Canaan, March 3rd, 1918 Dear Editor:--

It was June 22d, 1863.  My husband, Mr. Crendall Holt, was working for William Cornor of Fairfield, in Greenville.  Sapling Cornors Camp was where he was boss.  Our route from Canaan was to go to Clinton, take the train to Newport, and then take the stage to Dexter, Parkman, Monson, Shirley and Greenville, where we arrived at 7 o'clock at night.  We stopped there that night, and the next morning went up across Moosehead Lake in the steamboat they called the Fairy.  We anchored at the Lake Dam, and then had to walk in one mile to what was then called the Fogg & Newall farm, where we stayed all night.

The next morning we began our seven mile journey thru the woods on an ox sled with a yoke of 8-foot oxen right in June with the mosquitoes and black flies swarming.  I would sit on the sled and ride as long as I could stand it, and then I would get off and walk a mile or so while my husband kept a bush switching to keep the flies away from me as best he could.  We came to the stream called Churchill, and there we halted, not knowing what to do, for the water was deep.  Mr. Holt cut some long stakes to stick in the sled.  We had a large trunk full of bedding, and an old fashioned kitchen chair that he had taken from the Fogg house, and some bed cord that he had brought from the foot of the lake.  He lashed the chair to the top of the trunk, and had me step up into the chair and hold on to the tall stakes.  He stood on the front part of the sled and then came the plunge of the oxen into the stream.  They were old woods oxen and knew their business, and we reached the other side of the stream in safety.

When we were within two miles of Cornor's farm our sled runners broke from bumping over so many rocks.  Mr. Holt asked me if I was good for a two mile walk, and I said yes, altho I was very hungry, for it was then past twelve o'clock.  But we were in for it, so he took the oxen off the sled and started them ahead, for bears were plenty in those days, but they would not come near the cattle.  So old Bright and Broad, as Mr. Holt called them went on ahead, feeding and brousing along, and we soon came out of the woods.  There on the top of a little hill in the middle of the Cornor's farm, sat a log house, and quite a large barn surrounded by big black stumps, the whole thing surrounded by large pine trees, with some spruce and fir mixed it.  It was a pretty shut-in place for a woman to live three months and not see one of her own sex; but I had my husband with me and he was all the protector I needed.  Well, dear friends, that was a happy three months to me, right in the midst of the Civil War, but have seen some sorrow since.  I will now close.

Mrs. Cordelia Reed

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