Soon after Joe’s marriage, my sister also got married, to Jesse Hollis, oldest son of Mr. and Mrs. James Hollis, who were our neighbors. When I learned that this marriage had occurred (Sister and Jesse were not married at our house) I was disconsolate. Sister had so often been my solace in times of childish troubles I could not see how I could do without her. I was big enough then that I should not have been so childish, but as I was the baby boy I had been petted and spoiled. After Sister's marriage she and her husband soon went to make their home on a farm Father had given them, which I afterward learned was lust across the public road from Joe’s farm. A few days after their occupancy of their new home, Sister and Jesse visited us and I was delighted to see them. They stayed all night with us and I think Joe and Sarah were there too. I know Joe was. I remember the next morning seeing Jesse and Joe near our front yard gate and close to a new wagon Father had bought. I heard them talking and learned that the previous night they had been to Marshfield to attend a lodge. I heard them say something about what had happened at the lodge that I did not understand then, but years later I was enabled to comprehend what they said, and that it was a Masonic Lodge that they had attended. When Jesse and Sister were ready to go home that morning Mother said I might go with them, and I gladly did so and that day was a happy one to me. We had dinner that day at Brother Joe’s and we had lots of good things to eat, but I only remember one thing especially which was some new sorghum molasses. It was as clear and fair colored as strained honey and tasted very much like maple tree syrup that I ate a few years later in Indiana. I think they had pancakes to eat with the new sorghum molasses and I certainly did enjoy it. After I had spent the day at Joe and Sister’s, Jesse took me home in the evening. I rode behind him on his horse, my first horseback riding experience. After these visits I became more thoroughly reconciled to Joe’s and Sister’s marriages.

During the winter of 1857 and early winter and spring of 1858 Brother Dolph attended the Missouri Medical College in St. Louis, Missouri. Near the close of the term, Father went to St. Louis in our covered wagon for the purpose of witnessing the closing exercises of the college and afterward to bring Dolph home and to take some other students (whom Father had been their medical instructor before their attendance at the college) to their homes in Southwest Missouri. One of them was Harvey Headley who lived at Ebenezer and another whose name I do not remember, I think, lived in Webster County. At the conclusion of the exercises Professor McDowell, president of the college, as an evidence of the confidence of the faculty of the college in Father’s ability and experience as a physician, conferred upon him the degree of Doctor of Medicine and a diploma, signed by the officials of and in the name of the college, was issued and presented to him as an M.D. When Father arid Dolph returned home Father showed us his diploma and we were proud of the great honor which had been conferred upon him. He had at that time been practicing medicine eighteen or twenty years and had attained very gratifying success in the discharge of his professional duties and had become, although only a country doctor, to be regarded as one of the leading physicians of Southwest Missouri.

I think it was in the summer of 1857 that I had experience that was terrifying. It was in the afternoon of a very sultry hot day. Brother Bud, who was then about sixteen years old, and I went to the store of Mr. Larry Nichols, Mother’s cousin at St. Luke, a small village about two miles from our home, to purchase some groceries. It was somewhat cloudy when we started and the cloudiness increased and distant thunder began to rumble before we reached the store, and soon after our arrival, the storm which had been rapidly approaching broke with terrific force. There was a very hard wind and the worst electrical and hail storm I had ever witnessed. The vivid flashes of lightning and the dreadful crashes of thunder were truly appalling to me. The storm continued until dark and Mr. Nichols invited us to stay all night with him, as it was still raining hard and we could not return we had to accept the invitation. The thunder roared and the lightning flashed almost all night and I continued to be a badly scared boy and slept but very little that night. The next morning it was clear and bright and we went home. Mother had been very uneasy about us all night, fearing we might have started home and got caught, but Father told her she need not be alarmed, that Bud was a very cautious boy and would not think of trying to come home through the storm and had stayed all night in St. Luke. However Mother's anxiety about us was not entirely relieved and she was delighted when we arrived safely at home. That was my first experience of being away from home all night except when I was with Father and Mother on a visit.

An occasion of this kind was when we made the first visit to Grandfather and Grandmother Rountree at their farm home near Springfield. We went in the covered wagon. At noon that day we stopped and took dinner with Mr. and Mrs. Green Wharton, whom Father knew. Before we got to Mr. Wharton’s home, we passed by a large spring near the road in a very sandy part of the country. We stopped and got a drink. The water came up out of the sand and there was quite a big pool of it. It was called Sandy Spring.

Leaving the Wharton home we continued our journey until late in the afternoon, but did not reach our destination, and we stopped and stayed all night with a friend of Father and Mother, Mr. Nathaniel Massey, a brother of William Massey who married my aunt Almarinda Rountree. He lived on a large plantation in the Kickapoo prairie, several miles east of Springfield. He was a wealthy farmer and tobacco grower. He had a number of Negro slaves and on his farm were the first tobacco barns, very tall log buildings, I had ever seen. In these barns the tobacco, after being cut, was hung to be smoked and dried or cured. The farm house was several miles from any native timber and all around the house and especially on the front side next to the public road there were a number of very tall slim trees, the first of that kind I had ever seen, and I learned they were called lombardy poplar trees. Near the house there was a large orchard of various kinds of fruit trees. It was a splendid looking farm and there was a large frame dwelling house painted white. I suppose Father and Mother enjoyed the visit with Mr. and Mrs. Massey and their courteous family but I did not. I was afraid of the big black Negroes, the first colored people I had ever seen, except my nurse in Ebenezer arid she was a Mulatto, and I thought she was a pretty girl.

The next morning we resumed our journey, soon passing through Springfield, the largest town I had ever seen, having I suppose at that time about five hundred inhabitants. I was amazed to see the large brick buildings, some of the business structures being two stories high, the pretty white or other colored residences and the great crowd of people on the streets. I may have seen a hundred persons at one time. Leaving Springfield, we soon arrived at Grandfather’s home and were delighted to see the dear old people, and spent several delightful days with them. In addition to my grandparents there was a small boy, a little larger than I in their home. His name was Willie Jones Rountree, one of my cousins whose mother was dead, I think, and his father, Uncle Almus Rountree was in California, and Willie Jones had been living with our grandparents since he was a small boy.

I saw several more of my cousins while we were on this visit and we had a fine time playing games. Then the pleasure of our visit was marred by a sad accident. One morning Grandmother, Mother and I started in a buggy to visit one of Mother’s brothers, Uncle Junius Rountree and his family, who lived about eight or nine miles away on or near the James River. We had not gone far when the buggy horse, which I think Grandmother was driving, became scared and ran away, throwing us out of the buggy. Mother and I were not badly hurt, but Grandmother was seriously injured. Her back nearly, if not quite broken, and she was perfectly helpless. Assistance was secured, just how I do not remember, and we were taken back to Grandfather’s house, Grandmother was so seriously hurt that we remained there longer than we had intended to stay. When we started home she had improved some but she was a helpless cripple and never was able to walk after her injury. She died a few years later but whether as the result of injury received in the accident referred to or some fatal disease I do not know.

Not long after my sister was married she got, in some way, a little baby squirrel and raised it, and it became a great pet and would perch on her shoulder and ride all over the yard. Jesse, her husband, who was a carpenter, made a cage for the squirrel with a little hanging swing in it. The squirrel would run all over the sides of the cage and on the swing when in the cage, which was very amusing. One day Sister came on a visit to our house. She rode there on horseback. After she came she said she had forgotten to put Dick, the squirrel, in its cage before she left home, and she feared it would run off and get lost or killed. Soon after she came I went out in the yard to play and there on the yard fence I saw Dick. He had evidently followed Sister to our house, She lived across Niangua creek from our home and there was a foot log over the creek near the ford where Sister had crossed it, on which the squirrel must have crossed. When I told Sister the squirrel was out on the yard fence she went out doors, called Dick, and he at once came to her and remained about the yard or in the house during her stay with us. When she went home that afternoon the squirrel went with her, perched on her shoulder or sitting in her lap.

I forgot to mention in its proper connection that there was a rather interesting occurrence while we were at Grandfather Rountree’s home. It was the manner in which the wheat was threshed. There were no threshing machines in that part of the country then and they had to resort to other ways of threshing their wheat. He had a large log stable from which everything was removed before the threshing was begun. Then the binds of the wheat bundles were cut and the bundles were laid two or three thicknesses deep in a circle on the floor and several unshod horses were driven, two abreast, over the bundles of wheat, round and round until the grains of wheat were all thought to be trodden loose from the heads. The horses were then driven off the straw, underneath which was the wheat or there may have been some of it still among the straw. All of the straw was then removed as far as possible, first being shaken to remove scattering grains of wheat from the straw, and the straw was put in a pile outside of the building. The operation of putting down the bundles and tramping out the grain was continued until all off the crop was threshed. Then the wheat left on the floor mixed with short straw, chaff and dirt was gathered up and run through a fanning mill and when so cleaned was very nice looking grain, but the threshing operation was decidedly crude and primitive.

One very enjoyable time to me every year was wheat and oats harvest. I do not recall that wheat was raised very often but oats was grown every year and there were one or more days of oat harvest annually. The grain was cut with grain cradles, some neighbor usually wielding the cradle and there were usually two or three cradles. They would begin on one side of the field or piece of grain and cut a square around which they would go, one cradler a little behind the leader, until the whole square was harvested and so continue until all of the crop was cut down. There would be a binder after each cradler who would gather up the grain thrown in swaths by the cradler and bind it into bundles. Another hand, generally assisted by a boy or two, gathered the bundles and put them in piles of about one dozen bundles, which the men would put into shock covered by two bundles or cap sheafs. My job in the harvest when I was first permitted to help any, was to carry water in a jug or bucket to the harvesters. Sometimes it became a tiresome job to me and I though that the harvesters drank a lot of water, and as a matter of fact, owing to the strenuous labor and the hot weather, they certainly did. Later when I was some years older I assisted in piling the bundles for the man who did the shocking.

Another time that I enjoyed was when my brothers cut the corn and put into shocks in August or September each year. Later they would husk the corn off the shocks and the stalks were then called shock fodder which was hauled to the stables and stacked to be used in the winter and fed to the horses and cows. The greater part of our corn though was not cut and shocked, but was husked from the stalks standing in the field and the ears of corn thrown into the wagon and hauled and put in the crib. I enjoyed corn gathering as I always got to ride in the wagon while the boys were gathering the corn and going to and from the field of corn.

I remember the manner my brothers threshed seed oats in the spring. They always fed the oats in the sheaf or they had a cutting box with a knife attached and cut the oat bundles up fine for the stock. In threshing the oats, they first built a rail pen about waist high and covered it with rails. Then they covered it with bundles of oats. They had prepared flails made of hickory poles about six or eight feet long and about three feet from the large end of the pole it was cut all around with an axe about half way through and for a space of about three inches. This was limber then and was used to pound the bundles with the large end and the grain loosened by the flailing would fall through the openings between the rails. After the threshing was done the grain and whatever straw and chaff was mixed with it was put in a sheet and two persons each holding two corners of the sheet, threw it up and down until the straw and chaff was all blown out by the wind, they having chosen a windy day for the purpose. It was a novel way but about the best way to get a small amount of grain that there was then.

The only school that I remember attending in Webster County while I was a small boy before the Civil War was in an old log church house at St. Luke. My brothers Bud and Tom also attended this school. Several neighbor children, the children of Mr. John King and Wesley Louder went the same road that we did to school, and every morning and evening there was a crowd of ten or twelve of us and we had a lot of fun on the way to and from school. I was seven or eight years old then and had learned to spell and to read some, too, before going to school. I think I had a Webster’s blue back spelling book and a McGuffey's First Reader. I am not positively certain who was the teacher of the school but I think his name was Selph. I remember that there was another teacher that taught there named Webb but I did not attend that term.

Chapter four concluded...