Yes, we were a normal happy family, why shouldn't we be in those far off days. There were mother and father, Sam, Lyman, myself, (Mary) and Helen, and like normal youngsters, finding all sorts of things to do to make life either a burden or even perhaps to help our elders a little. In those days when mother would promise us something, even a punishment, we knew we would get it. Sometimes we would go with her to get the stick so we could get ours first and get it over with. But the worst punishment for either Helen or I was to be set up on a chair, Helen in one corner and I in another, and have to sit there until we could at least promise to behave, which promise I am sorry to say was not always kept. I washed dishes before I was big enough to reach the dishpan on the table, but, alas, a good many times I'd play until the dishwater was stone cold and I'd have to get more water and start over again. After Helen for old enough to help me, there would be two of us to play, and mother would often give us just so many minutes to finish the dishes. I can't remember if they were always finished in the required time, but some of the time they would have to be done over because we didn't do them very well.

I was two years older than Helen, and Lyman was two years older than me, our birthdays were all in January. When Helen was just old enough to run everywhere, mother and Sam were doing the chores while father was away on one of the numberless things he did to keep his family in food. Helen, Lyman and I were playing around a stone building where father had tied a calf he had bought (our calves were used to having children all around them). In racing around the building we scared the calf so, that in trying to break loose, it pulled a stone from the building which dropped on Helen's foot. Lyman and I tried to lift the stone and couldn't, so we each for ahold of Helen under her arms and pulled until we got the foot out from under the stone. Then I sat down to hold her while Lyman ran for mother and Sam.  

Grandmother, a practical nurse, lived close to us and Sam went for her as no doctors were to be had. Mother and grandmother worked for several days nursing the badly hurt baby who cried over and over, "Oh mama, footie," until mother was nearly crazy. It healed finally, leaving a bad scar, but was not deformed. My poor little sister. In all the scrapes we got into she was always the one who got hurt. One thing, she would always go a little farther than I dared. She was so adventurous, and I learned later not to dare her to do anything I didn't want her to do. She never would back down on a dare. Here is one proof of it. We would start out, "You don't dare do this or that," and then the one dared would or would not do it. I wouldn't unless I was sure it was okay to do it, but Helen would do it or die. One day she dared me to do something, I have no idea what, but it was pretty stiff. I came back with, "You don't dare rub poison ivy on your face and I do," which I proceeded to do. She said, "I do too," and did. I said "Oh, rub it hard like I do." Helen did, and before we were through, I was the worst scared child ever. I can't remember having any trouble at all, but Helen's face was a sight. Her eyes were swollen shut, and all of her face terribly swollen. I figured perhaps she never would see again and I would have to lead her around and wait on her. I can still feel that quiver of fear that she would never see again and I had got her to do it. I don't believe I ever dared her to do anything again that I didn't feel would be all right for her to do. If I started, I'd take it back before she could accept the dare. Sam and Lyman were older, and often while we were small they would have to help with the work while we girls just played. Once dad had taken them to the field with him, and while they were gone, Helen and I, who loved to dress up, got out their Sunday suits and put them on. We were having such a good time being boys when mother discovered us and made us leave the clothes on until the boys got to the house. They saw some little boys running around at their house before they got there and wondered who they were. We girls were terribly ashamed and the boys did tease us a lot about it. I wonder if little girls nowadays would be? The boys had to herd the cattle as they got older. We had a corral, and for years kept cows and calves on ropes. I can remember once there was a mad dog scare. Mother had left Helen and I at the house while she and the boys were away somewhere, probably not too far away, when I saw a dog coming across the prairie right towards where one of our cows were tied. I had heard that mad dogs went in a straight line, so I ran and moved the cow's picket pin over quite a little so that she was out of the line. As I remember it, the dog went on. I suppose some poor dog was headed for home and I thought him a mad dog, but anyway, I saved the cow!

As we got older, and the cows and calves more numerous, we herded them instead of tying them on a picket rope, and one of us girls would go with the boys. Lyman got to be an expert at making bows and arrows, and oh the game we hunted with them. However, the game was perfectly safe. We also had a dog whose only work was when we would call, "Here Lew, here Lew, dig them out, dig them out." Lew would come on high and the cattle, seeing him coming, would go back where they belonged and everyone would be happy, unless it was Lew. Before Lew though, we had a dog who was a real pal in every sence. Some of the things about him I am not sure about. I just heard them so much that I feel that I remember. One was when he went with dad to find a sow that had been nursing, her pigs were expected and dad couldn't find her. Dad hunted half the day and couldn't find any trace of the sow. So when they came in at noon and the dog wanted to come in with him, dad said, "No, you can't come in, Prince, you didn't find the sow, and I'm mad at you." Prince turned around and walked out. very soon dad heard Prince bark out in the rye field, and a hog squeal. He went there and found Prince holding the sow by the ear. He released her and she headed for her family, so they were all found. A few years later Prince was bit by a rattlesnake. The folks did everything they could for him, but he kept getting worse. We children were put in our trundle beds one evening and Prince scratched on the door wanting to come in. Mother let him in, he reeled as he walked and licked each one of us in the face as we slept. Mother said he stood a moment longer and looked at us, then went out.  In the morning he was dead. So passed one of our best friends.

Days and weeks slipped away in the fall after I was 4. We got a letter that excited us a lot. A brother of dad's, Loyal, had run away about the time of the gold rush in California. He had written his mother, still in New York where we had left her, that he had been shipwrecked on the coast of South America. He had stayed there and married, but now with one son, he wanted to come home. He had been injured when he was shipwrecked and had only got over it. So with his wife dead, he wanted to come home and bring his boy to relatives there and see them before he died. I don't know how it was accomplished, but Uncle Loyal went to New York to visit and then onto Kansas, bringing Jud, who was named for my father, with him. We only had one room, so dad quarried rock and laid up another room big enough for them to stay in. Jud was just 18 years old. Uncle Loyal took a homestead and Jud built a little house on it. They never moved on it because Uncle Law, as we called him, died the next spring, so Jud was a member of our family until he married at 25. But the thrill I got especially was that when we started to school that winter (our school lasted three months during the middle of the winter) Jud and I started in the same class. He had been to school and was fairly educated in Spanish, but couldn't read or write English. There were a great many big boys, some of them 20 - 25 years old, who went to school. I thought they went just to make the teacher trouble, but maybe they didn't. Anyway, they sure made fun of Jud and he had a good many fights before they finally decided it wasn't the thing to do. Of course, as soon as he could put what he had learned into English, he didn't have to stay back with me. Before the three month term was up, he was ahead of the ones who had made fun of him. The school house as I remember it was a sod dug-out with a dirt floor. The seats were cottonwood boards nailed up high enough for the large pupils to write on and seats just of cottonwood boards across blocks of wood, leaving an aisle at each side and the back end. There was a space in front of the room, and the blackboard was just that, boards painted black, along the front end as I remember it. The teacher's desk was a bench set near another board like our desks. The big boys had a bench in the back and sat there. If they ever studied much I can't remember it. I can remember how they used to pick on me because I was always a firebrand. One time one of the young men picked me up and told me to give him my gum, I didn't have any except what I was chewing. I refused and he tried to take it away from me. I finally gave it to him full tilt, I spit it with all the spit I could gather right square in his face. He called me a pretty bad name but let me go.

There were about 50 pupils in that little old sod school house. An uncle of ours taught it, and got the munificent salary of $15 per month. He boarded around. I remember one boy somewhat older than I who was clubfooted. Uncle used to carry him on his back coming home from school. Uncle stayed at our house, or at theirs, which was about a mile farther south of our place. There were often subscription schools in the summertime to give the smaller children more chance to learn, and we all went. I can remember one where the teacher was a neighbor girl whom we all loved, and the last day of school we had a program and lots of folks came to visit. The big girls were all dressed up with their big bustles and polonaise. They sure did look nice. Helen and I were standing on one of the side benches, and one of the girls came along. I decided to sit down on her bustle, she screamed and I landed on the floor. The rest of the big girls made a close wall around her, but I was in disgrace for some reason or other. Helen was always pretty and cute, and could say cute things. People would laugh at her and praise her. I decided I would try it, I was plain and so shy it was pitiful. I don't have the slightest idea what smart speech I made, but they all laughed and I got behind mother, and cried and cried. I never tried it again while I was small at least.  

About this time dad came home with two little lambs which I suppose someone had given him. He gave one to Helen and one to me, and we cared for them. Later when they got to be sheep, he sold them and got us each some shoes with the money. About this time, too, someone came along with some coyote pups. They had planned to get some bounty for them at the county seat, but the bounty had been revoked, and they sold them for what they could get for them. I was the only one of the children who was interested, do dad gave the coyote to me. I took care of it.
Lyman had made me a little wagon from a cigar box, with spools for wheels. One day I had hitched pussy up, but I needed another horse. I finally went and got my coyote, but when I tried to hitch them up together there was one grand fight. If I hadn't had the chain on my coyote I don't know what would have happened, but I hauled him away and didn't try that again. I can't remember what became of the coyote, but I suppose he died. The boys had wanted a goat and dad got them one. They went to get it and came home dirty and grimy. The goat butted them over every little bit, but they brought him home just the same. Jud was there to do chores, so when dad was elected delegate to a state convention at Topeka he went. When dad left home, he had let his whickers grow as was the custom then. When he came home, he had shaved them off. For several days we had been watching the road hoping for dad to come home when suddenly we saw him coming up the road toward the house.  All four of us raced out wondering what he'd bring us, as children will. We raced ahead until we got close, but it was a stranger, so we pretended we hadn't come to meet him, but walked by, half scared to think of going out that way to meet a person we didn't know. As we got past, we heard dad's own private chuckle, and then the poor stranger was strangled by the embrace of four husky youngsters. 

Soon after dad and mother came here, dad planted a bunch of walnuts where ever he felt they would do well. One of the first things I can remember was the walnut grove planted on the first and second bottom of a branch of the creek where they were very thrifty. Later, many picnics were held there, even political rallies. Dad was a strong Republican, and of course they had picnics there. Later, the People's Party, which was later called the Populist Party, asked to have the grove.  Dad said they could, but told them to arrange for seats. They didn't do it and were very angry that dad hadn't provided them. I can remember the man who was elected Governor at that time speaking from a wagon, and I can still remember how the tobacco juice leaked out of the corners of his mouth and ran down on his gray whiskers. I didn't suppose a man like that could be Governor, but I soon learned even sockless men were sent to the Senate. Before this time, however, dad had been nominated for a
county office and elected, so we moved to the county seat for a few years. One of the things I can remember of this time was that dad and an uncle had been sent to the county seat as delegates to a convention. The town was crowded, and the hotel room they got had room enough so the management asked to put in a cot and let another man sleep there. They agreed, and a certain prominent attorney was put in there. HE was a good lawyer, but had habits that made him a real menace to himself. He had a real dose of D. T.'s That night dad said it was the strongest temperance sermon he ever heard preached. This man afterwards tried to kill himself after another bout with D. T.'s He did not succeed, but died later from the effects of alcohol. It was such men as this, who more than anyone else, finally made Kansas a dry state. 

There were six of us children by this time, and dad went to town to try to rent a house. A friend told him, "You can not rent a house with that many children." I don't know whether dad tried or not, but I do know he finally bought a house and that he was very angry. He said, "I have children, yes, but they have always lived in a house." When we moved to town I was 10 years old, and too old to put in my time playing. We brought a cow with us and some pigs and a team. In the morning one of the boys would get us and build a fire, and then do the chores while one of the
girls got breakfast. Then the next week these two could stay in bed, and the other two took over. After breakfast one of us girls would wash and wipe the dishes while the other swept and made the beds. Of course this was in the summertime, and the boys worked in the garden or cleaned the barn and hog pens. After dinner we girls each had a stint to perform before we could go and play. We either had to make some quilt blocks, or knit a number of rounds on a stocking, or crochet. We made all the stockings we wore at that time, wool for winter, or cotton for the summer. In school times we did as much as we could before going to school, but school was the important thing and we were not allowed to be late or absent except for a good reason. I remember the first year we were in town we heard there were cases of small pox in town. We either had to miss school or be vaccinated. After much debate, the folks decided we had better be vaccinated so we wouldn't have to miss school. So the doctor came to vaccinate the four older children. The doctor had something he called a pencil of vaccine. He scraped our arms until they bled with an office knife, and then rubbed that over the open sore. I suppose he used the same pencil for all who were vaccinated. I know we only missed about a month of school and almost lost our arms. I still have a plain scar after 60 years. I can still remember the lumps
under our arms and how our fingers were all swollen terribly. How if we got up on our feet, we kept a pillow under our arms to hold the arm out so it wouldn't touch those kernels under our arms.

Our cousin Jud had been staying on the farm alone after we moved to town. He had expected to be married soon after we came to town, and take his wife to the farm house. One day he came up to bring a load of things we needed from the farm. He did not seem well when he was there. It was eighteen miles out to the farm, and there was a cold wind blowing. Jud kept getting worse, and when he reached home he must have been almost out of his head. He tied the horses in the barn without
feed or water or unharnessing them. He got into the house and into bed. The next evening someone knocked on the door, a neighbor stood there. Jud told him that he was sick and asked him to go for Aunt Becky (my grandmother). The neighbor afterwards said he thought Jud was drunk, so didn't do anything about it. The next day grandmother was in the country store and this man came in. Grandmother asked if anyone had seen Jud, as he had planned to be up there before that, and it wasn't like him to break a promise. This man said, "I saw him last night and he said he was sick, but I guess he had just had one too many." Grandmother turned to one of my uncles and said, "Get the team, we are going down there." They went and found Jud delirious on the floor where he had crawled after a drink. He had weeks of serious illness after that. My Grandmother took him home with her and cared for him. She was almost a doctor, and liked nothing better than caring for someone who needed
it. I will say in passing that the man who didn't go for help was probably the only one in that community who wouldn't have done all he could to help anyone who needed help. In later years he had a little girl who was going to school when she took sick. He and his wife had to depend on neighbors to care for their stock and house while they were in town. I had been reading in our McGuffey's readers about heaping coals of fire on your enemy's head, and I felt that he was having it done. I seem to remember him telling dad that he felt he didn't deserve the neighbors he had. However, Jud finally recovered and the first day of January he brought a sweet woman we loved to our house, and that afternoon the preacher came and married them. I'll always remember that day. There was an eclipse of the sun and we children were out with pieces of smoked glass looking at it when mother called us in. We had been dressed up but thought nothing about it and went in. I think mother said all four of us had smoke on our hands and faces, and she was afraid we would get it on the newlywed couple's fine clothes. That was my first experience with a wedding that I can remember. 

I have often heard the folks tell of the grasshopper invasion. Mother said she covered part of her garden with sheets only to have the grasshoppers eat her sheets as well as the garden. My oldest brother was born in 1874, the year the grasshoppers came. One story we used to love was about my brother when the Indians came. They wanted water for some of the children, and mother told Sam to get them some. Sam could reach the water bucket, and he began carrying to them. The Indians drank it all up, Sam felt they wanted more, and kept on carrying. Mother said when she noticed again, the Indians were beginning to laugh and rub their stomachs. She didn't have any idea how much water Sam had given them, but he was still hard at it when she stopped him.  

The neighbor who lived close to us lost his wife while we were quite small, and later either advertised for a wife or answered an advertisement. A woman wrote him and said she lived in a big white house on a hill. They corresponded for some time, when he finally went after her, he found the big white house was the poor house, but he married her and brought her back with him. She had an old mother who looked just like the pictures of an old witch riding a broom stick, and even today when I see those pictures I think of her. Also, this woman had a daughter who was about a half wit. My folks liked the woman herself, quite well, but the old witch and the girl were constantly in trouble. The old woman hated Mr. S. with a violent hatred, and did everything she could to keep him in hot water. She disappeared one time and said she was going to drown herself. He hunted all up and down the creek on his place and ours, but couldn't find her. Dad said, "Don't worry, she won't hurt herself. It would be too good a thing for you," and even I felt daddy wasn't very sorry for him. They found her hiding in the cellar with plenty of food and drink, and a knife she said she had planned to kill Mr. S. with. She later died, the granddaughter moved away, and Mrs. S. died. Mr. S. married a widow woman of our own community. She was short and fat, and he was tall and thin. I will always remember them on the way to church. He would start out and get perhaps 50' or 100' ahead of her, he would wait until she was almost up to him, and then he would keep on until he was way ahead of her again. They would be visiting all the time. I remember them coming to our place one time in a blizzard, she had wrapped herself up in a blanket. They were afraid the strong wind would set their house on fire, they stayed with us all day and night. I have often wondered what would have happened had she gone in some of the drifts they walked over going home.

One of the happy times in a pioneer child's life was going with her dad on one of his many trips over the county. The town where we went to do our trading was Kirwin, and when we went there we passed a little old stone cabin with a sod roof facing the east with no openings, either in the north of west. There was a half window in the south and a door in the east, and always when we passed it we would ask dad to tell us about it, and here was the story he told us.

Lewis was a coal miner from the east who wanted a home of his own, so he had come to the eastern part of Phillips County and took a homestead, building this little stone cabin, and bringing his wife and children there to live. Soon after they got settled, he had to go back to work to keep them from going hungry. His wife had always lived in the city and was afraid of the wide open spaces. Soon, that wasn't the only thing she was afraid of. A widow woman with three grown sons had taken a claim nearby, and two of the sons decided to scare Lewis's wife off the claim so they could take it, but the woman had no place to go and no way to go with little children. Whether she wrote her husband, Lewis, or he just came home, I don't know. But one night when the man came to frighten her, Lewis was at home. He stepped to the door with his rifle in his hand and told them they had better leave. He was a small, inoffensive appearing man, and the claim jumpers just laughed at him and came up toward the house. They had guns but didn't attempt to use them. Lewis
suddenly brought his gun to his shoulder and shot. The men, taken completely by surprise, ran and jumped off a bank into a ravine about 20' away from the house. One of them had been hit in the jaw, and when he got down the bank, he lay there and bled quite a bit. But he either got home on his own power, or the brother who was not hurt went and got help and took him home. In the morning when Lewis got up and found the blood, he decided he had killed a man and came to my father, who
was a justice of the peace, and gave himself up. Dad didn't have any idea what the proper procedure was in so serious a case as murder, so he took the man to the constable and left him there while he got on a horse to go talk to the county attorney who was later a judge (Judge Pratt whom we all knew.) 

Dad had left mother (who was a girl of 20) at home alone, except for the company of her younger brother, a boy of 15 years. They had figured there might be a lynching party, so dad told mother, "If anyone comes, just tell them where Lewis is, and they won't bother you." Sure enough, a bunch of seven or eight riders came up in the night and knocked on the door. When mother laid down, she had put a revolver under her pillow, but it wasn't comfortable to sleep on, so she took it out and put it on the
floor under the edge of the bed. She said my uncle got up when she did and stood beside her. The leader asked my mother politely where Lewis was and also dad. She told him, and then he asked if he could come in and search the house, and she told him yes, "Come in." My uncle was not in favor of letting them come in, but yielded to her wishes. There wasn't much to search, only one room. However he did spot her revolver under the bed, and looked at her and smiled. She said she was embarrassed.
The men walked out and rode off. They went to the constable's house and called out when they got there. The constable, Lew Malboff, got up and went to the door. They asked if Lewis was there, and he told them yes. He had his rifle in hand. They talked together a little and then asked if they could come in and see Lewis. He said yes, and then called Lewis, saying, "Come here to the door." Then he pointed his rifle at the leader and said, "One false move from any of you and one of you won't move
again." The Malboff's were noted buffalo hunters. The men talked a little, then rode off again. Sometime afterward, Lewis was tried and acquitted, but Lewis and his wife had had enough country life and he sold his relinquishment and went back to the coal mines. The man who bought it built on another part of the land, hence the empty house which I can remember, although I was not born when all this happened. I asked a man a few years ago where the land was the claim jumpers lived on and he said he owned it. This man still lives in Agra, but is past 90 years of age. 

Contributed by Julie Robst, a descendant.