CHAPTER XV.

The Majors family came in 1844 from Morgan County, Ills., near the place where the Phillipses came from, and made a large claim in the extreme west part of Mahaska County. Mr. Majors died soon after they came, leaving a widow and a large family of children. Their two sons, Jacob and John P., were men. Their widowed daughter, Mrs. Louisa Majors Lyons, came with them. There was another daughter, Nancy, a young lady. There were two sons and two daughters not grown.

The Phillips family and the Majors family were friends in Illinois, and after coming to the, "New Purchase" their friendly relations continued. The young people sometimes visited each other, though the Majorses lived some fourteen miles west of Oskaloosa. They didn't have carriages and buggies then, but almost every young man owned a good horse, saddle, and bridle. The girls thought nothing of mounting a spirited horse and cantering off fourteen or fifteen miles over the prairies. After I had taught a week of that school, and it was Saturday, Sept 13th, the Phillips young people, or Gorrell and Martha, proposed to visit the Majorses and invited me to go with them. I was anxious enough to go, but felt a little reluctance in thrusting myself on entire strangers. I mentioned that fact, but they assured me that any friend of theirs would be more than welcome at the Majors home. It was soon settled, for I was very glad of a chance to go; and another thing was, I had begun to think that Gorrell Phillips was a pretty nice young man. After the matter of my going had been settled, Gorrell said, "I will go and see Johnson Edgar, as he has been wanting to make the acquaintance of Nancy Majors, and I will invite him to go with us." Gorrell flew off up town and was back in a little bit. Johnson was more than pleased and would be ready to join us when the time came to go. Johnson Edgar was a nice young man, a carpenter by trade; was a brother to Mrs. A. S. Nichols and an uncle to Rev. Snowden - a man well known in Iowa, and highly esteemed as a minister in the Congregational Church. Mr. Snowden looks much like his uncle, Johnson Edgar.

Mr. Phillips owned several good horses. Among them was a high-headed, spirited bay which they called "Bill," which Mr. Phillips offered to me. I said, "Perhaps Martha will want Bill." Bill was my choice, but I didn't want to seem anxious about it. "Oh, no," said Mr. Phillips, "Martha claims 'Kit' and wouldn't ride any other." "Kit" was a fine sorrel mare with a heavy foretop which always seemed to be hanging over her eyes. I asked Gorrell one day why he didn't trim Kit's foretop; it looked like it was in the way of her seeing. "Oh, no," he said, "That would spoil her looks, It always parts in the right place and don't interfere with her seeing." Gorrell's horse was a fiery young chestnut sorrel named "Tinker." Tinker had never had harness on, and was only used as a saddle horse. He was young and wild and tricky, and was hard to mount, but Gorrell was a fine horseman and felt safe enough when once on his back, though as soon as he struck the saddle Tinker would rear, and pitch and jump and look like he was going to do something terrible, but never succeeded in unseating his rider. When the time came for us to start on that wild ride, Mr. Johnson Edgar was there on a handsome black horse with more gentle manners than Tinker, but full of life and ready enough to go.

About three o'clock in the afternoon we all mounted our horses, the family all standing out by the fence to see us off. While Tinker was getting over his tantrum, Mr. Phillips came and examined our girths and surcingles to be sure that all was safe, then said, "Now, girls, when you get out of town you needn't be afraid to let your horses go; you can't hurt them." We didn't need encouragement to let our horses go, but I suppose Mr. Phillips wanted to let us know that he didn't care how fast we ran his horses. When Tinker had settled down to a respectable gait, Gorrell and I took the lead. Bill bowed his neck, held his head high in the air, and assumed a stately step; but with all his airs, wasn't dangerous.

Our horses were all on their mettle, but we managed to keep them at a moderate gait as we rode along Main Street on the south side of the public square where several of our young men friends were sitting in front of the stores. The town of Oskaloosa at that time was of such narrow limits that a thing of so much importance as that equestrian excursion was very soon known by the most remote inhabitant. We were not at all surprised-in fact, we expected to see men, women and children out to see the procession. Our spirits were so buoyant and we were on such excellent terms with ourselves, and were expecting such a good time that we imagined everybody, especially those young men in front of the stores, were looking on us with eyes of envy. After leaving the town we only passed two houses before reaching the Majors place. One was Judge White's, about a mile out southwest, on the place which has since become a coal mining town called Acme, and a little cabin in a grove about five miles out, a little south of west. The road wound about on the high ground and was one unbroken stretch of prairie all that fourteen miles. The little cabin which we saw was some distance from the road and we could just see its clapboard roof above the bushes. I never knew who lived there. There was a plain road all the way, though it had not been traveled sufficiently to wear out the grass entirely. The sloughs were not washed into deep gutters then, but were covered with sod; there was not a field nor fence between Judge White's farm and the Majors place; but one unbroken stretch of undulating prairie. People had their choice of ground to travel on.

There was quite a settlement about where the Majors lived-not near neighbors, but in that region. On that September day the weather was all that could be desired, and the road was splendid all the way. Occasionally we would come to a long piece of level road, then we would give our horses a tap with the whip and away we would go on a full runfor perhaps a mile; then we would slow up for a little while until we came to another level stretch and off we would go again. With all that dashing and running, no accident happened to us. We never raised the sweat on our horses, nor did they seem tired when we reached the Majors farm, which we did a long time before night. We dashed over that foul-teen miles of charming prairie solitude without meeting a single human being, nor even any tame animal. Once we saw two deer scampering over toward the Des Moines river timber, and a gray wolf jumped out of the grass a little way ahead of us and went loping over toward the north. Gorrell said, "If I was out here alone on Tinker with a good club, I would run that wolf down and kill it." I remarked to him: "I think that would be something of a feat to run a wolf down with a horse." "Oh!" he said, "That has been done often; I killed one that way myself. I was down toward White Oak grove on Tinker one morning hunting our oxen. I had an ox-whip with a long lash and a short club of a handle, when a wolf jumped up just in front of me and started out on the prairie on a long lope. I let Tinker out and he fairly flew after that wolf. I wound that whip-lash around my arm and siezed that club, of a handle in my hand. We soon began to gain on that wolf, and when we had run about a mile we were right on
him. Tinker struck him with his fore-feet and the wolf commenced snapping at the horse's legs. I reached down and struck him a blow on the head with that club which stunned him; then Tinker and I soon finished him."

The Majorses were not expecting us, but received us with all the demonstrations of hospitality and smiling friendliness that was possible to show visitors. Mrs. Majors, with her sons and daughters, all came out to meet us, and when Mr. Edgar and I were introduced, received us like we had been their dearest friends. If I had had any misgivings about being an intruder they would have been dispelled at once. The Major's family were the most comfortably fixed for living of any family I had yet seen in this wild, new country. There was a look of comfort and restfulness all about the place. They had, a great big house with one immense room down stairs, and some kind of arrangement for sleeping above. That big room had in it four beds all made up nicely with snowy pillows and clean patchwork quilts. The walls were whitewashed as white as snow; there was no carpet on the floor, but the puncheons were scrubbed as clean as a floor could be made. There were plenty of oldfashioned splint-bottomed chairs, a shelf on the wall with a looking-glass above it; a Bible and some other books were on the shelf. Under the shelf was a table with a clean white cloth spread on it, where was a glass pitcher in which was placed an immense bouquet of old-fashioned flowers intermingled with sprigs of asparagus. I glanced about that room and thought, "how clean and fresh and comfortable everything looks." A little way from that big log house was another of less pretentious which was used as a kitchen and dining-room; there was the big wide fireplace with crane and hooks, and when we were all invited out to supper we were seated at a long table with snowy cloth and a supper good enough for a king. The Majors home outside and in was a scene of rustic beauty. The masses of morning-glories and cypress vines and flower beans climbed arid wound themselves in fantastic shapes about the windows and clear up to the eaves.

The Majors women, like the most of farmers wives and daughters in that day, spun and wove. The old fashioned loom, was a rather unsightly piece of furniture, but seemed to be indispensable in a well regulated farmer's home. I had seen many a loom-house, but never one quite so unique as the Majors'. Just a roof was built out from the kitchen, and in place of the sides being enclosed with lumber or any other solid kind of wall, morning-glory vines were trained all around except an opening for a door. Instead of an unsightly shed, that loom-house was made a bower of rustic beauty. I think I never saw anywhere but in the Majors garden so many of the old-fashioned flowers. There hadn't been frost enough to kill them, though it was near the middle of September. The Majors men took as much pride and, pains to make that rustic home attractive as did the women. The men did not neglect the more substantial things pertaining to farming. Their immense fields of big, tall corn, with long ears hanging, and yellow pumpkins almost covering the ground, gave evidence that something had been done besides raising flowers. It was easy to raise corn and pumpkins and morning-glories in that day, for the ground was new and rich and mellow without a single weed to be seen anywhere.

Gorrell, Martha, and I enjoyed ourselves amazingly, but Mr. Edgar's visit was somewhat interfered with by Miss Nancy Majors having to divide her attentions between himself and another young gentleman who seemed to have gone there with the self-same purpose. The other gentleman, whose name was Clark, was a very fine looking young man; was tall and straight, with dark hair and eyes; was dressed in a nicely fitting and handsome suit of black broadcloth, I thought him a handsome man. Mr. Clark lived somewhere in that region and perhaps lives there yet, with that nice dark hair all turned white. For all I know his children and grandchildren may be living about him, and he with spectacles on may be spending these summer mornings in an easy chair on his porch, reading about Cervera's awful defeat and Hawaii's annexation. I have never seen Mr. Clark from that day to this, and I don't think Mr. Edgar made any more visits to the Majors place, but married another girl. He has long been sleeping with his fathers.

We young folks spent the evening out in the yard and among the flowers, talking nonsense which we imagined was the most brilliant repartee. When the time came to retire, we were taken into that big room which we found all partitioned off with white curtains. Each one of those four beds was in a cozy little room all to itself. The Majors women seemed to be equal to any emergency. I never go into a sleeping car without being reminded of that night at the Majors place. Sometimes my young lady friends get me to telling about the way people lived and managed in those days of crudeness, when men and women and children all lived and slept in a single room. I tell them that the people who first settled this part of Iowa had good sense, good principles, and lots of tact, and could adapt themselves to circumstances. Women whose circumstances made it necessary for them to live in a cabin of one room were as modest and self-respecting as they are to-day in elegant homes where every individual member of a household has his or her own room. In those pioneer times when people did as they could and not as they would, men were imbued with the kind of chivalry which forbids the thought of taking advantage of circumstauces such as I have reference to. The chivalry which shields and protects women; the chivalry that women admire in men.

The government surveyors were encamped in the Majors neighborhood at the time we were there. A young man belonging to the surveying party was taken sick and was brought, to the Majors home and Dr. Warren sent for. I have not forgotten Dr. Warren's kind voice and gentle ways as he bent over and talked to that sick young man; nor those Majors men's tenderness toward him. Mrs. Majors, had him placed in one of her snowy soft feather beds, and she and her daughters brought dainty things to tempt his appetite. After spending a day and a night in that charming and hospitable home, we again mounted our steeds and had another wild and daring ride back to Oskaloosa.

The reason we saw so few people and habitations all that long ride was, our road was out on the open prairie. In that early day, people settled in or near the timber; no one ventured far out on the prairie. They knew the land was all right, but in winter prairies were bleak, and the northwest winds were piercing where there was not a tree to break their force. The first settlers were obliged, to build their houses of logs, use wood for fuel and make rails to fence their farms. They had to build strong staked and ridered fences. Many of the early settlers had long strings of oxen to break the sod; those oxen were turned loose when not at work, to get their living wherever the prairie grass suited them best; it took a mighty strong fence to keep those oxen out of a cornfield. There were no laws then to prevent stock of all kinds from running at large. All that could be done on that line was to make their fences as high and strong as they could; under those circumstances the nearer they were to timber the better. No matter how beautiful the prairie looked, how rich the soil, or how well the land lay for cultivation, to live in a little cabin away out where there was not a tree to break the force of wintry storms nor shade one from Summer's scorching heat, was not a situation to be desired. But little by little, settlers ventured out on that charming expanse of rolling prairie and in a few years, from the Des Moines timber to the Skunk, the country was dotted over with houses and fields and tiny groves. It don't take long for trees to grow big enough to shade a house in this country. If we should start out one of these Summer mornings to drive to what was once the Majors place, it would be through lanes bordering a paradise of farms, with not only comfortable homes, but homes of architectural beauty, surrounded by grassy lawns, kept like velvet, with borders and beds of flowers all about, and graceful vines trained over shady, cozy verandas. Orchards of big, thrifty apple trees, full of apples, with not a dead limb nor caterpillar's nest to be seen in them; great fields of clover, red and fragrant; immense fields of waving corn just "laid by," when if you look as far as you can see between the rows - just from under the plow - not a weed to be seen, only the fresh, clean, mellow soil. There are fields of wheat, and fields of oats, and fields of potatoes, and pastures with herds of Jersey cows, some busily nipping grass, others lazily chewing their cuds under clumps of trees. There are great pens of black hogs looking so much alike one can't tell them apart. Great big substantial barns and every kind of an out-house which it is possible to want. And besides all that, you would hardly think you were in a prairie country, trees are so numerous. This state of bounteous thrift does not alone abound on the way to the place once the Majors home, but in every direction: no matter which way you go you can see the same evidences of prosperity, a state of beauty, comfort and luxury the first inhabitants never dreamed of.

But I must go back to my school in that little cabin, the Methodist Parsonage, in September, 1845. The first great event after beginning that school was our first visit to the Majors place; the next was Oskaloosa's first fire. On Wednesday, September 17th, as I was going to my dinner, and had just reached the stile at the Phillips home, I heard a commotion up in town, and on looking around I saw flames leaping up from a house on the west side of the square. I called to the folks in the, house and told them a house was on fire. I didn't go in, but went up town as fast as I could go, and found Dr. Weatherford's house all in flames and their household goods piled and scattered about on the ground, the clock all broken to pieces. The nearest well was on the lot where the Merchants House now is (Lot 8, Block 21, o. p.: city of Oskaloosa.) Men were running here and there, and siezed all the buckets they could find, and commenced carrying water from that well; the ground was clear between the burning burning and the well I have mentioned. The first house south of the fire was Wm. B. Street's store, a small frame building; they kept throwing water on it and by hard work saved it. The house just north was George Baer's tailor shop, which was quite close; it took fire and was soon past saving. The house just north of the tailor shop was a cabinet shop, built of logs, and owned by a man named Parish Ellis. That was also entirely consumed. George W. and John W. Jones had a long frame store on the corner where Baldauf's store is now; that was scorched and began to blaze, but was saved with little damage. When I got to the fire I siezed a bucket and carried water as fast as I could. I was running with a bucket of water when I met John Jones who snatched it out of my hand. I saw him run and dash it on their store just as the weatherboarding began to blaze. The Jones store was saved. John used to tell Gorrell that my bucket of water saved it. I don't deserve that credit, but John's gallantry was great. Just before that fire a Mrs. Wright had bought that house of Dr. Weatherford, and I think they had some litigation over it.

Mrs. Wright at the time owned and lived in a one story frame house just back of Pickett's drug store. That same house is there to-day. She was a widow with two daughters - Anna and Levy. Perhaps her name was "Olivia," but I never heard her called anything but Levy. After that fire had subsided I noticed Anna Wright looking at the ruins as complacently as if nothing serious had happened. She had a book under her arm. I went up to her and asked her what she was reading; she handed me the book and I saw it was "The Wandering Jew" a book much talked of then. Anna married Henry Temple, a young lawyer of Oskaloosa, and Levy married Isaac Dickerson, a merchant. They all left Oskaloosa long ago, and when I last heard of them they were citizens of Atlantic, Iowa.

As I was going home from that fire I met Virginia Seevers and her cousin, Miss Anna Wilkins, who had seen the fire from their home a mile away and had come to see the ruins. The next morning Gorrell came in with an excited look and exclaimed: "What do you think! Cage and Virginia were married this morning and have gone to Mt. Pleasant!" A wedding in those days was not attended with much ceremony.

My school went along smoothly. We young folks assembled every Friday morning at the court-house and Mr. Phillips led us in singing. We attended meeting every Sunday, as there were services held by one denomination or another regularly in the court-house, which was the only public building of any kind in the town until the Cumberland Presbyterian Church was built, which was in 1846. Young men displayed their gallantry by escorting the girls to and from those singing schools. Gorrell and I soon become quite good friends, and he never let me lack for an escort. Our friendship before a great while culminated into something more serious, and before that school closed we were engaged to be married. When my school closed I went back to the home of my relatives, where I made my simple and unpretentious wedding outfit, and on Sunday night, January 18th, 1846, we were married by the Rev. Thomas Kirkpatrick, a Methodist minister who was holding a two days meeting in that court-house. No invitations were issued to that wedding. We just went in, walked up toward the rostrum, where the minister met us, and the marriage ceremony was performed before the religious services began. I think I could tell this story better if it was about some one else.

Gorrell's father and mother received me into their family just like one of their very own children, and we lived with them until the next October. My mother-in-law was one of the loveliest women I ever knew; she was gentle, kind and unselfish, a Methodist of the old stamp. Her maiden name was Hannah Sinclair. The Sinclairs were all Methodists from away back. Her brother John Sinclair was a pioneer Methodist preacher in Illinois along with Peter Cartwright, Peter Acres, and others whose trials and hardships and eccentric preaching are matters of history, and no doubt had much to do in making Illinois the great State it is to-day and her people the great people they are to-day. Through fire and flood, cold and hunger and self-denial, they sowed the seeds of righteous heroism which no doubt to-day is bearing fruit ahundred fold.