massachusetts. Mr. Edwards was pastor of the village church.
Once, a little later, after her mother had ex amined her journal, Esther wrote this :
My mother says my journal thus far is rather stilted and mature for me ; though everything in the family is
71
72 REAL STORIES FROM OUR HISTORY
mature. I have a letter of my father's, written when he was younger than I am, which I shall transcribe, just to show where the present writer gets her stilts and maturity.
Esther's first experience of romance in real life came when David Brainerd, the famous missionary
BRAINERD PREACHING TO THE INDIANS
to the Indians, was expelled from Yale College because he had said of a tutor that he had no more religion than a chair. He soon found refuge in the Edwards home. Esther wrote of him :
He is likely to become a member of this family, it seems. Soon after coming to Northampton he displayed strong affinity for Jerusha, our sister of seventeen. Thus far, his
A ROMANCE OF COLONIAL DAYS 73
Indian missionary labors have been solitary. He thinks this a mistake. He has had no domestic attention, no home care, no one to hold him back from over-exertion. And he means now, should he ever recover, which I very much misdoubt, to take a female helpmate back with him. I am pretty sure this kind of love would never satisfy me. I believe he loves her more because she will make a good missionary than for any other reason. But little does the dear girl care.
The young missionary became more and more of an invalid, wearing himself out in his work. Jerusha cared for him tenderly. He died October 9, 1747; Jerusha Edwards followed him in four months, at the age of eighteen.
Now Esther was to take her place as the eldest daughter of the home. Though only fifteen, she was in many ways a woman.
In 1750 her father was driven from Northampton by people who did not believe in him. He took his family to Stockbridge, where he began work without salary among the Indians. Esther wrote of the life there :
This family is very busy making lace and embroidery, so as to replenish the household treasury. In Northampton, my honored father had purchased a valuable homestead, with land for fuel and pasturing, and had erected a commo dious dwelling house. These had by our exercising the strictest economy all been paid for, before his removal.
74 REAL STORIES FROM OUR HISTORY
Among the bitterest of our experiences, therefore, was to be sent roofless and homeless to a wilderness. But neither my honored mother, nor any of the children bated a jot of hope. We began at once the making and decoration of fans and other ornamental work, which we were assisted to dispose of in Boston, by our friends, the Princes, there. How narrow our circumstances were may be seen from the necessity put upon our father to use the margins of other wise useless pamphlets and the backs of letters, on which to write his sermons and treatises.
Less than two years later Esther left her Massa chusetts home to go to Newark, New Jersey, where she was to marry Reverend Aaron Burr, president of the College of New Jersey. She made the journey on horseback, her mother being her only companion. As she rode through the forest she sang the song she had herself composed as an expression of her happiness :
My love hath love that he sendeth me
From the piney wilds of the Newark sea,
From the piney wilds, where the Mayflow'r blows,
And the princely Hudson seaward goes.
And I have love that I waft to him,
As I mount my steed for the Hudson's brim ;
As I mount my steed and speed to him.
It was in this home to which she went so gladly that Aaron Burr, who was to become vice president
ON THE WAY TO HER MARRIAGE
;6 REAL STORIES FROM OUR HISTORY
of the United States, was born. When he was two years old his mother wrote :
Aaron is a little dirty, noisy boy, very different from Sally almost in everything. He begins to talk a little, is very sly, mischievous, and has more sprightliness than Sally. I must say he is handsomer, but not so good-tempered. He is very resolute, and requires a good governor to bring him to terms.
Soiirce. JAMES EAMES RANKIN (Editor). Esther Burr's Journal. Woodward and Lothrop, Washington, D. C.
'^
" Do send a five-dollar bill by the post immediately ! " It was a Maine girl of the eighteenth century who sent this urgent request to her parents. She was ashamed to go into company without something the five dollars would buy. What was it? Her diary will tell.
CHAPTER XII
THE HEART OF AN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY GIRL
Eliza Southgate lived in Scarboro, Maine, near the close of the eighteenth century. Her life is faithfully pictured for readers of to-day in her let ters to friends and relatives.
These letters are full of lively descriptions of people and things. The young girl was a careful observer, and she had an entertaining way of telling what she saw. But far more interesting than these descriptive passages in her letters are the sen tences and paragraphs which give a glimpse of the heart of the writer. She was not only a good friend ; she was also a dutiful daughter who loved her parents and honored them.
When, at fourteen years of age, she was absent from home, attending a boarding school, she wrote to her father and mother, under date of May twenty-fifth, 1 797 :
77
78 REAL STORIES FROM OUR HISTORY
I hope I am in some measure sensible of the great obli gation I am under to you for the inexpressible kindness and attention which I have received from you, from the cradle to my present situation in school. Many have been your anxious cares for the welfare of me, your child, at every stage of my inexperienced life. In my infancy you nursed me and reared me up, my inclinations you have indulged, and my follies you have checked. You have liberally fed me with the bounty of your table, and from your instruc tive lips I have been admonished to virtue, morality and reli gion. The debt of gratitude I owe you is great, yet I hope to repay you by duly attending to your counsels and to my improvement in useful knowledge.
My thankful heart with grateful feelings beats, With filial duty I my parents greet. Your fostering care hath reared me from my birth, And been my guardians since I 've been on earth. With love unequalled taught the surest way And checked my passions when they went astray. I wish and trust to glad declining years — Make each heart gay, each eye refrain from tears. When days are finished and when time shall cease, May you be wafted to eternal peace.
Again, a little later, she wrote thus to her mother:
With what pleasure did I receive your letter and hear the praises of an approving mother. It shall be my duty to please and make you happy.
Your affectionate and most dutiful daughter.
© Curtis & Cameron, Boston
A BELLE OF THE COLONIES From a Copley Print
79
So REAL STORIES FROM OUR HISTORY
Her homesickness, usually so well concealed, found expression on one occasion, when she wrote :
Never did I know the worth of good parents half so much as now I am far from them. I never missed home dainties so much, and above all things our cheese and butter, which we have very little of ! But I am very contented.
She was so well content that she desired to remain at school longer than the term originally arranged for. Her request for an extension of time was put thus : " I should feel happy and very grate ful if you thought proper to let me tarry."
The letter from her mother which gave the desired permission evidently spoke of the privation suffered in the continued loss of the daughter's presence, for Eliza's next message was:
You say that you will regret so long an absence ; not more certainly than I shall. But having a strong desire to possess more useful knowledge than I at present do, I can dispense with the pleasure a little longer of beholding my friends, and I hope I shall be better prepared to meet my good parents, toward whom my heart overflows with gratitude.
• , ;\.
Eliza was now fifteen, and was making good progress in her studies. She spoke of arithmetic as her chief study. At first she used a small text book, and later reviewed the subject by preparing a manuscript arithmetic of her own. When com pleted this was bound and sent home.
V".
.BO!
OPIRSt
X j& . i £
I
A SAMPLER DONE BY CLARISSA EMERSON OF LANCASTER, MASSACHUSETTS
82 REAL STORIES FROM OUR HISTORY
After some months in the school she thanked her brother for his statement that she had im proved in her writing. " I am glad of it," she wrote. " I hope I shall make as great progress in my other studies, and be an accomplished miss."
Here is a letter sent to her father:
I hope by the help of heaven never to cause shame or misery to attend the gray hairs of my parents . . . but on the contrary to glad your declining years with happiness, and that you may never have cause to rue the day that gave me existence.
After spending eighteen months at Medford, she was transferred to a school in Boston. From there she wrote to her father:
I learn geography and embroidery at present, and wish your permission to learn music. You may justly say, my best of fathers, that every letter of mine is one which is asking for something more. I only ask. If you refuse me, I know you do what you think best, and I am sure I ought not to complain, for you have never yet refused me anything that I have needed. My best of parents, how shall I repay you ? You answer, " By your good behavior." Heaven grant that it may be such as may repay you.
She made mistakes, and once at least, she seri ously grieved her parents by her misconduct. They wrote her of their sorrow. Here is her reply : " I see my errors, and if I can only hope they will
AN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY GIRL 83
be no longer remembered by my parents, I shall again be happy."
At seventeen years of age she left school and was having a rather gay time among the young men of Boston. Changed surroundings suggested new wants, and again she sent a request home :
What do you think I am going to ask for ? A wig ! I must either cut my hair or wear one ; I cannot dress it at all stylish. How much time it will save ! — in one year we could save it in pins and paper, besides the trouble. At the Assembly I was quite ashamed of my head, for nobody has long hair. If you will consent to my having one, do send over a five-dollar bill by the post immediately after you receive this, for I am in hopes to have it by the next Assembly.
To her younger sister Octavia, who was, in her turn, away from home, studying music, she wrote :
My musical talents will be dim when compared with the luster of yours. Pooh, Eliza ! You are not envious ? No ! I will excel in something else if not in music. Oh, nonsense ! This spirit of emulation in families is destructive of concord and harmony. At least I will endeavor to excel you in sisterly affection. If you outshine me in accomplishments, will it not be all in the family ? Certainly !
In a letter to this same sister the seventeen-year- old woman of the world gave the following sage counsel :
I think, my dear sister, you ought to improve every mo ment of your time while in school. In November terminates
84 REAL STORIES FROM OUR HISTORY
the period of your instruction — the last you will receive, perhaps ever — only what you may gain by observation. You will never cease to learn, I hope. The world is a volume of instruction, which will afford you continual em ployment. Peruse it with attention and candor, and you will never think the time thus employed misspent.
At the age of nineteen Eliza went on a journey to Saratoga Springs. On the way she met the young man who later became her husband. As always, she remembered her duty to her father and mother. In writing of his intention to seek her parents' consent to their marriage, she added :
And now, my dearest mother, I submit myself wholly to the wishes of my father, and you, convinced that my happi ness is your warmest wish, and to promote it has ever been your duty. I have referred him wholly to you, and you, my dearest parents, must decide.
The parents decided favorably, and Eliza South- gate was married. Six years the young people spent in their own home in New York. Then Eliza died. But her influence survives in these letters, which preach a sermon whose text is the fifth commandment.
Sources. E. S. BOWNE. A Girl's Life Eighty Years Ago. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York.
LEONARD B. CHAPMAN. Monograph on the Southgate Family. Hubbard W. Bryant, Portland, Maine.
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There was no lack of work for the boys of the early days. Some worked on land; others worked with their fathers on the sea. Fishing smacks and coasting vessels lured many of them from home, but the ships which most attracted them were those of the famous whaling fleet.
CHAPTER XIII
WHALE-FISHING IN COLONIAL DAYS
In these days of kerosene oil and gas and electric lights it is difficult to understand how important the whale was to the early settlers. Indeed, even be fore their day the Indians were accustomed to hunt the whale in bark canoes, frail craft, held together with tough sinews and with the cracks stopped up with spruce gum and fat.
Right whales were especially difficult to handle, and white fishermen feared them, but the Indians bravely attempted to hunt them whenever they saw them spout. Puny were the implements of the sea whalers, but what they lacked in imple ments they made up in courage, ingenuity, and perseverance.
To the Indians the settlers on the coast were indebted for their first instructions in the art of whaling, as for so many other things. For years
85
86 REAL STORIES FROM OUR HISTORY
Indians and white men were often members of the same whaling crew. The Indians were glad to ac cept in payment unmarketable parts of the whale.
Among the inhabitants of Long Island whale- fishing was a regular business. John R. Spears says that "in March, 1644, the settlers divided themselves into four wards of eleven persons, each to attend to
THE CHASE
the drift whales cast ashore, and it was voted that, when such a whale was found, 'every inhabitant, with his child or servant that is above sixteen years of age,' should share equally in the products, save only as two men who were appointed to cut up the carcass were to have two shares each."
Of course every man was eager to share in the rewards of fishing, but there were found those who were always ready to shirk their share of the work.
WHALE-FISHING IN COLONIAL DAYS 87
That everybody might take part, the arrangements were well ordered from start to finish. The boats used were owned in partnership by all in the vil lage. These were always ready for launching when word was given that a whale had been sighted. A lookout was on duty every day and all day, that no opportunity might be lost.
Since a person standing on the low-lying shore of Long Island was unable to see far, it was the custom to plant near the water tall masts, similar to tele graph poles, which the lookout could
climb by means of cleats. Perched on a rough seat at the top the climber could look far to sea. When complaint was made that the position was too ex posed in severe winter weather, huts were built on the beach, inclosed on three sides, but with the seaward side open.
88 REAL STORIES FROM OUR HISTORY
Of course the work of the lookout was not pleas ant, and there was much difficulty in persuading men to take their turn. Especially when the weather was bad, volunteers were slow to present themselves. In one village the difficulty was solved when, at a town meeting held November 6, 1651, "it was ordered that Goodman Mulford shall call out ye town by succession to loke for Whale." The sum mons was as imperative as the call of a witness in court.
Whenever the appointed watcher announced a whale in the offing, there was great excitement. Boats were manned, the strongest men embarking, while Indian helpers were called for. These Indians were such good workers that they were paid fifty per cent more than their white neighbors, and were thus kept in good humor. But they earned every cent they received.
At first those who sought the whale kept near the shore, but in 1712 the first deep-sea voyage was made by a captain who thought that, if he could accomplish so much by going a little way to sea, surely the results would be much greater if he went farther out. When his logic proved correct, other captains followed him, and it was not long before the white wings of the American whaling fleet were seen on nearly every sea.
WHALE-FISHING IN COLONIAL DAYS 89
Discoveries of importance were made when voy ages extended into the Arctic Ocean, over to the coast of Africa, and south to the coast of Patagonia. No wonder Edmund Burke, in the course of a speech in Parliament, said :
No sea but is vexed by their fisheries, no climate that is not a witness to their toils. Neither the perseverance of Holland, nor the activity of France, nor the dexterous and firm sagacity of English enterprise, ever carried this most perilous mode of hardy industry to the extent to which it has been pushed by this recent people ; a people who are still, as it were, but in the gristle, and not yet hardened into the bone of manhood.
The extent of the whaling industry, even before the days of the Revolution, may be seen by a study of a Massachusetts report, which told of the voyages of the years 1771 to 1775. More than three hundred vessels were fitted out each year in the ports of that state alone, and more than four thousand men were employed as sailors. Nearly fifty thousand barrels of oil were taken each year during this period, the best of this bringing $18.75 a barrel. Whalebone sold for fifteen cents a pound. The fifty or sixty whalers owned in other states considerably increased the total of oil and bone, though, somehow, the Massa chusetts captains were usually more successful than those who hailed from ports in neighboring states.
90 REAL STORIES FROM OUR HISTORY
At this period more whaling vessels cleared from Nantucket than from any other port. A picture of the part played by the people of Nantucket Island in the whaling industry is taken from the report of a committee of Parliament in 1775 :
This extraordinary people, amounting to between five and six thousand in number, nine tenths of whom are Quakers,
ABANDONED WHALING SHIPS IN THE ICE
inhabit a barren island fifteen miles long by three broad, the products of which are scarcely capable of maintaining twenty families. From the only harbor which this sterile island contains, without natural products of any kind, the inhabitants, by an astonishing industry, keep 140 vessels in constant employment. Of these eight are employed in the importation of provisions for the island, and the rest in the whale fishery ; which, with an invincible perseverance and courage, they have extended from the frozen regions of the
WHALE-FISHING IN COLONIAL DAYS 91
pole to the coasts of Africa, to the Brazils, and even to the Falkland Islands ; some of those fishing voyages con tinuing for twelve months.
One of the unfortunate results of the war which followed so soon after these words were written was the practical annihilation of the Nantucket in dustry. One hundred and thirty-four of the vessels owned on the island were captured by the British.
THE WHALING FLEET
Many of the captains and men were forced to serve in Great Britain's wrhaling ships ; for that country, attracted by the success of Nantucket men, and de termined to build up a successful fishery, decided that none but Nantucket sailors should be employed. Of course the New Englanders were unwilling to serve the enemy even in a commercial way, but when the choice was presented of accepting this service or enlisting on war vessels to fight against
92 REAL STORIES FROM OUR HISTORY
their countrymen, many of them surrendered. At one time sixteen Nantucket men were commanders of British whalers.
But at the close of the war it was Nantucket that had the honor of sending the first ship flying the Stars and Stripes to an English port. The interest created by her appearance may be seen from this report in a London paper:
The ship Bedford, Captain Mooers, belonging to Mas sachusetts, arrived in the Downs on the 3d of February, & was reported at the Custom-House the 6th instant. She was not allowed regular entry until some consultation had taken place between the commissioners and the customs & the lords of council, on account of the many acts of Parlia ment yet in force against the rebels in America. She is loaded with 487 butts of whale oil ; is American built ; manned wholly by American seamen ; wears the rebel colors & belongs to the Island of Nantucket in Massachusetts.
With the increase in tonnage of whaling vessels Nantucket's supremacy became a thing of the past. The bar at the mouth of the harbor would not allow the passage of large vessels when fully laden. Grad ually New Bedford forged ahead. In 1857 she sent out ninety-five vessels, while Nantucket sent but four.
Source. JOHN R. SPEARS. The Story of the New England Whalers. The Macmillan Company, New York. The illustrations printed in con nection with this chapter are reproduced from Mr. Spears' volume, by the courtesy of the publishers,.
AAvWA^^
While adventurers roamed the sea in quest of whales, other hardy men tramped through the forests and over the plains, hunt ing and trapping, or trading for furs with the Indians. Zenas Leonard, one of these pioneer traders, returned with glowing tales of the West and its possibilities.
CHAPTER XIV
ADVENTURES OF AN EARLY FUR TRADER
In the early days of the nineteenth century the great forests were full of animals whose fur was valuable. Many men made their living by trap ping. They would take long journeys into the wilderness, and when they returned they would usually have rich store of furs, as well as wonderful stories of their adventures.
Zenas Leonard was one of these trappers. In 1831 he started on a five years' hunting and trapping journey to the Rocky Mountains. All this time he kept a diary, which later was printed and distributed among his friends.
When he left St. Louis he was clerk of a com pany of seventy men. At the beginning of the first winter the company pitched camp in a grove of cottonwoods, hoping to be able to keep their horses alive on the bark. When snow covered
93
94 REAL STORIES FROM OUR HISTORY
the ground and it was impossible to find other food, the bark was stripped from the trees, but the horses refused to touch it. Then the trappers discovered, too late, that the camp had been made among bitter cottonwoods instead of the sweet cottonwoods. The horses perished of starvation.
INTERRUPTED
Later a few men in the party made an overland trip to " Santafee," as they called it. They were delayed by snowstorms until their food supply was exhausted. They were almost blind from the wind and the snow. The deerskin lining of their trousers was used to make snowshoes, parts of the beaver skins that they had been carrying to
ADVENTURES OF A FUR TRADER 95
market were used for food, and they pushed bravely on. They grew weaker and weaker. Two animals were seen at last, but the men were too blind to tell what they were. The guns had been used as canes to support the travelers in the soft snow, and were not in order for effective work for some time. Finally, a shot was fired, but the aim was poor. The animals did not take fright, but remained long enough for a second shot to be fired. This brought down a buffalo. Nine days had passed since anything but dried beaver skins had been eaten. In the strength due to this food the adventurers continued their journey and at last they reached Santa Fe.
This was only a beginning of dangers. At one time the men were surrounded by two hundred Indians, and death seemed sure. Again Leonard had an encounter with an Indian whom he met in the forest. Before he escaped from the savage, he received a wound that troubled him for many weeks.
Soon after this trying experience he wrote in his journal :
Some of us had labored hard ; we had at times endured the worst suffering from hunger and fatigue, living amid the terrors of a wilderness filled with savages and no less dan gerous beasts of prey for two long years, and now left with
96 REAL STORIES FROM OUR HISTORY
nothing but an old greasy blanket, a rifle, and a few loads of ammunition, some thousands of miles from our homes. We had expected that to win a fortune in the fur trade we only required a little perseverance and industry. Such had been the life we had led, and such the reward.
At the end of two years the party succeeded in reaching San Francisco Bay. c The idea of being at the end of the Far West," Leonard wrote, "inspired the heart of every member of our com pany with a patriotic feeling for our country's honor. We felt as if all our previous hardships and privations would be adequately compensated if we would be spared to return in safety to the homes of our kindred and have it to say that we had stood upon the extreme end of the great West."
Leonard was happy as he looked out on the Pacific. As he stood on the shore he wrote a prophecy:
Most of this vast waste of territory belongs to the repub lic of the United States. Will the government ever succeed in civilizing the thousands of savages now roaming over these plains, and her hardy, free-born population here plant their homes, build their towns and cities, and say, "Here shall the arts and sciences of civilization take root and flourish " ? Yes, here, even in this remote part of the great West, before many years, will these hills and valleys be greeted with the enlivening sound of the workman's ham mer, and the merry whistle of the plowboy. We have
ADVENTURES OF A FUR TRADER 97
good reason to suppose that the territory west of the moun tains will some day be equally as important to the nation as that on the east.
Soon the return trip was begun. The Pennsyl vania home was reached in 1839. The net profits to Leonard of the five years of privation were eleven hundred dollars.
Source. W. F. EAGNER (Editor). Adventures of Zenas Leonard, Fur Trader and Trapper (reprinted from the original). The Burrows Brothers Company, Cleveland, Ohio.
»^>KU>IVLKMJUUIVU^
Travelers like Zenas Leonard gave the first clear idea about the West. For generations the region beyond the Mississippi was pic tured in all sorts of fantastic ways. Think of a great lake across the Rocky Mountains ! Think of California as an island ! This was the belief of many, until explprers found their way to distant regions.
CHAPTER XV
WHEN THE WEST WAS NEW
A glance at a map of about the year 1700 gives an idea of the erroneous notions then enter tained concerning the American continent. The map is called " A new map of North America, according to the newest observations, by H. Moll, geographer."
On this map the shores of the Gulf of Mexico are rather carefully outlined, as are also the islands of the Caribbean Sea. This is not strange, when it is remembered that many of the earliest ex plorers made repeated voyages to these regions. The peninsula of Florida, however, is given a peculiar shape, while the name " Florida " is made to include all the territory from Virginia to Texas, and north to the Illinois River. The Great Lakes are rather vague in outline, though
Lake Erie is given in good proportion, as is also
98
WHEN THE WEST WAS NEW 99
Lake Michigan. Lake Erie, however, is made to extend southward nearly as far as Virginia. Lake Huron is set down as being three or four times as large as Lake Michigan, while Lake Superior, called " Upper Lake," is about twice as large as Lake Huron. The distance from Lake Superior to the nearest point on Hudson's Bay is only about two hundred miles. The St. Lawrence River, which is made to take its rise near the arctic circle, flows southeast, widening to form the Great Lakes, then continues its way to the northeast, as does the real St. Lawrence.
Of course the country west of the " Missisuri " River, as it was called, was a vast unknowrn region, but the maker of the map was unwilling to own his ignorance. So he put down a few rivers, made no mention of mountains, and contented himself with writing the words " Many Villages," where Missouri is now. But the crowning feature of the great Western plain was the River " Longue," in reality a lake, which stretched for five hundred miles straight across the Rocky Mountain country. Islands were set down at random in this " river," and the inscription was added, " Many Villages on the Islands."
The Gulf of California is represented as a strait, stretching from Mexico on the south to what is
ioo REAL STORIES FROM OUR HISTORY
called the " Mozeemlek Country " on the north, where Oregon is now placed. California is thus an island, its shape being much like that of the state as it is to-day. The upper part of the island is called " New Albion." To the north of the Mozeemlek Country is a vast region on which is written the honest confession, " Unknown Country."
The wonder is, not that so little was known of the continent west of the Mississippi, but that so much was known that was even approximately correct. The knowledge had been gained from various travelers, few of whom knew anything of surveying or of scientific map-making. Some of them had gone out on fur-trading expeditions, though some were traveling for the avowed purpose of learning about the country.
It was not until the famous expedition of Lewis and Clark, sent by President Jefferson to explore the Western country, that definite ideas began to displace the hazy notions of earlier map-makers.
In 1803 Lewis and Clark, hardy young men, started west. In their party were about thirty others, many of whom had lived among the Indians. Their equipment was peculiar. They carried three boats — a keel boat fifty-five feet long, which could travel in three feet of water when loaded with twenty-two oarsmen, and two small flat-bottomed
WHEN THE WEST WAS >TEW
i.o T
boats. The sails of these boats could be used as tents at night. As the explorers rowed up the Missouri, two horses were led along the bank to be at hand when they should be needed for hunting.
© Brown Brother?; LEWIS AND CLARK ON THE UPPER MISSOURI
The boats were loaded with a strange assort ment of goods. In addition to the clothing, tools, firearms, and food, there were coats richly laced with gilt braid, red trousers, medals, flags, knives, colored handkerchiefs, paints, small looking-glasses,
.102 REAL STORIES FROM OUR HISTORY
beads, and other trinkets to win the favor of the red men. President Jefferson urged the explorers to treat the Indians as friends and to assure them that the United States would protect them.
The journey was comparatively easy down the Ohio, up the Mississippi, and to the sources of the Missouri. But when, in the summer of 1805, the Rocky Mountains were crossed, and the trav elers tried to find their way over the Bitter Root Mountains, their real troubles began. ' They must make their way over the sharp ridges, through terrific mountain defiles choked with fallen limbs and masses of rock debris," Schafer says, in de scribing the difficulties of the way. " For nearly a month they threaded dark forests, over steep hills, rocks and fallen trees ; made their way along dangerous cliffs ; crossed raging torrents, whose icy waters chilled both men and animals. Some times they encountered storms of sleet and snow, again the weather was very hot and oppressive. Most of them became sick, and all were much reduced in strength. Food was so scanty that they were compelled to kill and eat some of the travel- worn horses" which they had secured from friendly Shoshone Indians.
After spending a hard winter at the mouth of the Columbia, Lewis and Clark turned back by
WHEN THE WEST WAS NEW 103
the way they had come. But first they told the Indians why they had sought out this land. Then they gave some of the natives copies of a note which the recipients were asked to hand to any white men who might visit them. A rough map of the journey was included on the sheet with the note. One of these papers reached Philadelphia in 1807, by way of Canton, China. It had been given by a faithful Indian to the captain of a trading vessel.
Other explorers followed in the steps of these hardy pioneers, but it was a generation before the tide of immigration set in to what was once known as the Mozeemlek Country.
Source. SCHAFER. History of the Pacific Northwest. The Mac- millan Company, New York.
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There were those who did not think that the Western country was worth anything, but, fortunately, there were those who thought otherwise. So the territory of Louisiana was bought from France in 1803. At once the government began to investigate the possibilities of the new land, and made some wonderful discoveries.
CHAPTER XVI
WHEN LOUISIANA WAS BOUGHT FROM FRANCE
It is not easy to picture the popular ignorance concerning the South and West of a century ago. Perhaps there is no better indication of this than the description of the Louisiana country, written in 1803 for the state department at Washington, to give information of the vast territory bought from France.
In the absence of a map of this region, an attempt was made to describe the boundaries, and to mention the chief divisions. Among these were mentioned Mobile, New Orleans, Ste. Gene- vieve, New Bourbon, Catahanose, Fourche, and Galvez-Town.
It was stated that many of these divisions were "separated from each other by immense and track less deserts, having no communication with each other by land, except now and then a solitary
104
WHEN LOUISIANA WAS BOUGHT 105
instance of its being attempted by hunters, who have to swim rivers, expose themselves to the in clemency of the weather, and carry their provisions on their backs for a time."
The principal settlements in Louisiana were on the Mississippi, " which begins to be cultivated about twenty leagues from the sea, where the
NEW ORLEANS IN 1803 From a painting in the Louisiana State Museum
plantations are yet thin, and owned by the poorest people." Farther north were better plantations for a few miles. Along the river there was no space be tween cultivated fields, although the fringe of tilled land extended but a little distance from the shore. Special mention was made of Baton Rouge, which was considered remarkable as being " the first place where the high land is contiguous to the river." Attention was called to two creeks
io6 REAL STORIES FROM OUR HISTORY
which entered the river near this point, whose banks " have the best soil and the greatest number of good cotton plantations of any part of Louisiana, and are allowed to be the garden of it."
Along the river, from the sea to Pointe Coupee, fifty leagues from New Orleans, " three-fourths of the population and seven-eighths of the riches of Louisiana " were included.
A statement concerning the land on the west bank of the river is interesting, in view of the developments of more modern days :
From the settlement of Pointe Coupee on the Mississippi, to Cape Girardeau, above the mouth of the Ohio, there is no land on the west side that is not overflowed in the spring to the distance of eight or ten leagues from the river, with from two to twelve feet of water, except a small spot near New Madrid, so that in the whole extent there is no possi bility of forming a considerable settlement contiguous to the river on that side. The eastern bank has in this re spect a decided advantage over the western, as there are in it many situations which effectually command the river.
At the mouth of the Arkansas River were a few families who were " more attached to the In dian trade than to cultivation." It was added that " there is no settlement from the place to New Madrid, which is itself inconsiderable. As cending the river, you come to Cape Girardeau,
WHEN LOUISIANA WAS BOUGHT 107
Ste. Genevieve and St. Louis, where, though the in habitants are numerous, they raise little for exporta tion, and content themselves with trading with the Indians and working a few lead mines." A note was made of the fact that " lead is to be had with ease, and in such quantities as to supply all Europe, if the population were sufficient to work the numer ous mines to be found within two or three feet from the surface in various parts of the country." After telling of the wonderful silver and copper mines farther north, this paragraph was devoted to a more ordinary product:
The salt works are also pretty numerous ; some belong to individuals, others to the public. They already yield an article of general exportation. The usual price per bushel is one hundred and fifty cents in cash at the works. This price will be still lower as soon as the manufacture of the salt is assumed by government, or patronized by men who have large capital to employ in the business. One ex traordinary fact relative to salt must not be omitted. There exists about one thousand miles up the Missouri, and not far from that river a Salt Mountain ! The existence of such a mountain might well be questioned were it not for the testimony of several respectable and enterprising traders who have visited it, and who have exhibited several bushels of the salt to the curiosity of the people of St. Louis, where some of it still remains. The mountain is said to be one hundred and eighty miles long, and forty-five in width, composed of solid rock salt, without any trees or even
io8 REAL STORIES FROM OUR HISTORY
shrubs on it. Salt springs are very numerous below the surface of the mountain, and they flow through the fissures and cavities of it.
Returning to the lower part of the Louisiana territory, the writer of this early treatise on the
THE CABILDO, THE SPANISH COURTHOUSE IN NEW ORLEANS Now used as a museum
greatest real-estate purchase ever made went on to speak of the possibilities of the cultivation of sugar cane. On one section of the river the lands on both banks, for a distance of ninety miles, and about three quarters of a mile deep, were consid ered adapted to sugar cultivation. No other part
WHEN LOUISIANA WAS BOUGHT 109
of the territory was thought to be fit for the pur pose. On this territory annually twenty-five thou sand hogsheads of sugar could be produced, as well as twelve thousand puncheons of rum. This seemed to the writer to be the limit of cane production, although enterprising young planters stated that one third or even one half of the arable land within certain limits could be planted in cane. But at the very outside estimate it seemed that not more than fifty thousand hogs heads of sugar could be counted on.
The early historian would be startled if he could take a glimpse to-day of the rich lands along the valley of the lower Mississippi, on both sides of the river, and should note the enormous product of the plantations, and the wonderful de velopment of the towns and cities.
Source. An Account of Louisiana, 1803. Old South- Leaflets, Vol. 5. An abstract of documents in the office of the Department of State and of the Treasury.
mm^UJOO^UAWAO^
The purchase of the Louisiana Territory encouraged immigra tion to the West, and before many years had passed, southern
Illinois and southern Indiana were tolerably well settled, especially in the river valleys.
" The woods around us are inhabited by Indians, bears, wolves, deer, opossums, and raccoons" was the message one of those early settlers in the valley of the Wabash sent to friends in England. Yet he urged them to consider following him to that wild country and helping in the worth-while struggle of the pioneer.
CHAPTER XVII
AN ENGLISH IMMIGRANT'S JOURNEY TO ILLINOIS TERRITORY
In 1817 a company of English immigrants landed in Virginia, on the way to English Prairie, in southern Illinois. To one of the party, Elias Pym Fordham, was given charge of the farming im plements and household furniture, which he ac companied as far as Cincinnati. His route was by water from Norfolk to Baltimore, thence over land to Pittsburgh and down the Ohio River to Cincinnati. There he rejoined the other members of the party who had traveled to Pittsburgh in a phaeton and a light wagon, and thence had gone on horseback across southern Ohio to Cincinnati.
During his journey, and after reaching his des tination, the young man wrote letters to friends
AN ENGLISH IMMIGRANT'S JOURNEY in
in England in which he told of his experiences and his impressions of the new country. That these letters were written under difficulties is apparent from the preface, dated in 1818, to the published collection of the letters. He says, M Some times the writer was surrounded by the noisy
ON THE ROAD IN EARLY DAYS. THE CONESTOGA WAGON Reproduced by permission of the Philadelphia Commercial Museum
inhabitants of a smoky cabin, in his blanket tent, or in the bar room or no less public dormitory of a tavern."
From Baltimore to Pittsburgh, a distance of two hundred and forty miles, the farming implements and furniture were transported by wagons. "The mail is six days going this distance, the waggons sixteen," he wrote. " They travel at 12, 15 or 20
112 REAL STORIES FROM OUR HISTORY
miles per day. They avoid, as much as possible, the trampled roads, and scramble over hills and mountains, where English waggons would be dashed to pieces. The waggoners requested that we keep with them on the mountains ; for the combined strength of several men is necessary to keep the waggons from upsetting in descending the cliffs."
At Pittsburgh the goods in his care were loaded on two flatboats, curious structures for floating downstream which aroused his curiosity. He noted with interest, " Not a 100 nails are used in building one, but they are stuck together by wooden pins."
Progress on the river was slow, for the current was only three miles an hour. But many of the long hours were passed in a skiff, in which he rowed to the shore, where he scrambled over the rocks and searched for curious plants or squirrels. Sometimes the skiff would strike a log and he would be thrown into the water, but this merely added to the interest of the journey.
At length Cincinnati was reached, at the end of seven weeks after leaving the James River. From Cincinnati he traveled with his friends.
The journey across Indiana was made "on horseback, each person furnished with an upper and under blanket, and saddle bags, and two pack-horses with extra luggage and bedding."
AN ENGLISH IMMIGRANT'S JOURNEY 113
At night the party stopped in roadside taverns, or with farmers, most of whom had a room for travelers. The country traversed was " one vast forest, intersected by a few Blaze roads,1 and two or three open roads. There are a few new towns
PIONEERS ON A FLATBOAT
and some settlements on and near the state roads and river. These are generally from one to three years old."
1 The traveler gave in his diary this explanation of Blaze [blazed] roads : " Blaze roads are merely lines, marked through the forests by slices of bark, like a blaze, being chopped off the trees. When a road is surveyed, the trees are cut down, and the stumps are left to rot in the ground. The trees on each side are notched at convenient distances, to distinguish the State roads from private ones to plantations, and this is then called an open road."
H4 REAL STORIES FROM OUR HISTORY
At Princeton, Indiana, a house was visited and Mr. Fordham remained there, with some of his companions, for six months, while others went on to English Prairie. The town was then three years old, and contained three small brick houses, four or five frame dwellings, and seven or eight houses built of logs, besides a dozen cabins. The author notes the fact that " the trees have not yet had time to rot away in the streets, which were therefore dangerous to walk in after dark."
Not all the inhabitants of the region were de sirable. Mr. Fordham said, " We hear the howling of the wolves every evening, as they are driven back from the farmyards by the dogs, who flock together to repel the invaders."
From Princeton the traveler made many journeys of exploration through the surrounding country. When he mounted for these trips he wore "a broad-brimmed straw hat, long trousers and moc casins, shot pouch and powder horn slung from a belt, rifle at his back in a sling, tomahawk in a holster at his saddlebow, a pair of saddlebags stuffed with shorts and gingerbread, and a Boat- cloak and Scotch tent buckled behind the saddle."
Finally he went to English Prairie. From this place he sent a letter saying that the town had " no population to withstand an incursion of Indians,
AN ENGLISH IMMIGRANT'S JOURNEY 115
if a war had been excited by the violent and cruel hunters," and that therefore the houses " were planned to be easily converted into forts."
Before long so many settlers were coming to the country that the author of the letters thought he saw a chance to make money. He wrote :
I am laying off a new town to be called Albion. It will consist of 8 streets and a public square. Most likely it will be the County Town, and if so, there will be a Court house and a gaol, as well as a Market house and a Chapel, which last will be built whether it be the seat of justice or not.
The desire of the town builder was gratified ; since 1821 Albion has been the county seat of Edwards County.
Source. F. A. OGG. Fordham's Personal Narrative, 1817, 1818. The Arthur H. Clark Company, Cleveland, Ohio.
-4-VJXA
^
The Illinois prairies did not attract the immigrants so soon as the regions farther south, but when the tide began to turn north ward, development was rapid.
The diary of one of the early settlers in the vicinity of Chicago gives a vivid picture of the experiences of the pioneers.
CHAPTER XVIII
GLIMPSES OF WESTERN PIONEER LIFE
In 1836 A. H. Conant, a New Englander, turned his face to the Mississippi Valley. After an over land trip from Vermont to Buffalo, he went by the Lakes to Chicago, and thence to the Fox River country, the Dupage and Bureau rivers, and finally to the banks of the Des Plaines, about twenty miles northwest of Chicago. There a farm was located. On this farm and in the neighbor-
o
hood occurred such events as the following re corded in the diary of the traveler :
1836
Jan. I -- Attended to the survey of my claim.
2 -- Drew rails.
3 — Sunday. Wrote poetry.
4 -- Made shelves and split rails.
5 - - Went to Chicago with a load of potatoes.
6 — Sold my potatoes for 75 cents a bushel.
116
WESTERN PIONEER LIFE 117
7 -- Cut apples, worked at my house, husked corn.
8 — Attended a meeting of settlers for securing to
each man his present claim.
9 — Cut rail timber.
10 — Sunday. Went to Chicago.
Other entries show that time was taken for self-development, and for duties to others:
Attended a meeting called to get the mail route changed from Chicago to Green Bay. . . . Attended arbitration be tween father and Rufus Saule ; decided in favor of Rufus, and let him have some potatoes. . . . Read Mason on " Self- Knowledge." . . . Read the "Latin Grammar." . . . Brought in a deer. . . . Read the " Life of Josephine." . . . Got out wood for chairs. . . . Made a coffin for Mrs. Dougherty, and helped to bury her. . . . Made and bottomed chairs. . . . Mrs. Hoard and Betsy Kilsey arrived. . . . Planted corn, and prepared for the wedding. . . . Married Betsy Kilsey.
Just that bit to tell of the arrival from the East of his promised wife, the preparations for the wed ding, crowded into a day with farm work, and the wedding itself !
The next entry tells just as briefly of attempts to fit up the pioneer home : " Made a table, and borrowed six bushels of potatoes, to be paid back with interest in the fall."
Other entries were:
Wife is .18 to-day. Made a few articles of furniture. . . . Read " Paley's Natural Theology." . . . Made a churn. . . .
nS REAL STORIES FROM OUR HISTORY
Heard big wolves howling. . . . Hunted deer. . . . Worked at shoemaking. . . . Made a coffin for H. Dougherty. . . . Plastered my house. . . . Dressed pig and calves torn by wolves. . . . Dug a well. Killed a badger. . . . Corn half destroyed by blackbirds. . . . Set out shade trees. . . . Read Cowper. Took up a bee tree to hive for honey. . . . Hunted deer.
At length the farmer made up his mind to com plete his education. So he studied hard ; but he was so busy on the farm that the most favorable days for study were those when he was not well enough to work. During that time the following entries were made:
Made a ditching machine. . . . Studied algebra. . . . Made a chest of drawers. . . . Hunted a panther. . . . Went to a bridge raising. . . . Hewed timber for a barn. . . . Made a wagon. . . . Made a cheese press. . . . Unwell, and so studied algebra. . . . Made a sun dial. . . . Sister Har riet dead. . . . Made a coffin for Sister Harriet. . . . Went to the mill. . . . Read the " History of Rome." . . . Hunted deer. . . . Unwell, so wrote temperance address. . . . Hunted panther. . . . Sat on jury. . . . Helped to make post office. . . . Examined the school teacher. . . . Wrote a sermon. . . . Made soap. . . . Boiled sugar. . . . Started for New Eng land, to attend school.
In 1841 the young pioneer went back to the prairies, where he toiled on the farm and among the people who needed his services, preaching here
WESTERN PIONEER LIFE
119
and there, and finally becoming pastor in Geneva and Rockford. In one of his fields he was promised "$125 a year for one sermon each Sunday." His biographer chose extracts from his diaries which showed the manner of his life in Geneva, "while
A PIONEER GRISTMILL
he held, as it were, the pioneer's axe in one hand and the Bible in the other, doing a man's work with both." Here are a few of these extracts:
Wrote a sermon, and made a door. . . . Raised the house frame. . . . Cut and drew ice, and made curtain rods. . . . Made a plan of a sermon on the Prodigal Son, a pair of
120 REAL STORIES FROM OUR HISTORY
quilting frames, and an argument at the lyceum against cap ital punishment. . . . Read Neander. . . . Made a chair. . . . Worked on a sermon. . . . Drew straw. Commenced a sermon, and worked in the woods. . . . Doctored sick horse. . . . Cut wood. . . . Read Neander. Horse died. . . . Began a sermon. Planted potatoes. ... Built an icehouse. ... Helped wife to wash. . . . Made benches for the school. . . . Fin ished sermon, and haying. . . . Set out plum trees. . . . Planned a sermon. Made a gravel walk. . . . Wrote a ser mon. Papered my study. . . . Wrote at a sermon. . . . Planted seventy peach trees. . . . Wrote at a sermon. . . . Made a bedstead for the cobbler. . . . Went to Elgin with father, to build a cupola for the church. . . . Worked at cupola. . . . Raised cupola. . . . Hung the bell. . . . Preached in the church. . . . Read Macaulay. Made candles.
One entry calls for an explanation. The bed for the cobbler was not made for money. The cob bler was a poor cripple. He could make a meager living if he had a little house in which he could live and work. So the pioneer built a place for him entirely with his own hands, and furnished it in the same way. He secured for the old cripple all the wood he wanted, too, for the winter, sawed, split, and piled it for him, and drove the wolf once for all from the door, the result being the happiest cobbler in Kane County.
Source. ROBERT COLLYER. Augustus Conant. The Beacon Press, Boston.
lMJPO^UaU!^
Settlement of one portion of the Louisiana country was slow — and all because of a raft, more than one hundred miles long, which covered the waters of a river from the mouth far toward its source. Until that raft was destroyed, settlement was impossible.
The story of the conquest of the raft is worth reading.
CHAPTER XIX
THE RED RIVER RAFT
Stories of floating islands have been told from the days of Pliny the Younger, who wrote of a num ber of these in the Lacus Vademonis, near Rome. They were covered with reeds and rushes, and the sheep grazing upon the borders of the lake passed upon them to feed, and were often floated away from the shore. Driftwood accumulating on the surface of the water formed the founda tion of these islands ; deposits of earth and sand on the logs made a soil ; seeds were dropped by birds and carried by the winds, and after scores of years the " islands " were complete. Authorities declare that such islands, formed in the large rivers and carried out to sea, "have been the means of distributing species of the larger animals among the islands of the South Pacific, and of introducing vegetable life to new localities."
122 REAL STORIES FROM OUR HISTORY
It is not generally known that the largest and most remarkable formation of this kind was in our own land, in the Red River, a tributary of the Mississippi. This river, more than seventeen hun dred miles long, was practically closed to naviga tion by a timber raft of enormous extent. Early explorers were unable to ascend the stream, and later navigators found it necessary to make use of a series of bayous and creeks to reach the headwaters.
The raft has been described as "an accumula tion of trees, logs, and drift, extending over the surface of the river from bank to bank, and for miles in extent, so close and compact as to be walked over without wetting the feet. Broom straw, willow, and other small bushes are growing out of the rich, alluvial earth that covers the logs, so that it presents the appearance of an old worn- out field that has been abandoned to grow up again."
It has been conjectured that the formation of this raft began nearly five centuries ago. The cause, it is agreed, was that the waters of the Mississippi, being high from a freshet when the Red River was low, backed up and made still water at the mouth. Driftwood floating downstream was stopped in this still water; further accumulations made a
TEARING AWAY THE RAFT
I23
124 REAL STORIES FROM OUR HISTORY
solid mass from shore to shore. When the Mis sissippi fell to the level of the Red River, the mass became jammed. The banks of the stream being heavily wooded, vast quantities of timber were added, and the raft grew at the rate of about a mile and a half a year.
As the years passed, the oldest timber rotted, and sections of the raft broke away and floated down to the Gulf of Mexico. This process of decay was not sufficiently rapid to keep pace with the additions, and the raft increased in length, while gradually receding upstream. This recession was so slow that one man said, " If we would wait about two hundred years, it would give us navigation up to some eight hundred miles above the mouth."
But it has not been the American custom to wait patiently through centuries for the easy accomplishment of an important work. It was realized that there was too much at stake to falter because the difficulties were great. The whole Red River country was malarial, because of the decaying timber. As the raft grew, settlers were driven back, not only by the malaria, but by the waters, which overflowed the prairies and made of a fertile country a lake from twenty to thirty miles long. Houses were deserted, and the devel opment of the region was retarded.
THE RED RIVER RAFT 125
When the government engineers, to whom was committed the task of removing the obstruction, made their preliminary survey in 1833, the raft was found to be one hundred and twenty-eight miles long, its lower end being about four hun dred miles above the mouth of the stream. Oper ations were begun at once, under the direction of Captain Shreve. At first the work was not difficult. The lower part of the raft was in such a state of decay, and yielded so readily to the grapplings of the steamer that about one hundred miles of it was pulled away the first season. Good navigation was thus established up to Coates' Bluff, now Shreve- port, so named for the leader of the expedition.
The last thirty miles of the obstruction pre sented great difficulties, and the completion of the task was much delayed. The timber was solid. Axes and saws were used, while nitroglycerin and dynamite facilitated the work. The explosives were handled with great unwillingness by the engineers, who were not accustomed to them. Captain Tennyson, in an official report to his superior, wrote, " I have been uneasy sometimes about dynamite, probably a foolish whim, but put it off my boat in December, and refused to use it."
The raft figures in public documents for many years. Appropriation after appropriation was made.
126 REAL STORIES FROM OUR HISTORY
Millions of dollars were expended. Finally, in 1873, a navigable channel was completed. At once the level of water above was lowered fifteen feet.
Since 1873 the work has been continued by snag boats, which patrol the river and keep it clear of obstructions. The banks are stripped of all timber which might fall into the stream and help to remake the raft.
When the work of clearing was only partially completed, a person who knew the country and its possibilities wrote, " The greatness of the enter prise warrants any trouble in reason it may give for a few years to have a stream with so much of future promise kept open and in order." The prophecy was made that the fertile lands of the valley " would be inhabited by a dense population, and its waters freighted with the produce of its unlimited fine range for cattle and hogs, and also with cotton, wheat, and other grains."
Although the building of railways is responsible for the partial inaccuracy of this forecast, yet the prophecy has been justified by events. The Red River country is settled by thousands who could never have made their homes there but for the dauntless spirit of American pioneers.
Sources. Government reports.
De Bo'w's Review. New Orleans, 1855.
^
The next increase in territory of the United States, following the Louisiana Purchase, came when the republic of Texas sought and gained admission to the Union.
An observant traveler made it possible for us to know what life in the republic was like.
CHAPTER XX
A DAY IN THE REPUBLIC OF TEXAS
In 1830 the Mexican government, fearing the encroachments of foreigners in the northern part of the province of Coahuila, known as Texas, for bade further immigration. So the Americans, who were there in large numbers, were instrumental in having a request presented to Santa Anna, presi dent of Mexico, that Texas be organized as a state in the Mexican Union.
The request was refused, and dissatisfaction was so great that Texas revolted in 1835. Sam Hous ton, chosen general of the forces in rebellion, suc ceeded in achieving the independence of his people at the battle of San Jacinto, in April, 1836, when Santa Anna was captured. In October, 1836, Gen eral Houston was elected the first president of the republic, which successfully maintained its exist ence until 1845, when it was, at its own urgent
127
128 REAL STORIES FROM OUR HISTORY
and repeated request, admitted by resolution of Congress as one of the United States.
A visit to the frontier state was made in May, 1837, by John James Audubon, the naturalist, in the course of his rambles in search of birds and other specimens in natural history. The account
of his stay in Galveston, and in Houston, the capi tal, as given by him in his diary, is not only in teresting reading, but is invaluable as furnishing one of the few records of life in the Lone-Star Re public in its first months of struggle.
Audubon approached Galveston by sea and thus saw many reminders of the war so recently
ended. " We went ashore at Galveston," he wrote. ;' The only objects of interest we saw were the Mexican prisoners ; they are used as slaves — made to carry wood and water, and cut grass for the horses, and such work ; it is said that some are made to draw the plow. We passed through the troops and observed the miserable condition of the
GENERAL SAM HOUSTON
A DAY IN THE REPUBLIC OF TEXAS 129
whole concern — huts made of grass, and a few sticks or sods cut into square pieces composed the buildings of the poor Mexican prisoners, who, half-clad and half-naked, strolled about in a state of apparent inactivity. . . . The soldiers' huts are placed in irregular rows, and at unequal distances ; a dirty blanket or a coarse rug hangs over the en trance in place of a door. No windows were seen, except in one or two cabins occupied by Texas officers and soldiers."
The journey to Houston was made in a rain storm, so that the first view of the capital was not prepossessing. ' The Buffalo Bayou had risen about six feet, and the neighboring prairies were partly covered with water; there was a wild and desolate look cast on the surrounding scenery. We had already passed two little girls encamped on the bank of the bayou, under cover of a few clapboards, cooking a scanty meal ; shanties, car goes of hogsheads, barrels, etc., were spread about the landing; and Indians, drunk and hallooing, were stumbling about in the mud in every direc tion. These poor beings had come here to enter into a treaty proposed by the whites.
" We walked toward the President's house, ac companied by the Secretary of the Navy, and as soon as we rose above the bank we saw before us
130 REAL STORIES FROM OUR HISTORY
a level of far-extending prairie, destitute of timber, and of rather poor soil. Houses half finished and most of them without roofs, tents, and a liberty pole, with the capitol, were all exhibited to our
THE ALAMO, SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS
Here, for three weeks, a small body of Texans resisted a Mexican force ten times their number
view at once. We approached the President's man sion, wading through water above ankles. This abode of President Houston is a small log house, consisting of two rooms, and a passage through, after the Southern fashion. The moment we
A DAY IN THE REPUBLIC OF TEXAS 131
stepped over the threshold, on the right side of the passage, we found ourselves ushered into what in other countries would be called the ante-chamber; the ground floor, however, was muddy and filthy, a large fire was burning, a small table covered with papers and writing materials was in the center, camp beds and trunks were strewn about the room. We were at once presented to several members of the cabinet, some of whom bore the stamp of men of intellectual ability.
" We amused ourselves by walking to the capitol, which was yet without a roof, and the floors, benches, and tables of both houses of Con gress were as well saturated with water as our clothes had been in the morning.
"We first caught sight of President Houston as he walked from one of the grog shops, where he had been to prevent the sale of ardent spirits. He was on the way to his house, and wore a large gray coarse hat. He was upward of six feet tall, and strong in proportion. We reached his abode before him, but he soon came, and we were pre sented to His Excellency. He was dressed in a fancy velvet coat, and trousers trimmed with broad, gold lace ; around his neck was tied a cravat, somewhat in the style of Seventy-six. He at once removed from the ante-room to his private chamber,
132 REAL STORIES FROM OUR HISTORY
which, by the way, was not much cleaner than the former.
" We returned to our boat through a melee of Indians and blackguards of all sorts. In giving a look back we once more noted a number of horses rambling about the grounds, or tied beneath the few trees that have been spared by the ax. We also saw a liberty pole, erected on the anniversary of the battle of San Jacinto, on the 2ist of last April and were informed that a brave tar, who rigged the Texan flag on that occasion, had been per sonally rewarded by President Houston with a town lot, a doubloon, and the privilege of keeping a ferry across the Buffalo Bayou."
It would be interesting to learn what the sailor did with his town lot, which he probably valued less than the doubloon or the ferry privilege. The city has developed so rapidly that the present owner must hold it at a good figure ; for the Lone- Star State has had a marvelous growth since the days of Audubon and Houston. Instead of barren plains, there are extensive fields of cotton ; instead of an unfinished capitol, one of the most imposing edifices in the country; instead of a log cabin for the executive mansion, a governor's house that is a credit to the state. Everywhere are signs of thrift and prosperity.
A DAY IN THE REPUBLIC OF TEXAS 133
What a debt is owed to the pioneers who en dured the hardships and were willing to undergo difficulties that their successors might enjoy peace and prosperity!
Source. MRS. AUDUBON (Editor). Life of J. J. Audubon. G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York.
^UtVLWUJ^LmAVU^
Seven days from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh. This was the time made by the first stages. They succeeded in covering, according to the difficulty of the road, from two to four miles an hour. At night the passengers were glad to rest at one of the numerous roadside taverns.
rAW^ft^YyrwnYirwAYr^^
CHAPTER XXI
ON AN OLD STAGE ROAD
In an old diary, kept by some one whose name is not known, there is a curious entry which tells something of the difficulties encountered by a traveler on the Lancaster Pike in Pennsylvania, before the days of railroads. In telling of "a trip for pleasure " made over the old road from Lan caster to Philadelphia, he wrote :
Left Lancaster ... in good spirits, but alas, a sad acci dent had like to have turned our mirth into mourning, for W. driving careless and being happily engaged with the lady he had the pleasure of riding with, and not mindful enough of his charge, drove against a large stump which stood in the way, by which the chair was overturned and the lady thrown out to a considerable distance, but happily received no hurt. About 8 o'clock arrived at Douglass' where supped and rested all night. The supper was pretty tolerable, beds indifferent, being short of sheets for the beds, the woman was good enough to let W. have a tablecloth in lieu of one.
ON AN OLD STAGE ROAD
135
In 1789 a family party took passage on a stage of a later line, hoping for a speedy passage from Philadelphia to Lancaster. Everything was all right until they overtook a husband and wife who had been traveling in a chair until the driver refused to take them further. Room was made
AT THE PHILADELPHIA TERMINUS
for the wife in the stage; the husband walked alongside. The further incidents of the journey were related by one of the party in a letter to friends. The road was so rough, and the load was so heavy, that the axle soon cracked, and the stage dropped to the road. Fortunately nobody was injured, so the party extricated themselves
136 REAL STORIES FROM OUR HISTORY
and "footed it Indian fashion to the nearest inn," two miles distant. After eating dinner they per suaded a countryman to take them on the next stage of the journey. " His team proved to be a country wagon without springs or cover, with no seats other than bundles of rye straw." However, all agreed that the wagon was better than walking. Finally, after twelve weary hours, the party suc ceeded in reaching Downey's.
It was not till 1804 tnat a regular stage line to Philadelphia was operated over the Lancaster Pike. As this was the great highway to the West, the road had been improved in order that the vehicles of all sorts which used it might find it passable. The first newspaper announcement of the new stage line was quaint:
PHILADELPHIA & PITTSBURGH MAIL STAGES
A contract being made with the Postmaster General of the United States for the carrying of the mail to and from Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, in stage wagons, a line of stages will be in operation on the first of July next, on same route, which line will start from John Tomlinson's Spread Eagle, Market street, No. 285, Philadelphia, and from Thomas Forries, the Fountain Inn, Water street, Pittsburgh : and perform the same route in seven days from the above places. Passengers must pay $20.00 each, with the privilege of twenty pounds of baggage, all above that
ON AN OLD STAGE ROAD 137
weight in baggage sent by above line, to pay at the rate of $12.00 per hundred pounds, if the packages are of such dimensions as to be admissible to the conveyance . . .
Printed cards will be distributed, and may be had at the proprietors' different stagehouses, giving a full detail of the distance and time of arrival at the several towns through which the line shall pass.
N. B. Printers who shall think the above establishment a public benefit will please give the same a place in their respective papers a few times.
PHILADELPHIA, JUNE 13, 1804
The first trip was not made until July 4. At eight o'clock in the morning the stage was drawn up at the starting point, " the four prancing horses with red, white and blue ribbons," according to our historian.
Long before the starting time the mail was in the "boot," the straps drawn tight, the booked passengers in their seats, while as a last precaution an extra keg of tar was slung to the hind axle, the lynchpin examined and the dustproof covers fastened on the hubs. Then . . . the driver and the armed guard took their places on the box, the lines tightened, the whip cracked, and the pioneer mail stage to the West left the office among the cheers of the assembled multitude.
Before long another stage line was established, and residents along the road learned to watch eagerly for the races between the rivals.
138 REAL STORIES FROM OUR HISTORY
The demand for " accommodation stages," which would stop to pick up a passenger at any point, became so great that this was made a regular feature of the service. The fare for way passen gers was fixed at six cents a mile. Express pas sengers used the through coaches, and rejoiced that the fare had been reduced to #18.50, because of the large increase in travel between the cities.
MODEL OF PHILADELPHIA AND PITTSBURGH STAGECOACH
By 1823 there were eleven lines of stages running daily on the eastern section of the road. These were known as Berwick, Downington, Harrisburg Coaches, Harrisburg Stage, Lancaster Accommo dation, Lancaster Coaches, Lancaster and Pittsburgh Mail, MifBin and Lewiston via Harrisburg, Phila delphia and Pittsburgh via York, Pittsburgh via Harrisburg, and Philadelphia and West Chester.
ON AN OLD STAGE ROAD
139
But coaches were not the only vehicles on the busy road. At about the close of the first quarter of the century " there was hardly a moment dur ing the twenty-four hours when there was not some travel. ... It was a frequent sight to see long lines of Conestoga wagons going toward the
CONESTOGA WAGON. "PHILADELPHIA TO PITTSBURGH 20 DAYS"
city loaded with the products of the West, or going in the opposite direction freighted with the pro ductions of eastern mills or foreign merchandise ; their wagons were usually drawn by fine stout teams, each horse having on its collar a set of bells consisting of different tones, which made very singular music as the team trudged along
140 REAL STORIES FROM OUR HISTORY
at the rate of about four miles an hour. Emigrants could also frequently be seen on the way, gener ally in companies for mutual assistance, going with their families and worldly possessions towards the new West."
Source. JULIUS H. SACHSE. The Wayside Inns of the Lancaster Roadside. Published by the author, Philadelphia.
JJWJXVU^MUUL^J^
i
A journey to the West was a great undertaking in the early years of the nineteenth century. Think of advancing only ten or twelve miles in a day ! Frequently progress was even slower than this. Sometimes, when roads were especially bad, it was necessary to walk all day long.
CHAPTER XXII
A PIONEER TRAVELER ON THE ROAD
In 1810 Margaret D wight, a niece of Timothy Dwight, then president of Yale College, decided to go from New Haven, Connecticut, to Warren, Ohio. She did not think of the trip as a pleasure jaunt, for at that day there could have been little pleasure in a journey of six hundred miles. But her parents were dead, and she was to make her home with cousins in the frontier town. Fortu nately she could join a small party of Ohio people who were returning home. She kept a journal in which she wrote every night the story of the day's events. This is now one of the treasures of a granddaughter.
Soon after leaving New Haven Miss Dwight met a woman who asked her destination. " You bant going to New Connecticut ? " was the as tonished comment when the traveler replied to her
141
142 REAL STORIES FROM OUR HISTORY
question. " Why, what a long journey ! Do you ever expect to get there ? They say there 's wild Indians there."
Progress over the rough roads of New Jersey was slow. At times only ten or twelve miles were made in a day. Once eight miles was the total advance in three days. But for the toll roads, many of which were kept in fair condition, it would not have been possible to go so far. Many nights were spent in taverns where the accommo dations provided were so unpleasant that the travelers were eager to start on their way very early in the morning.
The signboards on the inns amused the young traveler. She told of some of these to her friend :
I saw one in N. J. with Thos. Jeff'n's head and shoulders and his name above it — to-day I saw Gen. G. Washington — his name underneath — Gen. Putnam riding down the steps at Horseneck — one sign was merely three little kegs hanging down one after the other. They have the sun rising, setting, and a full moon, a new moon, the moon and seven stars around her, the lion and unicorn fighting, etc., and everything else ever seen or heard of.
The last day's ride in northern New Jersey was thus described :
We crossed the longest hills, and the worst road I ever saw — two or three times, after riding a little distance on
A PIONEER TRAVELER ON THE ROAD 143
the turnpike, we found it fenced across, and were obliged to turn into a wood where it was almost impossible to pro ceed — large trees were across, not the road, for there was none, but the only place we could possibly ride. It appeared to me, we had come to an end of the habitable globe — but all these difficulties were at last surmounted, and we reached the Delaware. The bridge over it is elegant, I think — it is covered and has sixteen windows each side.
CROSSING THE ALLEGHENIES
At the end of a hard day on Pennsylvania roads the party came to a tavern, but they were denied accommodations. They were told of a log hut across the road, built for " movers " like them selves, "that the landlord need not be bothered with them." They wished to go in search of better
144 REAL STORIES FROM OUR HISTORY
accommodations, but, as their horses were tired, they decided to make the best of the hut. " We have a good fire," the journal explained, "a long, dirty table, a few boards nailed up for a closet, a dozen long boards in one side and as many barrels in the other, two benches to sit on, two bottom less chairs, and a floor containing dirt enough to plant potatoes. . . . The man says he has been so bothered with movers that he has taken down his sign, for he does not need his tavern to live. If we had a mind to stay, we might, but if we chose to go on he had no objections."
On the last day before beginning the crossing of the Alleghenies the weary travelers came to an inn where they hoped to have a good rest, in preparation for the next day's exertions. " We were never so disappointed," Miss Dwight wrote. " We were put in an old garret that had holes in the roof big enough to crawl through — our bed was on the floor, harder it appear 'd to me, than boards could be — and dirty as possible — a dirty feather bed our only covering."
The mountains were crossed on foot. At first the writer of the journal thought it was fun to climb mountains, but when she had walked up hill and down for several days she changed her mind. Once she wrote : " I was so lame and so
A PIONEER TRAVELER ON THE ROAD 145
tir'd that for an hour I did not know but I must sit down and die — I could not ride — the road was so bad, it was worse than walking." Once she told of "large stones and deep mud-holes every step of the way," adding, " We were obliged to walk as much as we possibly could, as the horses could hardly stir the wagon, the mud was so deep and the stones so large."
After experience with such roads as this, she said she understood at last why so few of the many emigrants to Ohio ever returned to the East. It was not because the new country was so good, but because the roads were so bad.
She expressed wonder at the number of those who were enduring the privations of the way. " From what I have seen and heard, I think the State of Ohio will be well fill'd before winter. Wagons without number every day go on. One went on containing forty people — we almost every day see them with 18 or 20 — one stopt here to-night with 21."
At last the journey was completed, though it required six weeks instead of the four weeks for which plans had been made. Miss Dwight had said good-by to her friends in New Haven on October 19, and it was December i when she reached Warren.
146 REAL STORIES FROM OUR HISTORY
Miss Dwight's shoes were worn to shreds by the long walks over the mountains and along the lowlands, and her clothing was threadbare. She declared she would not undertake the return trip till " the new turnpike " was completed.
Source, MAX FERRAND (Editor). A Journey to Ohio in 1810, as recorded in the Journal of Margaret Dwight. Yale Historical Manu scripts, Yale University Press.
^W^AAW/AW/AVJAAWXXWA\W;U^
Always there were some who felt that it was useless to talk of
colonizing the West because of the extreme difficulty of traveling ;
but always there were others who urged that settlers could and would find their way to the broad lands in the new country. One of the most ardent of these was George Washington. He dreamed of a day when the journey to the West would be comparatively easy. The story of the Patowmack Canal tells how he tried to make his dream come true, in the face of difficulties that to many seemed insurmountable.
CHAPTER XXIII
GEORGE WASHINGTON, CANAL BUILDER
During the closing years of the eighteenth cen tury and the opening years of the nineteenth century, the states of Virginia and Maryland took a prominent part in planning for the colonization of the great West. And it was largely due to George Washington, Virginia's greatest son, that plans to this end were made and carried out.
Even before the treaty of peace with Great Britain was signed, Washington was busying him self with plans for the development of the country. Once he wrote to the Marquis de Lafayette:
I have it in contemplation to make a tour thro' all the Eastern States, thence into Canada, thence up the St. Law rence and thro' the lakes to Detroit, thence to Lake Michigan by land or water, thence thro' the Western Country, by the
147
148 REAL STORIES FROM OUR HISTORY
river Illinois to the river Mississippi ; and down the same to New Orleans, thence into Georgia by the way of Pensacola, and then thro' the two Carolinas home. A great tour this, you will say.
Although Washington was not able to take this tour, he did make several shorter journeys
Ewing, Washington ON THE OLD PATOWMACK CANAL
which opened his eyes more than ever to the opportunities for developing water communication. He wrote to a friend:
I could not help taking a more contemplative and ex tensive view of the vast inland navigation of these United States, from maps and the information of others ; and could not but be struck with the immense diffusion and importance
WASHINGTON, CANAL BUILDER 149
of it, and with the goodness of that Providence, which has dealt his favors to us with so profuse a hand. Would to God we may have wisdom enough to improve them.
But Washington was not one of those whose eyes are so fixed on the distant chances that he
© Harris and Ewing, Washingtor WITHIN SIGHT OF WASHINGTON
was blinded to those near at hand. When he re turned to his Virginia home, he began to think of the Potomac, and the facilities it would offer, if improved, for reaching the Ohio by means of a single portage, and so the great West.
A number of men met and talked of this scheme. They found that one great difficulty in their way
150 REAL STORIES FROM OUR HISTORY
was the lack of a thorough understanding between Maryland and Virginia as to the regulation of navigation on the river. This understanding was brought about in 1785 by the Mount Vernon compact. As ratified by the state legislatures, it has been held by historians to be the origin of the call for the constitutional convention of 1787 in Philadelphia.
One of the first steps taken to put into effect the action of the legislatures was the insertion of an advertisement in the Maryland Gazette in 1785 :
PATOWMACK CANAL!
By virtue of an act of the last General Assembly of Maryland . . . notice is hereby given that the laudable subscriptions so essentially necessary to accomplish a work fraught with such unusual advantages is now opened at Annapolis.
On May 17, 1785, in Alexandria, the Patowmack Company was organized, Washington being the chairman of the meeting held for the purpose. In a paper read before the Columbia Historical Society of Washington, Mrs. Corra Bacon-Foster said of this meeting:
And thus the first incorporation of a company for the improvement of our inland waterways was accomplished ; its successors have been many, but none have ventured into
WASHINGTON, CANAL BUILDER 151
unknown difficulties and perplexities with greater courage or higher motives ; their aims were to benefit the remote settler, to safeguard the Union and incidentally to plan a remunerative investment.
Work was begun immediately. Before many months engineers were busy at Great Falls. That those engaged on this early project had their troubles with laborers may be seen from a report of the treasurer of the Patowmack Company:
Great Falls potowmack July 3d 1786. Sir We have Been much Imposed upon the last Two weeks in the powder way (we had our Blowers, One Run off the other Blown up) we therefore was Obliged to have two new hands put to Blowing and there was much attention given to them least Axedents should happen yet they used the powder Rather too Extravagant, But that was not all they have certainly stolen a Considerable Quantity as we have not more by us than will last until tomorrow noon. Our hole troop is Such Villians that we must for the future give the powder into Charge of a person appointed for that purpose to measure it to them on the ground by a Charger. — I hope you will have it in your power to send us powder here Im mediately. . . . please to send i Ib. Salt Petre with the powder, we think we Can make matches with it that will Save powder.
At Great Falls the Virginia Legislature let the trustees lay off a town to be called Matildaville. For fifty years the name was to be seen on
152 REAL STORIES FROM OUR HISTORY
Virginia maps, though the site cannot now be accurately determined.
In December, 1801, the locks at Great Falls were completed., In February, 1802, they were opened for business, and for twenty-eight years they were in use. The volume of trade and the re ceipts from tolls were large. Many visitors from far and near came to see this greatest American engi neering achieve ment of the time. All went so well that the company grew ambitious and began the im-
GEORGE WASHINGTON'S COACH
provement of the
Shenandoah, the Monocacy, and the Antietam. Then difficulties began, and the Patowmack Com pany soon fell on evil days. Lotteries were resorted to for the raising of funds, and there were disputes and lawsuits about the drawings. Debts hindered the progress of the work. The demand for the improvement of the river continued, and the use of the canals completed became larger year by
WASHINGTON, CANAL BUILDER 153
year, but the Company was not able to meet the claims upon it.
Then came the end. In 1828 the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal Company took over the prop erty of the Patowmack Company, and continued development according to their own plans.
The coming of the railroad made the completion of the work unnecessary. The canals and locks were abandoned. To-day the visitor to Great Falls can see the masonry of the great locks, overgrown by trees. These locks are so stanch that one is compelled to admire the thoroughness and skill of those early workers.
One other reminder of the past is to be seen at Great Falls, a bronze tablet in honor of George Washington, the first officer of the Patowmack Company.
Source. MRS. CORRA BACON-FOSTER. Early Chapters in the De velopment of the Patomac Route to the West. Columbia Historical Society, Washington, D. C.
George Washington had his successors who dreamed, as he did, of canals that would make easy the way to the West. Travel by the waterways they built was slow, but it was so sure that for twenty years the packet boats on some of the canals were popular means of transportation.
CHAPTER XXIV
WHEN THE CANAL WAS IN ITS GLORY
The pioneers rejoiced when they could make use of the rivers, for it was much easier to travel by water than by the miserable roads of the day. Yet rivers did not always flow in the desired direction.
What was to be done ? The question was asked and answered by far-seeing men who wanted to help in the development of the country, or who wanted to make money, or both. They would dig artificial rivers. They would follow the example of George Washington by building canals as he had built the Potomac Canal.
The first experiments in canal building were so successful that before many years the East was gridironed by a series of canals. New York and Pennsylvania were leaders in the construction. The Erie Canal, from Albany to Buffalo, was authorized in 1817, and was finished in 1825.
154
WHEN THE CANAL WAS IN ITS GLORY 155
The next year Pennsylvania began her system of artificial waterways. In 1825 Ohio began her first great canal, and in 1832 Indiana made her initial experiment.
The Erie Canal was the most successful of these waterways. It offered the easiest method of trans portation to those who wished to go to northern Ohio, for when the first stage of the journey ended at Buffalo they were able to take passage on the fairly comfortable lake boats to a point near their destination. The canal trip was usually made on boats which, on the trip from Buffalo to New York, were used for freight transportation, while on the return trip to Buffalo they were packed with the household goods, machinery, cattle, and families of those who dreamed of new homes in the West. The passengers were glad to pay the cent and a half a mile which was the customary fee demanded.
The canal boat was a curious structure, about eighty feet long and twelve feet wide. On the deck was a cabin, in which were cramped sleeping quar ters. The bunks were folded out of sight in the daytime, that room might be made for the long table at which the travelers ate.
The boats were drawn by three or four horses or mules, which were hitched to about two hundred
156 REAL STORIES FROM OUR HISTORY
feet of tow line. It has been es timated that at one time there were as many as sixteen thou sand animals in use on the Erie Canal, and that $ there must have y been fifty thou- w sand horses and a mules on all the
H
| canals.
^ The driver was, usually, a mere $ boy. Many driv-
% i
&3 ers were only ten years old. The towpath be came a refuge for orphans, who eagerly adopted this method of earning ten dol lars a month and board.
WHEN THE CANAL WAS IN ITS GLORY 157
While the speed of these boats was sometimes as great as four miles an hour, the average speed for the day was much less. Stops were frequent, and passage through the locks, by means of which a higher or a lower level was reached, was made at great cost of time. A mile and a half an hour was considered a good average speed. The possi bilities of such rapid travel were shown by Colonel William T. Stone, one of the editors of the New York Commercial, who wrote of a trip made to the West in 1829. Of one day's adventure he said:
Stepping ashore to look about a little, while the boat stopped to water the horses, I was surprised to find on turn ing around that the boat was off, and a bend in the canal had thrown it out of sight as if by magic. I lost some moments in a vain endeavor to get a horse to follow on, but was compelled to test my own speed, which, hindered with a heavy overcoat and an asthmatic affliction, was not of the fleetest. However, after running about a mile, I came near enough to hail the boat.
A traveler who made a trip on the Erie Canal in 1825 gave another laughable picture of this primitive transportation system :
One of the greatest inconveniences in traveling on the canal is the frequency and lowness of the bridges ; under most of these the boat has just room to rub. If passengers are standing upon the deck, with their backs to the bridge, they are liable to be swept off or crushed to pieces. Several
158 REAL STORIES FROM OUR HISTORY
accidents of this kind have already happened, and would occur daily, had not the danger rendered it a part of the helmsman's duty to give notice when the boat is approaching a bridge. Those who are expert, leap the barrier, jumping up on one side and off at the other, while others hurry below, sometimes with all possible dispatch and even then not without losing a hat. Measures are taken to correct this inconvenience by elevating the bridges several feet above the highest decks.
THE IRON STEAMBOAT R. F. STOCKTON
Travelers who were willing to pay an extra rate of fare traveled by limited packet boats, which made few stops and thus were able to make an average distance of something like the four miles which the state law allowed. Greater speed was not permitted because it was found that when boats moved faster, the wash set up caused the banks of the canal to crumble. The usual time
WHEN THE CANAL WAS IN ITS GLORY 159
required for the journey from Albany to Buffalo was six or seven days, though there is record of a journey which required but five days and a half. An Albany newspaper spoke of this in terms of wonder as a " Quick Passage."
Fanny Kemble, the actress, in her journal, pub lished in Philadelphia in 1835, told of a trip she made on an Erie Canal packet boat in 1833. She said:
I like traveling by the canal boats very much. Ours was not crowded, and the country through which we passed being delightful, the placid moderate gliding through it at the rate of about four miles and a half an hour seemed to me infi nitely preferable to the noise of wheels, the rumble of a coach and the jerking of bad roads, for the gain of half a mile an hour.
To Miss Martineau, the English traveler, canal travel did not seem so delightful as to Miss Kemble. She said :
I would not advise ladies to travel by canal. . . . On fine days it is pleasant enough sitting outside (except for having to duck under bridges every quarter of an hour) and in dark eve nings the approach of the boat lights on the water is a pretty sight ; but the horrors of night and wet days more than compensate for all the advantages these vehicles can boast.
As a contrast to this dismal picture, we have the assurance given by Miss Caroline Spencer, in
160 REAL STORIES FROM OUR HISTORY
an article in the Magazine of American History, published in 1889, that in 1835 s^e found the boat exceedingly pleasant.
It seemed such a relief from the hot breathing steam boat and the close, hurried railroad car. . . . The windows of the boat are sufficiently large to make the vi-ew pleasant from them ; and as you ride along through the most rich and delightful country whose banks touch the sides of the boat, you almost fancy yourself in fairy land.
But comparatively few of those who used the canals were able to travel for pleasure. Most of them had serious business before them ; for tens of thousands this business was the carving of a home from the Western wilderness, to which they were traveling at " a mile and a half an hour for a cent and a half a mile."
Sources. NOBLE E. WHITFORD, C. E. History of the Canals of the State of New York. (Printed as a supplement to the State Engineers' Report of 1905.)
DAVID L. BUCKMAN. Tow-path and Packet Days. (Unpublished manuscript.)
The vision of the West that must be built up was constantly be fore the eyes of far-seeing statesmen. Realizing that something more than canals would be necessary for the transportation of set tlers who sought the new country, they made the daring plan of a highway a thousand miles long.
CHAPTER XXV
THE GREAT NATIONAL ROAD
Many American young people have never heard of the old ' National Road. In fact, many of the older generation have forgotten this wonderful engineering triumph of the early years of the last century. In this age of railroads, trolley lines, tel egraphs, and telephones, we sometimes think that there were no really great works during the days of our grandfathers, and earlier.
But the traveler in Indiana, Ohio, West Virginia, or Pennsylvania, who passes over one of the massive bridges or along the still solid bed of the National Road, must change his mind. Interest leading to inquiry, he will learn that he has seen a section of " the longest straight road ever built in the world," a road which "for seven hundred miles marks the course of the Star of Empire in its advance" from the East to Indiana.
161
1 62 REAL STORIES FROM OUR HISTORY
Archer Butler Hulbert says of the road:
When the West was in its teens and began suddenly outstripping itself, to the marvel of the world, one of the momentous factors in its progress was the building of a great road from the Potomac to the Mississippi, by the United States government. This was one of the most important steps in that movement of national expansion which followed the conquest of the West. It is probably impossible for us to realize fully what it meant to this West when that vanguard of surveyors came along the western slope of the Alleghenies, hewing a thoroughfare which should, in one generation, bind distant and half- acquainted States together in bonds of common interest, sympathy and ambition. Until that day travelers spoke of "going into" and "coming out of" the West as though it were the Mammoth Cave. Such were the difficulties of travel that it was commonly said, despite the dangers of life in the unconquered land, if pioneers could live to get into the West, nothing could, thereafter, daunt them. The growth and prosperity of the West were impossible until the dawning of such convictions as those which made the National Road a reality.
The road was called into being by the neces sities of hardy settlers who had pushed into the Ohio country. In 1802 Congress passed the en abling act by which, a little later, Ohio entered the Union. A provision of this act was that five per cent of the net proceeds from the sale of pub lic lands within the state should be devoted to
THE GREAT NATIONAL ROAD
163
building public roads, under the authority of Con gress. In 1806 Albert Gallatin, who conceived the National Road, succeeded in having commissioners appointed by President Jefferson to report on the
MAIL COACH, WASHINGTON TO COLUMBUS
feasibility of the project. Almost immediately it was determined to begin work. Cumberland, Mary land, was fixed as the starting point. Thence the road was to run to Uniontown and Washington, Pennsylvania. Wheeling, West Virginia, and Steu- benville, Ohio, were eager claimants for the crossing
1 64 REAL STORIES FROM OUR HISTORY
of the Ohio River. Through the influence of Henry Clay, Wheeling won in the contest, and a statue, erected to his memory in gratitude for this serv ice, stands to-day by the side of the road in Elm Grove, five miles from Wheeling.
The first contracts, for ten miles leading out of Cumberland, were signed in 1811. Six years later Uniontown was reached. The first mail coaches ran through from Washington to Wheeling in 1818. The construction was at first somewhat flimsy, but later the entire road was built of the best macadam and was then handed over to the states through which it passed. Toll gates were set up, and the income was used for repairs.
In 1820 Congress appropriated $20,000 for the survey from Wheeling to the Mississippi River. In 1825 the first appropriation for road building in this section was made. In 1833 Columbus, Ohio, was reached. Indianapolis soon after became the center of operations. The original intention to build to the Mississippi River was modified upon the introduction of railroads. For a time Congress debated whether it would not be wise to make the last section of the great work a railroad rather than a turnpike. Final decision, however, was against the change. But years had passed, there was not so much necessity for a road, and
THE GREAT NATIONAL ROAD
165
the grading of the bed was the only work done in Illinois. The grading was completed as far as Vandalia, at that time the capital, for, according to law, the road was to pass through the capitals of all the states touched west of the Ohio River.
ONE OF THE MASSIVE BRIDGES Reproduced by permission of the Philadelphia Commercial Museum
The final appropriation was made in 1844, on account of a survey to Jefferson City, Missouri. The total amount expended was nearly $7,000,000, an average of $10,000 per mile.
The road never paid expenses. The receipts for many years were large, but the expenses were still larger. In forty-seven years Ohio collected nearly a million and a quarter dollars in tolls. The yearly
1 66 REAL STORIES FROM OUR HISTORY
expense of repairs was nearly one hundred thou sand dollars, while the greatest amount collected in any one year was $62,496. As early as 1832 the governor of Ohio was authorized to borrow money to repair the road in that state.
But this financial failure was not a disappoint ment. It was not the idea of the statesmen of the early nineteenth century to build a money-making highway. Their aim was to help the West. In this they succeeded. During the generation when the road was the only means of transportation for immigrants, the population of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois increased from 783,635 to 3,620,314. This increase was many times as rapid as that of other states during the same period.
Those were the days when the stagecoach was in its glory. There were many lines in operation over all divisions of the turnpike. Some of the earlier coaches were quite primitive, but improve ments were rapidly made, and rival lines vied with each other in providing the best equipment. The Ohio State Journal of August 12, 1837, gave the following description of "A Splendid Coach":
We have looked at a Coach now finishing off in the shop of Messrs. Evans and Pinney, for the Ohio Stage Company, and intended we believe for the inspection of the Postmaster General, who some time since offered premiums for models of
THE GREAT NATIONAL ROAD 167
the most approved construction, which is certainly one of the most perfect and splendid specimens of workmanship in this line that we have ever beheld, and would be a credit to any Coach Manufactory in the United States. It is aimed, in the construction, to secure the mail in the safest manner possible, under lock and key, and to accommodate three out side passengers, under a comfortable and complete protec tion from the weather. It is worth going to see.
Ten miles an hour was the recognized rate of travel. On special occasions much greater speed was made. In 1837 Van Buren's message was carried eighty-seven miles in two hundred and twenty-six minutes. In the same year regular mails were carried from Washington to Wheeling in thirty hours; to Indianapolis in sixty-five hours; to St. Louis in ninety-four hours.
But the railroads came, and the fortunes of the road declined. It had served its purpose. To-day some sections are neglected, owing to the care lessness and indifference of county officials. Still other sections are as solid and substantial as ever. In West Virginia and Pennsylvania and parts of Ohio " the pike " is still the pride of the people.
There are many relics of its greatness. Mile stones, iron in the East, stone in Ohio, are still standing. Old taverns are here and there along the way. What tales they might tell of the gay parties
1 68 REAL STORIES FROM OUR HISTORY
which ate and slept within their walls ! Team sters' lodging houses are falling into decay. But the massive stone arch bridges stand, and will stand for many years. " It is doubtful if there are on the continent such monumental relics of the old stone bridge builder's art," one engineer says. During a flood in West Virginia, some years ago, a great iron railroad bridge was carried from its founda tions, and swept downstream to the old S-bridge near Wheeling. The stone bridge stood the test of the great impact. The iron beams were bent and twisted, and finally were swept through the arches and down the stream. One historian says :
Were these relics all gathered together — from Indiana, and Ohio, and Pennsylvania, and Virginia, and Maryland — and cemented into a monstrous pyramid, the pile would not be inappropriate to preserve the name and fame of a highway which, as Everett said, "carried thousands of population and millions of wealth into the West, and, more than any other material structure in the land, served to harmonize and strengthen, if not to save, the Union."
Source. ARCHER BUTLER HULBERT. Historic Highways, Vol. X, " The Cumberland Road." The Arthur H. Clark Company, Cleveland, Ohio.
^y^UMk^U^WA^WXAW/XW^U^
There came a day when settlers wished to go far beyond the territory opened up by the great National Road. As early as 1846
many people were lured to the Pacific coast by wonderful tales of the delights of that region. They knew they would have to cross a trackless wilderness to reach the land of their dreams, but the thought did not deter them.
The story told by a survivor of a famous party which made the overland journey gives a vivid picture of the perils braved by those who sought the West.
CHAPTER XXVI
ACROSS THE PLAINS IN 1846 I. THE JOURNEY
Before the days of railroads, those who made the overland trip to California suffered untold hard ships. Thousands perished from hunger and ex posure, or were killed by the Indians. A graphic picture of the sufferings of these hardy Western pioneers is given in the story of the ill-fated Donner party.
The central figure in the story is a little girl named Eliza Donner. She was less than four years old when her adventures began, but many of the events were impressed on her memory so indel ibly that when she was nearly seventy years old
she told them for the boys and girls of to-day.
169
1 70 REAL STORIES FROM OUR HISTORY
Eliza Donner lived with her parents and four sisters, one younger and three older than herself, on a farm near Springfield, Illinois. One day in the spring of 1846 she learned that her father and her mother had decided to move to California. Such a journey was not so easy a matter as it is in this day of railroads. For many hundreds of miles of the way there was not even a wagon road. Roving Indians were everywhere. California was then a part of Mexico. Yet when the Donners decided to make the five months' journey, seven of their neighbors asked permission to go with them. In all, thirty-two persons agreed to share the dangers of the plains.
Eliza was much interested in the preparations for the journey. She saw three big white-covered wagons brought into the yard, and watched her parents as they loaded them. In one wagon they placed seed and farming implements for their own use in California, as well as laces, muslins, satins, and velvets which they hoped to trade for land. The second wagon held the supplies of food and clothing for the journey, as well as the tents and other things to be used in camp, and the bright- colored garments, beads, necklaces, looking-glasses, and so forth, with which unfriendly Indians were to be appeased. The third wagon was to be the
ACROSS THE PLAINS IN 1846
171
family home on wheels. Each wagon was to be drawn by three yoke of sturdy oxen. Three extra yoke of oxen, five saddle horses, beef cattle, and a dog were to follow the wagons.
It was a happy moment for Eliza and her sisters when the signal was given to start. They wondered
PIONEERS ON THE PLAINS
why there were tears in their mother's eyes as they left the old home and passed the familiar orchards and the fields beyond.
The first weeks passed pleasantly. Everything seemed so strange. By the time the journey began to be monotonous, other wagons joined the party, and there was great excitement for the Donner girls
172 REAL STORIES FROM OUR HISTORY
as they made the acquaintance of other boys and girls. During the evening hours in camp, and in the morning before the early start, the young people would have pleasant times together on the prairies, though they were warned not to go far from camp, because Indians might be near. At noon there would be another brief interval for play, after the company had eaten dinner in picnic style on the grass.
The loneliness of the days was frequently re lieved by messages from others who had traveled across the plains before them. Some of these mes sages came by the hands of trappers and traders who were on their way to the East. More often they were penciled on the skulls of animals lying on the prairie, or on the trunks of trees from which a patch of bark had been cut. When neither trees nor skulls were near, those who wished to leave a message would write a note and fasten it in a cleft stick driven into the ground.
Travelers were accustomed to watch for such messages. When they were uncertain about the way, they usually found something to guide them. One day, however, they looked in vain, until some one caught sight of a guideboard. The disappoint ment of all can be imagined when examination showed that the note which had been pasted to
ACROSS THE PLAINS IN 1846 173
the board had been torn into bits. Evidently the crows had pecked the paper to pieces. Nobody knew what to do till Mrs. Donner began to hunt for pieces of paper on the ground, where the birds had dropped them. Others helped her. When they had as many bits as could be discovered in the tall grass, she slowly fitted them together on the guideboard, as a child matches the pieces of a picture puzzle. At last she was able to spell out the words :
2 days — 2 nights — hard driving — cross — desert — reach water.
The Donner party was at this time in a beauti ful valley where there were twenty natural wells, and so it was decided to remain in camp until the oxen were thoroughly rested. Then, taking all the water they could carry, they started across the desert. The trip required twice the time the note had said. Before the next valley was reached, the wood of some of the wagons shrank till the vehicles were useless and had to be abandoned. Every one in the party suffered from thirst, and many of the oxen perished from lack of water.
There were other delays. Some of the notes left for their guidance led them astray. Once they were thirty days in making a part of the journey
174 REAL STORIES FROM OUR HISTORY
that should have required but twelve days. At another time the men made a road across eight miles of rocky country, only to find that they had to go back and start another way. These de lays made the food supply short, and everybody
AT THE END OF THE DAY
was hungry. But all were willing to bear the hardships, for California seemed near, and when they reached the sunny land there would be plenty to eat and drink.
Then there was an accident that changed all their dreams. Eliza and her sister Georgia were asleep in the wagon while their father walked
ACROSS THE PLAINS IN 1846 175
beside it down a steep hill. Near the end of the incline the front axle broke, and the wagon tipped over, spilling the contents, the two girls under neath. Mr. Donner rushed to the rescue, and soon succeeded in freeing Georgia through the open ing at the back of the wagon cover. Eliza was out of sight. Fearful that she might be crushed or smothered, Mr. Donner worked feverishly. At last the girl was found. Nothing was wrong with her but a bad fright.
The accident had other consequences, however. Mr. Donner injured his hand while making repairs. Then so many hours were wasted that it was im possible to cross the summit of the Sierras before the first great snowfall of the season. The party tried to go on, but they were soon unable to move. Some of the wagons, which were further along the way, managed to push through ; but the Donners and a few of their friends, twenty-one in all, were at the mercy of the storm. The men and women were dismayed at their situation. The children did not realize their danger at first, but the grave faces of their parents and friends soon made them feel that something was wrong.
They were stranded in the snow near the sum mit of the cold mountain. They had no shelter, they had little food, and it might be many weeks
176 REAL STORIES FROM OUR HISTORY
before they could push on to the valley. Their only hope was that some of the party who already had reached the valley would send assistance to them in season.
II. STARVING IN THE SNOW
Eliza Donner never forgot that first day and night in the snow in the lonely mountain valley. The day was spent by the men in felling and trimming trees. A beginning had been made on a log cabin, when darkness put a stop to the work. The moon was shining when the weary pilgrims went to bed, but during the night there was a heavy snowstorm.
The snowfall made necessary a change of plans. Instead of finishing the log cabin, the tent was pitched on a cleared space, under a pine tree, and an Indian guide showed the men how to enlarge this shelter by a rude hut of poles and boughs. On the framework were laid pieces of cloth, old quilts, and buffalo robes, as well as pine boughs. In a hollow scraped out under the tree a fire was built.
While the work was going on there was no shel ter for Eliza and Georgia. " Mother tucked a buf falo robe around us," Eliza wrote, " saying, ' Sit here until we have a better place for you.' There we
ACROSS THE PLAINS IN 1846
177
sat snug and dry, chatting and twisting our heads about, watching the hurrying, anxious workers."
Before the shelter was finished the snow was falling once more, gathering in a ridge beside the children on the log, and nestling in piles under the buffalo robe. They were glad of the call to
A REST BY THE WAY
enter the hut. There, after warming themselves at the fire under the tree, and eating their meager supper, they crept into the bed, which was made of boughs laid on posts.
For eight days the snowfall continued. Mr. Don- ner kept up his courage, in spite of his crippled hand, leading in the work of gathering fuel, and doing all he could to make others hopeful. Many
178 REAL STORIES FROM OUR HISTORY
of the cattle froze to death. The places where their bodies lay were marked, that they might be found later, as they were required for food. But the snow covered them out of sight, and few could be found. The men would prod in the snow with long stakes, but they seldom discov ered what they sought.
Food became so scarce that " the little field mice that had crept into the camp were caught and then used to ease the pangs of hunger. Pieces of beef hide were cut into strips, singed, scraped, boiled to the consistency of glue and swallowed with an effort. Marrowless bones that already had been boiled and scraped were now burned and eaten, even the bark and twigs of pine were chewed in the vain effort to soothe the gnawings which made one cry for bread and meat."
The wanderers were not only hungry, they were cold. :' We little ones were kept in bed," Eliza says. " My place was always in the middle, where Frances and Georgia, snuggling up close, gave me of their warmth."
So the days dragged along for more than two months. " By the middle of January the snow measured twelve and fourteen feet in depth. Noth ing could be seen of our abode except the coils of smoke that found thei