Father had to return to his former home in Springfield, Missouri at the end of a year on account of bad health. Owing to alkali water, exposure or some other cause he had contracted a very serious stomach trouble, from which he became critically ill, had no appetite for any kind of food and became so emaciated he could hardly walk. They were thus in a deplorable condition. I think Mother said that the surgeon at the government fort gave him treatment from which he derived but little benefit. Mother informed her parents by letter of their condition and they immediately sent wagons to bring them back to Missouri. After Father and Mother returned to Springfield, he was given treatment for his ailment by Doctor Bailey, who was their family physician before they went to Kansas and who upon examination found that Father also had a bad bronchial or throat infection from which he had suffered for some time. Under the old doctor‘s treatment he soon began to improve, but he was only partially relieved of his complication of diseases and the doctor advised him to use tobacco, especially to smoke the weed. He did so, and with very gratifying results. In a few weeks he was practically well, in so far as the stomach trouble was concerned and the bronchial affection was better. The doctor told him that the latter disease had been caused by his strenuous ministerial life. Public speaking especially out of doors, as he had been compelled to do so much, had irritated his bronchial tubes, causing the persistent and annoying cough, which if it continued would become chronic and might result in pulmonary disease. He advised Father to change his occupation and proposed the study of medicine.

Realizing the seriousness of his physical condition and fearing his health would become further impaired if he continued an active ministerial life, he decided to take his physician’s advice and accordingly at the next Annual Conference of the Methodist Church, Father retired from the traveling connection and became a local preacher in the church. He then accepted Doctor Bailey’s generous proposition and began the study of medicine in the doctor’s office in Springfield. This was another big undertaking. He had only a limited English education and his reading of course had been exclusively of such books as would be of assistance to him in his ministerial career. And of treatises on anatomy, physiology, Materia Medica and the Theory and Practice of Medicine he was wholly uninformed. Such books as he would be required to study were full of technical terms and many latin words and phrases and hence the task he had before him was a stupendous one, but with a determination to succeed, and a courage so characteristic of him, he pursued his studies very diligently under the able instruction of the old doctor.

After Father and Mother returned from Kansas, in the spring of 1835 they did not locate again in Springfield, but on a small farm near Grandfather Rountree’s home known as the Chamber's place. Years after, during the Civil War, I remember to have seen the old log cabin on premises then called the "Old Chamber’s Plantation," in which Mother said they lived for some time. I think Father farmed some while he was studying medicine in order to support his family.

In the fall of the year 1835 there occurred another important event in their life when on November 16th of that year their second son was born whom they name Joseph William Redmond. The first of the triple given name was for Grandfather Joseph Rountree and the second and third were for the Methodist minister who was the officiating clergyman at their marriage. The birth of Brother Joe, as we always called him, occurred while they lived in the Chambers’ cabin.

Father continued his medical studies two or three years until his preceptor thought he was qualified to begin the practice of medicine. I think they continued to live in Greene County until about the year 1840. I do not know whether Father did any professional work while there after he finished his course of study of medicine or not. I think it probable that he assisted Doctor Bailey some in his large practice and if so the experience thus gained was a great benefit to him when he began practice alone at his first location.

While they were still living at the Chamber’s place their third child, a daughter, was born on the 24th of January 1838. She was a brunette with black hair and eyes. My oldest brother, DoIf, had dark red hair and blue eyes and Brother Joe had dark brown hair and gray eyes. They named my oldest sister Nancy Ann for Grandmother Rountree and Grandmother Slavens.

After Father finished the study of medicine or at least became sufficiently proficient in the theory of the curative art that his preceptor thought he was prepared to begin its practice, it became a matter of great importance to Father and Mother and their growing family to find a location at which there was a reasonable hope of establishing a fair practice. They were henceforth to be dependent on the success of his professional career, and hence the selection of a location might mean success of failure. But they had to make the venture and to that end Father decided to locate at Neosho, the county seat of Newton County, which at that time was a small village. They removed from Greene County to Father’s first location, Neosho, I think in the year 1840 although it may have been in 1839 and probably was. I was in Neosho in 1913 and knowing that Father and Mother and their family once lived there, I wrote to my sister, Mrs. Nancy Ann Price, of Pana, Illinois about having been at Neosho and she wrote to me in reply that she remembered living there when she was a small girl, and as they only lived there five or six years, it is probable that they removed there in 1839. Father began the practice of his profession of course as an experiment. He was inexperienced and if he had any competition relative to which I have not information he found many obstacles in his first efforts to build up a practice. Be that as it may, I am sure he pursued his professional work as vigorously as possible. He was a man of excellent judgment, and I am sure he exercised great care and caution in the treatment of his patients and that in his first venture as a young physician, he made good.

All through his long career as a successful physician, I am sure that the main factor in his successful treatment of diseases was his fine ability as a diagnostician. I have heard him say that any well informed physician could be able to successfully treat a patient if he had made a correct diagnosis of the disease and that improper diagnoses were often the reason a doctor's treatment was a failure. Father stayed in Neosho until 1844 or 1845 probably the latter year. While they lived there, my brother Lucius Bailey was born July 26, 1841. He was named for Mother’s brother, Uncle Lucius Rountree, and for Father’s medical preceptor Doctor Bailey of Springfield, Missouri. Although named Lucius Bailey, Father and Mother and, of course, all of his brothers arid sisters always called him Bud. He was fair complexioned and had dark hair and gray eyes. Then on March 5, 1843, their fourth son Thomas Franklin was born. When he was a small child he had phthisic or asthma very bad and for several years he was a very puny little boy but he grew much stronger as he became older.

I do not know why Father removed from Neosho. The town is located in a fine section of the state and in later years became a well built and progressive little city. Of course when he resided there, it was just a small village in a thinly settled county much of which was hilly and broken, though the soil was generally fertile. I believe that his change of location was to better his condition and settle in a town where he could build up a more lucrative practice. At any rate in the year 1845 he and family removed from Neosho to Buffalo, the county seat of Dallas County, Missouri. This town is located in a fine section of the country. It is on the edge of the Buffalo Head prairie, which extends west and southwest of the town for several miles. East of the town is a hilly, wooded country through which about a mile and a half distant flows Greasy Creek and five or six miles further east is the Niangua, a much larger creek. On these creeks there were rich alluvial bottom lands upon which in later years, many goad farms were put in cultivation. However when Father moved to Buffalo, it was a small town and very little of the prairie bottom or uplands had been put in cultivation. I do not know whether Father and family lived in the town for a time after going to Dallas County or not. I do not remember hearing them talk of living anywhere except on their farm west of and adjoining the town, and my impression is that Father bought the farm before their removal from Neosho and their home was on the farm during their first sojourn in Dallas County. During a part, and probably all of the time, we lived in or near Buffalo, Father practiced his profession in partnership with Doctor Mark Andrews, of whom I have often heard Father and Mother speak. My second sister Louisa Almarinda was born on the farm near Buffalo March 5, 1847. She had a fair complexion, fair hair and blue eyes. It was in the winter before she was three years old that she was taken very ill at pneumonia. Mother said there was a barrel of water setting near the edge of the porch floor and the porch adjoined the sitting room. It was very cold weather and the barrel of water was frozen over and the ice had been broken by some of the family. Little Sister had gone out on the porch and got pieces of ice from the barrel and eaten them. They thought, in this way, she contracted a severe cold which developed into pneumonia and caused her death. I do not know the date of her death. It was entered in the old family Bible, but one of the other members of our family (I think was Brother Bud} got the Bible after Father’s death, and I do not know who has it now. Little "Yinnia" as she called herself, was buried in the cemetery near Buffalo. Mother said she was a lovely child and the most beautiful she thought of all her children.

On the farm near Buffalo was my birthplace too. The date of my birth was November 14th, 1849. The farm where we lived at that time in later years was owned and occupied by Mr. A. B. Maddox, clerk of the County Court of Dallas County.

While Father was well located at Buffalo, had a good farm home, and from a financial point of view was probably doing reasonably well, he and Mother were not satisfied to remain there on account of its poor school advantages. Their older children were becoming almost grown and they wished to give them better opportunity to obtain an education. To do this, they decided to remove to some locality where there was a good school. Accordingly about the year 1850 or 1851 (I am not positive which year) they removed from Buffalo to Ebenezer, a small town in Greene County, ten miles north of Springfield where there was a flourishing school, the Ebenezer Academy, which was one of the best institutions of learning in Southwest Missouri at that time. There, our family resided for a few years, the children attending school and Father following his profession as a physician. My first recollection is of living in Ebenezer. It seems to me that there was only one street in the town and that the street ran north and south and our house was on the east side of the street. I remember standing in the front door of our house late in the afternoon and viewing the sun set and it was across the street in the sky a long distance away. There were no houses on the other side of the street immediately west of our house but just a short distance in that direction there was a large spring over which there was a small house. There were few if any wells in Ebenezer then and almost everyone got water for house use from the big spring. I remember seeing the grown daughter of our next door neighbor, Sarah Susan Hawkins, carrying two buckets of water, one in each hand, from the spring. Between our yard and that of our neighbor, Mr. Hawkins, there was a paling fence and one of the palings was off and through this opening in the fence Patty Hawkins, Sarah Susan’s little sister who was about my age, and my playmate, and I could pass from one yard to the other. Mr. Hawkins was a merchant in Ebenezer and his store was up the street south of our house toward the Academy, but I think it was on the west side of the street. I remember going with my sister to the store and Mr. Hawkins put me up on the counter and gave me some brown sugar to eat. I was delighted. Further up the street south of Mr. Hawkins‘ store was the Academy and some other buildings. I suppose there was a church house, but I have no recollection of ever seeing it.

I remember very distinctly of going with Mother to attend an entertainment, it was called an exhibition then, at the Academy. There were vocal and instrumental music and numerous exercises including dialogues and in one of the latter, some of the characters represented Indian warriors whose painted faces and gaudy feathers and plumes in their head equipment looked terrifying to me. As the dialogue proceeded some of the Indian warriors shot arrows from their bows and then shot a gun or two and gave the war whoop, all of which frightened me giving me the "scare" of my life and I cried so lustily that Mother took me home. The entertainment was no longer interesting to me.

Another Ebenezer incident that I remember was going one day to a neighbor’s house, who was a shoe cobbler, and I carried a shoe to be mended and in order to more easily make the trip, I rode a stick horse. The cobbler’s house was some distance from but in sight of our home and the road I went was a winding path up a considerable hill, but I reached the place, got the shoe mended, and striding my stick horse, returned home safely.

My remembrance of our Ebenezer home is that it was a large frame house of several rooms. I do not remember distinctly about any of the rooms but two. One was the living room in which there was a large stove, open in front with a grate similar to a fireplace. It was called a Franklin stove and it was the only stove of that kind that I ever remember to have seen. The other room was the kitchen in which Mother, assisted by my sister and my colored nurse did the cooking. They did the cooking I am sure on a fireplace, but I have no recollection of seeing it or in fact anything else in that room except a bed on which I slept of nights with my nurse. I remember once that she was sick for several days (Mother told me afterward that the colored girl had the measles). While she was sick I slept in the bed with her and took naps on the bed in the daytime, but strange to say I did not take the measles.