Rebecca Steward Kartchner
Pioneers
The life of the Old Southern Girl
(Rebecca Steward Kartchner)
By Roberta F. Clayton, 2301 E. Willetta St., Phoenix, Arizona
If it has been many long years since I was a baby in my mother’s arms. I will never forget what she told me many times that she never wanted me. That she was ashamed to take me any place, but I am still here in this old dreary world, can have gone through all that a girl needs to go through.
I can remember since I was six years old. I was a big, fat girl, as being around as I was tall, with large blue eyes and black hair. I would fall down standing still I was so clumsy. No one seemed to care for me but my brother George. He was a blue eyed boy with brown curly hair. He was two years older than I. Everybody loves him but he was my old standby. My name was Rebecca and George knew when he called on Becky he always got what he wanted done.
We lived in the backwoods of Alabama. Ours was a two room log house. It was a mile from the road by a big mountain with a little stream of clear water running close by. George and I spent many happy hours wading in the water. We were always barefooted, my parent’s beings too poor to buy shoes.
My father drank all the time. He made his own whiskey. I was afraid of him because he would come home drunk every night, abuse mother and beat us poor little hungry children. He said I wasn’t his child and would knock me over in the corner where mother had a pile of cotton to have the seed picked out.
Mother would card and spin and make clothes for us children to wear. After father would get just so drunk he would go to sleep, then mother would have all us children sit around the fireplace and pick cotton seed.
She would throw on a piece of fat pine so we could see, we had no lamps. I was so afraid father would wake that I would get close to Mother. All of us would sit in silence, look back in the dark corner once in a while to see that he still slept, then we would bend over the cotton we were picking until our brains were nearly cooked. After a while we would go to bed. George, my baby sister, Evaline and I would sleep in a pile of cotton with an old quilt over us and I would cry myself to sleep. If I heard a little noise I would think father was coming and would lay close to George.
When morning came we would get up and eat our breakfast which was only a piece of corn bread, then we would go out to play.
One day Mother went to the field to plow as father made her do all the farm work. While us children were alone we did some queer things. This day, George said “Come here, Becky, lets plow with our old cat.” So we put a rope around her neck but she would only lay down. We whipped her but still she wouldn’t go. I carried her to a big rock, put her head on it and George hit her head with another big rock. That was the last of her. While this was going on and we were watching the cat, father stepped up. His eyes were red and he couldn’t stand still. He took out his knife. When it was opened it was exactly twelve inches long. He staggered back and cut a peach tree limb, caught me by the arm, put my head between his knees, pulled up my dress and whipped me until I stood in a puddle of blood. When he raised up, he fell face downward on the ground a laid there for a while. George ran to the house. I got in a big bunch of bushes, put my hand over my mouth and cried until I could cry no longer. After awhile my big sister came and took me to the house and put me to bed. All the clothes I had to wear was a belt waisted dress that touched the ground, long sleeves and high neck. I had no underwear or anything else. When my dress got so dirty it didn’t smell very good, then Mother would put me to bed and wash it. All the boys wore were long shirts and no pants.
There were thirteen of us children to make clothes for and Mother had her heart and hands full as she had most all the farm work to do besides caring for so many children and making our clothes. All Father thought of was whiskey and bad women. He drank so much, he was nearly blind and when he was sober he professed to be a hard-shelled Baptist preacher.
One night he came home from town and told me to come sit on his lap. I went because I knew I had to mind. He lifted me up and pulled a string of beads out of his pocket and gave them to me. They were blue and white. I was just six years old that day. I took the beads, got down and never sat on his lap again.
In the year of eighteen hundred and seventy-six, two men came through where we lived and stayed a week with my people. They talked to them about the West. They said it was the only place to live, there were lots of pretty women there and lots of money. Many of the men believed what they told and were anxious to go. These two men said people ate flour bread out West all the year around, worked two horses at a time, men wore underwear and had blue shirts to work in, women had rub-boards to clean their clothes and stoves to cook on and bought coffee that was parched. They said there were even no bed bugs to wake you at night. I would sit still and listen and although I was little I understood many things the older people talked about.
While these men were to our place Father stayed sober, we children didn’t have to work, he bought some bacon to eat. Mother made biscuits for breakfast and we could have one piece, with a little grease on it.
There were all kinds of berries, grapes, plums and peaches grew there but they were half worms and no one knew how to put up fruit or make jelly they were just back-woodsmen.
Soon all the people began making plans to go West. The women began to card and spin, making clothes and knitting stockings for all the family getting ready for the long trip of three thousand miles. They were a happy bunch. I would sit and listen until I would dream of seeing the big rivers they talked about.
Mother carded and wove enough cloth to make Father and four of the boys a suit a piece, a coat and pair of pants, and all of us girls, a little dress and the little boys each a long shirt. She knit us all two pair of stockings, covered a few old quilts and I would stand near her and ask questions about what I heard her and Father talk about until she would tell us to go play. George and I would go then and play we were going West.
Father sold our farm of thirty-five acres and the little two room shack that six of the children were born in. We were going to leave it never to see it again.
I had one brother named Ray that was Mother’s before she and Father were married but he was Father’s also. Father was awful mean to him because he didn’t like him so Mother had to leave him with his Grandmother until he was five years old and the Grandmother died. After Mother brought him home he was never allowed to speak until he was told and poor little boy would take beatings like a negro boy and be stomped like a dog.
One day Father went to see the man he sold the farm to and took Mother with him. They left at day-light as they had to bring two oxen and a wagon back with them and had twenty miles to go. When they got there Mrs. Smith had just bought a new stove, the first in that country. Mother had never seen a stove before so took both hands and lifted the lids off and burned her terribly. She nearly lost her right hand. They got back a long while after dark. Mother had let a six-month old baby at home. He was almost starved and had cried nearly all day. Her hands were so sore and she had to get supper for eleven that night and cook it by the fire place on a bake oven.
We had two good cows with young heifer calves. Father sold one for six dollars and one for seven and a half. He sold all our hogs, chickens and everything we had for two more oxen. We had an old wagon and Father began to start fixing everything for the trip. He thought he was a first class carpenter. His tools consisted of a broad-ax, a saw, hammer and an old time auger. They all looked to him for the boss and leader and he was a mean boss because he let his temper get the best of him.
At last came time to start. All the other families had gathered there the night before so no one slept much. All were up and ready to start at sunrise. When the wagons were loaded they consisted of a box of clothes, five pounds of flour, a side of hog meat, three pounds of coffee, a few sweet potatoes and five hundred pounds of tobacco. Every man, woman and child that was old enough used tobacco. They had bake ovens, a frying pan and coffee pot. Two more families rode in our two wagons. One man had a wife and two babies and the other man had five children. There was twenty-one in all for Father’s wagons. They tied the feather bed up in a sheet, pushed it back as far as they could under the wagon cover of Father’s wagon and put Evaline and me back against the bed, then put two old home made chairs in front of us with our feet stretched out under them. Father and Mother sat in the chairs. Some of the little boys rode in the other wagon with an older boy. Father was to be the leader so they all started. Most of the men, women and big children walked ahead. Men with guns on their shoulder, women with sun bonnets on and a big child a straddle their hips. All were as happy as could be but poor old souls did they ever dream what was ahead of them? There were fifty wagons started on the beginning. Some of the oxen were trying to run away, some were laying down with their yoke on and others crowding and trying to tip the wagon over. In the last wagon was an old man with his little old lady and a little adopted boy in her lap. The old man had a long white beard, he had one old steer working him in shafts starting three thousand miles for the West. Can anyone imagine how those poor folks could see their way through? There wasn’t fifty dollars among the whole bunch but they went on never dreaming what was ahead. They traveled until sun down the first day going only eight miles then they pitched their tents for the night. The next day they only went six miles for everyone and the critters were so stiff and sore. My sister and I sat in one position all day and didn’t even had a drink of water and when we tried to walk it was almost impossible. I couldn’t see how I could stand it another day. I couldn’t go to play like the rest of the children and slept on the ground that was so hard and cold.
We traveled day after day, week after week until months passed. Our money was going so when we got into Memphis we had very little left. We got there about four o’clock in the afternoon. A man came out where we were all dressed up with his black suit and white collar on. Nearly every oxen lay down while he was talking to us. Father asked him when we could cross the Mississippi River and he said not before the next day as there was a big rise in it. All the women and children look at this man has though they had never seen anyone before. Poor souls hadn’t seen very many in their life time. What were they born for? Just to live in the back woods.
This man told them to pull in the camp yard and they didn’t know what he meant so he had to explain what a camp yard was. Then a bunch of men came into camp. They each took a man, his wife and smallest children to supper leaving the older ones in camp. Father, Mother, Evaline, as she was sick, and I all went with one man and Mother had to leave the baby in camp with my oldest sister as Father had no use for babies and didn’t want to be bothered with them. We had to climb up stairs and I had no one to look after me so I crawled up like a cat. We thought we were so high in the air but were only ten feet. They wouldn’t let us pitch our tents that night so we all laid on the ground and looked at the stars. To see the electric lights and hear so much noise was a grand thing to see and surely opened our parents’ eyes.
All the women stood around with long belt waisted dress and bonnets and men shoes on with a big child on their arm and one hanging to their breast and holding all they could by hand. Then there were the men all in a bunch with their knives out whittling on sticks, their mouths full of tobacco and most of it coming down on their coat when they would spit. They all had long mustaches only Father and he wore chin whiskers.
When morning came the sky was cloudy and looked like rain. All were up by day light. The children were all crying for something to eat but they couldn’t make a fire and our parents never thought of going to a store to get anything. There was many an old person in the bunch who never had seen inside a store or a loaf of bread or a pound of cheese. God pity such a bunch. I look back in the year of eighteen hundred and sixty seven and can see how our old parents had to live and it was a shame for such people to bring children in the world to be raised in ignorance.
The man that had charge of the steam boat came soon and told them everything was ready to go and he would take two wagons across the Mississippi River at a time. Our two wagons were the first to go so we pulled on the boat, the little ones still begging for something to eat and the older ones sick with headaches for want of their usual coffee. It was just ten o’clock when we boarded the boat. The oxen were so frightened they nearly went overboard. The men had to beat them over the head as they had not ropes to hold them with so there was lots of excitement. Father told Mother and us children to stand up by the wagon and there was almost a foot of water on the floor where we were standing. My baby sister in Mother’s arms almost dead, the older sister holding the six months old baby boy standing close enough so he could pull at Mother’s sleeve and George and I holding to Mother’s dress. Oh, what a life for that poor old Mother of mine and I can look back and say, “God bless her and all the rest that had to live with a man and go through what they did and I know he will.”
The water kept getting deeper and deeper on the boat so they got six big negro men to dip the water out with big buckets. Finally the Captain told them all the women and children to go upstairs where it was warm and they could sit down. We all went upstairs where we found some of the nicest chairs and a pretty rug on the floor. A lady told Mother to sit down in a rocking chair with the little sick girl and that was the first rocking chair she had ever sat in and not being used to anything but a straight chair, she nearly fell over.
In one corner sat two ladies and two men playing cards and were dressed so nice. I wondered if I would ever have nice clothes like that. I sat there and could smell good things cooking and was so hungry. My poor little sick sister needed something to eat so bad and a doctor.
All at once a young man came and cried, “There comes a shark after the board and if it isn’t captured it will turn the boat over.” There was a dead man on the boat and that is what the shark was after.
The shark got so close they had to throw the dead man overboard. We all rushed to watch the excitement. The dead man tossed on the waves until the shark got to him then it swallowed him and went on. Soon some men came on a skiff and stuck a long spear in the shark then it went to a sand bar and died.
We got off the boat at two o’clock and after we got everything together. Father called our old dog, Watch, but he didn’t come and we could see him following some negro men a long ways off. Father liked the dog so well he went after him and found him seven miles from where we got off the ship. He was still with these negroes and they were on the sand bar where the shark went, had taken the dead man out and was getting ready to bury him.
We didn’t wait for Father or the rest of the wagons behind us, but went on trying to find a place to camp as we hadn’t had a thing to eat all day but we couldn’t find any wood so went on and on. Finally it began to rain and we drove on until dark. We saw the glimpse of a little house and wanted to get there so we would get in out of the rain and it was raining harder every step the oxen took.
My poor little sick sister how I wished I had a piece of bread for her. The baby was waiting for Mother so he could “suck”, as the Southerners say, and go to sleep. She had no milk as she hadn’t eaten in so long.
At last we pulled up in front of this little house. Everyone went in and there on the walls read “Smallpox, don’t come in.” We got out as quickly as we could, drove on a little father where the boys pitched our tent, made our bed on the wet ground, turned the oxen out and went to bed without supper. It was raining so had we could not find any wood. In the middle of the night Father came with the dog. It was raining so hard the dog had no place to sleep so went back to this little house and crawled under it. There was an earthen plate under there with some kind of poison on it. The dog was so hungry he licked the plate and the next morning he was dead. The long twenty-two miles Father had walked was all in vain. Mother kept that plate for twenty years.
Finally all the families got together again. On and on they went, over mountains, through rivers and through log flats, pushing on towards the West where there was plenty of sunshine. The oxen pushed and crowded along, some with their tongues out but on they went, by the help of the whip. The old tired mothers kept on the go from early until late, with all the care of the children, while the men went on ahead, with their guns on their shoulders and not a care.
It had been many a day since they had left their little old log houses where they could sit by a big fire, chew their tobacco and dream of what was to come. Now they had their wives and children out in the world, no friends, no money and if one should have died they would not have lumber for a coffin all they could do would be wrap them up in a quilt and dig them a grave. In all that large group there were only two short handled spades.
Our wagon covers wouldn’t turn rain and when a big rain storm came we were all soaked through and through. The women had slat bonnets. The slats were made of paper so one good rain would ruin them. They couldn’t get any more paper so would turn their bonnets up in front, in order to see. The women and girls had no coats, just small shawls.
We made very short distances during the day averaging six and eight miles. The oxen would get so dry, we only had a two-gallon jug to carry water in.
After two long months of these hardships we reached Arkansas where twenty-five more families waiting to join us. We stopped there awhile for our oxen to rest and camped in a little one room house. There was lots of cotton to pick so Mother and the bigger boys started picking to get money for shoes. The price was fifty cents a hundred for picking. Mother did all the work, tending baby and picked five hundred pounds of cotton a day. Father would take the gun and hunt squirrels. My big sister would do nothing but talk to an old married man. He had a wife and two children, and ready for another but my sister was crazy about him.
Mother and the boys picked cotton three weeks then Father took the money and bought shoe leather. From this leather she made six pair of shoes. She could make shoes as well as women of today can make a cream cake.
There was one man who wanted to go with us. He had five children and a sick wife. We waited over night for them. It was snowing. Mother was called to sit up with this sick woman, as she was dying. They thought she was too cold they got some rocks very hot and put them around her to get her warm. She was dying, and so near gone she could not tell them they were burning her. After she was dead they found big blisters where every rock touched her.
The next morning, Father sent George and me to tell Mother to come home as the baby and Evaline wanted her. We put on our new shoes, tied a rug over our heads, took hold of hands and started out before day light. By the dim fire light that shone through a foot square window we found our way. There were five inches of snow on the ground, we had no coats and when our hands would get cold on one side we would change hands. When we got there we could see the dead woman lying on a board, which they called a plank, through the window.
We three went back where Father was and after breakfast Mother took sick. Three or four of the children had chills and fever, in fact, most of the family was sick so we had to stay all winter waiting for Mother to get well or die. She kept getting worse until she didn’t know any of us and we had to wean the baby. He was only ten months old and she seldom weaned a baby before they were two years old.
There was an old man and woman planting goobers near us so one day George and I hid in the bushes until they went to dinner then we stole all their goobers, ate them, put a rock in the sack and threw it into the river, then ran. The old couple came back and found their peanuts gone. They tracked us right to our house, measured our feet with a string, then we sure got a whipping. I will never forget it. We were so sore that night and had cramps from eating so may goobers we nearly died and Mother was too sick to know.
At last we got ready to start on our way again. There was to be seventy-five families now in the bunch. One man had four milk cows that he worked. One man had a bull, a cow, a horse and a mule that he worked. A widow with four children drove two old bulls to her wagon. She would walk all day and drive them. An old negro slave wanted to go with one family but they told her no. She walked behind the wagon until noon. The family gave her dinner and told her to go home. She went down the road a piece and sat down. Some of the men threw rocks at her.
Mother was so sick she never knew when they put her in the wagon. We traveled two weeks before she could get out of the wagon.
We crossed many rivers, went over some of the highest mountains, thru pine trees, down steep rocky places and thru big valleys. The valleys were so big we would travel for miles with neither wood or water, still dragging out the lives of those poor old sore-footed steers. Sometimes it would be three days between watering places and they would be so thirsty they would reel under their yokes.
Most of the women were bareheaded by now. One day we met a lady in a buggy with bonnets and aprons to sell. We had no money so the women and larger girls cut off their hair and bought themselves bonnets. They all wore long hair twisted up and pinned on top their heads. The first rain spoiled the bonnets as they were full of starch and when they got wet there was nothing to them.
We worried through all kinds of weather, rain, mud, half-starved with only two scant meals a day, all of us most in rags and bare footed. The road was only a cow trail so rocky and narrow and washed full of gullies that the men would have to put rocks in the holes to keep the wagons from tipping over. Lots of them would get behind and push the wagons up the steep hills. After four or five months like this we came to a ranch forty miles from any place.
The people were very nice. There was just an old lady about seventy-five years old, a man near fifty and a little girl ten years old. Their house was built upon a little hill and below was a pretty meadow with the fattest cows in it. In the corral was a bunch of big fat calves. Father asked this man if we could camp and he told him we could and to turn our cattle in the meadow. Then he turned his cows in the corral and told the crowd to come in and milk all they wanted. The old tired mothers grabbed a bucket and run to milk. They would milk first one cow then another and get what while the calves were sucking. We children sure had a fine supper that night.
The man came to our camp and said that the old lady was his wife and that the little girl was their baby; that his wife was rich and that he had married her for her money. He asked us where we were going and father told him we were going west to get rich. The next morning when we left, our oxen were so full they groaned under the load.
We went until months had passed and no gold had we found, no, no, nothing but hardship and trouble.
There was a young girl in the crowd that was married just as we left our old southern home. She was going to become a mother and now the time had come. She was sick all day and that night they called Father. He claimed to be a doctor but he really did not know anything about it. He just had lots of nerve. When the baby came he let the baby die and they wrapped it up in an old quilt and lay it in a little hole by the roadside. The broken hearted mother raised her hand to see the newly made mound that she would never see again. Nine long months of suffering and expecting just to leave behind many a sad remembrance. I could hear her scream for hours.
At last we came to Kansas and it was getting very hot weather. The women and children pulled off their shoes and went barefooted in order to save them. Sometimes when we came to a stream of water they would stop and wash what dirty clothes we had. They had no tub or washboard, just rubbed the dirty spots with the palm of their hands.
Mother used to make our soap with ash lye. She tipped some planks up a little, put some ashes on them, poured some water on the ashes, then when the water dripped through, the ashes made lye. We started with a bucket of soft soap but it had been gone a long time.
While we were coming through Kansas, we stopped at a man’s ranch for the night to let our cattle rest. The man said we looked hungry and he would kill a beef for us. He killed a three-year-old steer and what a blessing it was to us. Some were so hungry they even ate raw meat. Every part was saved even the feet. God surely watched over us. There was one birth, one death and one wedding on the road and also several dances as there were large smooth places on the prairie and that is where we danced.
We came slowly on stopping to shoe oxen, fixing old broken wagon wheels, hunting through the woods and getting what ever we could to eat. Sometimes it would be prairie chickens, rabbits, squirrels and prairie dogs. Anything tasted good to us as we were half starved, ragged and sad hearted. It looked like our last days had come but we couldn’t give up. The men would pray to God at night to protect us until our journey was through and He did.
At last we came to the state of Oklahoma where the buffalo and Cheroque Indians were. At night when we were on the plains the buffalo would come so close to the fire we could see their eyes shining. Sometimes there would be sixty or seventy-five in a herd.
One of my brothers could shoot them right in their eyes and down they would come. The rest would run, sometimes toward the camp and we would have to jump and run to our tents. We always made a corral at night with our wagons. Many of the Indian girls would stand around camp and watch our mothers get supper. They were very pretty with fair complexions and rosy cheeks. Two of my big brothers fell in love with them and wanted to get one for a wife. When they tried to talk to them they would laugh and turn their heads away.
We went on and on and finally came to Texas. There we could see miles and miles ahead of us. There were no hills, no wood and very little water and a cloud of dust where cattle and sheep were trying to find water and something to eat. The wind was blowing so hard the men had to turn the brim of their hats under. They were queer looking people with long mustaches and their hats peeked in front and back. The women walking with their bonnets tied around their necks and hanging down their backs, a big baby hanging to their breasts and their dresses open from the neck to the waist. It would be a sight to see today.
Finally we came to hole of water where a sheep herder had a large flock of sheep. When he saw us coming he started his sheep running and he drove them for miles. We thought we could water our cattle as we stopped and they started dipping our sheep pills. They dug down about three feet but the cattle wouldn’t even smell the water and they hadn’t drunk for three days. We went on and in the afternoon we could see what looked like a big mountain and it began to get cooler. The wind began to blow harder and harder and soon we discovered there was a big storm coming. We went a mile farther and then camped as we knew it would be many miles to water if God didn’t send us some. We had just gone to bed when the storm came. Mother put us children to bed when the storm came. There was a big flash of lightening. I could see Mother standing at one end of the tent and Father at the other. Our tent was ripped right through the middle. The water was half way to their knees. All of us were as wet as rats. We were all crying as hard as we could. I was so nearly frozen I didn’t look out again until morning. Everything in the tent was washed away. Mother’s feather bed washed a long way away and lodged by a bunch of bushes. Everyone was disheartened and blue the next morning. Everything was wet, their floor, clothes, bedding and everything.
There was nothing to burn but cow chips and a man had to fan them with his hat to make them burn and then it was only smoke.
We stayed there two days to dry our bedding and clothes as the sun came out. We cooked our dough such as it was without salt or baking powder. Then we made another start.
After a month of just such luck we came into New Mexico. There we found a bunch of wild Navajo Indians and they gave us lots of trouble. They would follow us all day trying to steal a horse, mule or oxen. At night the men would stand guard taking turns always keeping awake. Both cattle and camp had to be guarded. They would sneak up so easy a cat couldn’t hear them. Sometimes when the women would raise their bake oven lids, the Indians would grab the bread out of their hands, take our coffee pot and get away. There were so many of them standing around we could hardly walk and they were full of lice. That is what we had to contend with from the time we got into New Mexico until we got out. We were so happy when we crossed the line into Arizona.
We were all undecided which way to go, on the northern part of Arizona or go to Utah. Finally some decided to go to Utah and some went to Arizona. We went with the bunch going to Arizona. My two brothers left us and went back to Oklahoma to get them an Indian wife. They gave everything they had to the oldest girl as the three of them were whole brothers and sisters. Their mother had died and then father married mother making us half brothers and sisters. We all dreaded to see the boys go as they didn’t have a cent of money and were starting back on foot. We didn’t know whether we would ever see them again. We all shook hands and said goodbye. One boy was fathers baby and it was a sad parting. We had been on the road for one year.
In the bunch that stayed there were about eight women who were expecting babies. They took the small pox and all the expectant mothers and babies died.
Father and twenty-five more families went on to Arizona. They traveled another month and stopped on the Little Colorado River. We were all so naked that mother took the tent and made us girls some dresses and the boys shirts and pants.
There was a colony of people living on the river so we joined them, turning the oxen over to the boss and father went to work on the farm, and mother helped in the kitchen. We only stayed there a short time and then moved up the river about thirty-five miles to another camp.
We stayed there because the people were good. It was in this colony that I met the man I married years later. He was ten and I was eight years old. They had more to eat at this camp and I went to my first school there. All the children could play until dark and they sent a big girl to watch us. All I wanted was Culver and George. I thought George was the only boy until I met Culver and I loved him at first sight. It was a different love from that of a brother. Even as a child I could tell the difference. As soon as we were in the yard we were together. He was older than I but much smaller and he could do the nicest things to my notion. I never could see a wrong thing he did only when he took hold of some other girl’s hand and then I would go off and cry. He would come and get me to riding with me on stick horses. He wasn’t the prettiest boy on earth but I thought he was the best. When we were eating, we would look across the table and smile for I surely loved him.
We didn’t have a real school teacher but after breakfast the chairs were pushed back and one of the men taught us what he could and that was our school. Mother and three other women cooked for everyone every three weeks, then some other ladies would take their turn. One man baked the bread; one man churned and one lady skimmed the milk. All the other men went to work in the field.
We all stayed there a year but couldn’t make a living so we went on our way another hundred and fifty miles further. When we got to our new home, Culver’s father moved on the other side of the river about five miles from where I lived. We all went to the same school there and George and I would run a mile to meet Culver at the cross roads. Sometimes he would speak and sometimes he wouldn’t. This used to hurt me very much. At recess I would stand and watch him play ball. I thought he could play better than anyone else. I would watch his every move and he paid no attention to me. At night he would run ahead not waiting for George and I so the love went only one way.
At this place we called home there was a white man who had three Indian squaws for his wives. He had lots of money and cattle. He had forty acres of barley, forty acres of beans and a big patch of corn. He told all twenty families to help themselves and we did as we were nearly starved. When he cut his barley, mother picked up a head at a time until she had enough to amount to forty dollars.
Mother and father went sixty miles with the oxen and bought us children shoes and clothes for the winter. They dried lots of corn. This man gave each family a sack of beans and gave us all the beef we could use as mother washed for him.
Flour was sixteen dollars a hundred and it had to be hauled four hundred miles. It took just two months to make a trip after flour. We didn’t eat a bite of bread for a year. We had no milk or butter. Later on cows were brought into the colony. The boss bought a townsite from this rich man and then Culvers folks moved onto the townsite. My father got six cows to milk by letting George and I herd calves. Culver had to herd the cows. The grass was up to the cows’ sides and was full of rattle snakes. Everywhere we went we could hear them sing.
One morning father made George and I go to town after the calves and he wouldn’t let us wear our shoes but I was glad to go because I thought I might see Culver. We took the calves down to the river to herd them and I knew I would have lots of fun there with Culver as no other girl would be there to interfere. We would wade in the river, play in the sand and I could be near Culver most of all.
We weren’t there long when we heard Culver whistle. George answered him and when he came he was barefooted too. The boys rolled up their pants and began to wade in the water. I was afraid to wade as I didn’t want Culver to see my legs but he finally said, “Come on Beccy, this is fine”. That is all I wanted just to hear him speak my name, so I went in the water and lifted my dress a little ways for it was so long. He called for me to come father but I wouldn’t go so he came and took hold of my hand. It was just like being shocked by electricity. It went straight to my heart. I let him lead me where the water was deeper and got the bottom of my dress wet. I had to lie to my mother that night when she asked my why my dress was wet. I told her a calf got out in the deep water. I had to go after him and I let my dress fall into the water.
I had many happy days herding the calves and I always dreaded to see the sun go down but welcomed the morning sun because I liked to see Culver when I could.
Months passed by with the same things to do every day. One day Culver told his father that he wouldn’t herd cows until he had a pair of new shoes. His father told him no but he was self-willed and wouldn’t take the cows out. George and I waited a long time that morning for him to come and we got on the highest hill to watch for him. At last near noon we saw the cows coming and then we saw Culver. He rode up on a new horse and had on a pair of new shoes, so he succeeded in getting his way.
After keeping up that routine for months, we finally quit herding cows and George and Culver went to work. Father homesteaded a hundred and sixty acres two miles from town and built us a house. I got to see Culver very little as father let no one go to town but himself. I stayed home and dreamed of Culver.
Father was building us a new one roomed house and mother was expecting a new baby. One day father went to town and she sent the boys after the cows. After a while they came running home and told us that pap, as they called father, was coming home and both sides of the road was his. Mother knew he was drunk and when he was drunk he was the meanest man on earth. She took all the children and went across the river. He always came with his foot-long knife open when he was drunk and our lives were in danger. Father cut his own brothers head off with that same knife. We could see every move he made from where we were. He left the road and fell over some rocks, cutting his face open. A man came by and helped him up, then he told the man he was going to kill him but the man got out of his way. He went on with the blood streaming down his face towards the house. Our floor in the house was just dirt so when he got to the floor he fell face downward in the soft dirt. This same man came on behind him and put him to bed and called mother. We all went to the house and I will never forget his looks. There was dirt and blood all over him and he had vomited all over himself. He could only see out of one eye. When mother went to the door he began cursing her and told her not to come in. He started to get up and fell off the bed. Then mother and this man had to put him back in bed. The man washed his face, bound it up and had to stay all night as he would not let mother do a thing for him.
In a day or two he was ready to work on the house again. Our house was one little room made of logs, dirt roof, no windows and the doors were so low we had to stoop to get in, and at last we were ready to move in. We had to carry everything we moved on our backs over a big hill. We had neither teams or oxens or wagons, no more cows and not even a dog. The boss had taken our cows when we left the colony and had moved to ourselves. One oxen had died. We had no stove or bedstead so father bored a hole in a log of the house and made mother a one legged bedstead. They had little poles for springs and a feather bed for a mattress.
We were on the bank of Silver Creek, a nice little clear mountain stream. Our house was in a nice location but there were many things to be done yet. Fences and ditches were to be made with no shovel team or wagon to work with. Just one old ox left. Our nearest neighbor was two miles away and they had no more than we did. That was really had times.
We lived on the road where all the wild Indians had to pass and there were many of them. Some mornings when we got up they would be camped in the cedar trees where our house was. We only had one gun but no bullets so we would wait in the house until we saw them leave then they might slip around some other way. We were almost afraid to go to the river for water. We only had a two-gallon jug to carry water in so had to go often. We had no buckets, no tubs, no washboard, no chairs, no table, in other words we had nothing but a big bunch of hungry children.
Father took sick and was in bed six months. The men in town took turns coming up and sitting up with him, two would come each night. It would have been a blessing if he could have died because he was so mean. A man took the biggest boy to herd sheep for him, thirty miles away. He had to stay all alone among the Indians day and night and he was only a boy of fourteen. He got a dollar a day. That left Mother and another boy, twelve years old to fence the farm and the boy was so lazy. He used to say he was not afraid of work, he could lie down by it and go to sleep.
Mother would sharpen the old ax with a rock the best she could, take a little bread and go to the cedar trees to chop fence posts. She would leave father on his pole bed. George and I had to stay at home and tend the baby. She would make a mark on the ground and tell us when the sun got to that mark to bring the baby to her so she could nurse it. I was nine years old, George was eleven. I carried the baby on my back and George carried the next little boy. Evaline carried a bottle of water for the baby. We left a can of water by the bed for father, left the door open so he could see out and the five of us little children would go two miles to here Mother was working. Maybe we would find her alive and maybe the red men had killed her. It was just a big chance. Our load would get so heavy before we got there. As soon as the baby was through nursing we would have to start back. We didn’t know whether we would see our horse or not as it would be so easy for the Indians to come and set the house on fire and burn house, father and all. It was a blessing the Indians didn’t harm us little children on our way.
When we got home, we would go in and speak to father to see if he was dead or alive as the house was so dark we couldn’t see. There was only one little door to let the light in.
Mother would come home early so she could get supper. She kept this up day after day. One day she was so tired that she lay down in one corner on some bedding to rest and let the baby nurse. Father asked “Mary, how many posts did you cut today?” She said “They are getting scarce. John and I only got a hundred and seventy-five”. He said “That’s a lie. You have been sitting down just because I was not there to watch you.” Mother said she hadn’t stopped once, that made him all the madder and he yelled “Don’t you lay there you lazy heifer. I’ll get up and rip you open”. He got up, after lying in bed six months being waited on hand and foot, and started after her with his knife open. Mother ran and he chased her about two hundred yards. He fell down and wanted her to help him up. She told him she wouldn’t help him if he stayed there until he died. We children did all we could until we got him in the house and on the bed. When the men came that evening to sit up with him Mother told them what had happened. That settled it, they never set up with him again.
One day a Mexican came by and cured father so that he could walk. Then he used to whip Mother and us children for what she did while he was in bed.
A young man came and hauled all the posts for Mother that she had cut and there were lots of them as they made stake and rider fences and that required many posts but it lasted for years.
We all stayed home without enjoyment and worked building fence and doing whatever there was to do. It is a life to remember.
We traded our oxen for a milk cow. We worked for different people and got two little mules. Some one gave us an old plow, one man gave us a pig, another gave us six hens and a rooster to raise chickens on shares. Mother and father walked six miles and carried the chickens home. One of my bothers walked thirty miles to get a kitten. Later the boys brought home a tom cat from six miles away. When our cat had kittens there were four and we sold them for twenty-five cents apiece. That’s how we got a start of cats.
There were many quarrels and fights and many a bottle of whiskey drunk during all these hardships that did not help in the least to make the burdens lighter.
I was fourteen by this time and had done everything in my power to help both in the house and out. The first good word I ever remember of hearing about me, was when two ladies were at our house one day. Mother called me to go to the cellar and get the butter. I stopped my play right then and started after it. I heard one lady say “That girl will make a smart woman if you will give her a chance.” Not boasting, I feel like I have done my part. People have always imposed on me. I am glad I don’t have to live my life over.
As years rolled on, we got more around us, more machinery, tools, cattle, horses and hogs. We sure knew how to work. Father made us hoe from daylight until four o’clock in the afternoon, day after day. He went somewhere everyday and allowed no one to come to our place. He told everyone not to bother us because we had to work. He gave orders to Mother and she and we did all the work. By now we had three hundred hens and got lots of eggs. Father took them to town every day.
We had plenty to eat but no clothes. My sister was fourteen and I was sixteen years old now and began thinking about the boys. When the grain thresher came to our house there would be young boys working on it, but they never got to see us. We were both pretty and were healthy and stout but no one knew it because they never got to see us. Father would say “You gals get your wood and water in before the men come to the house. I don’t want them to see you.” He liked to watch the women, though and tell what kind of stockings and underskirts they wore.
I always loved to cook. When we had men to cook for, we girls would get the meal then go outside behind the house while the men came in and ate, Mother would wait on the table. We knew we had to mind father, we would listen to hear every word that was said. It did us good just to hear a young man’s voice. I still thought of Culver and wondered when I would get to see him.
We were getting big enough now to want some one else to associate with but our brothers. We craved other people’s company. We had to work so hard plowing, making ditches, building fences, hauling hay and grain and in the spring, we had to clear out the stables and cow corral.
We had to haul manure all winter in the snow with worn out dresses, no underwear except a petticoat, woolen stockings and high-top shoes. We wore boys old coats with a red handkerchief tied over our heads.
We were up at four in the morning and to bed at six at night.
Mother usually did the milking, but one day she had to help father set out some cabbage plants and she told us girls to milk. There were two wild heifers. Evaline wouldn’t milk one of them so we got into a fight and she hit me over the head with a bucket and cut a gash about four inches long. My brother ran and told father. I went to the house to strain the milk and I saw father going toward the corral with a handful of big switches. He hit Evaline one lick and then came for me. He whipped me until the hide on my back and shoulders burst and the blood started to run. I began to scream that he was killing me. He said that was what he wanted to do. After he wore out all the willows he slapped me in the face and nearly knocked me down.
I staggered to the house and to my bed but couldn’t lie down I was in such pain. George came to where I was and asked me what was the matter. I started to tell him. Father told me to shup up or he would kill me. I told him to come on as I was ready to die. Then I fell on the bed. He started towards me and George pushed him back and told him never to touch me again. Father cursed him and told him he would have it out with him. He picked up a big rock and George a big iron pin. George dodged the rock and just missed Father with the iron pin. It went with such force that it stuck in a mud wall so far that we never could get it out. It sure would have fixed the old man if it had hit him. Then he went into the house to get his gun and said he was going to kill us all. Mother was screaming, the other children crying and I was nearly dead. Just as he was loading his Winchester another brother came in. When father saw him, he threw the gun on the feather bed and lay down on it. My brother held him and told Mother to get the gun. Father said if she did, he would kill her. Just then my baby brother got it and ran outside. Mother put it under the house. My big brother came and asked her where it was and as he was stooping over to get it father ripped my brother’s shirt open and nearly cut his kidneys out. George grabbed the gun and shot up in the air. That brought all the neighbors. Father went into a room, threw everything out but a straw tick, a pillow and President Garfield’s picture and locked the door.
When the excitement quieted down a little someone thought of me. I was cold and stiff. They put me to bed. I couldn’t lie on my back it was so cut and slashed. All they had to doctor it with was warm water and new butter.
The boys left home the next morning. There was only Mother, and we younger children left. Before they started Father told Mother to take the team and new wagon and go with them because if we stayed, he was afraid he would kill us. The boys begged her to go but she said “No. I can’t move Becky, now, and beside I married your pap, and I am going to live with him until one of us die.”
Every morning he would leave and be gone all day, then at night he would lock himself in his room. This lasted for thirteen days that he did not speak to anyone then him and Mother made up.
My suffering was almost more than I could stand. At night, the bedbugs would nearly eat me alive. As I lay there, I wondered why I was ever born as there was no one to love me, and how I wished that I could die.
Before I was able, I had to go to work. Father seemed better natured and told us girls if we would plow seven acres of corn and hoe the weeks he would get us each a new dollar hat for May day. It took us three days to do it. We each got a Black straw and enough cloth for a dress.
I looked forward to the celebration as I thought I would see Culver. How I longed to have him come and see me while I was sick, but no, he cared nothing for a poor girl. It is a shame to love and not be loved.
Sister and I had to walk two miles to the Mayday Celebration. Culver and another boy passed us in a buggy. As they did, they cut the horses and laughed, making fun of us. Oh, how my heart did ache. They got two girls and taking the big swing ropes went ahead of the crowd to the picnic grounds.
After we were there awhile, Culver’s girl went riding with a cowboy. That made him feel pretty bad. I went over and sat down in one of the swings, and pretty soon he came over where I was and sat and talked to me for a long time but all the while he seemed to be afraid someone would see us. All the time I was hoping his girl would get killed but she came back all right and he got up and left me again, brokenhearted.
That was the last time we went to town until Christmas. There was nothing to do but stay home and work like dogs. When the binder cut our grain Mother and Evaline bound it and my little brother and I shocked it, and we hauled it in.
It was our task to cut the corn when it was ripe. We were not allowed to wear our shoes. The first thing Evaline did was to almost cut her big toe off, so that left me to cut it all.
I was eighteen now, I would get very discouraged with the life I had. I had no one to come and see me after a hard day’s work, and no one to tell my trouble to.
One night I had a beautiful dream. I was so tired when I went to bed, I was almost sick, but I dreamed of Culver. He sat by my bed and put his head on my pillow. When I reached over to pat his head, I awoke to find it only a dream. I thought of him all day and that night asked my brother if he would do something for me. He promised and I sent word to Culver that I wanted to see him that night. I knew he had a falling out with his girl and thought he might come, and sure enough he did.
Father made us all go to bed at six o’clock, but there was no sleep for me. About eight I heard horses coming so I woke Evaline and made her get up and dress. Culver had brought another boy with him for Evaline. I will never be happier in my life. We were shamed to have the boys see our bare feet, but there was little time to think of that.
When Culver sat by me it made me feel like I was really living. Just to have his arm touch mine thrilled me. It lightened my burden of ten years. We all talked very low so father would not hear us. Finally he asked me to go horseback riding with him. I didn’t know what to do as I was afraid father would kill me, but I decided to go, for if I had to die it would be for Culver. We went and left the other two at the house. When we went to where the horses had been tied they were gone. A queer feeling came over me. I was alone in the dark with the man I love. Was I doing right or wrong? He took me by one hand, put his arm around me and pressed me to him. The first time he had touched me since we were little children wading in the water. His arms were the only ones that ever went around me.
Soon we heard the old clock strike twelve and the boys had to go. I did not know whether he would ever come back again. We went to bed and Evaline was soon asleep but there was no sleep for me that night. Days and weeks passed by, but he did not come. I looked forward to Fourth of July. Father had been a soldier, so we always were allowed to go to that celebration. At last the day arrived and we went to town and to the home of a girl across the road from the Kartchner home. This girl was keeping company with Culver’s brother. Soon the two girls came over. In a little while the others went to a children’s dance leaving Culver and me alone. I was so happy as I thought he would ask me to go to the dance with him, but he didn’t say a word but left me. I didn’t know what to do. I walked toward home, crying and thinking what a fool I was to love a man who didn’t care for me. I wished I was dead and out of the way. I remembered what Mother had often told me that I was never wanted. Finally I came to a ditch. I washed my face and went back to the dance. Everyone was having a good time. I was sitting by an open window, soon I felt something touch my head. I turned around and Culver was close to me. He wanted me to go outside as he had something to tell me but I was afraid to go as my folks were all watching me, but it made me feel better just to know he was near me and talked to me. I enjoyed the afternoon and was glad I didn’t go home.
My parents went home and left us girls to stay for the grown ups dance at night and my brother was to watch us. I did have the time of my life and danced so much and got so hot I sat by a window to cool off when Culver came again and asked me to go with him to get a drink out of a well. I watched my brother and when he was dancing I slipped out and met Culver at the door. He put his arm around me and said I would have to walk slow and help him as his foot was sore. That suited me just fine. We talked for two hours. He said he was coming up to see me again if I wanted him to. I told him many times I loved him be he didn’t tell me that he loved me. We got back just as the dance was out.
One Sunday Culver rode up and mother came out and asked him what he wanted. He told her he wanted to talk to me, so she said I was in the kitchen. Mother kept one of the little girls right there to watch us.
At four o’clock mother came in and told Culver that he would have to leave because that was the time we began to do our chores. Culver said he would come again in two weeks.
He did come every two weeks and stayed two hours each time. He went to all the dances and parties in town and once he came after me to go to a dance, but mother wouldn’t let me go.
Culver hauled freight for the government, and I went around with my thoughts waiting for him to come home so he would come and see me. We saw each other every two weeks for six months and I had lots to bear as my people despised him and made fun of him all the time. When I was eighteen Culver asked me to marry him. I told him I was ready any time. My parents would not give their consent but I was of age, so we set the day. Mother and father went after my wedding dress as I had never been in a store, never struck a match to a lamp or held a dollar in my hand. My wedding dress cost eight cents a yard and was white with a little black flower in it. They bought me enough unbleached muslin for a sheet, one pillow case and one night gown and four yards of black cloth for an undershirt.
A week before I was married father killed a pig and bought sugar and fruit then told mother to tell me to cook all I wanted for my wedding. I cooked for two days and had everything that heart could wish for to eat.
The day I was married we got up at three in the morning, milked the cows, drove them two miles to pasture; did the work and then I began to get ready. The first thing I did was to black my shoes with soot. I was ready by eight o’clock but Culver and his folks hadn’t come yet. I waited three hours and we were all upset. Mother said that Culver had disgraced me and then had left the country. At eleven o’clock their wagon came into sight and it wasn’t long after they got there that my name was changed. Mother asked me now that I was married which way I was going to fly. I said “Straight up”. She told us that we would have to wait until the children ate but I wasn’t hungry because I was so happy.
I thought Culver had plenty of money, but I soon found out that he was a poor boy with a blind father and a mother with six children to support.
We took his mother’s good team and wagon and went thirty-five miles to get something to keep house with. Culver had saved about seventy-five dollars. We put our bed in the wagon and drove in the snow the entire distance without even putting a quilt over our knees. I was nearly frozen when we got there. All I had to keep me warm was a calico dress, a slat bonnet and a cotton shawl. Tom was dressed in wool. When we got there, we went into the store. Tom acted ashamed of me, but I guess I shouldn’t blame him because I did look terrible.
He bought the things never asking me if I wanted this or that. The only thing I asked him for was a little trunk that cost eight dollars as I didn’t have a thing to put few belongings in only a rough box. He wouldn’t get it but bought himself a nine-dollar overcoat.
We got back and moved into a house belonging to Culver’s brother. All we had to start out with was one old horse. His father died shortly after, leaving a wife and six children. Culver took care of the twenty acre farm for them. I didn’t stand very high in the eyes of his people, but I was a good worker and could keep house if I had anything to keep.
Culver used to spend so much time at his mother’s. He would stay so late at night. I was never sure whether he was there or some place else because many times after we had gone to bed some of the young people would come and he would get up and go with them and have a good time while I was never asked to go. I would cry all the time he was gone. When he came back, I would love him and ask why he left me but he would turn over and go to sleep. If he ever took me to a dance, he would take me over to a dark corner and seat me. Usually he danced the first set with me and that was all. I wasn’t dressed as nice as others, but he would not buy me any clothes.
Culver took turns with other men hauling freight for the Government. He would be gone about ten days or two weeks. I took pride in fixing his grub box. I would bake beans, pies, cookies and fix everything nice for him to eat.
When I needed money for my baby clothes, he gave his sister the money to get the things as he said I didn’t know anything about handling money. That hurt me and I said “I never had a baby, maybe you had better have your sister do that for me”. When our baby girl came, we were very proud of her. When she was four months old, his brother wanted his house and we had to move out. Culver traded our horse for a lot with a little two room house on it. The snow was two feet deep on the ground when we moved. We were happy in our little home when he was there. I couldn’t go anyplace. When our baby was eighteen months old my second one came, a boy. His father wouldn’t touch him, wouldn’t help me tend to him. I tried to take the world as it came and be happy with my babies. I knew my husband was going around with his old girl friends but I could not help it.
I had to do all my sewing by hand as I had no machine. All I did have in my house was a little stove, a homemade bedstead, two chairs, an old table and a cradle. We slept on a straw mattress, had one wash tub, had to borrow flat irons. When a girl marries a man and lives like that, she marries for love. Culver never spoke cross to me. I had never known what kindness was so a kind word went a long ways with me as I had never heard such a thing at home.
When Culver was working, I milked the cow, fed the pig, got in the wood and had supper on the table when he came home. All I wanted was to have him near to look at. He didn’t like our little boy but was crazy about the girl.
We had few visitors. My folks never came, they didn’t give me any thing when I married, though I had worked hard to help them get what they had. Culver divided everything we had with his folks. I had no clothes fit to go out in. I wore my best dress for five years before I got another. No wonder he was ashamed of me.
I was glad when my family sold their home and moved away, as they never cared for me nor I for them.
When my baby boy was two years old, I had another little baby girl. I was proud of my three children. We had a nice little family.
When the baby was old enough, I begged Culver to take me to a dance. I hadn’t been any place for so long. He took the two little ones by the hand and I carried the baby and we went. As soon as the music started the little ones put their heads over on my lap and all three of them went to sleep and there I sat until twelve o’clock, while he never missed a dance. It was snowing when we went home, it was half a mile. I was almost dead when we got there. He said “If we have to take all the children we won’t go to any more dances.” I didn’t but he never missed one.
Culver got a letter one day from my folks. I couldn’t read a word of it, because before I married I could not spell my own name. After my children all grew up, they taught me many things, but my baby has been my teacher. The letter was to beg us to sell out and go down there. I didn’t want to of course, because I was better off away from the whole outfit.
One day I was busy sewing for the three children I already had and the new one that was coming when he came in and told me he had sold out and we were moving. That without ever saying a word to me. I cried until I made myself sick, but that did no good. We left with two wagons and four horses, as my sister and her husband went along. As we got on the Indian Reservation, three big Indians came from behind the bushes, put their guns in our faces and told us to stop and we did. I could look down the barrel of one of their guns. They talked with each other then told us to go on and we were nearly scared to death. The roads were rough, from one big rock on to another one. We had to go down a big seven mile hill and so rough I got out to walk but they told me to ride the old horse we were leading so I got on her and Evaline led her. The wagons went on ahead. The children began crying so their father put them out by the side of the road to wait for me to come along. When I came to them, I put them on the horse and I walked behind. After a while I turned around and there was an old Indian squaw behind me, knife in hand, ready to stab me. I screamed and she went away.
After ten days we came to the little town of Graham where my people lived. We moved into one of my father’s rooms. It had no roof, and the wagon cover didn’t keep the rain out, it came nearly every night. I fell out of the wagon before we got there and was expecting my fourth baby soon, so I was almost helpless. My people treated me so mean and didn’t want me around so Culver bought a place adjoining fathers and made a shed for us to live under, walled it up with anything we could find and covered it with dirt. We weren’t used to the hot sun and we nearly died.
Every night father would send for Culver to come and play cards with him and he would go leaving me to do all the work and put the babies to bed. Then my fourth baby was born, and I did have my hands full. My sister stayed with me for five days and Culver still went away every night so then I spoke my first cross words to him. We had a big quarrel and I told him I wanted to get away from my folks, so we left and went sixty-five miles where we made a new home. I stayed right by Culver’s side helping him with everything that he did so that we could make a home. We lived a year without a cent of money and had to go back where my people lived for flour.
Culver worked on the farm for my brother for a dollar a day until he owed him over three hundred dollars. He run a store and when I went to ask him for clothes for another arrival but he would only let me have enough green outing to make a dress and a night gown.
I plowed all day Saturday, and a baby boy came Sunday weighing fourteen pounds. We had no doctor but gave a neighbor lady three gallons of molasses to bring him into the world. I couldn’t hire anyone to help me so my oldest little girl did all the baby washing and what work she could. I sat up in bed and mixed bread and then she would bake it. We were nearly starved so when this baby was six weeks old I started taking in washings and made two dollars a week. This was the first money I had ever made in my life. That money had to feed all of us a week. I needed some garden seed, so I took my two dollars and bought the seeds then went to my brothers store and got twenty-five cents worth of kerosene and asked him to charge it. He said I could not have the kerosene until I had paid for it. He said I had the laziest man on earth and then he old me to get out and stay out.
Well Culver and I lived together and every two years there was a baby until there were eleven of them. I washed and ironed for the public for over thirty years besides doing my own work. We now have ten children well and strong. The boys are all fine men and are all farmers. The girls are all good mothers, housekeepers and cooks. We have thirty-six grandchildren and two great grandchildren. I am sixty-two and Culver is sixty-five. We have been married forty-four years. My hair is white and his is streaked with grey. We have our children all we could for poor people and gave them as much education as possible. Now we are left alone no home and no money. Our days are drawing to an end and we are just old and in the way.
(As told by Mrs. Rebecca Steward Kartchner of Mesa, Arizona)
The life of the Old Southern Girl
(Rebecca Steward Kartchner)
By Roberta F. Clayton, 2301 E. Willetta St., Phoenix, Arizona
If it has been many long years since I was a baby in my mother’s arms. I will never forget what she told me many times that she never wanted me. That she was ashamed to take me any place, but I am still here in this old dreary world, can have gone through all that a girl needs to go through.
I can remember since I was six years old. I was a big, fat girl, as being around as I was tall, with large blue eyes and black hair. I would fall down standing still I was so clumsy. No one seemed to care for me but my brother George. He was a blue eyed boy with brown curly hair. He was two years older than I. Everybody loves him but he was my old standby. My name was Rebecca and George knew when he called on Becky he always got what he wanted done.
We lived in the backwoods of Alabama. Ours was a two room log house. It was a mile from the road by a big mountain with a little stream of clear water running close by. George and I spent many happy hours wading in the water. We were always barefooted, my parent’s beings too poor to buy shoes.
My father drank all the time. He made his own whiskey. I was afraid of him because he would come home drunk every night, abuse mother and beat us poor little hungry children. He said I wasn’t his child and would knock me over in the corner where mother had a pile of cotton to have the seed picked out.
Mother would card and spin and make clothes for us children to wear. After father would get just so drunk he would go to sleep, then mother would have all us children sit around the fireplace and pick cotton seed.
She would throw on a piece of fat pine so we could see, we had no lamps. I was so afraid father would wake that I would get close to Mother. All of us would sit in silence, look back in the dark corner once in a while to see that he still slept, then we would bend over the cotton we were picking until our brains were nearly cooked. After a while we would go to bed. George, my baby sister, Evaline and I would sleep in a pile of cotton with an old quilt over us and I would cry myself to sleep. If I heard a little noise I would think father was coming and would lay close to George.
When morning came we would get up and eat our breakfast which was only a piece of corn bread, then we would go out to play.
One day Mother went to the field to plow as father made her do all the farm work. While us children were alone we did some queer things. This day, George said “Come here, Becky, lets plow with our old cat.” So we put a rope around her neck but she would only lay down. We whipped her but still she wouldn’t go. I carried her to a big rock, put her head on it and George hit her head with another big rock. That was the last of her. While this was going on and we were watching the cat, father stepped up. His eyes were red and he couldn’t stand still. He took out his knife. When it was opened it was exactly twelve inches long. He staggered back and cut a peach tree limb, caught me by the arm, put my head between his knees, pulled up my dress and whipped me until I stood in a puddle of blood. When he raised up, he fell face downward on the ground a laid there for a while. George ran to the house. I got in a big bunch of bushes, put my hand over my mouth and cried until I could cry no longer. After awhile my big sister came and took me to the house and put me to bed. All the clothes I had to wear was a belt waisted dress that touched the ground, long sleeves and high neck. I had no underwear or anything else. When my dress got so dirty it didn’t smell very good, then Mother would put me to bed and wash it. All the boys wore were long shirts and no pants.
There were thirteen of us children to make clothes for and Mother had her heart and hands full as she had most all the farm work to do besides caring for so many children and making our clothes. All Father thought of was whiskey and bad women. He drank so much, he was nearly blind and when he was sober he professed to be a hard-shelled Baptist preacher.
One night he came home from town and told me to come sit on his lap. I went because I knew I had to mind. He lifted me up and pulled a string of beads out of his pocket and gave them to me. They were blue and white. I was just six years old that day. I took the beads, got down and never sat on his lap again.
In the year of eighteen hundred and seventy-six, two men came through where we lived and stayed a week with my people. They talked to them about the West. They said it was the only place to live, there were lots of pretty women there and lots of money. Many of the men believed what they told and were anxious to go. These two men said people ate flour bread out West all the year around, worked two horses at a time, men wore underwear and had blue shirts to work in, women had rub-boards to clean their clothes and stoves to cook on and bought coffee that was parched. They said there were even no bed bugs to wake you at night. I would sit still and listen and although I was little I understood many things the older people talked about.
While these men were to our place Father stayed sober, we children didn’t have to work, he bought some bacon to eat. Mother made biscuits for breakfast and we could have one piece, with a little grease on it.
There were all kinds of berries, grapes, plums and peaches grew there but they were half worms and no one knew how to put up fruit or make jelly they were just back-woodsmen.
Soon all the people began making plans to go West. The women began to card and spin, making clothes and knitting stockings for all the family getting ready for the long trip of three thousand miles. They were a happy bunch. I would sit and listen until I would dream of seeing the big rivers they talked about.
Mother carded and wove enough cloth to make Father and four of the boys a suit a piece, a coat and pair of pants, and all of us girls, a little dress and the little boys each a long shirt. She knit us all two pair of stockings, covered a few old quilts and I would stand near her and ask questions about what I heard her and Father talk about until she would tell us to go play. George and I would go then and play we were going West.
Father sold our farm of thirty-five acres and the little two room shack that six of the children were born in. We were going to leave it never to see it again.
I had one brother named Ray that was Mother’s before she and Father were married but he was Father’s also. Father was awful mean to him because he didn’t like him so Mother had to leave him with his Grandmother until he was five years old and the Grandmother died. After Mother brought him home he was never allowed to speak until he was told and poor little boy would take beatings like a negro boy and be stomped like a dog.
One day Father went to see the man he sold the farm to and took Mother with him. They left at day-light as they had to bring two oxen and a wagon back with them and had twenty miles to go. When they got there Mrs. Smith had just bought a new stove, the first in that country. Mother had never seen a stove before so took both hands and lifted the lids off and burned her terribly. She nearly lost her right hand. They got back a long while after dark. Mother had let a six-month old baby at home. He was almost starved and had cried nearly all day. Her hands were so sore and she had to get supper for eleven that night and cook it by the fire place on a bake oven.
We had two good cows with young heifer calves. Father sold one for six dollars and one for seven and a half. He sold all our hogs, chickens and everything we had for two more oxen. We had an old wagon and Father began to start fixing everything for the trip. He thought he was a first class carpenter. His tools consisted of a broad-ax, a saw, hammer and an old time auger. They all looked to him for the boss and leader and he was a mean boss because he let his temper get the best of him.
At last came time to start. All the other families had gathered there the night before so no one slept much. All were up and ready to start at sunrise. When the wagons were loaded they consisted of a box of clothes, five pounds of flour, a side of hog meat, three pounds of coffee, a few sweet potatoes and five hundred pounds of tobacco. Every man, woman and child that was old enough used tobacco. They had bake ovens, a frying pan and coffee pot. Two more families rode in our two wagons. One man had a wife and two babies and the other man had five children. There was twenty-one in all for Father’s wagons. They tied the feather bed up in a sheet, pushed it back as far as they could under the wagon cover of Father’s wagon and put Evaline and me back against the bed, then put two old home made chairs in front of us with our feet stretched out under them. Father and Mother sat in the chairs. Some of the little boys rode in the other wagon with an older boy. Father was to be the leader so they all started. Most of the men, women and big children walked ahead. Men with guns on their shoulder, women with sun bonnets on and a big child a straddle their hips. All were as happy as could be but poor old souls did they ever dream what was ahead of them? There were fifty wagons started on the beginning. Some of the oxen were trying to run away, some were laying down with their yoke on and others crowding and trying to tip the wagon over. In the last wagon was an old man with his little old lady and a little adopted boy in her lap. The old man had a long white beard, he had one old steer working him in shafts starting three thousand miles for the West. Can anyone imagine how those poor folks could see their way through? There wasn’t fifty dollars among the whole bunch but they went on never dreaming what was ahead. They traveled until sun down the first day going only eight miles then they pitched their tents for the night. The next day they only went six miles for everyone and the critters were so stiff and sore. My sister and I sat in one position all day and didn’t even had a drink of water and when we tried to walk it was almost impossible. I couldn’t see how I could stand it another day. I couldn’t go to play like the rest of the children and slept on the ground that was so hard and cold.
We traveled day after day, week after week until months passed. Our money was going so when we got into Memphis we had very little left. We got there about four o’clock in the afternoon. A man came out where we were all dressed up with his black suit and white collar on. Nearly every oxen lay down while he was talking to us. Father asked him when we could cross the Mississippi River and he said not before the next day as there was a big rise in it. All the women and children look at this man has though they had never seen anyone before. Poor souls hadn’t seen very many in their life time. What were they born for? Just to live in the back woods.
This man told them to pull in the camp yard and they didn’t know what he meant so he had to explain what a camp yard was. Then a bunch of men came into camp. They each took a man, his wife and smallest children to supper leaving the older ones in camp. Father, Mother, Evaline, as she was sick, and I all went with one man and Mother had to leave the baby in camp with my oldest sister as Father had no use for babies and didn’t want to be bothered with them. We had to climb up stairs and I had no one to look after me so I crawled up like a cat. We thought we were so high in the air but were only ten feet. They wouldn’t let us pitch our tents that night so we all laid on the ground and looked at the stars. To see the electric lights and hear so much noise was a grand thing to see and surely opened our parents’ eyes.
All the women stood around with long belt waisted dress and bonnets and men shoes on with a big child on their arm and one hanging to their breast and holding all they could by hand. Then there were the men all in a bunch with their knives out whittling on sticks, their mouths full of tobacco and most of it coming down on their coat when they would spit. They all had long mustaches only Father and he wore chin whiskers.
When morning came the sky was cloudy and looked like rain. All were up by day light. The children were all crying for something to eat but they couldn’t make a fire and our parents never thought of going to a store to get anything. There was many an old person in the bunch who never had seen inside a store or a loaf of bread or a pound of cheese. God pity such a bunch. I look back in the year of eighteen hundred and sixty seven and can see how our old parents had to live and it was a shame for such people to bring children in the world to be raised in ignorance.
The man that had charge of the steam boat came soon and told them everything was ready to go and he would take two wagons across the Mississippi River at a time. Our two wagons were the first to go so we pulled on the boat, the little ones still begging for something to eat and the older ones sick with headaches for want of their usual coffee. It was just ten o’clock when we boarded the boat. The oxen were so frightened they nearly went overboard. The men had to beat them over the head as they had not ropes to hold them with so there was lots of excitement. Father told Mother and us children to stand up by the wagon and there was almost a foot of water on the floor where we were standing. My baby sister in Mother’s arms almost dead, the older sister holding the six months old baby boy standing close enough so he could pull at Mother’s sleeve and George and I holding to Mother’s dress. Oh, what a life for that poor old Mother of mine and I can look back and say, “God bless her and all the rest that had to live with a man and go through what they did and I know he will.”
The water kept getting deeper and deeper on the boat so they got six big negro men to dip the water out with big buckets. Finally the Captain told them all the women and children to go upstairs where it was warm and they could sit down. We all went upstairs where we found some of the nicest chairs and a pretty rug on the floor. A lady told Mother to sit down in a rocking chair with the little sick girl and that was the first rocking chair she had ever sat in and not being used to anything but a straight chair, she nearly fell over.
In one corner sat two ladies and two men playing cards and were dressed so nice. I wondered if I would ever have nice clothes like that. I sat there and could smell good things cooking and was so hungry. My poor little sick sister needed something to eat so bad and a doctor.
All at once a young man came and cried, “There comes a shark after the board and if it isn’t captured it will turn the boat over.” There was a dead man on the boat and that is what the shark was after.
The shark got so close they had to throw the dead man overboard. We all rushed to watch the excitement. The dead man tossed on the waves until the shark got to him then it swallowed him and went on. Soon some men came on a skiff and stuck a long spear in the shark then it went to a sand bar and died.
We got off the boat at two o’clock and after we got everything together. Father called our old dog, Watch, but he didn’t come and we could see him following some negro men a long ways off. Father liked the dog so well he went after him and found him seven miles from where we got off the ship. He was still with these negroes and they were on the sand bar where the shark went, had taken the dead man out and was getting ready to bury him.
We didn’t wait for Father or the rest of the wagons behind us, but went on trying to find a place to camp as we hadn’t had a thing to eat all day but we couldn’t find any wood so went on and on. Finally it began to rain and we drove on until dark. We saw the glimpse of a little house and wanted to get there so we would get in out of the rain and it was raining harder every step the oxen took.
My poor little sick sister how I wished I had a piece of bread for her. The baby was waiting for Mother so he could “suck”, as the Southerners say, and go to sleep. She had no milk as she hadn’t eaten in so long.
At last we pulled up in front of this little house. Everyone went in and there on the walls read “Smallpox, don’t come in.” We got out as quickly as we could, drove on a little father where the boys pitched our tent, made our bed on the wet ground, turned the oxen out and went to bed without supper. It was raining so had we could not find any wood. In the middle of the night Father came with the dog. It was raining so hard the dog had no place to sleep so went back to this little house and crawled under it. There was an earthen plate under there with some kind of poison on it. The dog was so hungry he licked the plate and the next morning he was dead. The long twenty-two miles Father had walked was all in vain. Mother kept that plate for twenty years.
Finally all the families got together again. On and on they went, over mountains, through rivers and through log flats, pushing on towards the West where there was plenty of sunshine. The oxen pushed and crowded along, some with their tongues out but on they went, by the help of the whip. The old tired mothers kept on the go from early until late, with all the care of the children, while the men went on ahead, with their guns on their shoulders and not a care.
It had been many a day since they had left their little old log houses where they could sit by a big fire, chew their tobacco and dream of what was to come. Now they had their wives and children out in the world, no friends, no money and if one should have died they would not have lumber for a coffin all they could do would be wrap them up in a quilt and dig them a grave. In all that large group there were only two short handled spades.
Our wagon covers wouldn’t turn rain and when a big rain storm came we were all soaked through and through. The women had slat bonnets. The slats were made of paper so one good rain would ruin them. They couldn’t get any more paper so would turn their bonnets up in front, in order to see. The women and girls had no coats, just small shawls.
We made very short distances during the day averaging six and eight miles. The oxen would get so dry, we only had a two-gallon jug to carry water in.
After two long months of these hardships we reached Arkansas where twenty-five more families waiting to join us. We stopped there awhile for our oxen to rest and camped in a little one room house. There was lots of cotton to pick so Mother and the bigger boys started picking to get money for shoes. The price was fifty cents a hundred for picking. Mother did all the work, tending baby and picked five hundred pounds of cotton a day. Father would take the gun and hunt squirrels. My big sister would do nothing but talk to an old married man. He had a wife and two children, and ready for another but my sister was crazy about him.
Mother and the boys picked cotton three weeks then Father took the money and bought shoe leather. From this leather she made six pair of shoes. She could make shoes as well as women of today can make a cream cake.
There was one man who wanted to go with us. He had five children and a sick wife. We waited over night for them. It was snowing. Mother was called to sit up with this sick woman, as she was dying. They thought she was too cold they got some rocks very hot and put them around her to get her warm. She was dying, and so near gone she could not tell them they were burning her. After she was dead they found big blisters where every rock touched her.
The next morning, Father sent George and me to tell Mother to come home as the baby and Evaline wanted her. We put on our new shoes, tied a rug over our heads, took hold of hands and started out before day light. By the dim fire light that shone through a foot square window we found our way. There were five inches of snow on the ground, we had no coats and when our hands would get cold on one side we would change hands. When we got there we could see the dead woman lying on a board, which they called a plank, through the window.
We three went back where Father was and after breakfast Mother took sick. Three or four of the children had chills and fever, in fact, most of the family was sick so we had to stay all winter waiting for Mother to get well or die. She kept getting worse until she didn’t know any of us and we had to wean the baby. He was only ten months old and she seldom weaned a baby before they were two years old.
There was an old man and woman planting goobers near us so one day George and I hid in the bushes until they went to dinner then we stole all their goobers, ate them, put a rock in the sack and threw it into the river, then ran. The old couple came back and found their peanuts gone. They tracked us right to our house, measured our feet with a string, then we sure got a whipping. I will never forget it. We were so sore that night and had cramps from eating so may goobers we nearly died and Mother was too sick to know.
At last we got ready to start on our way again. There was to be seventy-five families now in the bunch. One man had four milk cows that he worked. One man had a bull, a cow, a horse and a mule that he worked. A widow with four children drove two old bulls to her wagon. She would walk all day and drive them. An old negro slave wanted to go with one family but they told her no. She walked behind the wagon until noon. The family gave her dinner and told her to go home. She went down the road a piece and sat down. Some of the men threw rocks at her.
Mother was so sick she never knew when they put her in the wagon. We traveled two weeks before she could get out of the wagon.
We crossed many rivers, went over some of the highest mountains, thru pine trees, down steep rocky places and thru big valleys. The valleys were so big we would travel for miles with neither wood or water, still dragging out the lives of those poor old sore-footed steers. Sometimes it would be three days between watering places and they would be so thirsty they would reel under their yokes.
Most of the women were bareheaded by now. One day we met a lady in a buggy with bonnets and aprons to sell. We had no money so the women and larger girls cut off their hair and bought themselves bonnets. They all wore long hair twisted up and pinned on top their heads. The first rain spoiled the bonnets as they were full of starch and when they got wet there was nothing to them.
We worried through all kinds of weather, rain, mud, half-starved with only two scant meals a day, all of us most in rags and bare footed. The road was only a cow trail so rocky and narrow and washed full of gullies that the men would have to put rocks in the holes to keep the wagons from tipping over. Lots of them would get behind and push the wagons up the steep hills. After four or five months like this we came to a ranch forty miles from any place.
The people were very nice. There was just an old lady about seventy-five years old, a man near fifty and a little girl ten years old. Their house was built upon a little hill and below was a pretty meadow with the fattest cows in it. In the corral was a bunch of big fat calves. Father asked this man if we could camp and he told him we could and to turn our cattle in the meadow. Then he turned his cows in the corral and told the crowd to come in and milk all they wanted. The old tired mothers grabbed a bucket and run to milk. They would milk first one cow then another and get what while the calves were sucking. We children sure had a fine supper that night.
The man came to our camp and said that the old lady was his wife and that the little girl was their baby; that his wife was rich and that he had married her for her money. He asked us where we were going and father told him we were going west to get rich. The next morning when we left, our oxen were so full they groaned under the load.
We went until months had passed and no gold had we found, no, no, nothing but hardship and trouble.
There was a young girl in the crowd that was married just as we left our old southern home. She was going to become a mother and now the time had come. She was sick all day and that night they called Father. He claimed to be a doctor but he really did not know anything about it. He just had lots of nerve. When the baby came he let the baby die and they wrapped it up in an old quilt and lay it in a little hole by the roadside. The broken hearted mother raised her hand to see the newly made mound that she would never see again. Nine long months of suffering and expecting just to leave behind many a sad remembrance. I could hear her scream for hours.
At last we came to Kansas and it was getting very hot weather. The women and children pulled off their shoes and went barefooted in order to save them. Sometimes when we came to a stream of water they would stop and wash what dirty clothes we had. They had no tub or washboard, just rubbed the dirty spots with the palm of their hands.
Mother used to make our soap with ash lye. She tipped some planks up a little, put some ashes on them, poured some water on the ashes, then when the water dripped through, the ashes made lye. We started with a bucket of soft soap but it had been gone a long time.
While we were coming through Kansas, we stopped at a man’s ranch for the night to let our cattle rest. The man said we looked hungry and he would kill a beef for us. He killed a three-year-old steer and what a blessing it was to us. Some were so hungry they even ate raw meat. Every part was saved even the feet. God surely watched over us. There was one birth, one death and one wedding on the road and also several dances as there were large smooth places on the prairie and that is where we danced.
We came slowly on stopping to shoe oxen, fixing old broken wagon wheels, hunting through the woods and getting what ever we could to eat. Sometimes it would be prairie chickens, rabbits, squirrels and prairie dogs. Anything tasted good to us as we were half starved, ragged and sad hearted. It looked like our last days had come but we couldn’t give up. The men would pray to God at night to protect us until our journey was through and He did.
At last we came to the state of Oklahoma where the buffalo and Cheroque Indians were. At night when we were on the plains the buffalo would come so close to the fire we could see their eyes shining. Sometimes there would be sixty or seventy-five in a herd.
One of my brothers could shoot them right in their eyes and down they would come. The rest would run, sometimes toward the camp and we would have to jump and run to our tents. We always made a corral at night with our wagons. Many of the Indian girls would stand around camp and watch our mothers get supper. They were very pretty with fair complexions and rosy cheeks. Two of my big brothers fell in love with them and wanted to get one for a wife. When they tried to talk to them they would laugh and turn their heads away.
We went on and on and finally came to Texas. There we could see miles and miles ahead of us. There were no hills, no wood and very little water and a cloud of dust where cattle and sheep were trying to find water and something to eat. The wind was blowing so hard the men had to turn the brim of their hats under. They were queer looking people with long mustaches and their hats peeked in front and back. The women walking with their bonnets tied around their necks and hanging down their backs, a big baby hanging to their breasts and their dresses open from the neck to the waist. It would be a sight to see today.
Finally we came to hole of water where a sheep herder had a large flock of sheep. When he saw us coming he started his sheep running and he drove them for miles. We thought we could water our cattle as we stopped and they started dipping our sheep pills. They dug down about three feet but the cattle wouldn’t even smell the water and they hadn’t drunk for three days. We went on and in the afternoon we could see what looked like a big mountain and it began to get cooler. The wind began to blow harder and harder and soon we discovered there was a big storm coming. We went a mile farther and then camped as we knew it would be many miles to water if God didn’t send us some. We had just gone to bed when the storm came. Mother put us children to bed when the storm came. There was a big flash of lightening. I could see Mother standing at one end of the tent and Father at the other. Our tent was ripped right through the middle. The water was half way to their knees. All of us were as wet as rats. We were all crying as hard as we could. I was so nearly frozen I didn’t look out again until morning. Everything in the tent was washed away. Mother’s feather bed washed a long way away and lodged by a bunch of bushes. Everyone was disheartened and blue the next morning. Everything was wet, their floor, clothes, bedding and everything.
There was nothing to burn but cow chips and a man had to fan them with his hat to make them burn and then it was only smoke.
We stayed there two days to dry our bedding and clothes as the sun came out. We cooked our dough such as it was without salt or baking powder. Then we made another start.
After a month of just such luck we came into New Mexico. There we found a bunch of wild Navajo Indians and they gave us lots of trouble. They would follow us all day trying to steal a horse, mule or oxen. At night the men would stand guard taking turns always keeping awake. Both cattle and camp had to be guarded. They would sneak up so easy a cat couldn’t hear them. Sometimes when the women would raise their bake oven lids, the Indians would grab the bread out of their hands, take our coffee pot and get away. There were so many of them standing around we could hardly walk and they were full of lice. That is what we had to contend with from the time we got into New Mexico until we got out. We were so happy when we crossed the line into Arizona.
We were all undecided which way to go, on the northern part of Arizona or go to Utah. Finally some decided to go to Utah and some went to Arizona. We went with the bunch going to Arizona. My two brothers left us and went back to Oklahoma to get them an Indian wife. They gave everything they had to the oldest girl as the three of them were whole brothers and sisters. Their mother had died and then father married mother making us half brothers and sisters. We all dreaded to see the boys go as they didn’t have a cent of money and were starting back on foot. We didn’t know whether we would ever see them again. We all shook hands and said goodbye. One boy was fathers baby and it was a sad parting. We had been on the road for one year.
In the bunch that stayed there were about eight women who were expecting babies. They took the small pox and all the expectant mothers and babies died.
Father and twenty-five more families went on to Arizona. They traveled another month and stopped on the Little Colorado River. We were all so naked that mother took the tent and made us girls some dresses and the boys shirts and pants.
There was a colony of people living on the river so we joined them, turning the oxen over to the boss and father went to work on the farm, and mother helped in the kitchen. We only stayed there a short time and then moved up the river about thirty-five miles to another camp.
We stayed there because the people were good. It was in this colony that I met the man I married years later. He was ten and I was eight years old. They had more to eat at this camp and I went to my first school there. All the children could play until dark and they sent a big girl to watch us. All I wanted was Culver and George. I thought George was the only boy until I met Culver and I loved him at first sight. It was a different love from that of a brother. Even as a child I could tell the difference. As soon as we were in the yard we were together. He was older than I but much smaller and he could do the nicest things to my notion. I never could see a wrong thing he did only when he took hold of some other girl’s hand and then I would go off and cry. He would come and get me to riding with me on stick horses. He wasn’t the prettiest boy on earth but I thought he was the best. When we were eating, we would look across the table and smile for I surely loved him.
We didn’t have a real school teacher but after breakfast the chairs were pushed back and one of the men taught us what he could and that was our school. Mother and three other women cooked for everyone every three weeks, then some other ladies would take their turn. One man baked the bread; one man churned and one lady skimmed the milk. All the other men went to work in the field.
We all stayed there a year but couldn’t make a living so we went on our way another hundred and fifty miles further. When we got to our new home, Culver’s father moved on the other side of the river about five miles from where I lived. We all went to the same school there and George and I would run a mile to meet Culver at the cross roads. Sometimes he would speak and sometimes he wouldn’t. This used to hurt me very much. At recess I would stand and watch him play ball. I thought he could play better than anyone else. I would watch his every move and he paid no attention to me. At night he would run ahead not waiting for George and I so the love went only one way.
At this place we called home there was a white man who had three Indian squaws for his wives. He had lots of money and cattle. He had forty acres of barley, forty acres of beans and a big patch of corn. He told all twenty families to help themselves and we did as we were nearly starved. When he cut his barley, mother picked up a head at a time until she had enough to amount to forty dollars.
Mother and father went sixty miles with the oxen and bought us children shoes and clothes for the winter. They dried lots of corn. This man gave each family a sack of beans and gave us all the beef we could use as mother washed for him.
Flour was sixteen dollars a hundred and it had to be hauled four hundred miles. It took just two months to make a trip after flour. We didn’t eat a bite of bread for a year. We had no milk or butter. Later on cows were brought into the colony. The boss bought a townsite from this rich man and then Culvers folks moved onto the townsite. My father got six cows to milk by letting George and I herd calves. Culver had to herd the cows. The grass was up to the cows’ sides and was full of rattle snakes. Everywhere we went we could hear them sing.
One morning father made George and I go to town after the calves and he wouldn’t let us wear our shoes but I was glad to go because I thought I might see Culver. We took the calves down to the river to herd them and I knew I would have lots of fun there with Culver as no other girl would be there to interfere. We would wade in the river, play in the sand and I could be near Culver most of all.
We weren’t there long when we heard Culver whistle. George answered him and when he came he was barefooted too. The boys rolled up their pants and began to wade in the water. I was afraid to wade as I didn’t want Culver to see my legs but he finally said, “Come on Beccy, this is fine”. That is all I wanted just to hear him speak my name, so I went in the water and lifted my dress a little ways for it was so long. He called for me to come father but I wouldn’t go so he came and took hold of my hand. It was just like being shocked by electricity. It went straight to my heart. I let him lead me where the water was deeper and got the bottom of my dress wet. I had to lie to my mother that night when she asked my why my dress was wet. I told her a calf got out in the deep water. I had to go after him and I let my dress fall into the water.
I had many happy days herding the calves and I always dreaded to see the sun go down but welcomed the morning sun because I liked to see Culver when I could.
Months passed by with the same things to do every day. One day Culver told his father that he wouldn’t herd cows until he had a pair of new shoes. His father told him no but he was self-willed and wouldn’t take the cows out. George and I waited a long time that morning for him to come and we got on the highest hill to watch for him. At last near noon we saw the cows coming and then we saw Culver. He rode up on a new horse and had on a pair of new shoes, so he succeeded in getting his way.
After keeping up that routine for months, we finally quit herding cows and George and Culver went to work. Father homesteaded a hundred and sixty acres two miles from town and built us a house. I got to see Culver very little as father let no one go to town but himself. I stayed home and dreamed of Culver.
Father was building us a new one roomed house and mother was expecting a new baby. One day father went to town and she sent the boys after the cows. After a while they came running home and told us that pap, as they called father, was coming home and both sides of the road was his. Mother knew he was drunk and when he was drunk he was the meanest man on earth. She took all the children and went across the river. He always came with his foot-long knife open when he was drunk and our lives were in danger. Father cut his own brothers head off with that same knife. We could see every move he made from where we were. He left the road and fell over some rocks, cutting his face open. A man came by and helped him up, then he told the man he was going to kill him but the man got out of his way. He went on with the blood streaming down his face towards the house. Our floor in the house was just dirt so when he got to the floor he fell face downward in the soft dirt. This same man came on behind him and put him to bed and called mother. We all went to the house and I will never forget his looks. There was dirt and blood all over him and he had vomited all over himself. He could only see out of one eye. When mother went to the door he began cursing her and told her not to come in. He started to get up and fell off the bed. Then mother and this man had to put him back in bed. The man washed his face, bound it up and had to stay all night as he would not let mother do a thing for him.
In a day or two he was ready to work on the house again. Our house was one little room made of logs, dirt roof, no windows and the doors were so low we had to stoop to get in, and at last we were ready to move in. We had to carry everything we moved on our backs over a big hill. We had neither teams or oxens or wagons, no more cows and not even a dog. The boss had taken our cows when we left the colony and had moved to ourselves. One oxen had died. We had no stove or bedstead so father bored a hole in a log of the house and made mother a one legged bedstead. They had little poles for springs and a feather bed for a mattress.
We were on the bank of Silver Creek, a nice little clear mountain stream. Our house was in a nice location but there were many things to be done yet. Fences and ditches were to be made with no shovel team or wagon to work with. Just one old ox left. Our nearest neighbor was two miles away and they had no more than we did. That was really had times.
We lived on the road where all the wild Indians had to pass and there were many of them. Some mornings when we got up they would be camped in the cedar trees where our house was. We only had one gun but no bullets so we would wait in the house until we saw them leave then they might slip around some other way. We were almost afraid to go to the river for water. We only had a two-gallon jug to carry water in so had to go often. We had no buckets, no tubs, no washboard, no chairs, no table, in other words we had nothing but a big bunch of hungry children.
Father took sick and was in bed six months. The men in town took turns coming up and sitting up with him, two would come each night. It would have been a blessing if he could have died because he was so mean. A man took the biggest boy to herd sheep for him, thirty miles away. He had to stay all alone among the Indians day and night and he was only a boy of fourteen. He got a dollar a day. That left Mother and another boy, twelve years old to fence the farm and the boy was so lazy. He used to say he was not afraid of work, he could lie down by it and go to sleep.
Mother would sharpen the old ax with a rock the best she could, take a little bread and go to the cedar trees to chop fence posts. She would leave father on his pole bed. George and I had to stay at home and tend the baby. She would make a mark on the ground and tell us when the sun got to that mark to bring the baby to her so she could nurse it. I was nine years old, George was eleven. I carried the baby on my back and George carried the next little boy. Evaline carried a bottle of water for the baby. We left a can of water by the bed for father, left the door open so he could see out and the five of us little children would go two miles to here Mother was working. Maybe we would find her alive and maybe the red men had killed her. It was just a big chance. Our load would get so heavy before we got there. As soon as the baby was through nursing we would have to start back. We didn’t know whether we would see our horse or not as it would be so easy for the Indians to come and set the house on fire and burn house, father and all. It was a blessing the Indians didn’t harm us little children on our way.
When we got home, we would go in and speak to father to see if he was dead or alive as the house was so dark we couldn’t see. There was only one little door to let the light in.
Mother would come home early so she could get supper. She kept this up day after day. One day she was so tired that she lay down in one corner on some bedding to rest and let the baby nurse. Father asked “Mary, how many posts did you cut today?” She said “They are getting scarce. John and I only got a hundred and seventy-five”. He said “That’s a lie. You have been sitting down just because I was not there to watch you.” Mother said she hadn’t stopped once, that made him all the madder and he yelled “Don’t you lay there you lazy heifer. I’ll get up and rip you open”. He got up, after lying in bed six months being waited on hand and foot, and started after her with his knife open. Mother ran and he chased her about two hundred yards. He fell down and wanted her to help him up. She told him she wouldn’t help him if he stayed there until he died. We children did all we could until we got him in the house and on the bed. When the men came that evening to sit up with him Mother told them what had happened. That settled it, they never set up with him again.
One day a Mexican came by and cured father so that he could walk. Then he used to whip Mother and us children for what she did while he was in bed.
A young man came and hauled all the posts for Mother that she had cut and there were lots of them as they made stake and rider fences and that required many posts but it lasted for years.
We all stayed home without enjoyment and worked building fence and doing whatever there was to do. It is a life to remember.
We traded our oxen for a milk cow. We worked for different people and got two little mules. Some one gave us an old plow, one man gave us a pig, another gave us six hens and a rooster to raise chickens on shares. Mother and father walked six miles and carried the chickens home. One of my bothers walked thirty miles to get a kitten. Later the boys brought home a tom cat from six miles away. When our cat had kittens there were four and we sold them for twenty-five cents apiece. That’s how we got a start of cats.
There were many quarrels and fights and many a bottle of whiskey drunk during all these hardships that did not help in the least to make the burdens lighter.
I was fourteen by this time and had done everything in my power to help both in the house and out. The first good word I ever remember of hearing about me, was when two ladies were at our house one day. Mother called me to go to the cellar and get the butter. I stopped my play right then and started after it. I heard one lady say “That girl will make a smart woman if you will give her a chance.” Not boasting, I feel like I have done my part. People have always imposed on me. I am glad I don’t have to live my life over.
As years rolled on, we got more around us, more machinery, tools, cattle, horses and hogs. We sure knew how to work. Father made us hoe from daylight until four o’clock in the afternoon, day after day. He went somewhere everyday and allowed no one to come to our place. He told everyone not to bother us because we had to work. He gave orders to Mother and she and we did all the work. By now we had three hundred hens and got lots of eggs. Father took them to town every day.
We had plenty to eat but no clothes. My sister was fourteen and I was sixteen years old now and began thinking about the boys. When the grain thresher came to our house there would be young boys working on it, but they never got to see us. We were both pretty and were healthy and stout but no one knew it because they never got to see us. Father would say “You gals get your wood and water in before the men come to the house. I don’t want them to see you.” He liked to watch the women, though and tell what kind of stockings and underskirts they wore.
I always loved to cook. When we had men to cook for, we girls would get the meal then go outside behind the house while the men came in and ate, Mother would wait on the table. We knew we had to mind father, we would listen to hear every word that was said. It did us good just to hear a young man’s voice. I still thought of Culver and wondered when I would get to see him.
We were getting big enough now to want some one else to associate with but our brothers. We craved other people’s company. We had to work so hard plowing, making ditches, building fences, hauling hay and grain and in the spring, we had to clear out the stables and cow corral.
We had to haul manure all winter in the snow with worn out dresses, no underwear except a petticoat, woolen stockings and high-top shoes. We wore boys old coats with a red handkerchief tied over our heads.
We were up at four in the morning and to bed at six at night.
Mother usually did the milking, but one day she had to help father set out some cabbage plants and she told us girls to milk. There were two wild heifers. Evaline wouldn’t milk one of them so we got into a fight and she hit me over the head with a bucket and cut a gash about four inches long. My brother ran and told father. I went to the house to strain the milk and I saw father going toward the corral with a handful of big switches. He hit Evaline one lick and then came for me. He whipped me until the hide on my back and shoulders burst and the blood started to run. I began to scream that he was killing me. He said that was what he wanted to do. After he wore out all the willows he slapped me in the face and nearly knocked me down.
I staggered to the house and to my bed but couldn’t lie down I was in such pain. George came to where I was and asked me what was the matter. I started to tell him. Father told me to shup up or he would kill me. I told him to come on as I was ready to die. Then I fell on the bed. He started towards me and George pushed him back and told him never to touch me again. Father cursed him and told him he would have it out with him. He picked up a big rock and George a big iron pin. George dodged the rock and just missed Father with the iron pin. It went with such force that it stuck in a mud wall so far that we never could get it out. It sure would have fixed the old man if it had hit him. Then he went into the house to get his gun and said he was going to kill us all. Mother was screaming, the other children crying and I was nearly dead. Just as he was loading his Winchester another brother came in. When father saw him, he threw the gun on the feather bed and lay down on it. My brother held him and told Mother to get the gun. Father said if she did, he would kill her. Just then my baby brother got it and ran outside. Mother put it under the house. My big brother came and asked her where it was and as he was stooping over to get it father ripped my brother’s shirt open and nearly cut his kidneys out. George grabbed the gun and shot up in the air. That brought all the neighbors. Father went into a room, threw everything out but a straw tick, a pillow and President Garfield’s picture and locked the door.
When the excitement quieted down a little someone thought of me. I was cold and stiff. They put me to bed. I couldn’t lie on my back it was so cut and slashed. All they had to doctor it with was warm water and new butter.
The boys left home the next morning. There was only Mother, and we younger children left. Before they started Father told Mother to take the team and new wagon and go with them because if we stayed, he was afraid he would kill us. The boys begged her to go but she said “No. I can’t move Becky, now, and beside I married your pap, and I am going to live with him until one of us die.”
Every morning he would leave and be gone all day, then at night he would lock himself in his room. This lasted for thirteen days that he did not speak to anyone then him and Mother made up.
My suffering was almost more than I could stand. At night, the bedbugs would nearly eat me alive. As I lay there, I wondered why I was ever born as there was no one to love me, and how I wished that I could die.
Before I was able, I had to go to work. Father seemed better natured and told us girls if we would plow seven acres of corn and hoe the weeks he would get us each a new dollar hat for May day. It took us three days to do it. We each got a Black straw and enough cloth for a dress.
I looked forward to the celebration as I thought I would see Culver. How I longed to have him come and see me while I was sick, but no, he cared nothing for a poor girl. It is a shame to love and not be loved.
Sister and I had to walk two miles to the Mayday Celebration. Culver and another boy passed us in a buggy. As they did, they cut the horses and laughed, making fun of us. Oh, how my heart did ache. They got two girls and taking the big swing ropes went ahead of the crowd to the picnic grounds.
After we were there awhile, Culver’s girl went riding with a cowboy. That made him feel pretty bad. I went over and sat down in one of the swings, and pretty soon he came over where I was and sat and talked to me for a long time but all the while he seemed to be afraid someone would see us. All the time I was hoping his girl would get killed but she came back all right and he got up and left me again, brokenhearted.
That was the last time we went to town until Christmas. There was nothing to do but stay home and work like dogs. When the binder cut our grain Mother and Evaline bound it and my little brother and I shocked it, and we hauled it in.
It was our task to cut the corn when it was ripe. We were not allowed to wear our shoes. The first thing Evaline did was to almost cut her big toe off, so that left me to cut it all.
I was eighteen now, I would get very discouraged with the life I had. I had no one to come and see me after a hard day’s work, and no one to tell my trouble to.
One night I had a beautiful dream. I was so tired when I went to bed, I was almost sick, but I dreamed of Culver. He sat by my bed and put his head on my pillow. When I reached over to pat his head, I awoke to find it only a dream. I thought of him all day and that night asked my brother if he would do something for me. He promised and I sent word to Culver that I wanted to see him that night. I knew he had a falling out with his girl and thought he might come, and sure enough he did.
Father made us all go to bed at six o’clock, but there was no sleep for me. About eight I heard horses coming so I woke Evaline and made her get up and dress. Culver had brought another boy with him for Evaline. I will never be happier in my life. We were shamed to have the boys see our bare feet, but there was little time to think of that.
When Culver sat by me it made me feel like I was really living. Just to have his arm touch mine thrilled me. It lightened my burden of ten years. We all talked very low so father would not hear us. Finally he asked me to go horseback riding with him. I didn’t know what to do as I was afraid father would kill me, but I decided to go, for if I had to die it would be for Culver. We went and left the other two at the house. When we went to where the horses had been tied they were gone. A queer feeling came over me. I was alone in the dark with the man I love. Was I doing right or wrong? He took me by one hand, put his arm around me and pressed me to him. The first time he had touched me since we were little children wading in the water. His arms were the only ones that ever went around me.
Soon we heard the old clock strike twelve and the boys had to go. I did not know whether he would ever come back again. We went to bed and Evaline was soon asleep but there was no sleep for me that night. Days and weeks passed by, but he did not come. I looked forward to Fourth of July. Father had been a soldier, so we always were allowed to go to that celebration. At last the day arrived and we went to town and to the home of a girl across the road from the Kartchner home. This girl was keeping company with Culver’s brother. Soon the two girls came over. In a little while the others went to a children’s dance leaving Culver and me alone. I was so happy as I thought he would ask me to go to the dance with him, but he didn’t say a word but left me. I didn’t know what to do. I walked toward home, crying and thinking what a fool I was to love a man who didn’t care for me. I wished I was dead and out of the way. I remembered what Mother had often told me that I was never wanted. Finally I came to a ditch. I washed my face and went back to the dance. Everyone was having a good time. I was sitting by an open window, soon I felt something touch my head. I turned around and Culver was close to me. He wanted me to go outside as he had something to tell me but I was afraid to go as my folks were all watching me, but it made me feel better just to know he was near me and talked to me. I enjoyed the afternoon and was glad I didn’t go home.
My parents went home and left us girls to stay for the grown ups dance at night and my brother was to watch us. I did have the time of my life and danced so much and got so hot I sat by a window to cool off when Culver came again and asked me to go with him to get a drink out of a well. I watched my brother and when he was dancing I slipped out and met Culver at the door. He put his arm around me and said I would have to walk slow and help him as his foot was sore. That suited me just fine. We talked for two hours. He said he was coming up to see me again if I wanted him to. I told him many times I loved him be he didn’t tell me that he loved me. We got back just as the dance was out.
One Sunday Culver rode up and mother came out and asked him what he wanted. He told her he wanted to talk to me, so she said I was in the kitchen. Mother kept one of the little girls right there to watch us.
At four o’clock mother came in and told Culver that he would have to leave because that was the time we began to do our chores. Culver said he would come again in two weeks.
He did come every two weeks and stayed two hours each time. He went to all the dances and parties in town and once he came after me to go to a dance, but mother wouldn’t let me go.
Culver hauled freight for the government, and I went around with my thoughts waiting for him to come home so he would come and see me. We saw each other every two weeks for six months and I had lots to bear as my people despised him and made fun of him all the time. When I was eighteen Culver asked me to marry him. I told him I was ready any time. My parents would not give their consent but I was of age, so we set the day. Mother and father went after my wedding dress as I had never been in a store, never struck a match to a lamp or held a dollar in my hand. My wedding dress cost eight cents a yard and was white with a little black flower in it. They bought me enough unbleached muslin for a sheet, one pillow case and one night gown and four yards of black cloth for an undershirt.
A week before I was married father killed a pig and bought sugar and fruit then told mother to tell me to cook all I wanted for my wedding. I cooked for two days and had everything that heart could wish for to eat.
The day I was married we got up at three in the morning, milked the cows, drove them two miles to pasture; did the work and then I began to get ready. The first thing I did was to black my shoes with soot. I was ready by eight o’clock but Culver and his folks hadn’t come yet. I waited three hours and we were all upset. Mother said that Culver had disgraced me and then had left the country. At eleven o’clock their wagon came into sight and it wasn’t long after they got there that my name was changed. Mother asked me now that I was married which way I was going to fly. I said “Straight up”. She told us that we would have to wait until the children ate but I wasn’t hungry because I was so happy.
I thought Culver had plenty of money, but I soon found out that he was a poor boy with a blind father and a mother with six children to support.
We took his mother’s good team and wagon and went thirty-five miles to get something to keep house with. Culver had saved about seventy-five dollars. We put our bed in the wagon and drove in the snow the entire distance without even putting a quilt over our knees. I was nearly frozen when we got there. All I had to keep me warm was a calico dress, a slat bonnet and a cotton shawl. Tom was dressed in wool. When we got there, we went into the store. Tom acted ashamed of me, but I guess I shouldn’t blame him because I did look terrible.
He bought the things never asking me if I wanted this or that. The only thing I asked him for was a little trunk that cost eight dollars as I didn’t have a thing to put few belongings in only a rough box. He wouldn’t get it but bought himself a nine-dollar overcoat.
We got back and moved into a house belonging to Culver’s brother. All we had to start out with was one old horse. His father died shortly after, leaving a wife and six children. Culver took care of the twenty acre farm for them. I didn’t stand very high in the eyes of his people, but I was a good worker and could keep house if I had anything to keep.
Culver used to spend so much time at his mother’s. He would stay so late at night. I was never sure whether he was there or some place else because many times after we had gone to bed some of the young people would come and he would get up and go with them and have a good time while I was never asked to go. I would cry all the time he was gone. When he came back, I would love him and ask why he left me but he would turn over and go to sleep. If he ever took me to a dance, he would take me over to a dark corner and seat me. Usually he danced the first set with me and that was all. I wasn’t dressed as nice as others, but he would not buy me any clothes.
Culver took turns with other men hauling freight for the Government. He would be gone about ten days or two weeks. I took pride in fixing his grub box. I would bake beans, pies, cookies and fix everything nice for him to eat.
When I needed money for my baby clothes, he gave his sister the money to get the things as he said I didn’t know anything about handling money. That hurt me and I said “I never had a baby, maybe you had better have your sister do that for me”. When our baby girl came, we were very proud of her. When she was four months old, his brother wanted his house and we had to move out. Culver traded our horse for a lot with a little two room house on it. The snow was two feet deep on the ground when we moved. We were happy in our little home when he was there. I couldn’t go anyplace. When our baby was eighteen months old my second one came, a boy. His father wouldn’t touch him, wouldn’t help me tend to him. I tried to take the world as it came and be happy with my babies. I knew my husband was going around with his old girl friends but I could not help it.
I had to do all my sewing by hand as I had no machine. All I did have in my house was a little stove, a homemade bedstead, two chairs, an old table and a cradle. We slept on a straw mattress, had one wash tub, had to borrow flat irons. When a girl marries a man and lives like that, she marries for love. Culver never spoke cross to me. I had never known what kindness was so a kind word went a long ways with me as I had never heard such a thing at home.
When Culver was working, I milked the cow, fed the pig, got in the wood and had supper on the table when he came home. All I wanted was to have him near to look at. He didn’t like our little boy but was crazy about the girl.
We had few visitors. My folks never came, they didn’t give me any thing when I married, though I had worked hard to help them get what they had. Culver divided everything we had with his folks. I had no clothes fit to go out in. I wore my best dress for five years before I got another. No wonder he was ashamed of me.
I was glad when my family sold their home and moved away, as they never cared for me nor I for them.
When my baby boy was two years old, I had another little baby girl. I was proud of my three children. We had a nice little family.
When the baby was old enough, I begged Culver to take me to a dance. I hadn’t been any place for so long. He took the two little ones by the hand and I carried the baby and we went. As soon as the music started the little ones put their heads over on my lap and all three of them went to sleep and there I sat until twelve o’clock, while he never missed a dance. It was snowing when we went home, it was half a mile. I was almost dead when we got there. He said “If we have to take all the children we won’t go to any more dances.” I didn’t but he never missed one.
Culver got a letter one day from my folks. I couldn’t read a word of it, because before I married I could not spell my own name. After my children all grew up, they taught me many things, but my baby has been my teacher. The letter was to beg us to sell out and go down there. I didn’t want to of course, because I was better off away from the whole outfit.
One day I was busy sewing for the three children I already had and the new one that was coming when he came in and told me he had sold out and we were moving. That without ever saying a word to me. I cried until I made myself sick, but that did no good. We left with two wagons and four horses, as my sister and her husband went along. As we got on the Indian Reservation, three big Indians came from behind the bushes, put their guns in our faces and told us to stop and we did. I could look down the barrel of one of their guns. They talked with each other then told us to go on and we were nearly scared to death. The roads were rough, from one big rock on to another one. We had to go down a big seven mile hill and so rough I got out to walk but they told me to ride the old horse we were leading so I got on her and Evaline led her. The wagons went on ahead. The children began crying so their father put them out by the side of the road to wait for me to come along. When I came to them, I put them on the horse and I walked behind. After a while I turned around and there was an old Indian squaw behind me, knife in hand, ready to stab me. I screamed and she went away.
After ten days we came to the little town of Graham where my people lived. We moved into one of my father’s rooms. It had no roof, and the wagon cover didn’t keep the rain out, it came nearly every night. I fell out of the wagon before we got there and was expecting my fourth baby soon, so I was almost helpless. My people treated me so mean and didn’t want me around so Culver bought a place adjoining fathers and made a shed for us to live under, walled it up with anything we could find and covered it with dirt. We weren’t used to the hot sun and we nearly died.
Every night father would send for Culver to come and play cards with him and he would go leaving me to do all the work and put the babies to bed. Then my fourth baby was born, and I did have my hands full. My sister stayed with me for five days and Culver still went away every night so then I spoke my first cross words to him. We had a big quarrel and I told him I wanted to get away from my folks, so we left and went sixty-five miles where we made a new home. I stayed right by Culver’s side helping him with everything that he did so that we could make a home. We lived a year without a cent of money and had to go back where my people lived for flour.
Culver worked on the farm for my brother for a dollar a day until he owed him over three hundred dollars. He run a store and when I went to ask him for clothes for another arrival but he would only let me have enough green outing to make a dress and a night gown.
I plowed all day Saturday, and a baby boy came Sunday weighing fourteen pounds. We had no doctor but gave a neighbor lady three gallons of molasses to bring him into the world. I couldn’t hire anyone to help me so my oldest little girl did all the baby washing and what work she could. I sat up in bed and mixed bread and then she would bake it. We were nearly starved so when this baby was six weeks old I started taking in washings and made two dollars a week. This was the first money I had ever made in my life. That money had to feed all of us a week. I needed some garden seed, so I took my two dollars and bought the seeds then went to my brothers store and got twenty-five cents worth of kerosene and asked him to charge it. He said I could not have the kerosene until I had paid for it. He said I had the laziest man on earth and then he old me to get out and stay out.
Well Culver and I lived together and every two years there was a baby until there were eleven of them. I washed and ironed for the public for over thirty years besides doing my own work. We now have ten children well and strong. The boys are all fine men and are all farmers. The girls are all good mothers, housekeepers and cooks. We have thirty-six grandchildren and two great grandchildren. I am sixty-two and Culver is sixty-five. We have been married forty-four years. My hair is white and his is streaked with grey. We have our children all we could for poor people and gave them as much education as possible. Now we are left alone no home and no money. Our days are drawing to an end and we are just old and in the way.
(As told by Mrs. Rebecca Steward Kartchner of Mesa, Arizona)