This section of the Clarion County PAGenWeb site contains a transcription of the book, The Journal of James Campbell 1813-1892, which was published in a limited edition run of 100 copies by The Naylor Co., San Antonio, TX, 1955.

The original leather-bound volume contains 334 pages.  The text was scanned and digitized using OmniPage Pro and formatted into HTML for this site.  The digitized text was proofread as closely as possible, but some errors could have been missed.  Please accept our apologies.

The book is not divided into chapters or any other logical segments.  For presentation on this Web site, the book has been divided up as logically as possible with the goal of optimizing page load times.

Judge Campbell moved to Clarion just after the county formed.  He writes in extremely vivid detail about the people, places, and experiences he found there.  Much of the book discusses his family, education, career, and investments.  Those passages have been left intact, even though they may not relate specifically to Clarion County, because of the background they provide for readers.

The journal began January 25th, 1885, when Judge Campbell was 71-years-old.

Foreword by Ruth Campbell Taylor

My father, Robert Douglas Campbell, gave me the original manuscript, written in a lined day book, of this journal by my grandfather, James Campbell.

The journal was begun fourteen years after James Campbell retired from the bench, and was written over a period of about five years and completed about three years prior to his death.  He wrote this as if he were living it, and not as an old man.  It covers, principally, his education, practice of law, his judicial experience and retirement.

I would like particularly to call to the attention of my grandchildren that he was reading both Greek and Latin while in high school.

In order to preserve the original manuscript, I had it bound.  Believing the journal would be of interest to members of the family, and as it was impractical to circulate the original, I decided to have it put into book form, and I hope it will prove to be of interest.

Chronology of Hon. James Campbell

July 25, 1813 -- Born - Son of John and Rachel (Oliver) Campbell 1837 -- Graduated from Jefferson College 1840 -- Settled in Clarion, Pennsylvania May 10, 1847 -- Married Nancy Jane Hallock 1861-71 -- President-Judge of the 18th Judicial District January 25, 1885 -- Journal begun Subsequent to October 29, 1889 (date of brother's passing) -- Journal ended August 3, 1892 -- Died

The Armstrong County Beers Project has more information on Judge Campbell's lineage, his obituary, and post-mortem tributes.

From the Centre County, PAGenWeb site:

Three books in the Pennsylvania Room of the Centre County Library in Bellefonte apparently deal in part with the Campbell family.  They are Joseph Campbell's Genealogical Account of the Ancestors of Joseph Andrew Kelly Campbell and Elizabeth Edith Deal (His Wife); Sue Campbell's Family History of John Campbell 1730-1810 and His Sister Jane 1736-1821, Chester, Pa. and Mifflin Co., Pa.; and Hallock Sherrard's The Campbells of Kishacoquillas:  Historical Sketch and Genealogical Records of the Robert Campbell Family, and the John Campbell Family.  [The last volume would address Judge Campbell's family.]

Section 1:  School Days

The life of a student at an Academy or College is necessarily monotonous and without much variety, and I will pass over that part of my life briefly. My friend Paul arrived a day or two after I did, entering in the middle of a Term. We started by ourselves. Our first lesson was in Adams Latin grammar. We were roommates as well as classmates. To two young farmers, declining Latin nouns seemed a trifling business and was slow and tiresome, and soon Mr. Paul decided there was no sense in it. But we fell into the ways of the school.

One of the scholars was a full blooded negro who did several things besides reading Latin. At the Winter Term he rung the bell at precisely 5 o'clock A.M. and in ten minutes from the first tap he commenced calling the roll in the chapel, and all failing to answer were marked for punishment or censure. This was for the double purpose of teaching the boys the habit of early rising and to be smart at dressing. Then came prayer and a selected speech from one of the students, then breakfast in the large dining room. Dr. Jankin's family and the tutors sat at the table. Then family worship, singing a hymn, reading a chapter in which all the students took a part, and prayer by Dr. Jankin or someone called on by him. Then study till 10 A.M., then go to the shop and work two hours.

In those days traveling trunks were made of pine boards and covered with goat skins. This was one branch of the work performed by the students for which they were paid so much an hour. Another extensive branch was making husk mattresses. The husks were hackled fine and made into bed mattresses, and this furnished work for quite a number. Then they had a turning lathe propelled by a wheel, turned by the students like a grindstone. Turning this lathe was not popular work among the boys. Other work in wood was also done. After dinner, reciting and study till 4:30 P.M., then two hours' work. After supper, study, reading and social talk. I soon became acquainted with the boys and had company plenty. Mr. Paul was not quick at picking up the grammar, although he mumbled away at it faithfully, and I soon got ahead of him. Finally after several weeks the old Doctor set us our first lesson in Visi Romae and we were some hours poring over "Sumator sax Albinorum duos filios habuit," but we worked it out triumphantly, and I felt with some exultation that I was reading Latin.

We plodded along till about the first of February, when my chum, Jim Paul got tired and said he would go home. He was a clever fellow and the only one who could talk with me about my friends at home. He sent his trunk by stage and went home as he came -- on foot. On Sundays after church we did a great deal of talking. The Sunday morning after he left was balmy and warm. My window was hoisted and I was sitting there enjoying the fresh air, when the first bluebird of the season perched on a pear tree near my window and began to sing. I had been lonesome before, and the soft notes to me were all of home, and in all my after life I never felt so strong an emotion of homesickness as on that morning-and it stuck to me all day. I did not want to go to church, till I did, but in the afternoon I walked away out a lane eastward some three miles and sat upon a fence by a quaking aspen tree quite away from any house. I cut the initials of my name on the tree and the date. I took a long look at the country around me and I thought I never wished to see that spot again, and I never have. That was a blue day in my College life.

About this time Dr. Jankin was elected President of Lafayette College at Easton. The talk was that as many of the students as could be induced to go were to be taken up during the April vacation, and work would be plenty in getting ready to open by the first of May the 22nd of February of that year, a day's vacation was given the students to attend the centennial anniversary of Geo. Washington's birthday. Nearly all went -- many on foot -- I traveled with this crowd. It was a great show. I was on my feet the whole day except about 20 minutes while I was eating a lunch. Every trade was represented, and most of them had a shop on wheels with men at work in them. I recollect a small ship on wheels with sailors aboard climbing up among the sails, though propelled by horse power, and one fellow in the rear of the vessel taking soundings which was thought very funny. The carpenters had an elegant coach with thirteen columns supporting a highly ornamental cap of Liberty. The coach was drawn by eight splendid gray horses with a boy on each. A man on the weavers' car wove carpets all that day. The printers struck off Washington's farewell address and distributed all day among the crowd. Bricks were moulded on the brickmakers' car. Four hundred fine looking young butchers dressed in white shirts over pants rode in line. About 4,000 uniformed militia and Marines marched at the head of the procession. A vast crowd was in the city. It was said that one hundred thousand people were present on Broad street when the procession was passing. I stayed to see the illumination. I stood in front of the State House steps when old Bishop White (then said to be over 80) knelt and made the prayer dismissing the procession. I saw the old man kneel on the steps, his long, gray hair swaying with the breeze as he prayed for the country. All appeased, and I felt solemn. Just after dark the State House was illuminated, but I was worn out and with two others started to walk to Germantown. I never did a harder day's work. We got our supper at the Academy and I needed no one to rock me to sleep that night.

Some time that winter Stephen Girard died. The news came to the Academy the next morning.

I worked away quietly at my Latin till the April vacation and intended to work enough to pay my boarding till the first of May. About that time several wagons were loaded for Easton and about fifteen or twenty of the students went along. In a couple of weeks after that Tommy Pollock, our farmer, was going to take another load up and proposed to take me along if I would walk up the hills. I accepted the proposal, and we got under way one pleasant morning about the middle of April. I never liked Germantown, and as soon as I got up through Mount Airy and got a sniff of fresh country air, I felt full of fun and frolic, and I enjoyed walking up the hills rather more than sitting up in the wagon with Tommy. It was a two days' trip and I had a pleasant time and could have walked ahead and left him but had not the heart to do so. The second evening I tumbled in among the boys at Easton and had a jolly time.

They were putting up a rough frame house to hold a dozen or so of the students through the summer. Dr. Jankin was not there. We had good boarding, plenty of work and got paid for it. I don't recollect how much, but there were no strikes in those days and we were satisfied. I planed, plowed and grooved boards and sometimes assisted to haul up from the river.

The College was started in a farm house south of the Lehigh, rented from a man named Medlar. There was a good sized farm house and barn, the latter used for a carpenter shop. It is now in what is called South Easton, but then no houses near it except a small one out at the road occupied by an old fellow called "Dunnhiller," and the lockhouse down at the canal. The location overlooked the town up on the side of the hill southeast of the lock. A chain bridge over the Lehigh connected us with the town. It was then a place of four thousand inhabitants, pretty compactly built up. A covered bridge spanned the Delaware. A dam at the mouth of the Lehigh, by means of a lock, let the boats out into the Delaware, and on the New Jersey side connected with the Morris and Essex Canal to New York. At that day a large quantity of coal came down the Lehigh Canal from Mauch Chunk and on to New York. Right opposite the College building there was a flat between the Lehigh and the bank and close up to the steep bank was a stagnant pond which the next fall poisoned the atmosphere at the College and caused sickness.

By the first of May the new building was completed, and with three others I was put into one of the rooms upstairs.

At the commencement of the term, six boys from New York City came on about as far advanced as I was. A nice young French boy named Dilateur was found so much ahead of the rest that he was advanced to the next class. I had been pretty thoroughly drilled in the grammar and generally parsed every word in the lesson. My new classmates could read pretty well, but seemed to have had little or no training in parsing and I soon found that I could beat them translating and instead of being a help they were a drag on me. This went on for a few weeks (we were then reading Caesar). One day the old Doctor came in to hear us recite. The lesson was not long, and soon we got to parsing, and when one failed the word was passed on to the next, and as I was pretty well posted I parsed nearly all the lesson. The result was the others were put back to Visi Romae and I was told to get a Virgil and go into the next class ahead of me.

In that class were William Worrell, a man of 30 and had a family, his brother, Charley a couple of years younger, and Isaac Hall about the same. They seemed to resent my intrusion into the class. They wanted long lessons and it required hard and pretty long work for me to get the lessons; and when I made a mistake in reciting, which I sometimes did, they were careful to sneer and laugh till I got to hate the whole three, and I formed a stern resolution to give them enough of it before the end of the session. Charley McCoy was our tutor. He was afterwards President, I think, of Columbia College, South Carolina.

Section 2:  Illness & Recuperation

I studied real hard that summer -- I believe more hours than any member of the class. I could soon get longer and better lessons than any but Dilateur. He was smarter to learn Latin than I was. Toward the end of the Term, Hall had a close fight to hold his place in the class and I got to like him, but the Worrells and I never were friendly.

There was no manual labor there that amounted to anything. A pretense of running the farm by the students was kept up, but I mind of doing very little work and I know I studied faithfully. During that summer I learned to swim in the Lehigh. Some of the older students got to manufacturing laughing gas. I inhaled, I think, twice. It made my head ache and I have never tried it since.

Along about August bilious fever broke out in the College. One of my roommates named Morton got it. I frequently sat up with him, and when I did I read Latin sometimes all night, and next day the class would be surprised at how well I could read long lessons, and I got credit for being far smarter than I was for I did not enlighten them about my night studies -- and I bestowed many a triumphant sneer at my friends the Worrells.

Horton grew worse; several others were down. I was working hard for my fall examination. Suddenly word came that the cholera had reached New York and in a few days many were dying. About that time my roommate, Horton, died. The evening he was buried I felt so unwell I could not attend his funeral. That evening the cholera reached Easton and two or three Irishmen died in a few hours' sickness. Next day Dr. Swift came to see me and told me I had the bilious fever. My recollection of the next three weeks is misty -- emetics, calomel and flighty dreams, all in a confused mass. Dr. Swift was an old and skillful physician. With a good constitution and plenty of physic he ran the fever out of me. I mind of falling asleep one forenoon and I heard nothing till after the middle of the day. No one was in the room -- nurses were scarce and I put in several sick nights alone, but that day when I woke I had a strange feeling. I never was as happy in my life. It seemed to me all the world had sat down to rest, and there was no more trouble in life. As I got more awake, I knew there was a change. I put my hand to my forehead and my skin was moist. While I lay wondering what was the matter, Dr. Swift came in and rubbed his hand over my face, then took a sharp look at my tongue, laughed and said, "You are well. All you want is something to eat", and he went off and got me food. Then I had nothing to do but get well.

My tutor, Mr. McCoy had about as bad a time as I had and lay sick at Dr. Jankin's. He had got to be very friendly with me during the summer and as he grew better he wanted me for company. I had not seen a female face while I was sick, but during my convalescence one day a knock was heard at my door and Mrs. Jankin came in (she had a good motherly face), and in her kind way pitied me till I came within an ace of blubbering. But she made me go with her in their carriage - - I did not know where, but took me home with her, and no Mother could have been kinder than she was to Charley and me. They lived over in the town.

At that time there was a large society of young ladies in Easton, as well as older ones, and we saw a good deal of company and I improved very fast. In the short time I was there, I formed a profound respect for Mrs. Jankin and loved her as a Mother. My tutor was very friendly -- though older, when alone together he was as much a boy as I was; but my cheeks were filling up and the young ladies began to look too pretty for me to stay longer. So I got in the stage at 1 o'clock one morning and started home. That night at 11 P.M. I was in Harrisburg -- weak, tired and hungry. I rested there a day and on the 4th day of November, just one year from the day I left, I rode up the valley and received a warm welcome from those around my Father's hearth.

I found home an excellent place to recuperate, but as I grew fat, my hair fell out. Although a new crop soon started out, I think it has never been so thick, healthy or curly since. My two older brothers have good heads of hair yet, while mine is grey and very thin amounting to baldness.

There was beautiful Indian Summer weather that fall after I went home, and Uncle John Oliver, my brother Oliver and I visited our friends the Pattersons in Tuscarora. We went on horseback, crossed the Juniata River below Meyersburg and struck into Humphreys Gap and followed a path and blind road right through the mountains and came out in the evening in the valley near where the Reverend Mr. Coulter lived, where we stayed all night. Next day we went down to Uncle John Pattersons' where we found, besides the old people, two boy cousins, Robert and John, and four girls, and there were several married and gone. We were royally entertained. The girls were Betsey, Mollie, Isabella and Jane. They were nice looking young ladies. Jane was about eighteen and I fell a little bit in love with her. She was smaller than the others, but decidedly pretty. We were escorted across the valley to farmer John Patterson's and found another house full of cousins. Uncle John went home in a day or two and Oliver and I stayed several days. I recollect of my Cousin Jane with one of the other and older girls escorting me away across the fields to hear a little Scotchman play the bagpipes. Well, it was a very pleasant visit and we started home and I never saw Jane since.

Section 3:  Jefferson College

I stayed at home till about Christmas, and then packed up bag and baggage and started for Jefferson College at Canonsburg in Washington County. I was two days and all of one night and part of another in the stage getting to Pittsburgh. The stage office was in Wood Street, kept by old Sheriff Weaver. Next day, through muddy roads, we waggoned along in the stage and reached Canonsburg in the evening. I went directly to Dr. Brown's house and presented my letters of introduction. He had been acquainted with my grandfather, Judge Oliver, and gave me a cordial reception, assigned me a room in the old College building with Samuel McCune as my roommate.

At this time the College under Dr. Mathew Brown was in flourishing condition. Professor Kennedy, Professor of Mathematics, William Smith of Languages with Parks and Marshall as tutors. I think the rolls showed in the preparatory and College departments two hundred and forty or fifty students -- a good many from Virginia, South Carolina and Kentucky, but the most were from Pennsylvania and Ohio. I went into the preparatory department. Samuel Hamill and William Osborne had gone from Germantown to Canonsburg the spring before, and the night I got there they gave me a most cordial welcome. This was in the last days of 1832 between Christmas and New Years -- I entered the preparatory department.

At that time our vacations were in April and October, and I remained at the College till the fall of 1837, going home but twice -- in October 1833 and 1835. The other vacations I spent walking around the country. I mind of going out one time to Mount Pleasant in Westmoreland County with Ed Doty and Hugh Hamilton to see an old friend, Reverend Wm. Annan and wife. We traveled on foot, stayed all night, and next day got on a boat loaded with whiskey and came down the Youghiogheny to McKeesport. Next day, started on foot down to Pittsburgh. Doty and Hamilton stopped there, but my money being about exhausted, I went right on to Canonsburg where I arrived in the afternoon. Two or three vacations I walked out to Greene County and stayed at Reverend Cornelius Laughrans. He was married to my Aunt Margaret and they used me well and I traveled around and over the hills of that county a good deal.

Once I went to Waynesburg. The country was then new and a great deal of it covered with heavy timber. Sometimes I spent the vacation at Canonsburg, taking long walks around the hills, and became very well acquainted with the topography of the country. The first winter I was at College, some of the younger students got to throwing snowballs at people passing and got up a fight between the students and the town people. One day there was quite a riot -- as many as a dozen fights going on at the same time. The first time I ever saw H. N. McAllister, he was fighting. Nobody was much hurt, but dire threats were made that the College would be gutted and for several nights after, great preparations were made for a sanguinary battle, but it ended in a war of words in which the students generally had the advantage.

Our tutor, Mr. Parks, was a good linguist and we studied Latin and Greek under him till the fall of 1833 and then entered the Freshman class under Professor William Smith. I found that it took more work for me to learn the dead languages than some others, but by industry and care I could master the lessons and I made out to occupy a respectable position in the class, and the longer I worked at it the easier it got. In mathematics I was not so successful. It was always labor for me in the higher branches. Although I worked pretty hard, I was not as good as others whom I could easily beat in other branches. In natural philosophy and chemistry, I found no trouble, and in metaphysics I thought myself equal to any in the class.

Samuel McCune and I occupied a room on the third story of the old College building till the fall of 1834. At that time I descended to the second story and took a room with Elijah Creswell, a first rate young man from our own valley. With him I remained till he graduated in the fall of 1835. He was older than I and a man of principle and ability. I was sorry when he left. He went south and taught an academy in Jamestown, Alabama, on the Tombigbee River. He married and raised a family there and died many years ago. We corresponded for a number of years after I left College.

In the fall of 1835, I went out about half a mile north of town and boarded at "Fort Camonargo". Old man Cummings was a farmer and also a good mechanic. He had a wife and four daughters -- young ladies. They were an excellent family -- kept about ten boarders; had a large brick house and pleasant surroundings. The most pleasant part of my college life was spent there. I retain vivid recollections of many happy evenings; I ran wild along the banks of the little stream in front of the house, or sat on a bench under the Locust trees on the brow of the hill. The girls were bright and good talkers and I spent many social evenings in their company. He was a Scotchman of mind and character. He invented a machine for making cards that was a model of skill and ingenuity, but he was old and not much of a farmer. I mind one year he could not get hands to cut his wheat field. On the 4th of July we had a few days' vacation, and the boarders proposed if he would get us the tools we would cut his crop. Although he had not much confidence in our efficiency, he got a couple of cradles and some rakes. Samuel Cooper and I being farmers' sons, swung the cradles and the rest tied the sheaves and put them in shock. In two days we cut 8 or 10 acres of very good wheat. The last evening the girls brought us out the "evening piece" and although we had just finished, they spread a splendid supper for us in the edge of the woods and such a picnic and fun as we had would have caused chronic dyspepsia. Well, these were happy days and we marched home helping the girls to carry the dishes as proud as veterans returning victorious from the army. The good old man wanted to pay us, but we overwhelmed him with scorn at the idea that we were working for money; and Doctor Beer, from the number of spring chickens we had demolished at "evening piece", undertook to convince him that he was a clean balance out of pocket. The laughter and sport of that jovial party comes back to me over a chasm of fifty years, but with the exception of 4 or 5, the voices of all the family and party that participated in that evening meal are silent forever.

One quiet night in September, I had just gone to bed and was settling myself to sleep when some pebbles were thrown against my window. I got up and looked out and saw two or three fellows standing under the window. I throwed [sic] on some clothes and went down and found Tom Lamar, Nils, Scott and Shep Patrick. They told me that an outrage had been committed. That Bob Holland had cowhided his sister for keeping company with a young shoemaker, that there was an immemorial law of the college (not written) that all such offenses were punished by ducking. I went with them over to "Tusculum". In a private room seven of us met, and blackened our faces and put on old clothes till we were pretty effectually disguised. A horse belonging to a student was pressed into the service without the knowledge of the owner. Holland was keeping the McFadden House, and about one o'clock Lamar rode up and got off and thumped at the barroom door. Instead of Holland, a big negro hostler came to the door. Tom told him to go and wake his master, that he wanted to see him. The darkey came down and said Holland would not get up. Tom sent him back and got him up, but he came down with nothing on but his shirt. Tom called him to the door and caught him in his arms, and the rest of us who had been concealed around the corner, rushed up and jerked him off his feet and ran across the street with him. Scott had a handful of rags to gag him, but he could not get them into his mouth, and he yelled murder as loud as he could. Windows went up and heads poked out, some with night caps on. It was a bright moonlight, but we ran on with him to the west side of the town. A little stream of water running under a bridge had washed a hole three or four feet deep. We doused him in -- made him put his head under the water. By the time he got out his shirt was torn to ribbons and he presented a sorry picture. He was told what it was for, but little was said.

He was glad to get away and so were we, for we saw people coming down the hill-but we cleared ourselves and were never found out or at least prosecuted. This was the greatest outrage I ever assisted to perpetrate, and I remember it with regret. The man had never done us any harm, and to this day I don't know whether the charge against him was true or not. Many of the students knew all about it, and one had to leave the college and go home -- not because he was one of the party, but because he had talked too much.

When I entered the freshman class in the fall of 1833, I became a member of the Philo Society. In the new College building over the College Hall, two large rooms had been fitted up for the two Literary societies, the Philo and Franklin, to one or other of which nearly all the students in the College classes belonged. They pretended to be secret, but they were so much alike that it did not amount to much. The initiation fee was five dollars -- this with the fines imposed, was appropriated to the purchase of books. Each Society had a library consisting of about 1,500 volumes at the time I entered. The rooms were handsomely frescoed, carpeted and seats along each side with a desk in front of each seat. There were also a platform at each end -- one for the officers and one for the regular exercises of the society. The officers consisted of two Librarians, two reviewers, Eporch and Aichon. The exercises consisted of original and selected orations, original essays and debate at the close of each class.

The members were called on for remarks and often they were criticized without mercy. The original compositions were handed to the reviewers and at the next meeting they announced their corrections and criticism. The societies met every Friday night and a session generally continued till 10 or 11 o'clock. Sometimes extra meetings were called for special business, and sometimes these meetings were extra stormy. The exercises in our society were well calculated and did improve the students in debate and public speaking as well as in composition. This was very striking with some, and the boys soon found what they were best at. During the four years I was a member of the Philo Society I served a term in every office of the society. The officers were elected every six weeks.

During the freshman and sophomore years we finished the Latin and Greek; also studied Watts' logic and I think in that time Cavallos' Natural Philosophy, and the course of studies in mathematics prescribed in the curriculum. One session we studied algebra and conic sections under Professor Haderman. He was a fine intellectual German and had been an officer in the French Army under Napoleon, but he did not stay long in Washington. Mr. Cartney was then elected Professor of Mathematics. He was a graduate of the College, and a man of learning and ability, and we finished under him. Dr. Jacob Green of Philadelphia was the Professor of Chemistry and he came out every summer and taught the class and delivered a course of lectures. He was the author of a work on chemistry which was our textbook. On that branch he was regarded as one of the most learned and successful teachers of the day. He was then a pretty old man, and I heard of his death many years ago. I recollect him as an eloquent speaker and good instructor, but exacting and sometimes severe.

Dr. Mathew Brown, the President of the College, was a tall, spare man with the bearing and manners of a finished gentleman. I have a very distinct recollection of his high toned, graceful appearance as he walked up the aisle of the hall to the pulpit. He was by his learning and ability well qualified for his position, and in addition possessed in a high degree administrative ability, and was an excellent judge of character, particularly of young men, and took a great interest in the progress of his students. He had a keen sense of the ridiculous and a witty remark always brought a smile to his face. The fact is the boys felt that he loved them and they would take a scolding from him that they would have resented from any of the other professors. In the latter part of the junior year and during the senior year, our class was taught by him, and I became impressed with the deep and friendly interest he took in us, and I felt a profound respect for the kind and genial old man. While he was stern and resolute in maintaining the rules of the College, no father could have been kinder in his intercourse with the class. In his department of the mental and moral sciences, I happened to stand among his most successful students, and in many ways he showed a friendly and encouraging interest. In his many social talks to his class, gems of wisdom dropped from his lips. Nothing I have read in after life was better calculated to lead a boy to success and an honorable position in life. How much his teaching had to do in forming my character I cannot tell, but I would like my own boys to live the life for which he furnished the model and set the example.

In the fall of 1837, after our class had finished their final examination, as an especial favor, the Doctor granted me leave of absence so I need not wait for the formalities of graduating. The last day of my College life I went to see him in his library. He talked to me about my future prospects and life in a very friendly manner. Before I left he said he would give me a paper to show to my father and mother. He turned around to his table and wrote the following which I have ever since kept with my diploma, and the original is now before me. It is without date.

"It is hereby certified that the bearer, Mr. James Campbell, has been a student in this College several years -- has gone through a regular and thorough course of study -- has uniformly sustained a high standing in his class for talents, industry, literature and correct moral conduct, and having recently been examined with the senior class, is entitled to the degree of A.B. which will be conferred at the next commencement. Mr. Campbell in scholarship stands among the first in his class. Mathew Brown, Pres., Jeff. C."

Among the most talented members of the class were Walter M. Lowne, Joseph Smith, Wilson S. Scott, David Wilson and Wm. Barnett. Cyrus Dixon was a ready speaker, jovial and full of fun, became a D.D. and widely known as one of the most eloquent men in the Presbyterian Church. Lowne was killed by pirates in the Chinese Sea. The lives of these two learned classmates are written and are in my library. Scott, a fine, manly young fellow, died suddenly just as he was about entering the profession of law. Of the thirty-nine who graduated in the fall of 1837, I have knowledge of only four or five. I suppose more than half are dead. I don't think I have ever met more than ten since we parted.

Section 4:  Reading the Law in Lewistown

Well, my College course was finished and I was again at home with my father and mother feeling comfortable; thought I ought to be of more importance than I had been six years before. Still I had an uneasy feeling -- I did not known [sic] what I was to do with my learning or how I was going to make it pay. The only thing that was clear to me was that I could make a living farming, that at anything else I was by no means certain that I could succeed. If I had not been ashamed to acknowledge myself a failure, I would have preferred to go back to work on the farm. I was at a turning point of my life. Of the professions, I preferred the law, but I had been in a court house but a few times in my life and knew nothing about it. My father had expressed doubts whether I would ever be a success in that trade and I had serious misgivings on the subject myself, though I was loath to admit it. My brothers at home could buy and sell and do business intelligently enough, while I felt with mortification that I did not know how to write a receipt. In this hesitating way I doted along through the fall of 1837 and winter of 1838 till one day in March my brother Robert took me to Lewistown and turned me in to board with an old Mrs. Elliott with half a dozen other bachelor boarders and to study law with E. S. Benedict, Esq., then a successful lawyer in that place. At this time my fellow boarders were David Cander, a lawyer; Dr. McConnell, a Physician; Peter Kestler, a clerk in Millikens store; Thomas Stewart, a clerk for L. F. Matson _____ Hicks, a partner in a store. They were a clever social set of fellows and I was soon at home with them. My previous acquaintance in Lewistown was slight, but in a short time I was acquainted and had the run of most of the young people of the place. There were a good many bright, pleasant young ladies there and for the first time in my life I became somewhat of a ladies man and was at many social parties of refined and intelligent young people. But the great matter to me was I was again at work and had a definite object before me.

I read Blackstone with care and I soon found that the distinctions and principles of the old masters had something attractive, and I became interested as the new field of study began to open and I began to feel that I might, by industry, fathom most of the abstruse subjects discussed in the textbooks, and the more I worked at them the more confident I became.

My preceptor had a large practice and sometimes was pretty busy. Sometimes he would come into the office and tell me he wanted a certain principle of law, that it was in the books but he did not know where to find it. Of course I readily undertook to find it, but at first I did not know where to look and it was like hunting a needle in a haystack, but I soon became familiar with the books and it was rare that I failed to find what he wanted. Gradually I became familiar with the run of his business and did some of his office writing.

Mr. Benedict was a distant, reserved and silent man, fond of making money, and perhaps selfish and penurious. The first year I was in the office he rarely entered into conversation with me, but at last the crust seemed gradually to be broken and he became quite friendly, and in the winter evenings we had many long talks for he rarely left the office before 10 P.M., though he had an excellent wife and two small children; but he was naturally a solitary and reserved man. I got to have a friendly feeling for him and his wife and liked to call and see them at any time in passing through Lewistown. He lived to be quite old, but they and their children are all dead.

Thad Banks, William H. Irwin and Witherspoon Woods were all studying law at the same time I was. Banks settled in Hollidaysburg, raised a family, had a good practice and standing at the bar and died only a few years ago. Irwin settled in Lewistown, went to the Mexican wars as captain of a company of volunteers, was afterwards in the war of the Rebellion, and I have since lost trace of him. Woods died of consumption before he was admitted to the bar and I was one of the pallbearers at his funeral.

At that time the old Court House stood in the center of the diamond, looked and I suppose was old. Our boarding house stood on the corner of the street leading down to the stone bridge.

Old Mr. Horell lived in a little frame house to the west of us -- on the corner leading up towards the jail; David Halings lived in it a short time. Across the street on the north side was Reuben C. Hales' law office, and on the inside corner was a brick occupied then as the residence of Wm. Hale, afterwards occupied by Jos. Alexander, Esq. On the east side of the street up toward Ard's hill was the big Reynolds house, afterwards occupied as a hotel. East of that was the residence of James Milliken. On the east side of the diamond, extending out to Main Street, was a brick, the back end occupied by James A. Stewart and the front a store, and adjoining it on the east was the store of J. and J. Milliken, at that time the leading business house in Lewistown. On the southeast corner of the diamond stood the brick residence of Jos. Milliken, afterwards Blymire's store. On the inner corner Judge McCoy carried on a store and merchant tailoring establishment. Next to that lived Mrs. Marks, a widow lady, at whose house I spent many pleasant evenings. Next west of her Montgomery had a shoe store and on the corner opposite our boarding house a man had a bakery and confectionary. Benedict's office was the next building down the street towards the stone bridge

Lewistown was then a lively place. The warehouses down along the Kishacoquillas were the depots of nearly all the wheat raised in the valleys north of there as far as Penns-vally. In the winter when there was snow on the ground the streets were crowded with sleds, and some days several thousand bushels were brought in in a day. In the spring of the year when the river was up, the produce was floated to Baltimore in boats, or as they called them, arabs. The men who were reputed wealthy at that day were Dr. Ard, E. L. Benedict, Esq., my preceptor, Alexander Wilson and J. and J. Milliken, but the latter firm failed soon after I left Lewistown, but a great many goods were sold and much business done, probably more than at the present time.

At the west end of Main Street, Wm. Brothers kept a frame Hotel, at the end of which was usually fenced up for goble ball, and I used to go up in the evening and exercise myself at a game of ball. It was the best ball alley I was ever in, and I think the game was generally played for the drinks, but I don't mind of ever taking a drink in the House. Brothers was a clever, sociable and entirely sober man himself, and I never saw drunkenness about his house.

Pretty well up town on Main Street lived an old widow lady named Reynolds with her daughter Ellen. The old lady's husband had for many years been one of the associate judges of Mifflin County with Grandfather Oliver and they had been intimate friends. Judge Reynolds had died before I went to Lewistown leaving a good estate, and the old lady who was somewhat eccentric and lived a very retired life with her daughter. Ellen on the contrary was a sensible, social young lady, fond of company and was a favorite among the young people. On account of the long friendship between Grandfather and her husband, the old lady always treated me very kindly and I spent many pleasant evenings at their house. Miss Ellen was engaged to be married to her cousin, Dr. Reynolds, and it was no secret. It was understood that our relation was that of friends and it relieved us of all embarrassment about being anything more. She was a good talker, candid and sincere and I have always regarded her as one of the truest friends I had. She married before I left Lewistown and I was at her wedding. I think her husband was killed in the Mexican War. I have never seen her since, but heard of her traveling in Europe.

I also visited a good deal at the house of D. W. Haling, Esq. He was a lawyer of ability, but eccentric and peculiar. His oldest daughter, Ellen, was a dashing young lady, as smart as a whip. At one time she and I had a little flirtation. She generally had a flirtation or two on hands and after I left she married a man from up about Wilkes-Barre. She too became a widow and died a good many years ago.

Of my associates in Lewistown, nearly all are gone away or dead, and when I walk the street I don't meet a face I know and I am a stranger where I knew nearly everybody forty-eight years ago.

In the spring of 1838 a great waterspout fell out on the Allegheny Mountains. The Pennsylvania Canal had only recently been finished, and in the night the water rose to a raging torrent. On the flat above Hollidaysburg a woman and two or three of her children were drowned in trying to escape from her house. The canal was badly torn up all the way down to Huntington. We had no unusual rain at Lewistown, but the next day the river rose very high covered with drift. The State put a large force on and repaired it during that summer and fall.

Section 5:  Politics & Passing the Bar

The political campaign of 1838 was lively throughout the State, and towards fall raged with great fierceness in Lewistown. Towards Gov. Porter, the Democratic candidate, it became personal and abusive. An affidavit of a woman named Peg Beaty was procured, and circulated all over the State charging Porter with all manner of immorality and hard things. The Whig paper in Huntington, where Porter resided, was edited by a man named Benedict. My Cousin, Robert Campbell, was then Prothonotary of Huntington County. He was also active in writing vituperative articles, and Gov. Porter was held up to the public as one of the greatest sinners in the State. I think he brought suit against Campbell for slander, but I don't recollect what became of it.

Joseph Ritner was the Whig candidate. I don't mind that much was said against his character except that he did not know anything and was the tool of Thad Stephens, Thomas Burrows and Theopholus Fenn, and the country would be ruined unless they were turned out. Well, it was a bitter fight and much bad feeling engendered.

I took a deep interest in this campaign. The last week or two before the election I did little but read, think and talk about it; attended night meetings and caucuses, and felt a load of responsibility. If I had had any money I would have bet on the result, but fortunately I had none. The election came on and we Whigs were badly defeated. I felt very sore over it for a day or two and then went back quietly to Blackstone, and I have never been so much excited over an election since. I suppose I neglected my studies some, but this kind of experience seems necessary once in a lifetime -- to learn a young man to hold his head steady in time of excitement.

When the campaign of 1840 came on and hard cider, coons and songs became the order of the day, I kept very cool. I was just admitted to practice law and was far more interested in what I should do next or where I should settle than in who should be our next President.

On the first Monday of April, 1840, Mr. Benedict made application to the court for a committee to examine me. Judge Burnside appointed Isaac Fisher of Lewistown, John Blanchard of Bellefonte and James Mathers of Mifflin, and that evening at the Steel Hotel down at the stone bridge, Judge Burnside and the committee met and I took my seat. They were all arranged along one side of the room and I sat in front of them, feeling a little nervous but not much afraid. In fact I felt pretty confident I knew as much about Blackstone as they did. My fear was that they would not confine themselves to the books I had read.

Mathers, as the youngest lawyer, began on the second volume of Blackstone, and from his hesitating manner I soon felt I had nothing to fear from him. To one of my answers he objected, thought I was wrong, but the Judge said very bluntly I was right. When he got through, Blanchard took me on the doctrine of estates and went regularly and carefully over them. For an hour he asked and I answered his questions. After that he asked some scattered questions, one of which I was unable to answer. Then Mr. Fisher gave me a running fire of questions all over Blackstone, principally definitions, and by half past 10 o'clock at night Judge Burnside said I had stood a very fair examination on the rudiments of the law and advised me to take up Hobal and Halveys' practice and read all the references there to the reports of cases I should take up and read carefully so as to become familiar with the Reports and practice. Fisher told me to read Bacon's abridgment four or five times and I would be a good lawyer. Judge Burnside said I might read Bacon's abridgment from time to eternity and I would never be a Pennsylvania lawyer. I was then dismissed, and the next morning the committee reported recommending my admission and I was sworn in as a lawyer.

Here, then I had arrived at another turning point of my life, which I always found perp[l]exing. I had studied pretty closely the previous winter and spring, had pretty much secluded myself from society and social parties, and I think did more thorough work and got more severe mental training than at any previous period of my life. I had a little morbid fear that if I ever succeeded in passing an examination, I would fail as a practitioner, and the idea of a failure, I thought, would drive me to desperation, at least would be very mortifying. The consequence was when I was admitted I was pretty well worked down.

Edmond S. Doty of Mifflin was then in town. That afternoon was beautiful and warm and he and I took Miss Anna Milliken and Ellen Haling a long walk away back on the ridge. The total relaxation, the company and the delightful fresh air made that one of the pleasantest afternoons of my life. We were well acquainted and ran wild and played like children and did not get home till dark.

Section 6:  First Cases; Choosing a Practice Site

Some time before that Court a young girl of unsavory reputation had been indicted for stealing sixty dollars, had been bailed out of jail and when the Court came on had secreted herself and her bail had Sam Berryhill, the constable, hunting her. The night after my walk I was sitting in the office smoking a cigar. Benedict had gone home and it was perhaps eleven o'clock, when the door opened and a long-legged lummox of a boy put his head in the door and asked me if his sister could see me, that she was the girl Berryhill was after, and that she wanted some counsel. Suddenly I recollected I was a lawyer and I told him to bring her on. He disappeared and in ten or fifteen minutes came back, ushering in the young lady who was nicely dressed and handsome. She told me her story and after subjecting her to as severe a cross examination as I could, I made up my mind that while she had put herself in a disgraceful position, she was not at all guilty of larceny and I told her to come right into Court in the morning and I would say she was ready for trial. The prosecutor was a man with a family and I thought could not afford to stand the exposure the trial of the case would develop. He had got his money back, had become dispossessed of it while on a drunken spree. Next morning I told his brother-in-law what the defense would be and shortly after I saw him talking rather savagely to the prosecutor, and he incontinently started to the hotel stable and got on his horse and started out of town. I then went into court and had the case called up, and there being no evidence the girl was acquitted. I had had my first case and came off victorious and my girl paid me ten dollars, my first fee, and her bail insisted on paying me a small fee for getting them out of trouble as her bail.

My old Uncle Joseph Campbell had got into a fight with old Peter Hoover. Uncle cut down a tree that Hoover claimed as a line tree and indicted him for a misdemeanor under an act of assembly for cutting down a line tree. Uncle Joe insisted on me trying his case. I was afraid of it and told him he had better have an older attorney, but he would not hear of it and so I was in for another suit. I consulted my boss and he told me I could beat Hoover if it was not a recognized line tree. So we went at it one afternoon of the same court week, and when the evidence was in on part of the Commonwealth, I was much relieved by the Court ruling that a tree that had been disputed for 20 years was not such a line tree as the act of assembly contemplated and so the prosecution failed and I was again victorious and I got another fee, although I did not do a thing but sit still during the trial. I think I got some thirty dollars during the week and I was astonished and delighted at my success. But I was not deceived -- I knew I had a great deal to learn before I was a lawyer.

After the Court I went home to rest a while and I walked over the fields and through the woods. There was a kind of a marshy pond up near the mountain. The Sunday before I first left home to go to school, I had wandered up there and cut the initials of my name on the smooth bark of a maple tree on the side of the pond, and now after eight years I again stood by the side of the pond and looked at the letters -- nearly grown over -- that I had cut when a green, country boy. I thought over the excellent feelings and anxiety I then had to get away from home and what grand things I expected to achieve and what an insignificant life as a farmer I had led. In contrasting this with my present position I felt disappointed. I had not been a failure altogether, but I had fallen far short of what I expected. Everything I got I had to work and drudge for, and I had misgivings that I had a long and rough road to travel before I could expect success as a lawyer. I had the same hesitating feeling as to what I should do next that had troubled me when I left College, and I could not resist the impression that I was better qualified to be a farmer than anything else. I had no notion of settling in Lewistown -- I had too many acquaintances there and relations in the county who might be mortified if I made a failure. I had lost much of the confidence I had when I inscribed my initials on the maple tree. I did not really believe that I could not with an effort succeed as a lawyer, but in all my calculations I seemed instinctively to fear that I might break down just when I should not and I could not shake off this impression. I became restless and discontented, rather despondent; in fact had the "blues."

There had been a half blood Indian at College from near Little Rock in Arkansas. His mother was the owner of a large plantation and several hundred slaves. He was a good-hearted, friendly fellow, but not smart, and often came to my room in the evenings to talk, and wanted me to go and settle in Little Rock and he would get me to be his mother's lawyer and felt very confident he could get me a good practice there. I had an indefinite idea that I would go there, and one day I mentioned it to my Father who was then fully as old as I am now. He said with some feeling that he would rather I would not go to that far off new country, that he thought my associations would be bad, that in the summer it was sickly, and he was getting old and if I went there he would hardly ever see me again; that if I would settle anywhere in the State, he would support me for five years if necessary. I saw it would hurt him if I went so far away and I told him I would not go.

My preceptor, Benedict, advised me to settle in Lancaster -- that I might have to wait a year or two for business and during that time I could profitably spend my time in reading, but that business would come and that he had no doubt I would succeed. I knew this was honest advice and I went to Lancaster and spent several days there. At that time there were a number of old lawyers there, Hopkins Norris, Fordney Frazier and others and a great many young lawyers, and I thought there was no show for me there. I am now satisfied I would have done well by settling there. The old lawyers died off in a few years and I would have had no great difficulty in establishing a practice, but I was distraught to occupy another field.

Section 7:  Two Days in Clarion

Along about the time of the buckshot war, a new county was projected to be carved out of parts of Armstrong and Venango to be called Clarion. I had never seen any of the territory out of which the new county was to be made, but a number of families had removed from the valley and Center County to the settlements east of the Clarion River, and I knew it was regarded as a pretty good country. I kept trace of the bill in the Legislature till it was finally passed and the new county was created. I saw the advantage of starting in a new county where all would have an equal chance of catching business, but I had not thought seriously of settling there till one day Joseph Milliken told me J. and J. Milliken had wholesaled a good many goods out through that and Jefferson County and that if I would go to Clarion (the new county seat) he would give me five or six thousand dollars to collect out there. This struck me favorably and I thought I would go out and see it.

One morning about the beginning of August, 1840, I got on a gray horse of Oliver's and rode over to James Oliver's. The next morning I started bright and early out across the barrens, Half Moon Valley and took the Allegheny Mountains by way of Spencer's Mill, and by dinner time was at Phillipsburg and took my dinner with James McGirk. I think that was the only tavern there at that time. At any rate, I found him and his lady a very worthy couple and I often stopped with them afterwards.

At that time old Mr. Phillips occupied the Phillips' Mansion up at the woods. While I was there that day Mr. McGirk called my attention to the Phillips' carriage passing out the turnpike and was told that it was Mr. Phillips himself upon the front seat driving. After dinner I started on and met the carriage coming back with the same driver on the box. I did not notice who were in the carriage. I soon entered a pine forest and greatly enjoyed the shade and the sight of the tall trees. When about four miles out I noticed a man came out from the side of the road and looked at me and went back so I could not see him. He was a good piece ahead of me and as I approached he came out and took another look at me. This attracted my attention and I put my hand in my pocket to feel for an old single barrel pistol that I carried. I did not pull it out but just fixed it so I could lay my hand on it readily. As I came forward I noticed that the man was standing in the side of the road facing into the woods and appeared to be talking. On nearer approach I saw two bonnets and I immediately took my hand away from the pistol. About that time from under one of the bonnets came this address, "Why, James Campbell, where in the world did you come from and how did you get here?" I don't know what I replied, but it was Nan Patton and her Aunt, Miss Nancy Norris, who were visiting at Mr. Phillips', and the young man whom I had regarded with so much suspicion was a nephew of Mr. Phillips. They had started to take a ride and something broke about the carriage and the old gentleman had taken it back to get repaired and left the party in the woods and was to go back and take them out of the woods. I sat on my horse and talked to them a short time and started on -- did not tell them that I had thought they were robbers. That night I stayed at Clearfield Creek.

The next morning, just as I was getting on my horse to start, a man came trotting across the bridge, and after saluting the landlord, asked me how far I was going, and when I told him to Clarion he gave a little chuckle and said "How fortunate; why I live there and I do hate to travel alone". I did not meet him very cordially for I saw that he was not altogether sober. I got on my horse, however, and he kept up such a running fire of good-natured conversation that I could not find anything to grumble at. He said he had stayed four miles back at Lomadoo's, that he was an old hog and he did not like to stay there but his horse was tired and he thought he could stand the house one night. He said he was Marshall McMurtrie, that he was raised on Shavey Creek, had married and gone out to the new town of Clarion and was going to be elected constable the next spring and was on his way home. I found him an open hearted, talkative, rather pleasant fellow, though he carried a flask and occasionally took a nip out of it and every time offered it to me but I declined. He had been frequently along the road and seemed to know every man, woman and child on the road.

That night we got to Brookville and stopped at a brick tavern kept by a man named Perce. McMurtrie knew everybody there and introduced me to all the members of the bar, or at least most of them -- Col. Brady, R. Arthur, the Dunhams and Alexander. I think he hunted them up, for I did not leave the Hotel that night. The most I mind of Brookville was a tall young man they called Ash making a speech off the courthouse steps to a dozen or two of men and boys, I believe on politics. I also noticed a large pile of pine roots on the other side of the street.

The next day my friend and I came on to Strattonville. I stopped at the house of Robert Barber. McMurtrie, after introducing me all around, started on to Clarion. The next day was Sunday and I stayed there. In that time I became acquainted with Peter Clover, John Keath, J. W. Guthrie, John Burkholder, Samuel Wilson and a number of others. Algernon S. Howe was there. He was then the agent of the Maine Land Company, was a bright young, cultured man, and we soon became well acquainted, and I found him an intelligent companion. I also met Dr. James Ross there for the first time. He was a young physician, was full of energy and popular, though he had only been there a short time.

At that time the Village of Strattonville was a lively place. Captain Barber owned and ran the Hotel and was a partner in the store across the way of Wilson and Barber. Wm. H. and Hugh Lowry kept a store on the same side of the street further west. Clover and Keath ran a blacksmith shop and were prosperous business men. John Wynkoop made hats; John Burkholder made cabinet ware and James W. Guthrie, as the sub-agent of Dr. Ross, managed the entire business of the Bingham Estate and was regarded as a man of no small importance. John R. Shatton had a store -- I am not certain whether alone or with his father. Jo Stratton then or soon after ran a Hotel east of the Barber House.

On Monday morning Dr. Ross told me he was going down to Clarion, and so we got on our horses and rode down together and stopped with old William Clark, now the Loomis House. As I had come 125 miles to see the place with a view of making it my future home, I looked around with considerable interest, although disposed to take a favorable view of everything, there was very little I could see to fascinate. Previous to the spring of 1840 it had been a piece of poor pine woodland and the only money that had ever been made off it had been by John C. Corbett, who some years before that had gathered up the pine knots on the site of the town and burnt a tar kiln and realized out of it eleven barrels of tar. It was all woodland -- poor, and some of it stony. The main street was the waterfront and Susquehanna Turnpike, and the sides were occasionally or[n]amented with piles of half rotten logs that had been cut out and piled when the turnpike was made. Quite a number of houses were up along both sides, but if any were finished, I did not see them. Generally only enough land was cleared on which to set the building, and the back end was frequently lost in bushes and brush heaps. The town looked to me more like a camp meeting than the metropolis of a flourishing county.

Mr. Clark's Hotel was open for the accommodation of strangers and travelers, and I suppose had a bar for the spiritual nourishment of his customers, but I did not patronize it. The house was up, roofed and partitioned off into rooms and apartments and the outside doors were hung, but the carpenters and plasterers were still at work. The painters had not begun yet, and I slept my first night in Clarion in a room with a sheet hung up for a door. The window sash had not been put in, but these sheets and garments hung up were to partially shut out the view from the outside.

Dr. Ross had introduced me to Jacques W. Johnston, a young lawyer from Cumberland Valley, somewhere about Carlisle. He was very polite and introduced me to everybody we met. We walked up the street and out the west end of town as far as the turn of the road below where the fair ground now is, till we could see the Clarion River. It was all woods with a thick undergrowth of bushes.

The diamond looked hard. The pine trees, had been grubbed out and were lying on the ground with roots projecting up-some of them ten feet. The masons were building the wall of the jail yard. The jail and courthouse had not been commenced. A thick growth of young white pine extended all the way from the Alexander house to the Loomis house. The streets had generally been cut out and the brush burned, but logs and stumps were everywhere. On the east end of town a couple of fields had been cleared south of the turnpike extending back of where the Seminary now stands and down to Garvens, but all the rest of the town and surroundings were woods and thick underbrush. Including workmen, there might have been there five or six hundred inhabitants.

Down by the spring, near where the planing mill stood, there was an old log cabin with clapboard roof that had probably been built when the turnpike was made. At any rate, it looked old. An old Dutchman lived in it called George Lightner, with a grown-up family -- principally girls, and at the time I went there he had not less than twenty boarders. Where he stowed them away or where they all slept, I never knew.

Living in the town at that time looked very much like camping out. Those who had come to stay were generally young married people starting in the world on small means and were from all parts of the State, but in their primitive way of living soon formed acquaintances and all were busy getting their houses ready for winter.

Thomas Gahagan lived in a little house still standing east of the nursery; two other small one story houses were occupied between that and 7th Avenue, one on the Montgomery lot and one of [sic] the A. G. Corbett lot. Samuel M. Camant had a blacksmith shop where the Republican Gazette office now stands, and the kitchen end of the house was up and occupied by him. James McKee lived in the kitchen end of J. T. Moffett's house. The next building that I recollect was the Great Western Hotel (D. B. Curll's lot). It was up and roofed, but not far enough along to occupy as a Hotel. The next was a frame storeroom back off the street on the east side of the Jones House lot, occupied by John Potter. The Jesse D. Porter house was built and occupied by a man named Sloan, a cabinet maker. Between that and Dr. Pretner's house he had built a long shop and ware room which long afterwards was moved to the hind end of the Jones House and made into a kitchen and dining room. Dr. Pretner was in his house (now the post office). Linsay C. Pretner was living in a frame house on the east side of the Kribbs block lot and had a store in front of it. Ann Wills and Miss Jack of Brookville, afterwards Mrs. G. W. Andrews, were visiting there and Mr. Johnston took me to call on them that afternoon.

In the upper end of the town the settlers that I recollect were Andrew Gardner, my traveling friend M. McMurtrie, Wilson S. Packer, Joseph Kelly, Benjamin Crestman, William Black; I think Goble and Everding and James Sweeny did not come till the next spring. There was a house built or building out towards the fair ground by the Arthurs family and I think occupied by some of the family. Then there was a house opposite Jo Kelly's on Wood Street but I don't mind by whom occupied.

Jacob K. Boyd was the first resident lawyer in the county. He had a family and had a house somewhere in the upper end of the town.

Jonathan Frampton was living in the shell of a house on the lot now owned by Joseph H. Patrick. Alexander Reynolds was having the house and store built where Captain Alexander now lives. These are about all the buildings I now recollect, but there were many workmen and some families that I did not get acquainted with at that time, though I kept moving about pretty lively while I stayed. I recollect the first night. Johnson, Charley Waters, John McPherson and I played euchre from dark to bed time in a back room that was neither plastered nor weatherboarded. Waters was not living here at the time, but I think was peddling some kind of goods.

The lot on which I live and I think the whole square, was virgin forest. An old Mrs. Emply had the shell of the Colonel Alexander house up and was keeping tavern in it. The lot occupied by the Frampton block was covered with a growth of white oak timber. Wilson and Clover had a store on where the Arnold block now stands. I think it was shoved back and is still standing on the back end of the lot.

This is about what I learned about location, prospects and people of the town the two days I was there and I was pretty busy. My first thought was there is not a house in town fit to live in. I could see nothing in or in sight out of which money could be made. People would have to come through the woods in every direction to get to the town. A mile on each side of the river on an average was not fit for cultivation or settlement. The timber would not pay for the cutting and running to market. The cleared land between this and the Jefferson County line generally looked thin and poor, and on a good many spots oats were still standing in shock. The soil was surely not good for grain raising or stock raising, and I could see no sources of wealth that could be developed so as to make even a tolerably rich county. The greater part of the land I had seen was still in woods. I wanted to make some money and I did not see where it was to come from. The people told me a great deal about the furnaces that furnished a market for the farmer, but I had seen none of them and I thought they would do little for the county -- only to furnish a market for the wood used in making charcoal. In that I thought they might help the farmer to open up a farm.

On the whole I thought the prospect decidedly forbidding, and on Wednesday I thought I had seen enough and would turn my horse's head eastward. Johnson who had a higher opinion of the capabilities of the county than I had, wanted me to stay longer, but when I declined he and Waters concluded to accompany me to Strattonville, and we rode up there in the afternoon, and after talking a while they started back and I went up to close out a sale of a small interest in a piece of land in Millcreek Township to T. W. Guthrie. This had been entrusted to me by a man in Mifflin County who wanted to sell out. I effected a sale and got it all closed up that night. I again met A. S. Howe and had a pleasant talk with him. He was a clever fellow and on the short acquaintance I formed a most high opinion of him. At bed time I bid him goodbye and I have never seen him since. He went home to Maine and after some time married and lived in his native State; had one daughter. Shortly after middle age he got softening of the brain and died. His widow afterwards married a man named Samuel C. Smith of North Bridgdon. Forty years after that I had occasion to correspond with Mr. Smith and I happened to mention in a letter that I had a pleasant but short acquaintance with his wife's former husband, and within the last year she sent me a photograph of Mr. Howe. It was taken off an old tin type and not very good, but I readily recognized it.

My grey horse had nothing to do but eat oats after I got out here and he felt pretty frisky, so on Thursday morning I got up early and without breakfast started to Brookville.

As I got on the hill beyond Captain M. Grimes, the sun was just getting up, and I turned my horse around and took a survey of the country back towards Strattonville and Clarion. I wanted to carry away with me a clear and vivid impression of the land and neighborhood for I was fully convinced that I would never look on them again -- and I never wanted to. I turned and rode with a satisfied feeling that I had done all I ought to do towards finding a settlement in this direction. By eight o'clock I was in Brookville. I got my breakfast, fed my horse, walked a little out through the town, saw some of the acquaintances I had formed, and was again on the road. I did not intend to stop till I got to Luthersburg, 22 miles, but the day got very warm and my horse seemed to get tired about the middle of the day and I turned into a farm house and asked if I could get a feed for my horse and my dinner. I found only the lady of the house and her daughter, 16 or 18 years old, at home. They told me I could and the daughter went with me to the barn to show me where to get the oats. I fed my horse and came back to the house.

Section 8:  Going Home Again

The girl, though a woman in size, was evidently quite young and girlish and quite fond of talking; in fact, they both were. Said they had not been long there, had come from some of the Eastern states and seemed anxious to know where I was from, where I was going, and what my business was, but they were modest about it and not offensive or vulgar. After I had eaten my dinner I sat down on a little stoop and smoking a cigar told the young lady I had been out west hunting a place to settle, that I had found a farm and was now on my way east to hunt a wife to take back with me, and if the young lady would go with me I guessed I would go no further. I saw by the twinkle of her eye that she rather enjoyed the fun, asked me several questions about milking the cows and asked if I knew that Yankee women never did that and if as she supposed I was a Pennsylvanian, I had better learn that before getting a wife. The old lady who had not been on the porch but could hear us talk, came to the door and laughingly said, "Oh yes, take her, you would find her a great help on a farm." The young lady said, "Take care, Mother, he is not a bad looking fellow and maybe I might go with him." Well I sat and talked till my cigar was done and then paid them for my horse feed and dinner and started on. It soon began to thunder and I pushed on as fast as I could for over an hour, and just as I got to the Hotel at Luthersburg, the rain came on. I wished for it to clear off, but it rained on till sundown and stayed all night; got a good supper and pretty soon after supper went to bed.

The next morning was clear and cooler -- got an early breakfast and was again on the road. Rode 13 miles to Curwensville before the sun had got warm, passed right on through and did not stop till I reached Phillipsburg, 18 miles further, making 31 miles before dinner though it was after the middle of the day when I arrived there. I again stopped with McGirk, got my dinner and rested my horse a couple of hours, and about three o'clock started over the mountain.

There was no house on the road till I reached Bald Eagle Valley. I traveled steadily along and when I got across the valley to the foot of Bald Eagle Ridge it was sun down and my horse was tired, and I got off and led the horse all the way over. The North side is long and steeper than the road over the mountain, and it was dark when I got to Stormtown. I had traveled fully forty-five miles that day over a hilly, mountainous road.

I stopped with a man named Myer who at that time kept the only Hotel there. There had been a camp meeting near there and as I rode into town I heard singing. It was a prayer meeting at a private house and they were singing out the music in the usual camp meeting style and it sounded pleasantly. I got my supper, went to bed and was lulled to sleep by the sound of the music. The landlady had been at the meeting and brought a young lady home with her to sleep, and not knowing the room was occupied, brought her into my room, but seeing the bed occupied and a pair of pantaloons hanging on a chair, beat a hasty retreat. Next morning the landlord apologized and said he had forgotten to tell his wife that he had a stranger in the house. I told him it did not disturb me and I got an excellent night's sleep. The next day I rode out across the barrens to White Hall and down the back road to Brother Robert's farm on the slab cabin where I stayed two or three days, and then went home to the valley.

When coming home I thought a great deal about what I was going to do with myself. There was I, a young fellow in good health, in the prime of life, educated and a lawyer. The idea that I could not find a place to go to work seemed preposterous; that I must be too easily scared out, and it seemed the proper way to overcome the difficulty was to pitch in -- that where others succeeded I could try, but I could not stand the idea of beginning at the foot of the pile and working my way up at Lewistown. That I would have to take a position below what I had occupied as a student unless I could do something brilliant, which was not likely, but still I determined to do something and on the whole I thought perhaps I had better go back and try Clarion.

Through the following September and first part of October I stayed sometimes at home, sometimes in Lewistown, did a little business in Benedict's office. He was very friendly in giving me business and writing to do and I made a little money. If he had offered me a partnership I guess I would have stayed, but he did not and I did not propose it to him. I attended political meetings sometimes. The Buckeye blacksmith was stumping the county and the campaign was waxing warm, but I did not feel the interest I had done in the governor's election in 1838. Sometimes I helped Oliver on the farm. I had another talk with Joseph Milliken and he encouraged me to go to Clarion -- would give me a good deal of business out there and had no doubt I could do well. I was a boy no longer, having passed my twenty-seventh birthday, and I was going to make a push somewhere. Robert and Oliver had been making money for years. Robert was married and had children; Oliver was running the old farm and had acquired a good standing as an energetic and successful farmer. Robert was in debt for his farm but would succeed in paying it off. Both were settled apparently for life, and I was the drone of the family. The thing galled me, and had to stop. Uncle Jo's boys had grown up and taken charge of his farm. He had bought the John Heffly end of that old farm and they were farming that. Uncle thought his boys did not manage as well as Oliver and sometimes he and his boys did not agree very well. The fact was, he was a pretty cross old fellow. He was always ready to resent an ill time but also prompt to return a favor and possessed a good many good manly traits of character. He had always been kind to his sister, Aunt Abby, and built her a house at the lower corner of the garden where she lived many years. My father, from the death of my grandfather, had paid the half of her keeping, and after Oliver got the farm he paid her forty dollars a year while she lived which was till she was about ninety years old, and Uncle Jo's girls took care of her after she got too old to take care of herself and finally brought her up to their own house where she died.

I mind one day Uncle Jo came up to our house and said to Oliver, "You have been kind to me and done me some good times, and I thought I would give you a deed for a little piece of rocks up in the gap so that no person could get above you on the run." This gave Oliver control of the water all the way up to the place where it came out from under the mountain, and the old gentleman would take nothing for it. And this was characteristic of him. He was quick to resent an injury and about as quick and ready to return a kindness.

While I was in Lewistown I generally went up and helped Oliver to cut and put up his harvest. That summer I made a hand in cutting the crop and about the time we got done Robert sent over word from Centre County that his harvest was heavy and he was scarce of hands. So the afternoon after we finished cutting, Oliver and Pete Colpetzer went over to help him cut out, leaving our crop standing in shock. The weather was fine and the grain dry, and my father thought that I and Tom Pearson, a stout boy living with Oliver, should haul in at least enough to bread the family through the coming year, and as an encouragement said he would help to pack away in the barn. This seemed reasonable and so we hitched the wagon and Tom said he could drive first rate, but in going out of the lane into the field he snubbed on a bar post and pulled it down. I then told him he might get into the wagon and build and I would drive and pitch on the sheaves myself. We had four horses in the wagon and hauled in four pretty big loads that afternoon. Father said we were getting on so nicely that we had better go on the next day for fear wet weather might come on and hurt the crop. So the next day we worked steadily all day, I driving the team and pitching on and off and my father and Tom building back in the barn and Tom building on the wagon and father resting while we were out for a load; and we hauled in eight good loads that day.

By that time I found I was in for it, and the next morning I got up very early, went over to Nancy Yoder's and borrowed another wagon and brought it with me. I had taken a team along. Got Bob McNabb and a couple of old fellows to help him and was back in time for breakfast. Tom and I then hauled in while my new recruits unloaded. The grain was getting up so high I did not want father, who was lame, to climb up. That day I hauled in sixteen loads of wheat and the day following eight loads till dinner time, and would have finished that evening only it came on to rain. It was admitted that I did pretty big days' work but I was pretty strong and tough and don't mind of experiencing much fatigue. That afternoon Oliver and Pete came home and Oliver was agreeably surprised to find nearly all the crop in the barn. At that time I was a pretty strong man. I found others stronger and more active than I was, but I did not find any tougher to endure hard work than I was. To save my hands I worked in buckskin gloves, but anyone taking from that that I was soft or weak found themselves mistaken. Oliver used to say that I was pretty lazy about getting on to my feet in the morning, but when up it took a good man to put me off them before night.

Section 9:  Losing Elders

That fall my father was seventy-four years old. Some time before when I was at College, he had been thrown from a horse and injured his thigh joint and was lame and continued so the remainder of his life. His hearing had been growing dull from before he was sixty years of age, and at this time could not hear ordinary conversation. What was even of more consequence to him, a cataract had commenced growing over one of his eyes. He had been a great reader and as he grew older read a good deal lying in bed in daytime. His habit was to get up early in the morning and if pleasant would go out and exercise till towards ten o'clock and then take a volume of Humes History of England up to bed and read or sleep till dinner, and in the afternoon sit or lie and read till towards evening, and then again start out and take exercise. It was thought so much reading on his back brought on the disease in his eye. It was hard reading to him on account of his deafness and Mother thought Rachael Jane had hurt herself reading to him so much in a strained voice. Before he died the other eye began to close up and the poor old man was afraid of total blindness, but up to the day of his death he could still see enough to walk about.

We had an old mare which had been a good hackney and was still good to ride about home. In pleasant weather father would every now and then want to take a ride and look around the neighborhood, and we would saddle up old Lucy and he would travel around a few miles and it seemed to amuse him. In the winter of 1845 the weather was severe and rough and he did not go out even to the barn. That winter old Lucy got a swelling in one of her legs, got down and was so bad they had to shoot her. They never told father and in March following he died and never knew that his faithful old hackney had been killed.

When the spring opened a little, he started one day and walked down the back mountain to a vendue at old Jenny Huston's, I think. How he came to go, I don't know, but when he came home he was unwell, and by next day was quite sick and Dr. Vanvolzah of Lewistown was sent for. He pronounced it acute inflamation of the liver and a man of father's age was not likely to get over it. He gave him medicine and agreed to come back the last of the week. The first few days the pain was very distressing and the family stayed by him day and night. Then he seemed to get easier, but was very weak. A bad sign was he thought from the first he was going to die. When the Doctor came back the family thought he was much better and would get well and told him so. He said in reply that he would live to Sunday. The Doctor examined him and said he would die, that the reason he then had no pain was that mortification had set in and that he could live only a short time. This greatly alarmed Mother and the family, but did not surprise him in the least, and in the early hours of Sunday morning, the 21st of March, 1845, long before daylight old John Campbell breathed his last breath on the spot where he had lived seventy-two years of his life. A just man had gone to his rest. He had, in his humble and quiet way, worshipped his God and was gone to his reward.

I was not there. Two letters had been written to me and in some unaccountable manner had come out through Indiana and Kittanning. The first I heard was that he was dead and would be buried on the very day I got the letter. I never understood it, but I never received a letter by that route but those two announcing my father's sickness and I did not receive them till some days after he was buried. By the middle of October I had fully made up my mind to go back and settle in Clarion and began to gather up my traps and prepare for my final departure from home. I went to Lewistown and got my certificate of admission to the bar, gathered up a few law books I had bought, spent my last evening calling on the young ladies and promenading around the town; enjoyed it very much but felt no regret at parting, for I felt that I had been there long enough and I wanted to be away and at work where I could demonstrate that there was stuff in me that could be manufactured into a man.

The next morning I started home and as I rode up the valley I met my cousin Washington Campbell who told me my Uncle John Oliver was dead, that he had been taken with bilious cholic and had died in two days sickness, that our people were preparing to go over in the afternoon. I was greatly shocked for I had seen him a week before in his usual health. I went on home and found several of the family getting ready to go over and I went along. He died on 16th of October, 1840, at the age of nearly forty-five. He married late in life, left a wife and one child, John Shurman Oliver, and shortly after his death another child was born.

While studying law in Lewistown, I frequently went up to Grandfather Oliver's and spent Sunday. I always found it a very pleasant place to spend a day or two. Two old maiden aunts, Polly and Margory, were still at home with their father and mother, and Uncle John and his family all lived in the old mansion house. Uncle John was an exceedingly friendly, true-hearted man, had few faults and no vices and was universally esteemed in the neighborhood. He was the only man in the family fit to do anything, and his death was a great calamity to the family. We found the cheerful old mansion literally a house of sorrow, and next day we reverently followed the remains to the graveyard in McVeytown. It is in full view of the Pennsylvania Rail Road and I never pass without looking over the river and think how many of my mother's relation lie buried there.

Next day I bid a final adieu to my old grandfather and came home. He died the 9th day of February following, aged about 91 years. I never saw him again.

Section 10:  Return to Clarion

When I came home I gathered up old letters and papers, burned most of them, tied up a few small packages and stowed them away in my trunk and in addition to these I found room for my clothes and all my earthly goods in an ordinary trunk. I was also fortified with fifty dollars and with this outfit about the 23d of October, 1840, I bid farewell to the old home and started out to pick my way in the world. I went down to Reedsville and about 9 or 10 o'clock in the morning took the stage for Bellefonte. I found John Daugherty and Samuel Lucas in the stage, two Brookville merchants who had been to Philadelphia buying goods. I had not met them when out there but we soon got acquainted and I found them good traveling companions. We got to Bellefonte in the evening and got our supper. The weather had turned in wet and cold with some snow. About dark we started out, a cold, disagreeable night ahead of us, to cross the mountain. It was 28 miles to Phillipsburg and it was broad day light when we got there. We warmed up, got breakfast, and started to Curwensville by way of Clearfield; found it a villainously bad road, through dreary pine bottoms, but from Clearfield was better up the sandy bottom and we got to Curwensville by dinner time. The further we advanced westwards, the worse the roads became and we did not get to Brookville till after night. My two traveling companions then left me. I ate my supper and about ten o'clock at night the stage pulled out for Clarion with not a passenger but myself. It was cold, dreary and muddy and this was my second night in the stage. Well, I snoozed and shivered and jolted along, occasionally woke up by my hat falling off or my head knocking against the side of the stage.

Still the stage crept along, and some time after two o'clock in the morning drew up in the mud in front of the Great Western Hotel, and I was back in Clarion and at that time all my aspirations and wishes in this world was to get a place to sleep. I was quickly in bed and sound asleep.

The next morning I was waked up by the landlord, Col. Coulter fixing up a stovepipe through the room, assisted by his brother-in-law, Joseph H. Patrick, but I had got several hours' sound sleep and I got up refreshed and ate my breakfast.

I found my friend, Jacques W. Johnston, boarding at the Western. I also found several resident lawyers had come during my absence. Alfred Gilmore had been appointed Prosecuting Attorney and was a boarder; also David B. Hays and John B. Butler. The former was a brother-in-law of John J. Pearson of Mercer, afterwards President Judge of the Dauphin County District and intended to practice in connection with John W. Howe of Franklin, who was well and favorably known west of the Clarion. Butler was from Butler County, had a family, but had not yet brought them here and was a boarder at the Western. William L. Alexander was editing and printing a democratic paper.

The Great Western Hotel where I was stopping had been opened for business, pretty well finished and filled up with boarders. A large cellar had been dug out under the building and a good deal of the clay thrown out in front and was tramped up into mud of unknown depth, and a few scattered boards laid on it for the benefit of pedestrians. There was not a foot of pavement in town. The fall had been wet and I never saw ground work up into soft, dirty mud more readily.

I think it was the 26th of October I arrived in Clarion. It required ten days' residence at that time to entitle an elector to vote, and the Presidential election was not ten days ahead and I lost my vote. It may have been a day or two later, I have no record of the precise day, but I think the election was about a week after my second advent to the county.

The room back of the Great Western barroom was the general sitting room of all the lawyers. Not one of them had an office. The first few days I looked around to see if I could rent one, but it was more than a month before Hays and I succeeded in renting the front part of Sloan's house, now used by Jesse D. Porter for his store. We got a bench and three chairs in it and we got some boards and built up a number of shelves against the wall and made a bookcase. I bought an old common stove for eight dollars and we got a pipe to it. Got a load of stove coal from old Billy Boreland, fixed up and hung out our shingles, and we were ready for business. Johnston had got the shell of a cabin up where Dr. Ross' office now stands, and had an office before we got into ours.

Along about the first of December, G. W. Lathy came out from Muncie, Northumberland County, and took up his boarding at the Western. He had some experience as a lawyer and Johnston took him into partnership and they soon had, at the side of the door in glaring gilt letters, "Johnston and Lathy, Atty's at Law."

Alfred Gilmore was building an office on the west side of the diamond (now occupied by John Sweeny). John B. Butler got in with the Commissioners in a little office on the south side of the diamond. We were soon all well acquainted and herded together for misery loves company.

I was soon familiar with the town, walked over it nearly every day and explored the woods on every side -- one day found an old field half a mile west of the graveyard beginning to grow up with white oak bushes. At another time four or five of us went down to where the upper bridge is now, got a skiff and crossed the river and explored around the old Myers Mill. A man named Wilson lived there and ran the mill. John B. Butler and I started out one day along what is now Seventh Avenue to explore south of the town. The bush out through our woods were very thick and by the time we got to the top of the hill above the spring we were glad to make our way out to the Greenville Road and give it up. I soon got an impression that if I stayed in Clarion I would have to live in the center of an interminable forest and thicket all my life.

Clients were few and far between, but one day an old fellow named Samuel Adams blundered on to me and told me he wanted a lawyer, that he had rented a carding mill from old Billy Chambers over where Mary Ann Furnace is, that they had quarreled and old Billy had sued him and they had referred the whole matter to David B. Long, Barnhart Martin, Esq., and Henry Sloan as arbitrators, and they were to meet at Shippensville a few days after that and he wanted me to try it for him. I gathered all the facts I could out of him, got the names of his witnesses and put them in a subpoena, told him to have all his witnesses there and I would be on hand. My friend, Johnston, was on the other side and had gotten up a technical question of law on the appointment of the referees, and he felt sure of blowing up the case that he told around to the other members of the bar and soon came to my ears. I did not at all feel alarmed about it if my arbitrators were sensible men.

When the day arrived, Johnston and I rode over together on horse back, he carrying a bundle done up in paper that I had no difficulty in deciphering as Purdon's Digest -- I went unfortified with any books. I was introduced to our arbitrators and found at once that they were intelligent business men. Martin was an old Justice of the Peace -- a fine scholar, could write and talk French and German better than English. Well, Johnston's law point did not catch, which greatly disconcerted him, and we called witness after witness and made out a stronger case than I expected. Relying on his technicality, the defendant could not make a very formidable case, for indeed he had but one or two witnesses and they did him no good. By the time the evidence was through and Johnston had concluded for the defense, I thought I knew my arbitrators and the case pretty well, and I summed up by recalling the testimony and dwelt carefully on that part, showing outrage and oppression on the part of the defendant, and that in the face of a solemn contract the plaintiff had been violently thrown out of the mill at the beginning of winter, without notice or a chance of getting other work, that he was poor and had a family to support, and that ninety-nine dollars was the least that my client ought to get. They retired, and in a short time brought me in an award of eighty-eight dollars. This made me feel pretty comfortable for I had now some chance of fees (Adams could have paid me none if I had not been successful). Johnston took it in pretty good part, but it set old Mr. Chambers in a towering passion and he immediately appealed the case to court.

That arbitration was of a good deal of use to me. There were a good many people there and I got acquainted and got business in the neighborhood afterwards. Barnhart Martin settled a number of estates west of the river and I soon after became his attorney and we settled a good many estates together. I believe I was his lawyer till the day of his death, or as long as he did business. For a man that knew as much as he did, he was a very modest and upright man. Like most of my old friends, the sod has long since been green over his grave, though he lived to a good old age.

This was my first case in Clarion and I may as well tell here what became of it. In a short time after the trial, Johnston got the appeal and entered it. I immediately filed a declaration and got him to enter a plea and put it down for trial at the following February court. By that time Lathy was with Johnston and I knew would make a more formidable fight, but I determined to try it by myself, though the old lawyers from Brookville, Kittanning, Butler and Franklin were there and I knew it would be very embarrassing to me to have so many present that knew more than I did. It was the only case on the list and the first case tried in the county. Well, I did try it, but felt intolerably awkward in displaying myself before such a crowd for the court house was full, and I blundered through the case in a manner very unsatisfactory to myself, but I got through with it and argued it to the jury as well as I could and the jury took pity on me and gave me a verdict of ninety-five dollars.

Lathy was very indignant and took a writ of error to the Supreme Court, and as I had not been two years a lawyer, I got John W. Howe to attend to it for me in the Supreme Court in October, 1841, and it was affirmed and I made old Billy pay the $95 and all the costs. I think I kept for fees about fifty dollars, and thus ended the first case tried on the civil list in Clarion County.

Section 11:  Early Bar Members & Residents

I had an object in view in coming out here by the first of November. On the first Monday of that month the first court was to be held and it was my business to be there to be admitted to the bar. We had no court house, jail or church to hold it in. Christian Myers and Charles Evans had been elected Associate Judges at the October election. The new county was made a part of the Twenty-Eight Judicial District. Alexander M. Calmont President Judge, all the leading lawyers from the surrounding counties would be there. The house and store being built by Alexander Reynolds was up and roofed and partly weather boarded, but the front was still open, and a large carpenter bench was standing in what is now Captain Alexander's parlor. That apartment was secured in which to hold the court and the carpenters' bench turned around against the east wall. Three or four trestles were arranged in front of the bench and boards laid across for seats for the bar. Three large chairs were mounted on the stand for the judges. The judges elect had to be sworn in but there were no officers sworn in to qualify the court. That was the starting point, and till the court was in running order, the entire machinery of the county was at a standstill and could not start. But this difficulty had been foreseen and Governor Porter had sent out to Jacques W. Johnston a "Dedimus Potertortem" to swear in the judges and start the machine in motion. Jacques was no little elevated at the idea of being made the receptacle of this amount of royal prerogative in the hands of a subject and talked a great deal about the importance of this sacred trust. The people had elected Dr. Goe Prothonotary and James Hassan Sheriff. Uncle Jacob Zeigler, then Prothonotary of Butler County, was brought over to teach the new officers how to put on their official robes and to see the court inaugurated with becoming dignity. The old court crier of Venango County, Mr. Morrison, came down to help on the show and pick up the initiation fees of the lawyers.

Early on Monday morning the town began to fill up. The Fanklin, Butler and Armstrong County lawyers had generally come in the Sunday evening before. It was a pleasant, sunshiny November day, which was fortunate as we had no means of heating the room. I believe more people came in to see the court than come now, although there was not a case on the list either civil or criminal. The judges got Johnston into a room at the Western and were sworn in before going to court. By ten o'clock the judges got up on the bench, and at the intimation of Judge M. Calmont old Mr. Morrison opened the court. The seats in front of the judges by that time were pretty well filled with applicants for admission.

Zeigler was a good officer with a fine, manly voice, and after reading the commissions of the judge, commenced swearing in first the Prothonotary and Sheriff whose bonds had been approved, then the constables and justices of the peace. Then the certificates of the younger lawyers were examined by the court and the whole batch were told to stand up and be sworn, and all were on their feet and sworn in. There were twenty-six lawyers admitted on that occasion. I don't know that I could give all their names now from recollection, but I suppose there is a list of them yet on file in the Prothonotary's office.

By dinner time nearly all the preliminary work was done. As I sat on one of the back seats and looked over the crowd of lawyers, a few past middle life with reputations established and in successful practice in their own counties, with others younger all the way down to greenhorns like myself, without practice, reputation or property, I thought my chance of success not very brilliant and in trying to avoid competition I found myself in a position to face the best attorneys in the western part of the State, and more resident lawyers than I would probably have found in older counties.

Though the Court met in the afternoon, there was little to do. Most of the old lawyers failed to put in afternoon appearances, but were seen walking around or sitting at the Hotels talking or telling stories. Several were upstairs playing uchre or other games.

Jonathan Frampton and James Craig had the contract for building the jail -- had by this time the walls pretty well up and were rushing it to have ready for the February Court. The whole upper story was left in one apartment to hold courts in till a court house was built. They had a little store house on the diamond right opposite the steps of the present court house on the south side of the street. Soon after that the Prothonotary's office was moved in there, and occupied all or a part of the store room.

Dr. Goe had been a practicing physician and was, I think, a local Methodist preacher -- at least he preached sometimes very good sermons, but he was not familiar with the manner of keeping the county dockets. At that time the Dr. held all the offices and needed a competent clerk. David H. Foster had been in the Prothonotary's office in Kittanning and was employed to open the books, and as clerk to write in the office. Before he came to Clarion he had been reading law. He had a wife and some children. He soon was admitted and practiced as well as played Prothonotary and it gave him a nice chance of catching business. Every man who came into the office to inquire about business could find a lawyer who understood the office and could give advice. I don't know that he ever took much advantage of his position, but it was talked about among the other members of the bar. At any rate, he was another resident lawyer.

Shortly after the first court, Thomas Sutton from Indiana County came over and settled here, making his home at the Clark house where I had stopped when I first came. Not long after that, I think by the middle of winter, Gen Jolly came -- an old lawyer of some ability, but soon fell into intemperate habits. In the spring a young lawyer from Lancaster called John L. Thompson came here with a wife and child and went into partnership with Alfred Gilmore. I think by the spring of 1841 or soon afterwards we had fourteen resident members of the bar, and the principal business and nearly all the cases were tried by the old lawyers from the adjoining counties. Sutton got a good many collections in Jefferson County through friends in Indiana, and that was the most lucrative part of a young attorney's practice. It seemed to me that nearly all the newcomers had friends or influence to get them into practice but myself. I met quite a number of men through the county that had come from Mifflin County and had known me as a boy, but their patronage did not generally amount to anything, and the prospect through the fall of 1840 and winter of 1841 to me looked anything but rosy; indeed I felt gloomy and dispirited that winter -- the snow hanging on the pine trees and the gloomy woods, the ragged streets and unfinished and unsightly houses. As soon as the snow was off -- mud and dust. There was that winter a thaw in January. I recollect on the night of the 10th of that month there was a thunder shower after dark with quite vivid lightning, though there was cold weather and snow both before and after that.

I felt that if any reasonable chance of improving my prospects offered I would pull up stakes and leave in the spring; but I was away off in the woods. A daily stage passed through from Bellefonte to Franklin and we only heard from the outside world by that channel. I think it was fully three weeks after the Presidential election before we heard that the State had gone for Harrison. The inquiry every night when the stage came in, was "What is the news from 'Potter and McKean'." I had before been taking the "Saturday Courier," a weekly Philadelphia paper, and it was nearly a week after it was published before I received it. I read the stories and news in that and in the little papers published at home. I had a few law books and Davy Hays had a few, and we pored over them. Hays read Dallas reports and I read Troubett and Haleys practice, but had not the reports to read as Judge Burnside had recommended. Still, by reading and talking and practicing a little, I learned so-me law that winter, but it was a gloomy time in my life.

One thing I was determined on -- I would go no more home till I could go as a success or at least with a prospect of making a living.

There was plenty of company in town. The bar itself furnished pretty good society -- mostly social, clever fellows. Sutton I had known very well at College and he and I met very cordially and continued friends till the day of his death. He soon got to like Hays and gradually we swung off and though social with all, became far more intimately associated than with others. Hays was a warmhearted little fellow of good intellect with a streak of the sentimental in his character, fond of singing old hymns on a Sunday afternoon, in which I usually joined him, and they always brought home and Mother to my mind and I frequently felt sad for I knew I had no home but where I was, and my local attachment to the old home was always strong and lasting. Poor Hays -- he had lost his Mother when a child, had not the best influence around him; an impulsive nature, he sometimes in company went off on a spree and he always hated himself for it afterwards, and while in the office with me refused often to go with fellows to drink. I recollect of him being but on one while we were in the office together, and I never lived with a more agreeable, kind-hearted fellow.

Sutton, who was an exemplary member of the Presbyterian Church, liked Hays as well as I did, and we became warm friends and constant companions. Everybody was social, but society had not been formed at that time, though a number of excellent families had settled in town.

Hugh A. Thompson brought his family here a short time after I came. His wife was a refined, high-toned, excellent woman and at that time they had several children. He and John Lyon established themselves in a store in the Alexander Reynolds house. They were also from the town of Indiana. Lyon was from Fayette County and he also had a family.

Before I left home I had at one time been visiting in Center County and met John Newell, a grandson of old Aunt Barron. We were then both boys but he was several years older than I was. At the time I came to Clarion he was a clerk in the wholesale grocery store of Robert Dalzell and Co. of Pittsburg and had charge of a large portion of the business of the firm. I had never seen him but the one time, but we considered ourselves kind of relations -- his Uncle John Barron having married my Cousin Jane Ferguson. He knew of my settling in Clarion and sent me some collections which I made promptly, and he sent me others and got me business from other houses, and through him I soon had established business relations with a number of houses doing business in this county. I was anxious to become a good collector and gave close attention to the claims in my hands and was fast getting into a paying business when the stag law of 1842 was passed that tied up collections for one year. This gave me a back set, but I pressed collections just as fast as the law would permit, and by the end of the year I was doing a paying business and was independent. I never had a better friend than John Newell and I made out of business sent by him some thousands of dollars.

Section 12:  People & Events of 1841

Well the gloomy winter of 1841 wore away and as the spring began to open the town was alive with work. Houses were being finished and new ones going up. Railings of houses, barns and stables were an everyday occurrence. No one went out to hunt hands for a raising, but when ready the hands in charge set up a hullabaloo as loud as they could yell and nearly everyone hearing the racket would betake themselves to the raise, and in that way most of the buildings were raised.

I recollect one morning Hays and I were walking up along where the First National Bank stands and we heard a hurrah out on Wood Street, and we broke right back through the thick pines and brush. About half way out we ran against a huge fallen chestnut so large we could hardly get over it, which we had never seen before. We got through, however, and found the hands gathering to put up the house of Abraham Richards (now Mrs. Richards). We stayed and helped to raise the house. In fact, I think Sutton, Hays and I were at not less than twenty raisings that spring.

The weather opened out beautifully. I never mind of more pleasant weather any spring since. The mud dried up and we traveled about a great deal. Very often in the evenings we three would walk out a mile or two and enjoyed ourself like school boys. The outdoor exercise had an excellent effect on our spirits and I began to enjoy myself. A little business came dropping in and I thought I saw a chance of making a living. My winter's reading gave me a little confidence in myself and I thought in time I could try cases with or against the old lawyers; at least I could make a more creditable contest than I had done in the Adams case.

At the May Court I had done better than I expected -- not that I had got much money, but I had got some business, argued a cert[i]orari or two and felt myself growing as a lawyer. I had paid my boarding and office rent and I had enough of my fifty dollars left to bear my expenses home, and I had got enough to feel that I could not be starved out.

Old Judge Evan had built a little office for Hays, which is now the front part of Judge Corbett's office. It was finished before the May Court and Hays and I moved into it at twenty-five dollars a year rent. It was set up on blocks but was new and comfortable and the rent was reasonable.

I had a strong desire to go home that spring. I could well spare the time. Hays would take care of my business. He had more than I had, got principally through Howe with whom he was in partnership. I did not like to spare the money, but it would cost me as much to pay my board as my traveling expenses would be. About that time J. W. Guthrie offered me a stout little bay horse he had to ride over the mountain free of charge, and I determined to go. I suppose it was the latter part of May I started and made the trip very easily and at very little cost.

At that time my Sister, Margaret, was married to James Oliver and they were living on the farm with Brother Oliver who had exchanged farms with Robert. During the summer of 1840 Robert's wife had been in poor health. She then had three children and seemed to be running down, and shortly after I came to Clarion, to wit on the 5th day of November, 1840, she died. Robert was left with his three young children, and after getting back to the valley, my Mother and Sister Rachel Jane took charge of his children. I stayed several days with my brother and sister and had a nice visit and my sister went over with me to the valley and I stood again on the spot I was born and spent my early life and I enjoyed it ever so much and I had not the unsettled feelings that troubled me when I went away. On the contrary, I had a sanguine feeling that I was settled and independent, and I think I held out that idea rather more than I felt. In other words, I was rather disposed to brag than complain.

If I got any money at that time it was very little, probably about fifteen dollars, and after staying a few weeks, turned around and came back to Clarion. I recollect I arrived here after the middle of the day on a very warm day in June and Mrs. Coulter got me up a late dinner to which I did ample justice. By that time I felt a good deal like coming home when I got to Clarion. Mrs. Coulter, my landlady, had always been friendly and the boarders frequently spent a part of their evening with her in the dining room. She was a great worker and kept a sharp supervision of her girls and the house, but was cheerful and good company, in the evenings.

I mind one evening the kitchen girls had a kind of a party and had taken possession of the boarders' sitting room behind the bar. As the boarders came in they fell into the party, and took part in the play. Hays and I did not come down from the office till about ten o'clock. As we came to the door, we heard a racket inside, and opening the door, we found Gilmore, Johnston, Butler, Alexander and Jim McLaughlin on the floor with the girls in some obstreperous play. They immediately dragged us into the play, but I found it too democratic and slipped out and went to bed. I had not been long there till Hays came up (we slept in the same room). I asked him why he had left the party. He said, "Oh, I got tired of it and went out and washed my mouth and came to bed". He said he could not enjoy a party like that unless he had about three drinks in him and then he would smell of dishwater for three days. I don't know how long they kept it up, but we saw no more of it.

As the summer advanced and harvest came on, we found business very dull. Hays and I had paid out our last dollar and were both completely strapped. One day we happened to ask Sutton what was the state of his finances and he pulled out ten cents and said that was every cent of money he had in the world. We took a hearty laugh over it and told him it was not fair for him to have such an advantage over us who had not a cent and that he should hand the ten cents over to Hays -- which he did, and we handed that ten cent piece back and forward I should say at least two months. I recollect one day Sutton and I had been up town. As we came down we saw Hays coming towards us laughing and swinging something over his head. He came up to us saying, "Look here, you poor rascals," and showed us a two dollar shin plaster he had just taken in as a fee, and we all started over to Hysong's who sold grumbles and small beer and spent the most of Hay's money. Hays' client wanted to bring a suit against a man who had shot his dog. In passing along the road the dog had run out and tried to bite him and having a gun on his shoulder he took it down and cracked away and shot the dog. The owner was indignant and so paid Hays two dollars for telling him that the dog had no business to attack a man on the public road and that the man had the right to defend himself against a man or beast, even if it resulted in the death of the canine.

The summer was wearing away and this impecuniosity became monotonous. I was not discouraged for I was still getting some business, but no money. I had argued a certiorari for old Mr. Andrew Owens and he had got into some trouble in settling with the auditors of Clarion Township. As supervisors they had appointed a day for a final settlement and the old gentleman spoke to me to go up and assist him. They wanted to charge him with the debt of a previous year. So I borrow [sic] James Ken's gray horse and rode up after dinner with Pendor's Digest under my arm. Before I got there I met the old man coming after me. Captain McCune was one of the auditors and I made his acquaintance for the first time. They got in session and I showed them the act of assembly requiring the auditors to settle the account of the township officers and that they had no power to go further back than the current year. I had no trouble getting the account passed as the supervisors wanted it and I stayed and saw the account closed to the satisfaction of my client.

I was about starting home when Mr. Owens came and asked me what he owed. I told him I wanted to be reasonable. He then asked if ten dollars would be satisfactory and I told him it would and he paid me. In all my after life I never received a fee that did me so much good. I really needed it and I had earned it myself. I have never been so hard up for money since. I got on the old gray and came back to Clarion in triumph, but said nothing about my success nor did I spend it for grumbles.

At the September Court I picked up a little more money and paid up my boarding. After that Court, Hays began to talk about going away. He was engaged to be married to a Miss Parks of Franklin. His brother-in-law, John J. Pearson, was practicing in Mercer and offered him a partnership which promised better returns than he expected in Clarion. He wanted to get married and on his practice here he could not keep a wife. Pearson was an able lawyer and had a large practice in Mercer and the adjoining counties. I was sorry to lose him for we had occupied the same office, slept in the same room and been companions almost ever since I came to the town. We had never been partners in business -- neither of us wanted partners, unless it would bring us practice or money. We never happened to be on opposite sides, but I had been employed on opposite sides with Howe. He was a great deal in the office when attending court in Clarion, and as he possessed a great fund of Yankee wit and was fond of fun, I had got to like him. He was shrewd and had the Yankee talent for asking questions and his strongest point as a lawyer was his skill in examining witnesses.

He was also popular with the jury and kept them in a good humor with witty speeches, but was really not a very strong lawyer. He had a wife but no children. They raised an adopted daughter who became the wife of Dr. Eaton, and I believe is living yet. Howe was afterwards elected to Congress, moved to Meadville, quit the practice, became rheumatic, spent several winters at Clifton Springs, finally removed to Rochester, New York, and died there, and after the life estate of his wife and daughter left twenty thousand dollars to the Alabama Theological Seminary.

In the fall of 1841 Judge McCalmont brought his wife and daughter to Clarion and boarded with us at the Western. He also brought his library down and put it up in our office and we had the use of his law books which to me was a most fortunate arrangement, for he had all the Pennsylvania Reports and I was not able to buy them. I saw that I would be the gainer by the departure of Hays, for as far as he could control it, I would get all his practice, and Howe would throw his influence to me, though we were partners only in the cases he put into my hands and my own practice was still slowly growing.

It was pretty late in the fall before Hays went away. I bought out his share of the office furniture, which was not much, took charge of his business, and was alone in the office for the first time only when Judge McCalmont came in to read or write. But he was not much in the office and he was good company and on abstract questions of law -- in cases that would not come before him, was good at giving me counsel.

The next May Sutton and I went to Franklin and saw our chum, Hays, married. He had quite a wedding. His brother, Alexander Hays, and five or six couples from Mercer were guests -- Sutton and I were all from Clarion; the rest were from Franklin. We had a jolly time and made many acquaintances, particularly among the young ladies. I think Sutton had more talent for cultivating ladies' society than I had and I have no doubt he was more popular among them for he was a fine looking fellow of good address and gentlemanly manners.

I never met Hays again till the fall of 1846 -- when a candidate for Congress I met him in Meadville. I had heard that he was somewhat dissipated and his looks indicated the incipient stages of intemperance. We spent an hour together and parted and I never saw him again. In holding courts in Mercer some time along about 1862 or 1863, I was walking with Samuel Mason, Esq. down through the cemetery, and when I least expected it my, eyes rested on a large headstone, "Sacred to the Memory of David B. Hays, Esq." I knew he was dead, but I had never thought of his grave. I was shocked and stood and looked at the inscription till I felt the tears coming to my eyes. His social habits, love of company and a streak of recklessness in his character had been the ruin of a noble, generous-hearted fellow as ever lay beneath the green sod. I never had a truer friend or a more genial companion. Requiescat in pacem.

His brother, Alexander Hays, was an officer both in the Mexican War, and as General Hays fell in battle in the War of the Rebellion.

Section 13:  Spring, 1841

The winter of 1841 and 2 I settled down to reading and practicing. Most of the time I was in the office and was diligent in trying to make myself a lawyer capable of trying cases with and against the old lawyers from the adjoining counties. My practice was small but I could live on it and I thought we ought to aim to run out all the non-resident lawyers who monopolized the trial of all important cases. I gave a great deal of work to my cases, hunted up carefully all the facts, studied them long and hard, frequently wrote out speeches to the jury on the facts in my side of the case. It is true when the other side was in my speech would never exactly hit and sometimes would not touch the question on which the contention finally turned. Still it was good exercise and turned the mind to laborous practice.

The summer had made considerable improvement in the town. The houses had many of them been finished and some of them painted. Along about March, 1841, I was sitting in the office in the Sloan house and I noticed a man across the street sitting on a scaffold up under the eaves painting as hard as he could. I did not know who he was, but afterwards made his acquaintance and found his name to be H. M. R. Clark, but he was not then living in town. I think he moved to town in the spring of 1842 and is living here yet -- an old fellow like myself. He had a wife but no children, but has been a prominent and successful citizen ever since he came. The brush was burnt and some lots cleared off and gardens planted -- most of them in potatoes. New houses were erected and the town had a more respectable appearance. The second story of the jail had been finished and furnished for a court room and was pretty comfortable, and all the preaching was done in it.

There were no organized churches in town. There were a few Baptists, a few Methodists under the charge of Dr. Goe, a few Catholics and a family or two of Lutherans. Gen. Jolly represented the Episcopal Church. H. A. Thompson, Thomas Sutton and Abraham Richards were Presbyterians, then John J. Wilson down at Myers Mill, the Brisbins and Gourleys to the south, and the Potters to the east belonged to the same church. I recollect of attending prayer meeting in H. A. Thompson's house the first year I was here. Many belonged to no church but had preferences. About the Western, Gilmore and some of the boarders were down on our church on account of the doctrine of predestination. Hays and I took up the cudgels for old John Calvin and I mind of having many stiff and sometimes boisterous arguments with Judge Myers, Gilmore and others in favor of that doctrine.

Although not a member of the Presbyterian Church, I was very willing to fight her battles. I don't know that I succeeded in convincing anybody, but I soon let the rascal know that I would not let that Church be sneered at, and as my opponents did not know much theology, I generally was so far successful that they were glad to let me alone. Lathy, Johnston and some others got to take my side of the controversy and it rather became the popular side.

Dr. Core and old Father Thomas preached for us occasionally; sometimes a traveling preacher came along and preached in the jail. In their absence, Dr. Goe frequently preached. Old Mr. Thomas was the father of the Reverend B. H. Thomas. He was an uneducated man, a great though uncultivated singer and full of zeal and fervor. It is probable he did more to build up the Baptist churches in this and Jefferson Counties than any of his successors.

At the time I began to board at the Great Western, there was not a Whig in the crowd -- except Joseph H. Patrick and myself. Some of the more ardent Democrats seemed to resent the intrusion of a Whig into the bosom of so harmonious a family. Hays had not then announced his politics and went to Franklin to vote. Among the boarders was John Richards, brother of Abraham, who was a most fanatical Democrat. He soon found out that I was on the opposite side. He never spoke to me nor showed any disposition to cultivate my acquaintance, and at the table looked at me as though I had horns. Like his brother, he was a carpenter and a very good one too. I wanted to get an office table made of a size and pattern to suit myself. I was rather amused at the shy and distant manner he regarded me, and I thought this would be a good time to establish more amicable relations with John and see if I could not make him a friend. So I hailed him one day and took him up to the office and told him what I wanted and gave him particular directions how to make it, and told him I understood he was a first class workman and I preferred him to any one else to do the job. The ice was at once broken and his face related into a smile and said he would make me just the thing I wanted, and he did, and in two or three days brought it into the office and it was just as I wanted it with two drawers and divided into sections as I had directed, and I paid John just what he asked for it, three dollars and a half, and he and I were always friends after that. That table has been in my office ever since and there have been few days in the last forty-five years I have not sat by it and opened and shut those drawers and I am now writing on it. I had it made a little higher than an ordinary table so I would not get doubled down writing on it. Nobody else likes it, but I have done all my office writing on it and that is not a little, and I expect to use it as long as I am able to use a pen. Richards went to Missouri many years ago, and I have lost sight of him, though he did other work for me before he went away. He was a narrow-minded but broad-chested strong man and a good carpenter.

As soon as the lower story of the jail was finished, Sheriff Hasson got an old man named Speer to move into the front part of it to act as deputy sheriff and jailor. He was something of a character in his way, very clever and social but not very smart as a county officer.

In those days when everybody was poor and money scarce, it was not unusual when the sheriff got a Fieri Facias to levy on personal property and take a bond with security for the production of the property at the court house on the return day of the writ. The object of this was to procure time and generally the defendant did not expect to either pay the money or deliver the goods, and to the next term a judgment would be entered on the bond and a new writ issued, or if the plaintiff preferred to look to the sheriff for the money, he had the bond for his protection. Sheriff Speer, as he was called, generally sympathized with the defendant, and as it made more costs was very liberal in taking bonds. One time he got a writ on a man across the Clarion and as he had no personal property -- he lived on a hundred acres of land -- and took his bond for the delivery of it at the court house on the first day of the next term. This was a standing joke on Sheriff Speer and it was long before he heard the last of it.

He had a large rather fine looking daughter and a long-legged son called James. Not infrequently they gave parties. I was at some of them and saw what I thought was pretty good dancing in some of the empty cells of the jail, but as I could not dance never took part in them. I mind of Sutton and I being there one night till one o'clock and in taking some of the girls home, lost the path, and Sutton got tangled up in a brush heap and we had fun getting him and his girl out and the girls were safely deposited in their cabins.

Davy Hays had a habit, when any one said a ridiculous or witty thing, of hallooing "Shakespeare". One evening a dozen or two of us were standing around the corner near where the Second National Bank now is. Someone made a foolish remark just as Young Speer was passing, and Hays roared out "Shakespeare". Speer turned around indignantly and said, "My name is not Jake Speer, but Jim Speer, and I don't like to be hallooed at that way", and Jim seemed bewildered at the roar of laughter that greeted his expostulation.

This was in the spring of 1841 and the town was full of workmen who gathered around the corners in the evenings. The amusements were jumping, throwing a sledge or shoulder stone or heaving a crowbar or rail, and sometimes there was a good display of muscle, and I never saw more good nature and genial feeling in a crowd. I look back to the spring of 1841 as the time when I first felt a home feeling in the town of Clarion and I have never wanted to leave it since.

Section 14:  Hunting & Other Activities

A young man's real wants are few and he readily falls into the habits of those with whom he is thrown, and where he has work and a prospect of a living he soon becomes contented. I wanted to work and looked forward with a keen relish to the time when I could contest with the old lawyers of the adjoining counties and when I would have a standing of my own at the bar. The effect of this was to make me attentive to the business I had and to read and study carefully with a view of taking a higher position in the future.

At that time, when the greater part of the county was in woods, there was great uncertainty in the land titles. Many of the warrant lines had not been run since the original surveys made in the latter part of the previous century, and in laying the Holland and Bingham and some other warrants, the deputy surveyors had frequently run them in blocks, marking only the outside lines, and marking the interior lines on paper -- as it was called "chamber surveys," and not infrequently settlers coming in without any knowledge of survey squatted on what they supposed was vacant land. In this way many controversies grew up about the ownership of lands, and the first year I was here I found that the old lawyers talked familiarly about the land law of Pennsylvania and the rules for finding the true location of warrants. Of our whole system of acquiring titles by warrant survey and patent by settlement and the statute of limitations, I knew little. In the older counties the lines and titles were generally settled, but found that the litigation growing out of land titles was going to be an important branch of the practice. I went to work and read "Smiths Note" which is a history of the land law of Pennsylvania and the reports of cases as far as I had the books. The first case or two I was retained along with one or more older lawyers and made it my business to take notes of testimony and tried to understand the points on controversy, but I was surprised to learn how little I knew about them and how utterly incompetent I was to try a complicated action of ejectment. To one not in the profession it is impossible to realize how much learning has been expended in ascertaining the true lines of a survey from the marks on the ground by the original surveyor who located the warrants. There are volumes of reports on that subject alone and this was but one of the many subjects of controversy in the land law of the State. Time, accident and clearing out and improving the land have effaced and obliterated nearly all the marks of the original surveys; and that branch of legal learning is nearly now, and soon will be altogether obsolete.

I worked faithfully to master this branch of our practice, but it was several years before I felt myself at home in a trial of ejectment. But the first ten or fifteen years I made a good portion of my fees out of the trial of land titles. I had studied the theory of surveying at College and the fall after I graduated I did a little practical surveying, which I found of great use trying land cases in after life.

In the fall of 1841, about the time Hays went away, an old man named Janus Grey came up here from Pittsburgh and rented a store building on what is now covered by the Kribbs block just above the Linsay Pretner house, and brought on a large stock of dry goods -- claimed to be fifteen thousand dollars worth. He was then a gray headed but active business man and was a great talker on almost every subject, principally on speculation and business, but sometimes would preach a sermon on Sunday. He was the owner of six thousand acres of land, mostly pine timber, in the northern part of the county. He also owned a large tract of land in the State of Illinois besides considerable property in Pittsburgh, but he was in debt and was anxious to turn his store goods into money. His advent created some stir in town and to show that he meant business he brought along with the goods two salesmen -- young, good looking fellows.

The older, John Kramer, was married to a step-daughter of his; the younger was a bright-eyed, red-cheeked, curly headed boy just getting a beard on, was quick and smart and well calculated behind a counter to make a good impression on young lady customers. The store soon became a very popular place. Our set got to buying their cigars there and very often in the evening sat in there and smoked them. I don't think while the old man was in the store it was so much resorted to by the young fellows, but he always went to bed early and was an early riser. The young men appeared to have the running of the store.

How long it remained I don't now recollect, but I think over a year and it may have been two, but I don't recollect of it ever being recruited but while it lasted it was a popular place. A good many of the goods were sold on credit and at last the books were put into my hands for collection and I made some money out of it. Old Mr. Grey subsequently sold his land in this County, a part of which is now the land of C. Leeper and Co., and went back to Pittsburgh and is long since dead. Kramer also returned to Pittsburgh, was for a number of years in the banking house of Allen Kramer and Co., afterwards was President or Cashier of the First National Bank of Allegheny City. He too is now dead. The younger salesman's history is so well known that I need only mention that his name was and is J. E. N. Wetherington.

At the time I came out here, balls and dancing parties were popular. I think there were two at the Western the winter after I came. I recollect of the young people from Strattonville, Corsica and Brookville and some from Shippensville and the county being there. The dancing was kept up vigorously till about 12 o'clock when supper was served up and from that till 2 A.M. the company broke up and left. I did not take part in the dancing, but I could not go to bed if I had wanted to, for the house was crowded with people and shaken up with the dances. I, however, managed to make the acquaintance of most of the guests and entertained myself talking to the girls when not dancing. This kind of amusement was more common than in subsequent years.

I recollect in the winter of 1841 and 42 there was a great ball in Brookville and nearly everyone that could procure a conveyance went there. The Western was nearly deserted. Old Mrs. McCalmont and I were left to take care of the Hotel. Lizzie McCalmont and I spent a good part of the evening cracking and eating hickory nuts in the kitchen. I never saw much drunkenness at these parties, but there was a good deal of drinking and it was a common thing, next day, to hear of a good deal of headache.

During my first winter the room back of the barroom was occupied by the boarders and at night nearly all gathered in there. There were many stories told, many discussions on all manner of subjects, and frequently songs sung. "Hail to The Chief" was a favorite in which nearly all would join in the noise, though some did not add much to the music. We frequently played a foolish game of cards called "Bounce" in which any number could take a hand. It was, I think, more like dominoes, but I have forgotten it so entirely that I could not now play it at all. There was no gambling in it, but it was played only for amusement. Judge Myers lived then over at the furnace, but frequently spent an evening at the Western. He and David B. Long always played euchre and frequently ordered in a bottle of liquor. Judge Myers, Long and G. B. Hamilton all drank liquor freely, but I never saw any of them intoxicated. I think nearly all the boarders drank occasionally but not to excess and some of them very little. Col. Coulter, our landlord, was fond of a drink and could take down a tumblerfull at a swallow, but it did not show on him much and it was not till some years after that he became addicted to drunken sprees.

I recollect one day in the fall of 1841 of Hays, Sutton and I going out pheasant hunting. It was a beautiful Indian Summer afternoon -- hazy and smoky, but dry and warm. We got out away beyond the graveyard and for the purpose of covering more ground we scattered, and I got away off by myself out beyond the old field. The day was so pleasant that I wandered on out to the top of the river hill between Russell's dam and where the railroad bridge now is. I sat down on a log to rest myself. The sun had got around by that time and was shining against the hill. The temperature was perfect and there was something inviting in gazing down at the river on over on the opposite bank. While sitting there I discovered that I had a "Saturday Courier" in my pocket that I had got out of the office that morning. I pulled it out and began to read one of the stories and becoming interested and everything seemed so quiet and delightful, that I got down on the dry leaves and read away -- forgot all about Sutton and Hays and when I got through the story which was a long one, I was surprised to notice that it was almost sundown and I was two or three miles in the woods and had only a general idea of the direction back to town. I was not the least alarmed and wondered what had become of my other hunters.

I picked up my gun and started back, was soon at the old field and coming on up towards the graveyard I heard a squirrel barking on a tree up on the ridge to my right. I started up there and soon found the tree he was on but he was an old cunning fellow and dodged round the tree so I could not get a shot at him. I moved around the tree continuously and finally got a shot at him and sent him scampering to the top of the tree, evidently somewhat tickled by a grain of shot. The tree was high and he kept jumping from limb to limb while I gave him two or three more shots, apparently without effect, and it was growing dark. Finally he made a race down the tree, ran out on a limb and jumped off away down the hill and I after him through the bushes, but he kept ahead of me and ran up another chestnut tree and into a hole.

In my haste I had dropped the gun and lost my hat. It was fast growing dark and I had run farther than I was aware of, but after some time I found both and started home. By the time I got to the edge of the town the moon was shining brightly and I met Hays and Sutton coming back to hunt me, thinking I had got lost or met with some accident. They had come home before night and had their supper and we had a laugh over my first hunt in Clarion County.

I don't now recollect whose gun I had, but it was not my own for I was not then able to own a gun. When I got further along I became the owner of both a rifle and double-barreled shotgun and some of the most delightful afternoons of my life were spent on the hills around Clarion shooting pheasants and squirrels. H. M. R. Clark in after years became my general hunting companion and many a bag of small game we brought home. My love for the woods continued till late in life and till my own boys became my hunting companions.

At one time, I think in the fall of 1842, I became ambitious to hunt on a more extended field. George Dall had a sawmill on the Clarion River and one morning he and I got on our horses with rifles slung on our shoulders and started up the Clarion. His mill was three miles above the mouth of Spring Creek and it was a pretty good day's ride up there. The evening I got there we made arrangements with Jim Crow to take me out the next day and have a deer hunt. In the morning I went over to his cabin and we crossed the river and got up on the flat in a hemlock forest and we hunted faithfully all day till about four o'clock and found nothing and had nothing to eat, came back to his cabin with empty bags and empty stomachs and made our dinner and supper together out of a half jerked saddle of venison hung up in his chimney. This about satisfied me with deer hunting and I made up my mind that my vacation was for smaller game.

I stayed around the mill a day or two -- went out and looked at the windfall. It was an interesting sight. It was said the cyclone had passed about forty years before that and for about a quarter of a mile wide not one stick or tree was left standing. The storm had swept from the southwest to the northeast and the timber, half rotten, was piled up in places 15 feet high. It was a gloomy scene of destruction and desolation. It was difficult to get through. I did not try it, but stood on the edge and looked over it and never wanted to look on it again.

Another season of the year -- at that time game was abundant. In the spring from March to May the pigeons flew as thick as autumn leaves -- very often over the town. Generally the morning and evening was the best time to take them on the wing. Some of our sportsmen went out and watched for flocks on the buckwheat fields. I usually stood on the brow of the river hill and fired at flocks crossing from the other side of the river, and I think I have blown away a pound of powder in a single day, some times killing a good many birds and some times when they flew high, gotten very few.

In taking this outdoor exercise and amusement I was not conscious of neglecting my profession. I know I gave careful attention to what business I had and I read a good deal, and we lawyers discussed legal questions very often. A young man's life is a good deal influenced by his surroundings. My bread and butter depended on my success and this was a strong motive to dilligence [sic]. Sutton and Hays were well posted in the general literature of the day. We read and talked about poetry and the popular writers of that time. I know I had read Milton, Young, Pollock, Thompson, Shakespeare, Byron, Homer's Iliad, Burns and a number more of the English poets. Certain kinds of poetry I enjoyed and felt deeply. Sometimes in the woods alone certain lines would come to me like an inspiration, and the words and the rhyme would take shape in my mind in a manner I could not comprehend, for in other moods I could not recall them at all. I thought I could appreciate gems of practical thought and sentiment and sympathy with beautiful descriptions of scenery, yet I could not write a line of poetry and the attempts at it by Sutton and I, which we sometimes indulged in for amusement, invariably resulted in awkward doggerel.

Section 15:  Politics, Work & Charity

I read all the good speeches made in Congress and as soon as I was able took the Congressional Globe and appendix and in this way managed to keep pretty nearly abreast of the literary and political news of the day.

At this time I had an uncertain feeling about my future that I am satisfied now did me no harm, for it kept my mind alert and eager to catch at anything to improve my prospects, and after the first year, although making slow progress, I felt that I stood on firmer ground. In the first place I had learned a good deal of practical life and was better qualified to take hold of the business that dropped into my hands, and I thought I could see the dawn of a brighter future.

Along about these years Neal's charcoal sketches began to appear; Mrs. Candle's curtain lectures and Salimagundi [sic] and machine poetry. Jack Downing's letters were old, the moon hoax was perpetrated I think before I came to Clarion. Washington Irving and J. Fennimore Cooper were living popular authors. Some of their works I had read at College. I had read while there a good deal of fiction -- Scotts [sic] -- many of them, J. K. P. James, Fielding, Dr. Warrens and others. After I was settled here for many years I read little at novels, only the stories published in the Saturday Courier and some in Graham's Magazine which I took for a year or two.

A year or two after I came, an old Scotchman named Jamy Rutherford died up in Farmington township. Some of our boys went up to the vendue and I authorized Gilmore to buy me any histories that went cheap enough, and he bought me Homer's history of England in twelve volumes for a dollar a volume. They were well bound and in good condition and I reviewed that work at my leisure and I have them yet. Soon after that I bought Gibbon's Rome. Early in 1841 the first volume of Watts and Sergeants Reports came out and I bought it, and every volume of Supreme Court Reports I bought as they came out from that till the spring of 1885, something over one hundred volumes.

About 1843 when Gen. Jolly moved away I bought from him Sergeant and Rawles Reports and Rawles Reports, 23 volumes. Sometime after that I bought from Alfred Gilmore Watts Reports, 10 volumes. Penrose and Watts 3 volumes I bought at D. W. Fosters vendue, also Bacon's abridgment 7 volumes.

In the fall of 1848, when Mary was a baby, I was in Philadelphia. Sitting in the Hotel one evening I noticed in a paper a sale of law books and on looking at my watch I found it was just about the time the auction commenced. I got right up and went over to the auction rooms of Thomas and Sons on Walnut Street and the sale was just commencing as I got in. I had thought nothing about what I wanted to buy, and before I had time to think a full set of Massachusetts Reports were struck off for a dollar a volume, so I opened up my eyes and began to bid, and I got Binney's Reports and Chitty's pleading at a little over a dollar a volume and might have got other standard works at less than half price if I had been a little smarter. But I had then all the Supreme Court Reports but Wharton and I never bought them to this day. The Digests I bought as they came out and other works such as acts of assembly and works on practice till I now have what cost me more than a thousand dollars but owing to the reduction of prices and the republication of cheap editions of various books, would probably not sell for more than half that sum. This is a succinct history of how I got my library, in the perusal of which and in the preparation of cases I have spent many anxious hours and lost some sleep.

During the fall of 1841 I had travelled around the country some -- gone as far as Kittanning and several times to Brookville collecting for J. and J. Milliken. I had received a number of bills and one morning in November I got on a bay horse of Charley Waters and started to Brookville. The roads were frozen and pretty good and I got down there in good time and went around among the merchants making settlements and receiving money. I did not get away till after supper and with a roll of money in every pocket I started up the hill. It soon got very dark -- was cloudy with a strong east wind. I had to stop four and a half miles from Brookville to see a man who was to pay me some money for the same firm. When I got there it was pitch dark and pretty cold and it began to snow. I got four hundred dollars more money, stuffed it under my overcoat, buttoned myself up to the chin, got on my horse and rode home with a driving snowstorm on my back -- every pocket full of money. True it was not my own, but I felt proud at the thought that I was a business man and at the opportunity of showing that I could handle other people's money, and I would not have kept a cent over my regular fees for a kingdom. It was not a pleasant night to be out, but I certainly enjoyed that ride and was happier taking the snow than I would have been by the stove in my office, and with a good horse under me I had not a fear of being robbed.

Next morning I wrote to J. and J. Milliken what I had done and very particularly how much I had received from each man, and in due time received a very satisfactory answer. I don't recollect now how or by whom I sent the money to them. We had no banks at that time, but they got it and I retained over fifty dollars collecting fees.

One day that winter, 1841 and 1842 I was sitting in the office when a pale, sickly-looking young man came in and asked me if came from Mifflin County, and on telling him who I was he said his name was Clugh, that he lived in Ferguson Valley near old Hugh McKee's, that he had been out in Ohio visiting friends and got sick and lain there for over a month, and started home but at Franklin had found himself so weak he had to lie over several days among strangers and had just come on here, but had not money to pay his stage fare home and asked me for the loan of ten dollars. I had never seen him but knew that there was a family of that name where he said he lived. The poor fellow looked sick and as if he needed a friend. I pitied him and although not flush, I could spare that sum and I gave him ten dollars. After he was gone I had doubts whether I had not done a green thing for he might very easily be an importer. I concluded to say nothing about it, but in a short time I got a letter from Millikens instructing me that young Clugh had paid them ten dollars for me. I was then glad I had accommodated the fellow, and although I have never seen or heard of him since, I have no doubt he made an honest and upright man.

I have done a few of that kind of things since and was not so fortunate but I was better able to lose the money.

Section 16:  Building an Office

By the spring of 1842 I began to have a little money ahead and fair prospect of more, and a strong desire got hold of me to become the owner of a little of the property I had regarded as so poor and worthless when I first saw. The lots were cheap but my pile was small, and I was afraid to go in debt.

Judge Myers had built a brick dwellings store -- above the diamond and William Alexander was building a brick hotel on the opposite side and further up the street, and a good deal of improvement had been made in that end of the town, but from the first I preferred the east end and had a kind of instinctive notion that the town would draw to the east and south. At an early period I often walked through the woods of the lots on which my house stands and thought it would be a nice place for a home, although it was low and flat and some of it wet, and at that time quite out of the business part of the town except Sam McCamant's blacksmith shop across the street.

Billy and Jesse Love were talking of building a hotel on the east side of the block. Samuel Duff was then living in town and that spring laid the first brick pavement in Clarion in front of the Great Western Hotel. He was a man of some means and that spring bought the two lots next the alley, being numbered in the map of the town 26 and 27. I got to talking with him about his purchase and he told me he would give me one of them for what he paid for it and allow me any reasonable time to pay for it. I studied the matter over carefully, made a bargain with Col. Coulter, my landlord, that he was not to ask me for my boarding for six months or a year, gathered up all the money I could and bought the lot and made a payment on it.

I kept that old article and have it yet somewhere in the office, but cannot find it. I took No. 37 that being the lowest in price. I think I was to pay a hundred and thirty or forty dollars for it. It (the article) is plastered over the back with small receipts from a dollar or two up to twenty or thirty, but I got money faster than I expected and I think had it paid off and a deed for it in less than a year.

That same summer I bought No. 38 of George Bovard for $138.00 and hired old Jo Kilby to grub all the trees out of both lots. There was a good deal of timber on them. I mind one large chestnut near the northeast corner of the house that had been struck with lightning. A very nice, young, thrifty white pine I saved for a shade and ornament, but afterwards had to cut it down to make room for the stables. The stuff lay on the ground for a while. I gave a good deal of it to anyone who would take it away, reserving enough to make posts to fence the lots and some of the smaller white oaks for stakes and joists for the office I intended building.

I had attended to some business for my old friend, George Dall. He was slow pay and was sued sometimes. I went to Brookville and tried an arbitration for him and was successful. There was very little money in the lumber business at that time and while he had plenty of lumber, he had very little money. He proposed to me to get a complete bill made out by a carpenter for an office and he would fill it and deliver at the turnpike bridge, this to include shingles, and it would not cost me a dollar in money and I could get an office of my own for a trifle. This came over me very pleasantly and I closed with it at once.

My friend, John Richards, made out the bill and the first water the summer of 1842 my lumber was dropped at Black's Landing. Lynon and Thompson kept a team for hauling around town, with Martin Kearny for driver, and I got him to haul up my stuff and dump it on the lot.

Having succeeded in paying for my lots so easily, I thought I had better risk getting my office up, and so got Richards at it and had it up and a roof on it before the winter set in. The afternoon we raised the office, plenty of hands came and we not only raised the office but had a log rolling and piled up all the stumps and logs on the two lots, and as I had time I got them all burned along through the fall and winter.

The office was built near where the gate opens into the house. The corner lot did not then belong to me.

I did not get the office plastered and painted till the spring of 1843. About the last of April I moved into it with a complacent feeling of independence and self-sufficiency that I have surely experienced since. It was 28 by 16 feet in two apartments, the front 16 by 16, with a chimney between the two rooms in the center and a grate on each side with a neat closet and clothespress in the back room between the chimney and the east wall. It was clean and nicely painted by H. M. R. Clark and really was a comfortable place for a bachelor to stow himself in.

The pavement was two or three feet lower then than now and my scotch friend, Billy Thompson, insisted on building me stone steps to let me down gracefully to the pavement. It cost me some twenty dollars but I stood it. They were neatly cut, with a platform stone on the top, that now ornaments the kitchen door of my house. All this indicates that I was prospering and taking a better position as a lawyer, nor did I find it necessary to practice economy so closely.

My preceptor, E. S. Benedict, charged me two hundred dollars for my tuition, which was more than I ought to have paid, but he told me he would wait till I could pay it myself, and that spring I sent him the last hundred dollars, and with the exception of same dribs on the office, I owed no man anything, and I went home once a year to see my old father and mother. It was a great pleasure to the old man when someone told him I was getting into a practice and was going to make a good lawyer. I believe it was Gen. S. G. Clover, and it removed a doubt that I know he entertained about my success in the profession.

As soon as I got into my office I put a stout board fence around both lots and planted several apple and a number of peach trees. When building the fence we noticed a young apple tree near the front fence. It was evidently from a seed, and when first seen not over a foot high. It was by the side of a pile of lime core that had been thrown there when Thomas Norwell built the front part of what is now the I. T. Moffett house. After the fence was up, it grew quite vigorously and the next spring was as high as the fence, and I had the top cut off and a graft of the Belleflower inserted. A year or two afterwards a storm came along and blew the grafted top all off but a small twig at one side not three inches long and that was split up the side. Nevertheless it grew, and in a few years made quite a heavy top. When the house was built, the ground around the tree was filled up from one to three feet, but it seemed only to grow the stronger. The Belleflower, though a good apple, was not a prolific bearer, and many years after I had the top cut off and grafted with the Baldwin. That tree is there yet, large and flourishing, and no longer ago than the fall of 1885 Fred Elslager and I picked seventeen bushels of apples off it. That is the oldest tree in my lot, all the others of my first planting were cut down to make room for my new house in 1858, or were destroyed by the cattle getting in that summer. The peach trees had nearly all been killed by the cold winter of 1855-6.

The site of the town must be natural grassland, for as soon as the stuff was cleared of it a nice crop of timothy came up in several places, though no seed was sown. I went over to Dr. Bowser's and John G. Mendenhall and brought over several rose roots. I recollect the cabbage rose was one -- I think a sweet briar, a sprout of rhubarb tree and a bunch of pie plant -- some of it is there yet. In a short time I had quite a number of trees and shrubbery and on a Sunday afternoon in the summer could sit in the back office and listen to the birds singing and there were a great many more of them then than now, and I soon had nests full of young birds in the lot and they seemed to feel pretty safe there, for nothing but cats could get in and I have many a time pelted them out when they showed a disposition to molest my pets. I know the robins were more tame in the lot than on the outside. Very rarely was anyone in the lot but myself and they were not disturbed.

Section 17:  Courts & Lawyers

In the fall of 1842 I went down to Pittsburgh to be admitted to the Supreme Court. I believe I had enough business there to pay my expenses. I went there on the Saturday evening before the court, and on Sunday I met Judge Burnside. He was stopping at the same hotel and I found him very friendly. He was then on the Supreme bench. The next Monday morning when the court met, my friend, John W. Howe, moved for my admission and was about stating that he had known me to be a member of the bar for two years, when Judge Burnside broke in saying, "Never mind, Mr. Howe, he is one of my boys. I admitted him in Mifflin County more than two years ago. Let him be sworn," and I was sworn.

At that time John Bannister Gibson was the Chief Justice and Kennedy Rodgers, Coulter and Burnside were the Associates. They were a venerable looking and able body of men. Gibson had done much to build up the excellent system of jurisprudence in our State, was a large man with heavy shoulders and big head and a strongly marked face. They were soon all gone and a new set of men took their places, and my principal practice in that court was before Black, Lewis, Lowry, Woodward and Strong. I think Sergeant was on the bench when I was admitted. Coulter did not come on till afterwards, and died in a few years afterwards.

At the sessions of the Supreme Court we met many of the lawyers from the western counties, and in the evenings we usually had pretty lively times. Some patronized the theatre, some played euchre and many sat around talking and telling stories, and a few would be studying over their paper books.

It is an easy place to speak in the Supreme Court. The preparation is mostly made before you go there and eloquence or any attempts at ingenious arguments or sophistry is thrown away. A clear, logical statement of the facts and succinct statements of the principles of law applicable to them and a quotation of your authorities is all the court wants.

Two sets of judges have entirely passed away since I was admitted, and the present court (now increased to seven judges) is composed of men generally a good deal younger than myself, and I think none older. Ex Chief Justice Agnew is still living, but has been out of office for a number of years. He must be over eighty.

In the winter of 1842 and 3 I found my practice increasing and I thought I was growing as a lawyer. In a few instances I found men inquiring for me when they wanted a lawyer. A good deal of this was on account of practicing with Mr. Howe, but I prepared the cases and had my clients carefully hunt up all the evidence, and the effort to be thoroughly prepared both on law and facts naturally caused men to repose some confidence in me.

In those days we tried cases before Justices of the Peace, and more cases were arbitrated than now. These I tried my myself [sic], and many a contest I had with Lathy and Gen. Jolly, and ransacked the books for authorities to spread before a board of not very intelligent arbitrators. Sometimes we would make speeches by the hour over a horse trade or a controversy involving twenty-five dollars. How much of these speeches were made for bunkum and how much on law and facts of the case, I would not now like to say.

I mind of Lathy and I having a fierce fight before Esqr. Smith about the ownership of a pig. The plaintiff proved by about three witnesses that the pig was his, and the defendant by about the same number of equally credible witnesses proved that it was his. We argued long and earnestly on the discrepancy of the evidence and the question of personal identity and ear-marks of the pig, and the squire delivered a Solomon's judgment -- that is, he gave the plaintiff a judgment for half the price of the pig and divided the costs. We had many a laugh over it afterwards.

Lathy had got into a good deal of business and he arbitrated nearly everything, and I frequently met him on the other side. J. L. Thompson had gone back to Lancaster; John B. Butler had made several mistakes in bringing suits and in his pleadings, and I had tripped him up a few times and he was not doing much. Gen. Jolly had become intemperate and I frequently got the advantage of his lapses, and in the fall of 1843 he pulled up stakes and went back to Montgomery County.

After the first two years, Mr. Gilmore spent most of his time in Butler, but attended the courts and a portion of his time he remained in Clarion. Jacques W. Johnston had gone east and married and brought his wife out but never went to housekeeping. She lost her health and I think in less than a year died. He soon after went away and I lost trace of him, but some years after I heard that he died somewhere out west. Old Billy Clark sold his hotel to Robert Barker and with his son, Jesse G. Clark moved back to Brookville.

This general thinning out was that much clear gain to those of us that remained. I began to feel myself in a pretty secure position. Sutton had the best collecting practice in town, but I think did not try as many controverted cases as Lathy and I, though he did try some cases very well. D. W. Foster had not much collecting practice but tried some cases and had a pretty good legal mind. He became the editor of the Whig paper of the county and ran that for some years. But a large portion of the cases in court were still tried by the old lawyers from the adjoining counties.

I learned faster and more law against them than with less experienced opponents, for I prepared more carefully and tried hard to not be tripped up on technicalities, and I made attempts to spring traps on them sometimes, generally with indifferent success, but I succeeded in inspiring myself with some confidence, and I learned to think standing on my feet and made some speeches to the jury that I thought as good as my older opponents, and occasionally I heard complimentary remarks on my efforts which came home to me pleasantly. All these were stimulants to industry and further effort, and I began to have a comfortable assurance that in time I could take a respectable position at the bar, and I tried to be honest and faithful in all my professional engagements and to be polite and just in intercourse with the bar and the court. I found it no easy matter to command my temper at all times and I did not succeed very well. I knew I was too ready to show my teeth and lose my temper, and this defect I found more difficult than anything in my professional life, and the most I ever learned was to retain my presence of mind enough to take care of my case if I did occasionally show an ugly disposition. I can see now and I freely admit that it would have been pleasanter both for my opponent and myself if I could have always remained cool and calm and probably I would have been a better if not a more successful lawyer.

There are things occurring at the bar that are excessively provoking, and few lawyers who not only feel but express indignation sometimes, and sharp spatting are not of rare occurrence among the best lawyers and I don't think the bar, however well it is calculated to sharpen the intellect, is a good school to learn amiability of disposition, but as a general rule lawyers do not carry hostility or anger out of the courthouse. But I have known coolness to exist for months growing out of spats over the counsel table, and I have felt strong animosity long after I thought it best not to show it. Naturally I was not of a very forgiving disposition, but there were so many chances for shooting back at a fellow who had affronted me that I found it necessary to resist the temptation to retaliate or it would result in chronic war. There is this in the profession of law -- a man must know what he is doing and saying, there is no chance for concealment or humbug, every sophistry is exposed and every bubble is dragged to the light and bursted.

It is true to the jury many a spacious argument is made and false reasoning is indulged to sway a jury, but it is followed by the opposing attorney or on the charge of the court, and unless the jury are very stupid, as they frequently are, the truth may be brought out.

Section 18:  Furnaces & Failures

Judge Myers had erected the brick house and store, now occupied and owned by C. A. Rankin, and moved there, I think, in the spring of 1842, opened out a large store and I became his lawyer in most of his business and we became intimate friends and associates. We had quarrelled over politics and predestination till we got to like each other. In 1843 his son, Amos Myers, became a student of law in my office and was admitted in 1845, and although the old Judge afterwards failed in business and subsequently removed to Philadelphia, we remained firm friends to the day of his death at the age of about 82 years.

He was a Lancaster County Dutchman, had moved out across the Clarion River in 1825 to 1827 and built Clarion Furnace, lived there till he moved to town; was a member of the Constitutional Convention of 1838, was one of the proprietors of the site of the town of Clarion. He always attributed his business disaster to the Tariff of 1846 and with Patrick Kerr and a number more of our iron masters, left the Democratic party and ever after acted with the Whig and Republican parties.

From 1840 till 1845 or six there was a boom in the iron business of the county. Myers, Shippen and Black, Long and Blackstone, Lyon Shorb and Company (Madison Furnace) Lucinda were in operation before I came to the county. In the next five years new furnaces started up all over the county, among which were Kerr and Hasson beyond Shippensville; Wm. B. Fetzer a mile further north; Hemlock in Washington Township; Clinton was in operation before I was here; Highland (Barber and Packer) Corsica Furnace; Washington and Monroe in Monroe; John and Jacob B. Lyon erected a furnace in Limestone Township; Judge Myers erected Polk and afterwards changed the name to Martha. Lyon Shorb and Company built Stigs, Lawson Duff and son built Pitre furnace in Porter Township, Jo Flick and others built Wildcat. Quite a number of others were started in various parts of the county till there were at one time, I think, twenty-nine furnaces in blast in this county, a good many of them by new men with small capital and little experience. To these the Tariff of 1846 was a disaster of the most deadly character. By 1847 a dark cloud had gathered over these men and in the next two or three years all these men were wiped out and their property sold by the sheriff and passed into other hands. Most of the furnace fires went out, never to be rekindled, and some of the best business talent in the county was turned loose without a dollar.

In those days I have seen men of stalwart frame and manly courage, after working and striving for years, when they were compelled to look bankruptcy and poverty straight in the face, sit down and cry like children, and they were men not given to tears; some past the middle of life with large families, had labored and saved and lived poor and accumulated something, to find themselves overwhelmed and shattered -- then property sold by the sheriff and thousands of dollars of debt still unpaid. It was no wonder they sat down and wept.

Having a large amount of the collections on furnace firms, I passed through some painful scenes during the panic of 1847. At that time I had become the attorney of many of the iron men through the county, and not infrequently they had stipulated with creditors if their debts had to be put into the hands of an attorney, they were to be sent to me. When that was done, when I had an opportunity, I always stipulated that I would be bound by the instructions of the creditors however hard it might be on the debtor, and though many were sold out in whole or in part on claims in my hands, I never lost the confidence and friendship of the poor fellows that were sold out on writs that were controlled by me. While they were breaking up and going to pieces financially, I was making money out of their misfortunes, although it did not come off then.

At that time such a thing as five per cent attorneys' commission in a note was unknown, but I charged the creditor, the plaintiff in the writ, five per cent out of the money made by sheriffs sales, unless the amount was large and then about three, and I have had as much as five hundred dollars collection fees at a single count.

Of all the 29 furnaces, not one is in blast today, and all that is left is an unsightly pile of stone, and some have disappeared and most of the original owners are dead. There was, I think about 1852, a short revival of the iron business in this county but it has gradually declined as an industry and now the fires are all out.

Red Bank Furnace was built after the panic of 1847 by Thomas McCulloch and Alex Reynolds -- after most of the others were broken up and blown out. McCulloch had been a partner and manager for Lyon Shorb and Company at Madison Furnace for a good many years, was a man of strong common sense and unusually good judgment in business -- I thought one of the best in the county. He would sometimes get on a spree and at such times was a rough stick, but harmless to everyone but himself. He would make as much noise as a whole menagerie, but I never heard of fighting only with the tongue, and at other times he was so honorable and just that he was a popular man. He sold out his interest in the firm of Lyon Shorb and Company to the company for forty thousand dollars. After building Red Bank he managed it and made money for a good many years and then sold his interest there and removed back to Juniata County in which he had been born and raised. He died, I think, in Huntington some ten years ago.

I was his lawyer while managing at both places, and I never met a man that I liked better to do business for, and I do not think I ever had a more intelligent or liberal client. When he got to be an old man he used to tell me the great mistake of his life was that he had not married when he was young, and I have heard him tell more than one young fellow to not make a fool of himself as he had done by leading a bachelor life.

Section 19:  Clarion Presbyterian Church

In the winter of 1841 a Presbyterian congregation had been organized in the jail in the room occupied as a court room. An old class mate, J. Newton Bracken, then a minister in that church, presided at the meeting. I do not recollect now how many members were present, but I know a good many like myself were only nominal members but we took part in the organization. Thomas Sutton and Hugh A. Thompson and I think another, perhaps David Brisbin, were made Elders either then or afterwards. Old Dr. Core sometimes came up from Leatherwood and preached for us. James Montgomery, another class mate, was then preaching over in the western part of the county -- at Salem and one or two other places. He had been in our class till the junior year, then went away and taught a year, came back and graduated with Sutton in the class of 1838. We were well acquainted with him. Occasionally he preached for us, and finally we got up a call for him from the churches of Clarion and Rehoboth which was accepted, and he was installed as our pastor and we had preaching every alternate Sunday. I don't recollect how much we were to pay him but it was not much, though I think we paid as much as Rehoboth. Dr. Core left the latter church with about $100.00 of unpaid salary for which the trustees gave him a note and he gave it to me for collection and I soon made the rascals fork it over. This made that congregation feel a little sour toward the Doctor and ready to join the Clarion congregation in the call to Mr. Montgomery.

Old Mr. Alexander Guthrie had moved into town and he and his family cordially invited the Presbyterian church here and he was the first to agitate and advocate the building of a church. I recollect we had several meetings of the Presbyterians as early as the fall of 1841 and through the winter and spring of 1842. Old man Guthrie was very urgent not only to build, but to erect a building large enough to accommodate the town for the next hundred years, and he had strong faith that if we went vigorously to work, Providence would help us through. It was a good deal talked about and it was thought a church would assist greatly to build up a congregation, and if we waited other denominations would get ahead and gather a good deal of the strength we ought to have.

Judge Myers, as one of the proprietors of the town, would give fifty dollars. It was soon ascertained that Shippen and Black would give the same and Thomas McCulloch for Lyon Shorb and Company would give fifty dollars. This seemed a good start, but we could not build for less than three or four thousand, and that sum could not be raised in our town even if all contributed liberally.

Along toward spring several meetings were held, and later the enthusiasm became so great that a building committee was appointed and subscription papers were circulated, though to the committee the prospect of a church looked a good way in the future; but it was affirmed if the house was built we would find some way of paying for it. After canvassing the town and neighborhood, the subscription looked very small and many were in work hauling grain and stove coal and there in all but little over a thousand dollars. Still the excitement ran high and we had many offers for work, materials, etc. Charley McCray offered to burn and deliver the brick at $4.00 per thousand, and for cash would take $3.00. The carpenters bid and the masons and bricklayers bid and everybody was anxious for a job. It was evident there were many workmen and mechanics out of work. The town was finished and many out of work and all eager to go ahead with the church. Robert Barber, H. A. Thompson, H. M. R. Clark, Thomas Sutton and myself constituted the building committee. Barber subscribed one hundred dollars and the rest of us smaller sums according to our means. Edward Derby who had built the court house the year before was somewhat of an architect and he furnished us with a draft for the church with the combined features of the Gothic and Corinthian order which looked quite handsome on paper, but would cost not less than eight thousand dollars. This was entirely beyond our pile and we laid it aside. We wanted a good sized house with as little costly ornament about it as possible, and after elaborately discussing the dimensions of a building, Henry Clark made a draft that suited us better and with some slight alterations was adopted and the church was built after that model.

We had decided on the present site as the proper location. The lot belonged to Lyon and Thompson and Sutton and I bought it in our own names, intending to transfer it to the church when incorporated, which we did a number of years afterwards.

It was fortunate that the younger members of the committee on whom the principal part of the outside business devolved did not know much about the business of church building on insufficient means. The fact is, we went largely by faith and let the digging of the foundation, the quarrying and hauling of stone, the making and laying the brick and carpenter work as cooly as if we had a gold mine to draw on. Mr. Montgomery took a deep interest in the work and did much to concentrate public sentiment, and at first everybody seemed to favor it and we, the building committee, were on the top wave of popularity.

Billy Thompson, a Scotsman, had come here a year or two before badly used up drinking bad whisky. Sutton and Thompson had been friendly with him and had succeeded in making a far better man of him. He was by trade a stonecutter and he was anxious to undertake all the cut stone work consisting of water table, lintels and sills, and nearly all the cut stone, including the steps, was done by him. Once or twice he fell from the platform of total abstinence and got behind and we got Louis Chenier to help him a few days, but on the whole he did well. He made a pocket in a stone under the steps and Sutton deposited a bottle in it containing the names of the Governor and State officers, the borough and town council, building committee and two ten dollar counterfeit notes. It may have been in or under a cornerstone of the church, but my recollection is it was under the steps. I think one or two copies of the county papers were stuffed in. I know the bottle was pretty full, corked and covered with sealing wax. I suppose they are there yet.

We found stone plenty down below the old tan house, had them split out and John McPherson took the contract of hauling up the stone; and it took a great many. Besides the outside foundation walls, we built two interior walls the whole length of the building, and I should think from the bottom of the foundation to the top of the stone work was four to six feet.

We soon found that it was no small job to give out contracts, hunt materials, collect and pay out money and keep everything moving steadily and smoothly along. I recollect of Clark, Thompson, Sutton and I walking down to Russells dam to haul sand. I think some of us explored the river from there all the way up to Clughs dam to find the most convenient place to get sand. We got some lime and a good bit of hauling on subscription. Allen Wilson had a good team of mules and a wagon which he gave to the committee, asking us only to feed them and pay the driver. This was about the best bargain we made, for we could hardly have gotten along without them and we had them pretty much all summer, and they did an immense amount of hauling.

Charley McCray burned the brick on the south side of Wood Street along from 7th Avenue up to where Mrs. Aldringer now lives. Capt. Barber got a horse and cart and with the mule team nearly all the brick were hauled.

At that time all the scaffolding was on the outside of the building. We went to the woods and cut stout poles -- I don't think we stopped to inquire on whose land we cut them -- hauled them to the church, dug holes in the ground and set them up ten or twelve feet apart, cut notches in them at the proper height and tied horizontal poles to them with hickory withes, then laid short pieces from that to the wall all around the outside of the church and put boards on and made a narrow gangway for carrying up brick and mortar, and we had a scaffold. All this took work and the committee took a hand in it and spent considerable time in working with the hands and sharing the work.

I mind one day of Mr. Clark and I going up on the hill south of the Seminary which was then woodland and cutting withes and carrying them down to the Greenville road for half a day. About the time we got through some man came along with an empty wagon and we got him to haul them in to the church without costing a cent. I recollect another day we had Billy Wilson to come and haul the plates and long timber from the hollow down Trout Run.

In order to get the most out of the team, I got Wilson S. Packer to go with me to help load the timber. We cut roads, skidded up the timber so that no time was lost in loading, and we got in all the heavy long stuff for the building. Of course we got nothing for our work, and old Billy hauled on his subscription. At that time lumber was plenty and cheap and I think we got the most of it on subscription.

Our money soon ran out and we began to have trouble with our workmen. In those days there was no such thing as striking for higher wages, but it was by no means uncommon to receive a message in the morning that some man was going to quit unless we would pay him at least a portion of what was coming to him. Some of the committee would go and get him pacified by a bag of flour, a dollar's worth of coffee or a promise of something in the near future. Sometimes two or three of these notices greeted us in a single day. The church was getting more in debt every day and our resources diminishing and the last were the hardest to get, and if we could get all we would still be in debt.

The committee frequently met under very discouraging circumstances. We could discuss ways and means, but there was no prospect of getting money. We could not find fault with hands for complaining -- in fact they exercised great forbearance, and it was not very pleasant to tell them that the treasury was bankrupt. Still we struggled along.

The brick work was done. We had paid Charley McCray better than most of the contractors. In our article with him, it was provided that any debts we paid of his should be payments on his contract. He had a good many small debts out and as he had little property many were willing to subscribe his notes to the church. In this way we had more against him than he was aware of. As soon as he was through, he brought a suit against the committee before Esqr. Leats, and I met him there and had so much of his paper that I threw him into the costs. This set him in a very bad humor and he wanted to fight me, but I declined as this constituted no part of the duties of the building committee.

By this time we were in very bad odor not only with our employees but in the community generally, and it was insinuated that we collected the money and kept it and paid our hands with the worst subscriptions or did not pay them at all. One or two others filed mechanics liens and ruled them out to arbitrate. Sutton would not contest their claims because they were just, and we were in danger of having the church sold by the sheriff before it was finished. Because of the abuse heaped on the committee and because the hands would not listen to reason, I got my back up and went before the arbitrators and found technical defects in the manner of filing the liens and threw the plaintiffs in the costs. This had a salutary effect in staving off and deterring others from bringing suit, but did not pay the debt. Notwithstanding these troubles the church slowly approached completion.

The brick ran out leaving a small portion of the table at the south end unfinished. Sutton went up and borrowed 800 brick from Robert Potter who had them piled in his yard, and as he came down met a two horse team of an Ohio trader who was on his way home and cooly asked him to haul them down for us, stating how we were situated, and the good natured fellow turned in and hauled them down without charging us a cent, Sutton and I helping him to load and unload the brick, and that was the way the brick work was finished.

Then came the raising. The gangway was made along the east side to carry up the brick and mortar. That was securely propped up and a scaffolding was made in the inside all over the church about three feet below the top of the wall and the plates were carried up the gangway and across the building and laid on the wall plates in their proper position. Plenty of hands came to the raising and I never saw men work better. Not only the heavy timber but all the rafters and stuff for the tower was carried up in one afternoon. Some days after that I recollect of Sutton, Thompson, Clark and I one beautiful fall afternoon helping the carpenters to set up the timbers in the tower. The work was not hard but tedious. While there we noticed a flock of these middle-sized hawks flying around over the town. There must have been a thousand or more of them, and they circled around for hours. I don't know that they were ominous of anything, but we thought it remarkable and I have never noticed such a flock of them since.

As soon as the roof was on we had plasterers at work. David Morrell and George Dale took the contract and put it through vigorously.

The seats were put up and painted and the church finished, and we were some fifteen hundred dollars in debt. The pews were sold, everyone buying for about as much as he had contributed to the building so that we made little or no money. I bought the pew that I and my family have occupied ever since for sixty-five dollars, that being the amount of my contribution to the church. Thompson got the second one in front of me and Sutton bought up at the side of the pulpit. Mr. Montgomery had been a sensible and useful advisor in all our difficulties and was not slow to see that something had to be done to extricate the church from its load of debt, and as nothing else seemed available he agreed with some reluctance to go, as he called it, on a begging expedition. We were very glad to dispense with his services in the church, and so he went off to Pittsburgh, to Philadelphia and New York and plead our poverty with such persistence and effect that he came back with money enough to pay off all our debt and presented to the church a very nice communion set; and this church owes more to Mr. Montgomery than to any man living or dead. For many years afterwards as pastor he served the church faithfully, preaching to us every alternate Sunday till his health failed.

Section 20:  Politics & Panic

In the campaign of 1844 I mixed some in politics; went out through the county occasionally and made speeches for Henry Clay. This was by no means popular in this county, for the Democrats were largely in the majority, but it afforded me pleasure to expose what I believed to be the hypocrisy of the party in this county who claimed that Polk was a better Tariff man than Clay. On many of their flags and banners were in glaring capitals "folk, Dallas, Wonck and the Tariff of 1842." I contended that this was deception and flying false colors and was not slow in denouncing it off the stump, and wherever I made speeches over the county.

Lathy and I made a good many stump speeches that fall and incurred the hostility of many noisy Democrats, but I don't know that it hurt either of us as lawyers, and when, contrary to the assertions of the Democrats, the Tariff of 1842 was repealed by the Act of 1846, we were completely vindicated and some of the men who had fought us the hardest came over to our side and became our warmest political friends. But it was too late to avert the disaster that followed the Tariff of 1846, and I believe no county in the State or perhaps in the United States suffered as much as the County of Clarion.

Section 21:  Borough Growth

October 7th, 1886

The last written in this book was in April last. As the days grow long and the evenings short, I don't feel like thinking over my past life or noting down the incidents that come to me naturally on the long evenings of fall and winter.

Since I came here the people of Clarion County have paid for two jails and three courthouses. In the summer of 1841, Edward Derby and Gen. Levi G. Clover took the contract from the commissioners and that summer and fall built the first courthouse and made a very good job of it. Derby was a good mechanic and an honest man and did good honest work.

It was built on the same site as the present courthouse. The courtroom was on the ground floor at the back end next the jail, and the offices were in the front next the street. It was, of course, a stone foundation, and the building was brick. The courtroom was not so wide as the front end and two doors were at the offset on each side by which communication was had with the jail. A large hall ran all across between the courtroom and the offices, and stairs went up on each side to the upper story.

The floor over the courtroom was swung to the roof, and I recollect that we were afraid to hold meetings in the upper story for fear that the supporting rods might give way, and it was never used much. It would have answered the purpose till this time and with necessary repairs would have been a good building, but about March, 1859, it took fire and burned down. We lost a good bell.

David English of Brookville built the second courthouse a little larger than the first. He took it too low and lost money on the contract. After it was finished, the Grand Jury recommended the payment of fifteen hundred dollars additional which was done and he came out about whole. In this building the courtroom was on the second floor and it was a commodious, well arranged house, and large enough far the county for a hundred years, but sometime in September, 1882 it too went up in smoke. Both caught fire from defective flues, and the fire was first seen in the roof. The dockets and records were saved, and I think no papers of importance were lost in either fire.

Although the old buildings cost far less than the present house, with the furniture, bells and clock I suppose each cost the county twenty thousand dollars. The new building will cost the county at least a hundred thousand, making the outlay for courthouse fully $140,000.00, and the two jails not far from the same amount. The old jail was not burned, but was not large or tight enough to hold our criminals. As stated before, it was built in a hurry to be ready for the February Court of 1841. In a few years after it was built the front walls began to swing out, and under a contract with the commissioners, Captain Barber took it down and rebuilt it. The front was of cut stone and the sides and back and jail yard was of rough stone. I have no doubt the entire costs of our public buildings will foot up two hundred and eighty thousand dollars -- a pretty heavy burden for Clarion County to carry, but at least three-fourths of it is paid and our county buildings will compare favorably with any in western Pennsylvania, outside of Pittsburgh.

The town was settled generally with young people and families of limited means. Strattonville and Greenville were on the east; Reedsburg, Curllsville and Rimersburg were to the south, and Shippensville to the west. All these places were older towns and more or less business centers, and most of them had more capital than Clarion, and of course strove to retain their trade and for a good many years did so to a great extent. The consequence was that our town, though settled by an intelligent, industrious and reasonably energetic population for the first twenty years, advanced very slowly. Instead of taking or feeling proud of the county seat, there was a feeling of jealousy against it throughout the county, and it used to be said that fifty bushel of oats would glut the market in Clarion.

Between 1860 and 1870 the town began to accumulate some surplus capital and most of the new buildings that now ornament our town have been erected since that time, and gradually the business of the county began to concentrate at the county seat and the surrounding village to lose their prestige till now there is more business done here than in all the surrounding towns put together. Strattonville, our most formidable rival, is going back, and real estate there goes a begging.

Section 22:  Congressional Candidacy

From 1843 till 1846 I continued steadily at work, my practice gradually improving, and began to accumulate some money -- more than I needed for a bachelor life, and I felt myself in easy circumstances and took an active part in all that interested our town and was pretty well read up on the political questions of the time.

Judge Thompson of Erie (afterwards of the Supreme Court) was a candidate for Congress in the fall of 1846 in this district, and my name was spoken of as the Whig candidate. The Judge lived in the only strong Whig county and I in the strongest Democratic county in the district. It was then composed of the counties of Erie, Clarion, Jefferson, Elk, Potter, McKean and Warren, and the Judge had held important positions of trust before that time and had far more experience as a politician and statesman. I was somewhat acquainted with him, at least had met him a number of times. He came down to attend our court after I had been nominated. I met him in the courthouse. One or two of my old Democratic clients wanted to be introduced to him, and just as the court adjourned in the evening, I called him over to the bar where I was and introduced him to half a dozen old Democrats and told them that he was a gentleman and if they were going to elect a Democrat they could not vote for a better man. Before he left town he called on me and said our contest will be purely political and he would tell his friends over the district that he and I were personal friends, and it was agreed that no personalities were to be indulged in and we would speak of each as if we were not candidates. And we did and remained personal friends till the day of his death.

My chances of competing with the Judge successfully were not rosy. I think all or nearly all the counties gave democratic majorities but one. The district covered nearly one-fifth of the State and it was deemed the proper thing for me to do to go into every county and become acquainted with the people. So I hired a gray horse from J. W. Loomis and started to the Brookville court. After remaining there till the Saturday of the court, Gen. Levi Clover, although a Democrat, proposed going with me up to Ridg[e]way where the court would be in session the following week. We got on our horses and started pretty early in the morning up to the Buck Woods -- stopped at a good many houses -- the General was acquainted all along the road, introduced me and electioneered for me more than I did for myself. He was a personal friend and did all for me he could.

That night we arrived at a place called Brandy Camp, six miles below Ridg[e]way, where we found a little tavern kept by a lady called Mrs. Viol, and there we also found Judge Alexander McColmont, his son, John S., Tom Turney and George W. Zeigler, all on the way to the Elk County court. Turney and Zeigler were young lawyers hunting a place to locate. We were a pretty jolly party and spent a pleasant night. We visited a family or two there that evening and did some electioneering. On Sunday morning we all rode up to Ridg[e]way and put up with Esqr. Guliger. He took me to task sharply for traveling on Sunday, and I excused myself as well as I could by telling him we had traveled hard the day before but could not get in, without abusing our horses. However, he gave us a good breakfast and made us comfortable.

About ten o'clock I was startled by the discharge of a gun, and going out to his back yard found the Squire just sitting down his gun after shooting a beef. I asked what he meant by desecrating the Sabbath by butchering. "Oh," he said, "This was a work of necessity"; that we hungry rascals had come in on him and how could he feed us without killing the beef? At any rate he fed us well.

The next morning I came down to the porch to wash (everybody washed there) and as a good many had washed, the big towel was pretty wet, and just as I turned around to find a dry place, a young lady came out with a clean towel and handed it to me. I was in my shirt sleeves with my hands and face wet and my eyes full of water, but I saw enough to know that she was wonderfully handsome and graceful. She was Squire Guliger's daughter and on seeing her afterwards I thought she was as beautiful a girl as I ever saw, and for one raised in the woods as she was, was very ladylike and pleasant. She afterwards went to the City of Mexico and there married a rich gentleman from Philadelphia, but who was residing there, where I heard of her many years afterwards.

I stayed at the Elk County court several days with Gen. Clover forming acquaintances and electioneering.

I think on Wednesday morning, with letters to political friends there, I started alone on my horse to Smethport. The ride was 40 miles, a great portion of the way through woods. I ate dinner at a little hotel by the side of the road. I saw nobody but a woman, I supposed the landlady. She fed me on wild pigeon for meat and it was as tough as an old gander. In all my after life I was careful to refuse wild pigeon unless I knew it to be a spring chicken.

Toward evening I was riding up the head waters of the Clarion River where it was apparently about as large as Little Toby at Clarion. It was all woods and the road began to seem monotonous. About sundown I saw a break in the woods ahead of me and came out right into the town. I stopped with the Sheriff of the county who kept the hotel -- again found nobody but a woman. She said the Sheriff would be in directly, that he was milking the cows, and in a short time I saw him coming in between two buckets of milk. I gave him a letter of introduction and he received me very cordially, but having no hostler he took charge of my horse himself, and I have no doubt fared well for he was a horseman.

That night I saw Richard Chadwick who was Prothonotary of that county and a leading man among the Whigs. I found the Whig party well organized in the county and I thought their arrangement for getting out the vote and conducting the campaign was excellent. In fact, I found earnest, intelligent men who felt the importance of the issues of that day. The next morning the Sheriff (whose name I have forgotten) told me my horse's back was sore but that he would give me his buggy to ride over to Coudersport, the county seat of Potter County, and the harness would not touch the sore and in a day or two he would be well.

On Thursday I rode over a mountain twelve miles and came down to a bridge over the Allegheny. It was then a small stream. I followed it up to Coudersport, stopping on the way with old Dr. Coleman for whom I had a letter of introduction. I found him a very pleasant, genial man and I took dinner with him. I met Mr. Benson at Coudersport, an intelligent young lawyer with whom I spent the night at the hotel. I met a few of the voters but they were not as well organized as at Smethport.

The next day was warm and I returned to Smethport. It began to thunder while I was still on the mountain. A heavy thunder shower seemed to be approaching, and I was trotting my horse as fast as I could, when a rather wild-looking man stepped out of the woods just ahead of me -- had a gun, coonskin cap and moccasins. I called to him to jump into the buggy, which he did, and I found him a pleasant, intelligent fellow, and by a close shave we got to the hotel as the rain came on.

That night I saw some other men of our party and made arrangements for supplying the county with tickets. Next morning, which was Saturday, I started for Warren, on horseback, and had another forty mile ride ahead of me. I stopped a few miles out to see Major Taylor as he was called. He was the father of Mrs. D. Eaton of Franklin, but was raised by Hon. John W. Howe of Franklin. I had to make Kinzua on the Allegheny for dinner and I pushed on through the woods and towards the river through a very poor country. I rode moderately for fear my horse would give out and it was evening when I got to Kinzua where I got dinner and bed my horse. I was still 12 miles from Warren and had to cross the Allegheny without a bridge and it was a much larger stream than where I left it in Potter County. I was told to follow the road down some three miles -- I would there see where it turned into the river opposite an island, and to just follow the track and I would find shallow crossing all the way. But before I got down it got very dark and began to rain. When I thought I had gone down far enough, I got off and felt for the track of the road but could find none. I strained my eyes to see an island, but could see nothing but black darkness -- could see no light or sign of a house. So I turned my horse into the river, which was very low, and sure enough I soon come out on an island. I rode across to the west side and again hunted for a wagon track but found none. I again turned my horse into the river and after going a few rods he plunged down so the water came to the saddle flaps, but he moved on and soon was in shallow water. On that side the river seemed very wide, but at last I came out and found a perpendicular bank as high as my head on the horse. I found there was no road from the margin to the bank so I rode up the river fifteen or twenty rods and came to a break in the bank which I found by the sound of the horse's feet on the stones. I got off and found that I was on the road. I found I had gone too far down the river, but I was safe on the west side.

All this time it was raining pretty fast, and I gave the horse the rein and trotted on down to Warren, which I reached about 9 o'clock, and put up at Mr. Hackney's which happened to be Whig headquarters. I there spent an hour by his kitchen stove and then to bed.

In thinking over my experiences I came to the conclusion that this thing of going to Congress was not all fun, and then the chances were that after all I would not get there. Just at that time if I had the thing all to do over again, I would stay at home and let Congress go to the dogs. But I spent a quiet Sunday there, and on Monday Thos. Struthers, Archie Tanner, Richard Miles and several others went up to Sugar Grove and had a meeting and everything passed off nicely and I made the acquaintance of a good many first class men. Came back the next day and with some company went six miles down the river, and from there up the Brokenstraw to Youngsville and stopped with old Judge Young who was then living. From there a man named Tarbox traveled with me to Lottsville where we stopped an hour and my companion left me and I rode on to Columbus that night -- stayed in a poor tavern there with a Democratic landlord.

Next day I traveled alone, stopping with old Sheriff Grey at Beaverdams and Wattsburg and reaching Erie about dark and stopped at the Reed House, attended a Whig meeting in the courthouse, made a little speech. Hon. John H. Walker made the principal speech.

The next few days we traveled over the county -- had meetings in North East, General McKean's corners and several other places. Friday evening found me at Waterford with Mr. -- now Judge Vincent, who had accompanied me across the county to that place. Next morning I started home pretty tired of the trade of politician. Nearly ten o'clock that night I broke into Col. Kunecies barroom and got a good humored scolding for keeping such bad hours. I had traveled 46 miles. I got my supper, however, and stayed there till Monday morning and then came on home. I had traveled some 420 miles on horseback and so far as I knew had not made five votes.

The time from that to the election was put in in my own county and there I made some votes, and if I had put in all my time among my friends and clients, I might have been elected, for I was beaten by only 228 votes.

I was not greatly surprised or disappointed at the result of the election and found that some four hundred dollars would cover my entire expenses. I had extended my acquaintance, if not improved my reputation as a lawyer, and I expected to increase my practice enough to cover all my expenses, and I did and more in the course of a few years. My political experience perhaps was not very valuable, but it was a break in the monotony of practicing law and may have given me some views of life that I would not have readily acquired at the practice, and I was at a time of life when a knowledge of men and the outside world was useful. At any rate, I did not regret the experiment. I have no doubt now that it was a fortunate turn that I was not elected. Had I become fascinated with politics, I would have lost my interest in the law and probably my practice. Judge Thompson told me, after spending six years in Washington, that if I had beaten him in 1846 it would have been the most fortunate thing that could have happened him, that at the end of that time, after keeping his family, he was not worth a cent, and his practice was gone and at fifty he had to start life anew, while as he said, I was quietly at my practice making and saving money.

Section 23:  A Friend's Wedding

In the spring of 1846 my friend, Thomas Sutton, made a great wedding and got married to Miss Anne Mahon of Pittsburgh. I had been on confidential terms with him and was posted on his courtship -- had at one time been with him at Pittsburgh just after the great fire in April, 1845, and noticed that he rarely arrived at the hotel before eleven o'clock P.M. I was notified that I would be counted on for first groomsman. I had no great confidence in my ability to grace a position of that kind, but had no hesitation in accepting the place. My old classmate, Wm. M. Stewart of Indiana, Pennsylvania, was to be the second groomsman; the third and fourth were friends of the Mahon family in Pittsburgh. My partner, whom I had never seen, was to be Miss Rebecca, a daughter of Dr. Herron of the First Church and Stewart's was Miss Rose Irvin of Pittsburgh. In June, a day or two before the wedding, Sutton and I went down to the St. Charles Hotel and established our headquarters. Stewart, John Sutton and his sister arrived the same evening. We all went out the night before the wedding and met our partners at the bride's father's and spent a pleasant evening cultivating the acquaintance of our partners and the ladies present. The bride's father was John D. Mahon, a member of the bar of some standing and a gentleman in manners and a very good talker. I had some acquaintance with him before. His daughters were educated, bright, fine looking young ladies, Miss Anne being the oldest.

We returned to the hotel under contract to appear the next evening in proper time to arrange for the ceremony. Stewart and I had chartered a carriage and driver to be for the exclusive use of ourselves and partners till the whole performance was finished. We had also fortified ourselves with expensive suits of clothing -- city made and cut according to the latest fashions, and we considered ourselves sufficiently dressed to appear in a city crowd.

On the eventful evening we took our partners and went out some 2 miles out 4th Street to Mr. Mahons, found the people beginning to assemble. Mr. Mahon asked me what arrangements had been made to bring out Dr. Herron. I told him Will Rose had agreed to attend to that. Rose was called and said he had so much to attend to he had totally forgotten it. Stewart and I went out and got into our carriage and told the driver to put his team to Dr. Herron's door in the quickest time he could make, and in a few minutes we were there and found the old gentleman waiting with hat and gloves on and we were back and ushered him into the house in a wonderfully short time.

We were then called upstairs and instructed in the details of the program. The doctor was placed in the corner of the parlor and a space cleared around him. Pair No. 4 were to lead the column downstairs and through the crowd to the Doctor's corner. The others were to follow in the order of their numbers, the bride and groom bringing up the rear. When No. 4 Pair stood in front of the Parson, they separated, and No. 3 moved in between them and separated, and so on till all had spread out like a fan with the bride and groom in the center in front of the Parson. In that position we all stood during the ceremony. Then kissing and congratulations were in order till everything was in confusion and we had lost our partners. A great many people were present, and though the parlor was large, when all were in there was not standing room without crowding.

In an hour or so we got into line again, reversing the order of march, and the bride and groom let into the refreshment room. There was a long table well loaded and beautifully ornamented with flowers, and after helping the bride and groom and my partner, I think I worked half an hour filling plates and handing them to the crowd that could not get to the table. After this the crowd scattered to the parlor, portico and to the walks and promenades around the house. The evening was beautiful with the moon shining, and till 12 o'clock M the many well dressed ladies and gentleman kept the house and grounds pretty lively and I suppose it was a good party.

I met some acquaintances, among others Mrs. Dr. Riddle -- a daughter of my old preceptor, Dr. Mathew Brown, with whom I had a pleasant talk about old College days. As I was walking around, Mrs. Irvin, a relation of the family, came to me and said she and I had been so busy helping others that we did not get enough to eat and took me back to the dining room -- no one then in it, but ourselves, and I enjoyed the little supper and to me was an enjoyable part of the party.

The carriages began to fill up and by midnight the guests had mostly gone. At 1 A.M. Stewart and I drove back to the hotel. Next morning we drove out and came in with the bridal party and saw the bride and groom on board a steam boat bound up the Monongahela to Brownsville. The bridal trip was to take in Washington, D. C., but as soon as the boat pulled out, we took our girls home and dismissed our carriage at the hotel and felt ourselves free men again. That night we took the canal boat after dark, John Sutton, Stewart and myself, and we sat out on deck till one or two o'clock in the morning. I was going east to visit my old home and at Apollo all my Indiana friends got off and I was alone. That night I smoked a cigar. For more than five years I had not tasted tobacco in any form. That night on deck of the boat I again tried a cigar and it went off as natural as life. As soon as my company left, I took a bunk and slept soundly to Johnstown.

Section 24:  "A Good Country Practice"

This was an independent portion of my life. I was about thirty-three years of age, had good health and a fair standing at the bar and enough money to do and see all I wished to. My previous training to habits of economy, I found, instead of being an injury were an advantage. I found after living well I had a surplus and my business was increasing. I had no family nor no cares and buoyancy of spirits to enjoy my independent life. I felt pretty secure in my position at the bar and I had no desire to lead a useless or an idle life, and some ambition to deserve the respect of respectable people. I found the outside world more disposed to flatter than condemn. I had little disposition to shine in the company of fashionable ladies, nor was I qualified to do. The young ladies in my own sphere of life seemed to me more like companions. I had a pretty general acquaintance throughout Clarion County and had some friends in the adjoining counties and Pittsburgh. In collecting money for persons and firms in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, I had established business relations and personal acquaintance with a good many men, and most of them remained my friends through life. In some instances I was invited to their houses and became slightly acquainted in families, but I took no pleasure in private houses -- however worthy and respectable the families might be. Nor did I ever have much social relation in the cities.

Sutton and his wife extended their bridal trip from Washington to Philadelphia, New York and Boston and I think came back by Saratoga and the lakes. I got back to Clarion about as soon as they did and for a while they went to boarding at the Western. Sutton became a domestic, married man and I could not feel at home with him as I had done in our bachelor days. I thought he would tell everything that was said to his wife, which I have no doubt he did, and it made me feel under a little restraint, and we were not, at least on my part, as confidential as we had been. Of course we were as friendly as ever, but not so intimate, and then as we grew older our boyish sociability changed somewhat. I went into company and parties of young people as usual, but I found myself losing relish for this kind of society and was inclined to settle down as a business man to bachelor life. A younger set were coming on with whom I had not much sympathy. I was getting too old for any young company, and in the society of married people I was out of place, and this may have turned my attention to politics.

At any rate, I was conscious of an emotion moving me to aspire to something higher than the life of a country lawyer. That was respectable, but it was not a very high level to satisfy the ambition of a healthy young man the third of a century old. It seemed to me I was good for another third of a century, and a country practice for thirty-three years more would grow monotonous. The defeat of my political aspirations did not discourage me and I soon thereafter got to thinking if ever an opportunity offered I would try and qualify myself for judicial honors.

Amos Myers had read law in my office and was admitted to the bar -- I think in 1845, and shortly afterwards with Sutton and Nels Wetherington and some others, I attended his wedding in Meadville. J. B. Loomis, who was then keeping a livery stable in Clarion, took a hack load of us up to Meadville. The bridal party stayed all night in Franklin as we came home, and I recollect that some hoodlums of that place gave us a vigorous serenade at the Kennear House. Amos married Miss Jane Andrews of Meadville and she made him an excellent wife and they raised a family of bright daughters.

Wm. L. Corbett was born and raised on a farm a mile east of town. He went to school at the old Academy some time and then read law in the office of D. W. Foster, Esq. and was admitted to practice law a short time after Mr. Myers. They were the first two lawyers of native stock in the county. Myers at one time had a good practice and was elected to Congress and afterwards scattered off into other business and finally became a Baptist preacher. Corbett became a leading lawyer in this and the adjoining counties, was elected to the State Senate and was a member of the Constitutional Convention of 1872. On the death of Judge Knox he was appointed Judge of this district and served till the election of Judge Wilson in the fall of 1885. He is still a practicing member of the bar.

About this time the old lawyers from the adjoining counties began to drop out. Buffington succeeded Hon. Alexander M. Calmont; Wm. F. Johnston was elected Governor of this State; John W. Howe was elected to Congress; Samuel Gilmore and Samuel A. Purviance held on a little longer, and Geo. W. Smith of Butler practiced here a good many years. Gen Jolly had broken down as a western lawyer and gone back to Montgomery County, and the practice was largely in the hands of the resident lawyers. The collecting business was all in the hands of the home lawyers and at that time was valuable, and I had a good share of it.

I had become pretty well known in the county and had friends and clients who threw business into my hands and gave me their influence. I was counsel for a number of the iron masters and I made some money by trying suits and collecting money of some of them. In this way I was gradually growing into a good country practice.

Section 25:  Brothers & Sisters

At this time my brother, Robert Campbell, was living on the old farm, had a hired a housekeeper and was raising his children without anyone but himself to look after them. After the death of father, Mother had moved up to Oliver's and with Sister Rachel Jane was taking care of Oliver's children. His second wife, Ellen, had died before he left Center County and they took charge of his children over there on the death of their mother. When he quit farming and bought where he is now, they lived with him till he got his third wife, then Mother and Rachel Jane moved into a little house down in his orchard and lived there and both died in that house. Rachel Jane died in 1868 and Gran McIlvaine took care of Mother till she died in 1871.

When Oliver took the Center County farm he was a heavy-boned, muscular man and a great worker. His land was good and he had plenty of it and he put a great deal of work on. He cleared land, built a large barn and paid a thousand dollars a year till he had all the purchase money paid. He told me he raised one year twenty-two hundred bushels of wheat and sold it for 90 cts. a bushel. He first married his Cousin, Margaret Campbell, but she died in about a year giving birth to her first child, and mother and babe lie in one grave in Pinegrove. Some three or four years afterwards he married Ellen Jackson of Shavers Creek. She became the mother of his two children, Anna and James D. She too took sick and died suddenly over in the valley when her two children were quite young. By this time his farm was paid for and he had bought sixty acres more land off the Everhart farm and was making money, but even his iron constitution could not stand such continued hard work, and the loss of the mother of his young children he felt as a very severe stroke. At all events, he got chronic diarrhea and dyspepsia and broke down. If he had quit work he might have got well, but this he seemed unable to do. Finally his family physician, Dr. Montgomery, told him he must quit the farm or die. He then sold off all his stock and farming utensils and came over to the valley and bought the house and lot where he now lives. At first he did little or no work and gradually improved in health, but he never seemed like the same go-ahead man or was so cheerful and manly as he had been in his younger days. One fall or beginning of winter he had a severe attack of fever while living in Center County. I think Mother and Sister were there at that time. For a week or two his friends were alarmed about him, but he took a turn for the better and got well.

He had a large savage dog that he thought a great deal of. The friends noticed while Oliver was confined to bed that the dog got stupid and moped about and noticed nothing. He never went into the house and it occurred to them in the house that the dog was mourning for his master, and they coaxed him into the house and when Oliver called to him he raised his ears and rushed to the door of his bedroom and the moment he saw his master he gave a howl of delight and rushed forward and laid his head on the bed and seemed overjoyed to be with him once more. After that he came into the bed every day and was all right again. I never liked the brute and he was always surly with me, but wherever Oliver was over the farm, the dog was not far away. I recollect one time Oliver was like to get into trouble with his neighbor. The dog had caught one of Musser's hogs and before they could get him off had killed it. But after showing so much affection for him, Oliver would not part with him for a horse. I think the dog died of old age before Oliver came to the valley.

I think it was fully ten years before Oliver fully regained his health. He had to quit using tobacco and has never chewed or smoked since, and now at the age of seventy-five he is a pretty stout, healthy old man, but like myself don't hurt himself with hard work but travels around among his friends. His two children are both married and living in Rock County, Minnesota. For many years he has been a member and an elder in the Presbyterian Church, and I know of few whose profession is more conscientiously carried out in his life and daily practice and he has the happy talent of believing everything taught in that church. Others may have more intelligence, and he makes no pretensions to learning, but let anyone undertake to convince him that his church is wrong and they will find him as solid and as hard to move as a rock, and he will be a hardy man who will try it a second time.

He was of a kindly nature and when we were boys together on the farm I recollect of experiencing a degree of inferiority because he was more of a favorite among young people visiting our house than I was. He had a streak of drollery in his composition and sometimes absolutely witty, but rarely sarcastic. That made him a genial companion. Though he was not brilliant and had rustic manners, he was a good deal of a man morally and physically and pretty stubborn in his own opinion, and he generally managed to be pretty nearly right; and generally lived an upright life and had few enemies, and among the poor in the neighborhood he was just and charitable and they were his friends. Fine or handsome clothes were no use to him. Dress him up in his best and set him down in church and nobody would shoot at him for a good looking man, but when he was thirty years of age, in his shirt sleeves pitching hay and the ease with which he heaved up big forkfuls and the manly vigor of his motions made him seem graceful and a fine looking man. There were a few stronger men at that time along the back mountain but I knew of none who could do more work in a day or do it with more ease and his judgment about farming was excelled by no man in the neighborhood. He is five feet ten or eleven inches tall and weighed then a hundred and eighty pounds. Robert and I are both taller but not so heavy boned or so strong in the arms. Well, he has always been a good brother to me and I value him as the playmate of my boyhood and the trusted companion of my riper years.

My sister Margaret (we always called her Peggy) was quite as strongly marked a character as any of the family. She was a large, strong woman of good mind and even temper, and she was good and kind to all the family and a favorite with her father. My earliest recollection of her was in taking care of me and trying to keep me out of mischief, and when quite young I think she was wise and good beyond her years. At any rate my recollection is that in all disputes and quarrels between us brothers she was a peacemaker and on the right side and she patiently exhorted, coaxed and scolded me out of many a mischievious [sic] trick but rarely if ever undertook to control me by harsh measures. She was of a cheerful, happy disposition, and like Oliver was an early riser and great worker. Mother was subject to spells of sick headache and when quite young, after Rachel Haggerty went away, milked the cows, washed, scrubbed and cooked for the family. She grew up to be a strong, healthy woman. In haying time I recollect of her after dinner coming out to the field and raking hay till time to go in and get the evening peace, and after we boys came in and were resting, she was often busy till bed time.

In thinking over her character, her strong sense, her conscientious discharge of duty, her kindness to every member of the family, her veneration and goodness to her parents and her truthful Christian character -- if she was not mentally and morally the strongest member of the family, she was certainly the best and freest from faults. From early in life she was a consistent member of the Presbyterian Church. She has gone to her reward, but I know of no children have greater reason than hers to revere and honor their Mother's memory. She married James Oliver, raised four children and died October 6th, 1880, aged seventy years, nine months and eleven days -- mourned by husband, children and friends. Her husband is still living at the age of about eighty, but for a number of years has been totally blind.

Section 26:  Investments

Having settled down to bachelor life, I thought it would be the proper thing for me to do to buy a horse. So one fall I got me a snug, good-sized bay horse and the first use I made of him was to ride him over the mountains home. He was a good traveler and I made about forty-five miles a day. On returning home I found no place to keep him but at the hotel which cost me about two dollars a week, and I could not use him every day. It soon began to appear an expensive luxury, and I thought if I had a stable on my lot I could take care of him myself -- so I had a stable built where it stands now, but I found it would require a well on the lot to make everything handy and convenient, so I got old John Ridley to dig me a well over by the leaning apple tree near the Love's fence. But before I had gotten all this done, old Jamy Grey got in concept of my horse and bought him for a hundred dollars. I had paid only sixty-six for him. I then soon had a stable and a well but no horse.

The neighbors got water out of that well for a number of years, but one dry summer the water failed and I dug it deeper -- down to the rocks, and all the water ran away in a crevice and I never received any value or use of the water, and some years afterwards I filled it up and there are now few people in town know that ever a well was there.

A young apple tree came up on the margin and before I filled the well got the stand that the old tree now has. The stable stood empty for years, but sometimes I put hay of my oat lot in it and in the winter or spring sold the hay.

About 1846 I bought the corner lot next the alley and I made up my mind that those lots should be my home while I lived in Clarion, and I think at no time since would I have parted with them unless I had removed from the town -- and I never had serious thoughts of making my home elsewhere.

I did not own another horse till after I was married. I bought one to go east but sold him soon after I returned. Some years after, I bought a strong, active, young brown horse and kept him in my own stable. One evening I received a letter enclosing a note of $600.00 on a man away down by the Red Bank Creek with instructions to get a judgment immediately and collect. The next morning I got on my new horse. He had been standing in the stable and needed exercise, and by sunup he was making the sparks fly out of the stones out through the woods south of the town. I discovered he needed watching and I put him over the road at a good pace. I rode him 18 miles down there, got a judgment note and came back to Polk furnace for dinner, about 27 miles, and he still seemed fresh -- scared at a sheep lying in a fence corner and tried to throw me off. By the aid of a rawhide I persuaded him to go past. I came home after dinner, entered my note and saved the money for my client. By that time I had made up my mind he was an excellent horse but required more work and exercise than I could give him. He was a well built, muscular animal and worked well in harness, and Sam Green hauled in my hay crop with him that year in a one horse wagon. But I sold him to the man who raised him. Some years after the man's son was hauling a load of wood with him and the horse ran off and threw the boy from the top of the load and killed him. The horse was not hurt but I don't know what became of him.

I afterwards bought a horse one fall to attend political meetings and rode him nearly all over the county making speeches, and when the campaign was over I traded him for a boat in the Clarion River and then sold the boat and made money in the trade.

By this time I came to the conclusion that the fewer horses a lawyer kept the better he was off; that half the price of keeping a horse would pay livery bills and save all expense of saddle, harness, buggy and shoeing besides the trouble of looking after him. And I never had another horse till the boys grew up.

Some time along in 1843 or 1844 I got the 4 acre lot out along the Greenville road. It was then all woods. I cleared the upper end and got it in grass. The whole lot was heavily timbered, but I got it cut off and rails made and a good strong rail fence made around it. In the evening I enjoyed working and help clearing up the lot. I recollect Mr. T. George and I built the first division fence along his line. It was made of oak rails and carefully built and staked and ridered. It took about all one man could do to put on some of the riders. After using it for pasture a year or two, I got Samuel Kennedy to put it all in wheat and gave him three-fourths of the crop to farm it carefully and dig around the stumps. He raised a half bushel over a hundred bushels of clear wheat. I then put it in clover and timothy again but it did not produce what grass I thought it ought to, and I got old Joseph Cochran to put four hundred bushels of fresh lime on it and got old Mr. Kennedy to again farm it in wheat. That winter the frost pulled it up by the roots and there was no wheat on it -- only along where the snow drifts had protected it, but the grass caught nicely and I got a succession of good crops of hay off it.

While I had this lot I did a good deal of work on it myself. When the grass was cut, I stirred and turned and dried it and generally helped to hand it into the stable, and I had sometimes, I thought, as much as two tons to the acre. I sold some out of the field -- once or twice presented some good neighbor a load. I recollect one spring I sold out of the stable on my present lot three tons of hay for forty-eight dollars and had enough for myself besides. One year I had oats in the north half of the lot. It was good and I went out and borrowed Mr. Kennedy's grain cradle and cut it myself, but having blistered my fingers I did not help to bind. I have pleasant associations with that lot, and many an hour I puttered and worked on it, first picking and burning brush and logs, and it paid me in many ways, and my cows generally pastured there from July till fall and till the boys got large enough to take my place, I drove the cows out and brought them home every evening. I was annoyed with the stumps and they would not rot and I could not burn them out. So one fall I got a man to go out and dig out every stump and there were several hundred of them -- some huge, big ones, principally oak and a few chestnut. My man, Mr. Reese, got a little machine that worked by leverage like an old-fashioned cider press. I helped him sometimes and we could take a pretty hard pull on a root, but he got them out mostly by digging around and under and cutting the roots. When out they lay very thick on the ground. We got a team and low sled and put them in three large piles, and towards fall I had a grand time burning them. As they burned with the aid of a handspike, I kept them well shoved together. This was a favorite work with me all my lifetime. When I wanted exercise in the fall or a good day in the winter, nothing seemed so delightful as to get out alone and burn brush or stumps or anything, and many an evening or afternoon I have spent on that lot or in the woods, and I recur to them as among the most delightful of my life.

It was foolish of me to sell that lot and I suppose I would not have done so had it not been that when I was traveling on the circuit and away from home half the time, the fences were thrown down and I could not use it as I had done, but I would not have sold it had I been at home all the time; and then I had the wood lot and a fence around it -- that was nearer home than the out lot. At the southeast corner of that out lot a spring came out of the field above. After it was cleared one day, I took a locust grub out there and planted it on the corner cut off by the channel and stuck a few stakes around it to keep the cows off. It grew rapidly and in a warm day my cow would cross and climb up under the shade and lie down. So many sprouts from the roots or seeds came up that it was cut down after I sold, but I notice that there are yet a few saplings from it growing up over the spring. It is now owned by G. W. Arnold and kept in fine order.

As early as 1844 when I began to have a little money, I got to investing it in anything that would pay me a good interest. I attended pine unseated land sales, bought sometimes for my clients, and as I became acquainted with the titles bought some lots for myself. If they were redeemed, I received the redemption money; if not, at the end of two years I sold them generally for twice as much as they cost me, and sometimes a good deal more. I also bought at private sale small lots of pine timberland and I frequently sold in a year or two at a hundred per cent over what they cost. I also bought a tract or two at sheriff's sale and did well on them. Sometimes I bought a judgment or a note at a pretty heavy discount. I did not advertise a shave shop or hunt this kind of business, but just took what came to me and frequently I told men to see if they could not do better before discounting their obligations; but I was very careful to know that the claim was got before I bought.

At one time I came very nearly being caught. I had bought a note of several hundred dollars on Henry Fulton who was then the owner of Monroe Furnace. Before my note became due, I. Painter and Co. and Hampton Smith and Co. entered up judgments against him and issued executions for more than all his property was worth. G. W. Arnold had engineered the matter for them and it was arranged that he was to buy in all the property at sheriff's sale and run up the stock and give Fulton the benefit of all after paying their debts. He tried to keep the matter very quiet, but I soon suspected what he was doing as Arnold was very busy looking after everything and giving directions to the sheriff. So on the day of the sheriff's sale, I got on a horse and rode out there. Arnold was very busy getting the sale started but I saw he had his eye on me. I was standing with a crowd who were attending sale and pretty soon Arnold called me into a little room and asked me what I was there for. I told him I was going to bid on property to try and save a little claim I had on Fulton. He asked me how much it was -- I told him about $400.00. "Well," said he, "If I say you will be paid will you agree not to bid on the property." I told him certainly I would and keep my mouth shut about the whole transaction. "Well," said he, "That is all right," so I went up to the store and talked an hour or so with some old neighbors and lit a cigar and got on my horse and came home, and afterwards I got every cent of my money.

In these little outside transactions I soon got to making a little money -- from $500.00 to $1,000.00 a year, and it did not seem to interfere with my law practice. Further on in life I dealt a good deal in real estate, generally making some money, and I believe in no instance failing to come out whole. In some larger transactions I made a good deal of money and in the course of my life have made at least three times as much outside of the office as I made in it.

The practice of even a good country lawyer is not going to make him rich. Three thousand dollars a year is a good country practice -- over the average. They are generally good livers and with a family will not live and school a family of children much under two thousand dollars a year. It takes five years to establish a practice and few lay up a thousand dollars a year for over thirty years. It will be found that most lawyers who retire on over forty thousand dollars have made it by speculation or outside transactions. The law gives them facilities for making money that other professions do not possess.

Section 27:  Early Married Life

At the commencement of the year 1847 I was pretty well established in the practice. I had passed my thirty-third birthday -- I was then worth from three thousand to three thousand five hundred dollars, enjoyed good health and was well known through the county. I had been living at Colleges, boarding houses and hotels for twelve years. Young company was fast losing attractions to me. I had some special reasons for being tired of hotel life and it seemed to me the proper thing to do was to establish a home of my own. I had once thought of bringing my Mother and Sister out and going to housekeeping, but the death of Oliver's second wife left the care of his children on them and they could not come if they had been willing. My wife's father was at that time the pastor of the M. E. Church in Clarion. He had a large family -- two or three grown daughters at home besides three older daughters married. I visited in the family and in the course of the winter succeeded in making arrangements to marry the oldest of the daughters at home in the following spring. I communicated my intentions to no one but the family, but I quietly secured a lease of the house (now I. T. Moffetts) and with the aid of my intended wife I bought a lot of carpets, bedding and stuff for housekeeping and had them stowed away upstairs in Judge Myers store. I had no intention of investing a thousand dollars in a wedding trip as my friend Sutton had done.

The first week of May was our court; the next Monday I went to the Brookville court and on Tuesday, the 10th of May, 1847, I came home and in the evening after dark I went up to old Mr. Hallock's and we were married by a Rev. Stearns. That will be forty years ago next May and I guess neither of us have ever regretted it. The next morning my wife came down and we took possession of our house. She and Mary Hallock got to sewing carpet and I to carrying in furniture. In three days we were living in our house and getting it fixed up for our home. I think our whole outlay for furniture was not over three hundred dollars. My wife brought a bed and bedding from home and I had bought feathers for bed and pillows. I recollect of Polly Oxenerder and my wife working several days making ticks and pillows and stuffing the feathers in them. My first day of married life was spent in carrying in tables, chairs, bedsteads and furniture and I did not finish it in one day either. We were soon quietly settled and living like old people.

That spring the hard times of 1847 came on. The most disastrous panic to our iron men they had ever experienced. That summer I got collections to the amount of forty thousand dollars and while the business of the county was suffering, I made money. It was the best year I had and my collecting fees from the spring of 1847 till the spring of 1848 was something like $2,000.00. Besides my other fees I think that year I made about $2,600.00 and kept my wife and for several years after that I was able to save about $2,000.00 a year. Of course my expenses were light but my wife kept a girl most of the time. I think the first few years I spent less keeping the family than I had done the last year or two of my bachelor life. Certainly I made more money and accumulated faster and I soon got to having money bringing me interest. I also kept a small reserve fund to pick up anything that came in my way.

Our first child was born on the 19th of February, 1848, and I was a man with a family.

To the public improvements of the town I gave my influence and sometimes a little money. The first bridge over the Clarion River at the mouth of Little Toby was built by subscription of the people of town. In that all were interested and with others I contributed a part and I think there were few improvements made then or since in which I had no part or interest. I recollect redding up the graveyard, the fairground, the Carver Seminary, the water works and in introducing natural gas into town I was a holder of stock or contributor and I have done something towards supporting the Presbyterian Church ever since it was organized.

In the fall of 1847 I hired a little team and a carriage from Jonathan Frampton and took my wife down to the valley to visit my friends. To her it was going among strangers for she had never seen one of them, but she soon got acquainted. We stopped at Oliver's in Center County and he and his wife took their buggy and went with us over to the valley and we had a nice time. We stayed two or three weeks, and one pleasant morning in October we started for Clarion by way of the turnpike and easily got to Bellefonte that night. The next day was warm, and as the team was walking up the pike pretty near the Rattlesnake Hotel, I saw a vine above the road loaded with grapes. It was hanging over bushes not higher than my head. I got off and instead of picking, I took my knife and cut a number of limbs off the vine that were the fullest of grapes and threw them into the hind end of the carriage, and my wife picked the grapes and threw the vines out nearly all the way over to Phillipsburg and we took the grapes home with us and she made jelly out of them. We got to Clearfield Creek about dark and were going to stay there all night but found the hotel full of lumbermen and drove on seven miles farther to Curwensville. It was cloudy but not very dark. We stayed all night with old Mr. Ross who kept the hotel. The next morning was raining and we did not make a very early start, but we had a good roof on our carriage and drove on to Brookville that day and next day got home in time to eat our dinner in our own house.

I think at that time when we were in the valley we attended Brother Robert's in fair. He, with quite a little company, came over from Jacksonville, a little town down below Bellefonte where he got his wife. I mind we ate supper with the party after dark in the evening. It was ascertained afterwards that some young rowdys about Greenwood had intended giving us a noisy serenade that night but were deterred by a very serious accident that befell their leader. There was a thunder shower that afternoon. The young man was working out in a cornfield and when the rain came on he took refuge in a corn shock and the lightning struck the shock and killed him and this ended the serenade.

Ellen Montgomery was Robert's second wife -- was I suppose thirty seven to forty years of age when married. She was a good housekeeper and a sensible woman. She never had any children and died a few years ago from a stroke of palsey. But she was a good mother to Robert's children.

Section 28:  Clarion Society

At this time we had a pretty good population in Clarion, largely young married people, and there was a great deal of sociability. In the fall and winter, dinner and tea parties were very common. They were generally made up of our intimate friends, or as it was frequently called "our Set." H. A. Thompson and his wife were our nearest neighbors; T. Sutton, H. M. R. Clark, Col. Coulter and their wives, with the Lathy family and some others. The younger set of unmarried people did not mix much in our set and I think there was more enjoyment and sociability at those parties than any I ever attended. We were too well acquainted to be formal and too much on an equality for rivalry and plenty of the spirit of fun to make an hour or two pass off pleasantly. Dr. James Ross and wife came down from Strattonville and settled in our town about 1842. He was a good and successful physician. They were a pleasant family and for many years their house was a favorite place for social gatherings. He was our family physician till his death some three or four years ago and until his son, J. Frank Ross, took his place.

But our society was large enough for variety. After Judge Myers moved to town, his family became a part of "our Set." He was a jolly, genial old man and a favorite in the social circle. I enjoyed the parties and this was a pleasant portion of my life.

There was never much sociability between the people of Strattonville and our town; but a few who had relations or intimate friends there visited back and forth some. I believe I never ate a meal at a private house in Strattonville though I have been there for days on business and ate a good many meals at the hotels. It was different at Shippensville. We have visited at both Shippins and Blacks and I have been days there trying arbitrations but generally boarded at the hotels. I never had a more steadfast friend and client than Jacob Black and I believe he relies more on my advice today than on that of any man in the county. With the exception of the ten years I was on the bench, I think he never had a suit or business in court in which I was not his lawyer. Being so long and intimately connected in business and his counselor in buying and selling his land and writing deeds and articles, it is not surprising that we became fast friends. Since the decease of his wife he has lived a good deal in Clarion, and we have associated a good deal together, and whichever of us dies first will be missed by the other. He is four years and a half older than me to a day, he being born on the 25th day of January, 1809, and I on the 25th day of July, 1813. He was an active business man before I came to the county. Richard Shippen was his brother-in-law and as the firm of Shippen and Black, ran and operated Shippensville furnace for many years and kept on their feet through all the disasters and panics of 1847-8 and 1857, and finally retired, both wealthy, and divided their land, of which they owned a large body in Elk and Beaver township.

Section 29:  Hallock In-Laws

Some time after we were married, Mr. Hallock removed to Shippensville and we visited there sometimes. I mind one time we took our baby daughter over there and I was amused to see Mary Hallock go into raptures over the little angel as she called her. I had a strong impression myself that the child was rather pretty, but Mary could beat me so for piling on the adjectives that I could only sit and laugh at her. I guess, however, parents are not displeased with an extravagant expression of approbation over their children. Fortunately the child did not happen to cry and spoil her beauty.

I don't think I was naturally very fond of children, but as my little girl developed into a smiling baby I took great pleasure in being with her and spent many an hour learning her to laugh and play, and she was a good, healthy child -- a good girl and became a good woman. She learned to read before she went to school, learned easily, and I tried to give her opportunity to be a scholar up to the time she got married.

Her Mother, Nancy Jane Hallock, is the fourth daughter of Rev. J. K. Hallock. Her Mother's name was Melissa Griffith. They were both natives of one or [sic] the northern counties of the State of New York in the neighborhood of the Ausable River. The Hallocks are an old family -- now greatly scattered and numerous and have a family history written by a member of it now or formerly residing in the City of New York. The volume is in our house but I have never traced out only to see that my father-in-law is one of the descendants of the original stock. After his marriage he removed to Erie County in this State and settled on a farm near McKean's Corner where he lived a number of years and till my wife was some seven years old. He became a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church and was licensed to preach, and for the greater portion of his subsequent life was a member of the conference and occupied stations through northeastern Ohio and northwestern Pennsylvania; was finally retired on the superannuated list and finally died two years ago at his son's, at the age of about 87 years. His wife had died several years before at our house and is buried in our graveyard. He had a family of ten children, all of whom were married, and seven are living yet but are scattered through the south and west.

When we were married my wife was a member of the M. E. Church and she is yet. My predilections were all for the Presbyterian, but we never had any trouble about our churches and the children had full liberty to attend either without any constraint on my part, but largely on account of their associations and with their Mother's full consent, drifted into the Presbyterian Church where they all go but one daughter, Harriett, who married an Episcopalian and went with him into that church.

Section 30:  Growth

In ______ [sic] I bought the wood lot from Lyon Shorb and Co. for one thousand dollars, consisting at that time of a little over twenty-six acres, and after that my leisure time was largely spent out there. I hired a long-legged negro to make rails and put a fence around it and have kept my cows in it in the summer. On a pleasant winter day I would take a hatchet and go out and trim the young pines and burn the brush. I have spent whole days out there after I went on the bench and had the children bring out my dinner. The fresh air and exercise seemed to do me good. I worked just exactly to suit myself.

I recollect one cloudy afternoon, probably in February, I thought I wanted some exercise and went out there and had hardly got my fire started when it began to snow. I had plenty of brush, however, and soon had a rousing fire. I had taken the precaution as I usually did to put on an old coat and hat. It was not cold and I stayed out and took the snow all afternoon. I got along first rate and was nothing the worse for it, but it was not as comfortable as a sun-shiny day would have been. That may have been thirty years ago and I have had many pleasant days there since. I have bought two small additions to it since and sold off about an acre and a half up next the depot and have now about thirty acres, and I will not sell it in my lifetime. Should the town grow to a population of five or ten thousand, it will be valuable, but I keep it as a grove and for the associations I have with it. It is true the railroad cuts it both on the south and the east, but I have more than twenty-five acres still fenced in and I still think at some future time the road will stop down at the Curllsville road and leave my land intact. There is plenty of timber on it yet to make a nice grove, though I cut the oak sills for my house off it, made the rails to fence it and in olden times took wood off it for my a cook stove.

After I moved across to our present house, I planted young, white pines in the back yard, but they did not grow. One time about the last of May my farmer, Wm. French, was hauling in my summer fire wood. Rob was a little fellow, five or six years old. He pulled up a little pine out in the woods and brought it home, got the mattock, which was about as much as he could lift, but he made out to cut the sod and skinned it back and stuck in his little pine and turned the sod back on the roots. To my surprise it grew, and is now the tallest of the bunch of white pines in the lot. I found that I had planted too deep, and the shallower the roots are covered, the more likely the tree is to grow. The last of May or first of June is the time to plant. The other pines were planted by the boys later and all are growing and doing well. I think all trimming does harm -- as the tree grows the lower limbs die and fall off.

Hemlock, Larch, Norway Pine and Arbor Vitae are easily cultivated and do well in our climate. The Juniper will not stand our severe winters without protection. Mine all died the hard winter of 1855 and 6. I tried pear trees both on the Moffett lot and on this side. They did pretty well for a few years and some bore good crops, but in 18 or 20 years got the dry rot and died. I had peach trees bearing before I was married and I have planted new ones every few years, but they don't last, and for five years they have done no good and nearly all are now dead.

In 1843 I planted a Locust up between where the gate is and the apple tree. It grew and made a nice shade, but along about 1858 or 1860 one warm, dry summer the worms got at it and ate nearly all the bark off it and it died. The maple in front of the pavement Charley Harkless dug up out in the wood and he and I planted them in 1859. I like them as shade trees as well as any I see in town. Some 28 or 30 years ago I got half a dozen walnuts and planted them in the yard along the alley fence. They did not come up for one or two years. I had forgotten all about them, but one day in walking along the fence I found four little walnut trees. One was cut off in mowing the lot; three grew there for ten or twelve years, when Grandpa Hallock and I took up two of them and planted them in front of the pavement. One of them the cows broke down; the other is growing in front of the Baldwin apple tree and one is growing behind the office where it came up. It was badly scorched the time Frampton's house was burned, but it is going to survive. Our clay land is not the natural soil for walnut and they grow slowly, but they will make trees.

In 1852 I found my practice growing pretty large and I took in C. L. Lamberton as a partner. He was an intelligent young man, a pretty well read lawyer and a very good penman and put himself on paper very easily. I also found him an accurate business man and of great use in looking after our collecting practice. He was also better at collecting our fees than I was. I gave him the third of what the office made and it left my practice pretty much as it was before with less office work to do. He was a companionable man, well read up on the literature of the day, but he was not popular with my old clients, though they were largely Democrats and he belonged to that party.

Section 31:  Campbell Family Tree

On the 10th of August, 1850, a fine boy arrived in our family and was named James Hallock. He was a good sized, healthy child till he was six months old when he caught a cold that settled on his lungs and he never got over it. We tried all that the doctors could do - blistered the poor little fellow on breast and back and dosed him with cod liver oil. His Mother and I sat up with him for weeks -- she in the fore part of the night and I from one or two o'clock till morning. I still thought he ought to get well. In the spring he was still growing weaker. The doctor said if anything would save him it would be a change of air, and along the last of May I took his Mother and him down to Brother Oliver's in Center County and left them there, but it did no good, and on the 10th day of July, 1851, our boy died and was buried in the graveyard at Pine Grove where, with two little cousins, he still sleeps. Of course, I took Mary along, and after our fall courts I went down and brought her and her Mother home. He had been long sick and for a while the house appeared very desolate without him.

On the 4th day of May, 1852, another child was born in our house -- a daughter, and we called her Elisabeth. At first she appeared healthy, but in the fall she began to decline and medicine seemed to do her no good and she too died in November of the same year.

These losses were hard to bear and were very discouraging, but we had done all we could and submitted to these painful dispensations. Long after I thought of those dear little children and felt desolate. I now feel happy that they are gone and escaped the troubles, the temptations and the sins of an evil world and I have not a doubt they are happy.

I was now a man of middle age, enjoying vigorous health, doing a large business and acquiring property and some influence. The work was no trouble to me unless sometimes on court week I got rather more of it than was pleasant, but I enjoyed my business life and felt that I was prospering.

About once a year, instead of going to a watering place, I took a trip to Mifflin County to see my Mother and friends there. Frequently Mother and I would take a trip around among the four or five families composing the Campbell settlement and took us about a week to get around. Uncle Joe's old home was a pleasant place to visit. He married Elisabeth Oliver (Aunt Betsey she was always called) on the 17th day of April 1813 and went immediately to live where they remained for life. Their oldest daughter Isabella was born February 18th, 1814. Their second daughter, Margaret Jane, was born November 19th, 1815. Joseph was born November 6th, 1817. Elisabeth L. was born January 15th, 1820, and died unmarried February 7th, 1883. Hugh McClelland Campbell was born November 17th, 1821, and died in California May 11th, 1850. Andrew W. was born November 6th, 1823. Robert Douglas was born October 30th, 1826, and still lives on the old farm. Mary Rachel Campbell was born August 26th, 1830. She married a Wilson and removed to Illinois and had two children, Myra and Bruce, and died November 17th, 1859. Isabella died December 9th, 1863. All these eight children lived to maturity. The three boys living have done well and are in good circumstances. The three oldest girls did not marry. Margaret Jane is living on the old place with her niece, Myra Wilson, and she too is getting to be an old maid and is spoken of as an excellent girl. The family grew up on the farm adjoining ours -- double cousins and being a great deal together.

Joseph Campbell married Elisabeth S. Wilson on the 29th day of March, 1849, and commenced housekeeping on the farm on which he now lives. They have had seven children, as follows:

Marian E. born April 2nd, 1850

Joseph Milton born September 15th, 1853

Emma Jane born March 2, 1856

Wm. Wilson born June 16th, 1858 -- deceased

Oliver McClelland born July 6th, 1862

Robert Lincoln born March 3d, 1865

Bessie Mary born May 30th, 1868

The oldest married a man named Albert Cowars on the 27th of December, 1874, and lived her married life in Chester County, Pennsylvania, and died November 27th, 1886, leaving three children. Joseph Milton is married and lives on a farm adjoining his father. Emma is married to a man named Cummings. McClelland is a graduate of Jefferson and Washington College -- is now in Minnesota teaching. The two younger children are at home.

Andrew W. Campbell, on the 22d day of November, 1854, married Margaret Jane Wilson. They have but one child living -- Mary Elisabeth, born February 11th, 1863. Andrew is a good farmer and in independent circumstances.

Robert Douglas married Mary W. Marsden on the 10th of October, 1872. Their children are Florence Rebecca, born January 5th, 1874; Douglas Marsden, born August 21, 1880, and Oliver Hubert, born May 7th, 1883. They had another daughter dead. His wife, Mary, died March 16th, 1884. He lives on his father's mansion farm.

It is somewhat singular that about the beginning of 1805, Samuel the youngest son of my Grandfather, Robert Campbell, married Agnes, the third daughter of John Oliver. In the spring of 1807 my father married Rachel, the older daughter, and in 1812, or early in 1813, Uncle Joe married the second daughter, and afterwards John Campbell of Center County, then a widower, married Jane Oliver, another daughter of John Oliver.

Uncle Samuel Campbell bought a farm in Washington County near Shirleysburg where I believe all his children were born. Early in 1830 or before 1835 he and his family removed out to Monroe County, Ohio, where he died on the 19th day of September, 1841, aged 63 years and seven days. The family of Uncle Samuel are as follows:

John Oliver, born December, 1806, died July 29th, 1885, in California

Joseph Furguson, born September 21st, 1808, living in Bedford County, Pennsylvania

Jane, born October 27th, 1810, married a man named Hand, lives in Illinois

Margaret Ann, born December 22d, 1812, married a man named Hames, is now a widow and lives at Plymouth in the state of Indiana

Mary Agnes, born July 5th, 1815, married a man named Ray, is now a widow and lives at Plymouth, Indiana

Robert was born December 14th, 1817, and died October 14th, 1844

Elisabeth Isabella, born February 17th, 1820, married a man named Gilson and died November 13th, 1858

Samuel Franklin, born May 5th, 1822, and died November 18th, 1858

Casandence Lyon born 16th [sic], 1824, married a man named McDonald and died July 2d, 1855

James Alexander was born December 22d, 1826, is a bachelor and lives in Kanyon City, Grant County, in the State of Oregon. When he left the State of Indiana a young man, he copied the family record off his father's Bible. Afterwards the Bible was burned with the house of Mrs. Ray. The children's ages could not all be made out by memory, but Miss Cornelia E. Campbell, daughter of John Oliver, in corresponding with her Uncle James A., happened to mention the loss of the old Bible and he wrote her a copy and she sent a copy of that to me. Then the information came to me by a long and roundabout way, but I have no doubt it is correct.

John Oliver, the oldest of the family, was a large, fine looking man. He married out in Ohio and wandered out to Iowa -- got to keeping a hotel out somewhere not far from where Omaha is now. It was about the time of the great emigration to the Pacific Coast and his house did a large business and he made some money, but the western fever finally struck him and he packed up, took his wife and five young children and started across the plains and mountains -- was about three months on the way, lost most of his teams and property in crossing the desert, but finally got across the Nevada mountains to the settlements and placer diggings; found himself in the occident with a wife and five children, without money or property and nothing to do but dig for gold. However, he rented a boarding house and made his first money feeding golddiggers; got to trading and gathered some money and bought a farm (a ranch, he called it) right on the shores of the Pacific Ocean. During all this time he had never written to his friends and they did not know what had become of him. About 12 years after he was lost I received a letter one morning from him, stating that he had dreamed one night that all his friends were dead and he became anxious to hear from them but did not know where to write to any of them -- that he happened to meet a man from Clarion County who told him I was living there and so he wrote to me. I knew his brothers and sisters were anxious to hear of him, so I immediately enclosed the letter to Jane Hand with whom his Mother was living.

The answer I got from Cousin Jane was they were very glad to hear from him but that his Mother was buried about three days before the letter arrived. I wrote to Oliver about as severe a letter as I could for neglecting his friends for so long a time. This brought an answer from his daughter, Cornelia, with whom I have kept up an occasional correspondence ever since. Some 10 or 15 years ago he came over and spent a winter among his friends -- I think two or three weeks with me. On his return home the train was overtaken by a storm in the Nevada mountains and were snowed up a day or two, the thermometer dropping down 25 degrees below zero. When the train got through and started one morning down the mountain it was intensely cold, but by evening they were in the valley of the Sacramento amid clover blossoms and a temperature of 80 degrees above, and the passengers suffered as much with the heat as they had done with the cold. Oliver wrote me it was the most trying experience he ever had and he caught a very bad cold.

In 1838 he married a Miss Matilda L. Shear in Ohio, by whom he had five children, as follows

Carlisla E., born in Ohio in 1840, married Wm. F. Jess in California

Cornelia E., born in Delphi, Indiana, in 1842, unmarried

Oliver, born March 14th, 1847, is married and has five children

Benjamin Franklin, born in 1851, married and has four children

A. E. Campbell, born in 1854, not married

Section 32:  The Mexican War

Pretty soon after the election of James K. Polk in 1844, after the acquisition of Texas, the country got into complications with Mexico about the strip of country between the Nueces River and the Rio Grande resulting in the Mexican War. It was believed by a great many, and with good reason, that this war was precipitated on the country in the interests of slavery. There is little doubt with prudence and a decent regard for the rights of a weaker power this complication might have been amicably adjusted; but the southern states were aggressive and in sympathy with the President. Although believing the war to be unjust, I felt a keen interest in the success of our armies and no man exulted more in the success of General Taylor on the Rio Grande and General Scott in the center of Mexico than I did. There was really a good deal of good generalship and severe fighting in that war. The volunteer troops were principally from the southern states and it was an excellent training school and many of the officers and best fighters that gave us so much trouble in the war of the Rebellion. I kept a file of all the papers containing official reports of the battles fought throughout the entire war, but in the political campaigns of 1848 and 1852 I used them in making speeches through the county and many of them got lost.

One of the early settlers of our town was a half-witted fellow named Henry Gompors.

One spring about the time of the breaking out of the Mexican War, Tom Sutton, B. I. Reid and a passel of the boys, in the spirit of fun and mischief, elected Gompors burgess of the Borough which so inflated him that he was easily persuaded to call a meeting of the citizens to deliberate on the momentous situation of the country in view of the impending war with Mexico.

The meeting was a prodigious success, and the solemnity of the occasion was such that the burgess himself had to preside. Sutton and Reid were on hand engineering the meeting with resolutions prepared which were carried unanimously. I believe the purpose of them was that in view that a marauding band of Mexicans might come along some time and if not protected might sack the town, and recommending the erection of fortifications on graveyard hill to repel any onslaught of the enemy. Well, the boys had their fun and the burgess was dropped out and went back to his saddlers bench.

In 1848 the unfortunate little simpleton joined a company of young men of his native town of Indiana and went to California to dig gold. After being there a year or two he got into a fight with a companion named Spotswood and stuck a knife into him, killing him at once. It was in the days of vigilance committees and the miners immediately called a meeting to determine on the character of the murder and the punishment of the murderer. If he had any defense, he had not sense enough to make it and he was condemned to hang the next evening at sundown. He never tried to escape but spent the hours between the sentence and execution in writing to his father and addressing his prayers to his Heavenly Father and at sundown was hung -- and his bones rest along the foothills of the Sierras. I always felt sorry for the fate of the poor silly fellow. The chances are that he committed the murder in resentment of some dishonesty practiced on him.

Section 33:  Thomas Sutton & Family

Sutton became a prosperous man -- bought the two lots east of the Presbyterian Church and erected a brick house and brick office thereon. They had a beautiful little daughter, their first child. At the age of three or four years she died of scarlet fever. They also had a little boy and a younger daughter. The family were among the best in town. He was a useful member and elder of our church, a successful, popular member of the bar; he was naturally a cheerful, jovial companion and he and his wife did much to give tone to the social intercourse of the town. So far as drink was concerned, he was strictly temperate, but he was a free liver, fond of highly seasoned food and late suppers and had a tendency to grow corpulent; but he had pretty good health and continued growing as a lawyer till the winter of 1853 he began to fail and in March of that year he took some kind of a gastric fever and after lingering a week or two died at the age of thirty-seven -- universally regretted, and I lost the most intimate friend I ever had in Clarion.

While he lay sick his little boy took the fever and died a day or two before his father, and I attended the funeral of both within three days of each other. His brothers, John and James Sutton and one of their sisters came over to the funeral and Mrs. Sutton in her desolation accompanied them back to Indiana with her remaining child, but it had caught the contagion too and took sick after they got there and in about a week she died and they brought her back and buried her beside her father and brother and sister, and all but the mother sleep in our graveyard.

Mrs. Sutton remained in town several years after the death of her family but subsequently sold her property and removed from town. H. A. Thompson and wife were her most intimate friends. They removed back to Indiana where they had formerly lived. In the removal and breaking up of these two families, our church sustained a great loss. They were both ruling elders. Since that we have lost by removal Thompson, Moffitt and John P. Greer and others, and still our church lives and is supported by about the usual number of members. Mrs. Sutton is living in Philadelphia, in charge of a select school.

Section 34:  Continued Growth

From 1852 till 1861, my partner and I, though not engaged in every suit that was tried in the county, had a pretty large practice.

Few important cases were tried that we were not on one side or the other. During that time I argued a good many cases in the Supreme Court at Pittsburgh. Our term of that court came in October, and I think I was there every year. There is a drawer in my bookcase full of old paper books and a good many in the old bureau drawer. The preparation of these books took a good deal of work. They had to be written out in manuscript and then printed for the judges and Pro. of the Supreme Court. We usually had 25 copies printed and I always tried to keep a copy or two for future reference and in this way they accumulated to a pretty large pile of pamphlets.

During these years I got to attending the courts in Jefferson County. I always had a collecting practice in that county and gradually I was employed in the trial of cases, and I made -- outside of our partnership practice at home -- from five hundred to a thousand dollars a year. There was a natural feeling among the members of the bar in that county to keep out foreign lawyers and I recollect of having some stiff fights in that county with nearly all the bar against me.

The case of Magbin vs. Taylor took nearly a week. I had only Capt. Wise Taylor's son-in-law to assist me and all he could do was to take notes of testimony. Judge White of Indiana, Gordon Bor, The Jenks and Ben Lucas and I think Barkley were for the plaintiff. It was life or bankruptcy for Philip Taylor. He had a grist mill below Magbin on the Red Bank Creek and Magbin sued him for flowing water back on him. The mill was valuable and the revenue derived from it kept Taylor from insolvency. If he had to lower his dam it would destroy it almost and of course we fought it for all that was in it. Judge M. Calmont was on the bench and left the whole question to the jury, and after being out all night they brought in a verdict next morning for the defendant. That was just before the war, and in a few years prices got up and by a few lucky turns Taylor came out with flying colors and died some years after the war one of the wealthy men of Brookville.

Some other closely contested cases got me into quite a practice in that county, and with the members of the bar I contracted a friendship that has lasted ever since.

At this time Judge Gordon was in his prime and he and his brother had a large practice. Judge W. P. Jenks had a large practice. Phineas Jenks and Winston brought a good practice over from Punxsutawney. Gen. Brady and Jesse G. Clark were out of the practice and died. Richard Arthurs was still in the practice and is living now, the sole connecting link of the present and a race of lawyers now passed away.

Thirty or forty years ago I believe the practice was better in Jefferson County than in ours. The grand forests of white pine in Jefferson County have been a source of wealth for many years, and though greatly reduced and forests largely cut off, the lumber industry brings more money in that county today than any other industry.

Punxsutawney, Dubois, Reynoldsville and Brockwayville were all built up by the lumber trade. I also got to practicing some in Forest when the county seat was Manorville. During this time I had bought the old Potter farm. I knew it was poor and out of order when I bought, and I thought I got it pretty cheap, but I soon found that it was quite as bad as it looked. However, I put a new roof on the barn, made new fences and repaired old ones and put a pretty good farmer on it and spent a good deal of time and money on it. Fifty acres on the east side was in woodland and I sold that to Wm. Young for a thousand dollars. There was nothing in it to me and after having it for a number of years, I sold the balance of it so as to come out without loss, but it was about the poorest speculation I ever made in real estate.

During the fall of 1856 I spent a good deal of time on the farm and exposed myself in the wet and cold and got the typhoid fever. In a few days I became a very sick man. Dr. Ross told me the fever had got to run its course and the attack was a severe one. The December court was coming on and I was anxious to be able to attend to my cases at that time, but the doctor told me I could not expect to be well that soon, and when that court came on I was in bed with the chance about even whether I would get well or die.

At this time I had accumulated some property, but it was scattered out and would be of little avail to keep my family if I died, and this annoyed me a good deal and I thought if I got well I would make some provision to support my family till the children would grow up. Dr. Gillitt came down from Franklin to see me a few times, and by skillful treatment and careful nursing I gradually pulled past the danger line and began to mend. My Brother, Robert, and his wife and Sister Rachel Jane came out to see me and my Sister remained a part of the winter.

By the February court I was able to be out but did not attempt to do much business. By spring I was well, but I felt the effects of that fever for several years.

After the May court I took a trip west as far as St. Anthony's Falls in Minnesota, was gone perhaps a month, and suppose I was the better for the trip. In a few years the dregs of that disease left me and I regained my usual vigorous health.

At this time we had three children -- Mary and Rob born in March, 1854, and John K. in July, 1856. Rob was a sickly boy till late in the fall after he was born. His mother cured him by the water cure which was quite popular at that time, and he has been pretty healthy ever since.

We had a comfortable home. The house was not large but convenient with a good well at the door. I had it dug some years before by a big Irishman called Dan McFadden. In fact he dug the wells on both my lots, but at the old house his brother, Charley, assisted him. They were both ignorant Irishmen. Dan would get drunk but Charley was one of Father Mathew's men, carried a little medal given to him when he signed the pledge. Charley worked for me a good deal. When he got some money he wanted to send to Ireland and bring in one of his sisters. He told me he was going down to Pittsburgh to get a priest there to send the money to his sister. I asked why he was going there for. He said the priest was from their country and nobody else knew how to send it. I told him I could send it better than the priest and would charge him nothing for it. He regarded this as a piece of presumption, but after reflecting on it a day or two he concluded to let me try as it would save him the expense of a trip to Pittsburgh. In due time the girl got the bill of exchange and came out here and Charley thought I was a wonderful man who could send money to Ireland as well as the priest that was born there. The poor fellow went from here to Pottsville and was killed in a coal mine.

In 1857 I bought of Samuel A. Purviance, Esqr. the one-fourth interest in the Bingham estate for thirteen thousand dollars, in payments. The other three-fourths were owned by Samuel M. Lane, A. N. Neglert and the estate of Hon. John Bredin, a fourth each. All were or had been residents of Butler, Butler County, Pennsylvania. The Bingham lands were in Clarion, Jefferson, Forest and a few tracts in Venango. Nearly all of it had been sold and the bulk of the property was unpaid purchase money on articles of agreement. Being the only owner residing in this county, the partners appointed me their agent and I had charge of the entire estate, collected money, paid taxes, brought ejectments and tried several and made settlements all through the localities where the lands were. I notified purchasers that I would attend courts in the several counties. From this time I attended all the courts in Jefferson and Forest, made collections and distributed the money as often as I received any considerable sum; kept a land book and cash book, and in a few years, by liberal and fair treatment, I secured the confidence of the settlers and though slow pay they were willing to do the best they could.

Some years afterwards James Bredin bought out Neglert and then we two bought out Lane. It is now nearly all paid and deeds made. I think I have collected some eighty-five thousand dollars. When the war came on and legal tender at a heavy discount, money was paid in pretty fast. As it accumulated on my hands, out of my share I bought Government Bonds, some of them at a discount. I also bought the farm over in the valley.

I made a good bit of money out of this purchase, and by attending the courts in the different counties I made some money by the practice outside of my collections. I suppose I made altogether, out of the purchase of the Bingham property, not less than ten thousand dollars and possibly more.

From 1857 to 1860 I thought myself a pretty hard working man, and so much of it was in the trying of cases and attending to business outside of the office that I found it necessary to read a good deal at night. I think less time was given to play and amusement than at any other period of my life.

Previous to this some years, at the end of the year I had fallen into the habit of making an inventory of my property and I notice in these years a comfortable growth in my pile, and I felt in quite easy circumstances.

In the fall or winter of 1858 Hattie was born. We still lived over in the S. T. Moffitt house. It was comfortable and though not large, furnished us a pretty good home. I found, however, that I could build a new house over on my lots at the office without feeling it much. Some years before that I had bought the corner lot next the alley and the three made a nice square of 180 feet, and I thought a good house about thirty feet from the street on the middle lot with the two side lots for trees, shrubbery and yard would be about the right location for a pleasant home. They were all surrounded then by a good close board fence and a nice lot of trees growing thereon.

Section 35:  Settlers, Fire, and Hard Winter

I had raised some good crops of peaches and some apples. The hard winter of 1855 and 6 had killed some of my peach trees and all were badly injured. In fact, half the peach trees in the county were killed. The snow was deep. It scarcely thawed for three months and the roads were badly drifted.

I recollect one bright, star-light night in February, John B. Loomis and I came up from Brookville in his sleigh with two horses.

We started after dark and by the time we got up the hill on this side of Brookville, the horses were as white as ganders. It was the coldest night I ever traveled. When we got to Strattonville, the thermometer was twentyseven degrees below zero. We got home safe. We were both well protected by warm clothing and buffalo robes, but from my eyes up to where my hat reached my forehead was sore for day or two.

One night that winter I was waked up with the cry of "fire," and running out I saw the Great Western was on fire. Andrew Gardner was then keeping it. I went back into the house and put on my clothes, went out and turned my cow out of the stable and tied the calf to the fence in a safe place, and went back and told my wife to move nothing but to stay and watch the children and a little bag of gold I had in a drawer in the bookcase. We had neither engine nor hose but the snow was at least two feet deep and it was cold. I had no doubt when I first saw the fire that the building had to burn. The wind was blowing from the northwest. Down and across the street Mr. Niblock had a brick house built right up against the Western at the east end, and that building I knew could not be saved. Right against that was Wm. Everding's -- only one story but a frame. It was thought by tearing that down the next house below could be saved and so we went at it and in a short time let the roof down on the floor with a good load of snow on it, and with the brick wall protecting it, we had no trouble in stopping on our side and as it did not get across the street only the two buildings were burned, but the Western being a large frame building made a big blaze, and if it had not been for the snow we might have had trouble stopping it. And so the old hotel where my home had been for some six or seven years went up in smoke. With the appliances we have now, we could probably have saved the buildings.

Col. Coulter had sold the property as early as 1846 or 1847, and bought the brick up next Brimstone Corner. Some time along in 1853 or 1854 he got at me to furnish him some money to start a store. He had his money in a store over in Butler County and thought he could make money out of a store here, and he would attend it himself. At first I refused. I had no doubt of his ability or of his honesty, but his habits were not what a business man's should be. He became anxious and made solemn promises that he would never touch liquor again. I thought he might be all right, for sometimes he would abstain for six months or a year at a time, and so I gave him two thousand dollars and he was to run the store at a small salary and give me the half of what we made. He soon had five or six thousand dollars in it and made some money. The Col. broke over sometimes, but on the whole did pretty well. His wife often attended the store and I believe was quite as good at selling goods as he was. Of course I had nothing to do but furnish capital. I remained a member of the firm for five or six years and did well enough -- think I made about twenty per cent on the money invested. I was a good customer myself and while building the house I must have drawn out one or two thousand dollars for I paid my workmen largely through the store. The Col. employed Abr'm. Stull as a clerk and salesman and he turned out to be a faithful, honest boy, and about 1860 I sold out my interest to him. The store made money fast when the war came on and Abraham paid me easily and in a reasonably short time.

The town had changed a good deal. Judge Myers and Captain Barber, our two most wealthy men, had failed. James Kerr, an excellent citizen, had sold out and gone to Westmoreland County. Sutton was dead and Thomson had gone. John Clark soon after sold and went to the State of Indiana. Dr. Goe went to Meadville and from there to Wisconsin where he died. G. W. Arnold got the Wilson and Barber store. John Lyon became an iron master and went down in the panic of 1847. H. M. R. Clark rented his hotel (now the Jones House) and afterwards bought and ran it for a good many years and then sold it to Sheriff Jones who operated it till he sold out and Mrs. Beck became proprietress. B. J. Reid came here as early as 1842, I think taught school a term or was then assistant editor of a democratic paper and read law with Thos. Sutton, was admitted and went west to St. Louis and from there to California; stayed several years, came back and practiced here, got married, went to Titusville and from there to Erie, and from there came back to Clarion where he has been ever since, a successful lawyer; raised a large family of good boys and girls, has been an industrious, enterprising, but financially not a very successful man. His brother, John C. Reid, has kept a drug store in the James Kerr property which he bought, has been successful and accumulated a pretty large amount of property, but never found himself far enough ahead to get a wife. But he made more money sitting down quietly and attending to his drugs than his brother while moving all over the continent and, no doubt, working far harder.

Dr. James Ross was one of the early settlers. I think he built the back end of his house in 1842 or 1843, ten or twelve years after he built the front; had a large family -- I think six of their children died while quite small, and six survive. He was our family physician and the families were friends. He was a few months younger than I, but he died some four years ago, and his wife has followed him quite lately.

Perhaps the best and one of the most useful men of our town was the Rev. James Montgomery. He had, till the Junior years, been a member of our class at Jefferson College. He went away and taught a year and came back and graduated in the class of 1838, studied divinity at the Allegheny Theological Seminary. He came to preach for us soon after the congregation was organized. One half his time he preached in the Rehoboth Church, but lived in Clarion and preached for us one half his time till failing health compelled him to resign about in 1867 or 1868. He was not a fiery eloquent sermonizer, but was a man of ability and great force and exercised more than ordinary influence in the town. He was a wise man and though an Irishman, was eminently prudent and possessed sound judgment. His sincerity and Christianity I never heard doubted. He first married a daughter of Dr. Jeffrys who died in about a year. Some years afterwards he married Margaret Johnson of Mercer, Pennsylvania, by whom he had two daughters. His salary was barely sufficient to keep his family, but he made some prudent investments on which he realized handsomely and left an estate of some twenty five thousand dollars to his widow and young daughters besides an honored name and a fragrant memory. His family continued to reside in Clarion.

Section 36:  Building a House

In the spring of 1858 I had made up my mind to build a house on my lots on the south side of the street, and I settled in my mind what I wanted the inside of the house to be. As that was where I expected to live, I made that my first study and the outside had to conform to it whether it made an imposing appearance or not. I was not an architect or draftsman but I drew plans on paper to an exact scale, locating rooms, halls and porches, windows, doors and chimneys, and when I got them all adjusted and fitted to suit me I found it made my house fifty-four feet long by thirty-six wide with an eight foot porch in front thirty feet and the same width at the back the whole length of the house, cutting off a buttery on the east end and a small room on the west end and the house was one story of twelve feet to the square.

The first thing I had to do was to move the office down to the corner for it then stood right in front of where the house was to be. This involved the erection of a foundation for the office on the alley which I had done. We then took down the chimney and got rollers under the office and shoved it down on to the new foundation where it now stands. I was somewhat annoyed to find that in making room for the house I had to take two of my best apple trees and about three peach trees, but they had not recovered after the frost of 1855 and 1856.

But I had George Lapole, Francis Slagle and John Warack (a gentleman of African persuasion) to dig the celler [sic] under all the house but the porches -- 52 by 36, and pile the clay around the foundation to raise the ground. Got old Wm. Shaner to split out the stone down in our woods by the spring and as soon as a part of the cellar was dug out got old John Cookson to laying the cellar walls. Charley Beman had a stout team of horses with Smith Strickler for driver, and I hired this team for the summer at $2.50 a day, he finding everything, and I very soon had quarrying, hauling and laying stone. Mr. Neal had filled up a little lime house and we got water out of the well to make the mortar which George Brewer mixed and carried to the mason. By the time the cellar was dug out, Shaner was done quarrying stone and he turned in and helped Cookson at the wall. The stone had been carefully split out and all projections and protruhberances [sic] knocked off, and when the stone was dumped on the ground they were in shape for dressing and building which saved hauling, and I got a most excellent substantial wall in which mice find no place to make nests. There is a good deal of wall under the house, and though we commenced work in May it was late in August or first of September before the mason work was fully completed.

Some years before this, John Klingensmith and I had bought two hundred and twenty-eight acres of very fine timber land in Jefferson County, north of Corsica. Subsequently he wanted to build a saw mill on it and manufacture the timber. To this I would not agree and told him the money was in holding it for a while and then selling the land. However he insisted or if I would not go in with him he would buy me out. I finally told him I would either buy or sell at exactly double what we paid for it. He at once agreed to buy but had not the money to pay me, so I made him a deed and took a judgment for the purchase money. He went on and put up the mill and had it ready to commence cutting the spring I began building my house. I got my carpenter to make me out a bill of all the sawed stuff I wanted for the house, the building to be double plank so as to have the walls thick enough for weights in the window frames.

I got in all 51,000 feet of sawed stuff, had it cut and the stuff for doors and windows put into the dam and soaked for a month or so and then taken out and stuck up and dried. The balance of the stuff Beman's team hauled in the course of the summer and fall. It was cut out of the stuff right around the mill -- mostly cock pine and a good deal of it clear stuff. There are some plank in the house 27 inches broad and much of it is clear stuff. I got the oak sills out of our woods and the long plates on the hill out towards the old Kelly place, and we were all ready and raised the house in September, 1858.

During that fall we put the roof on it and by winter closed it up and let it settle till the next spring. All the carpenter work was done by hand by Abr'm. Richards and his two boys, John and Tom. The stuff was all worked out through the winter. The weather boards were nearly all clear stuff and there is not a knot as large as a ten cent piece on the front of the house. The windows, doors and sash were worked out and put to dry. During the winter I got lath and made a contract with Mr. Burns to plaster it as soon as the spring opened. By the first of May, 1859, the carpenter work was ready for the plasterers. The chimneys were all up the fall before. Burns and his partner went to work nailing on the lath. The mortar was made in a big mortar bed right under where the cherry tree at the east end of the house stands, and it took a good deal of it. There were twenty-five loads of sand besides the lime worked up and plastered on the walls. Then the woodwork was finished, the doors hung and the windows put in and Miller Beaty got at the painting, and by the time it had three coats on inside and out it was fall.

I had taken a good deal of pains to have everything in and about the house finished in a substantial and workmanlike manner.

After all was finished we let it stand until it was thoroughly dry, and about the last week in December, 1859, we moved across the street and the day we moved we had Francis Slagle, Margaret Potter and a Mrs. Arnold who lived back on Liberty Street help u[s] carry over the furniture. I was in the new house arranging the furniture, and my daughter, Mary, carried over to me an apple pie and a pitcher of milk, and I ate my first dinner in the dining room of the new house alone. The others ate over in the old house.

So much stuff had accumulated about the old house that I thought I would never get it packed in the one, though the latter was as big again as the old one. After nailing down carpets, putting up beds and arranging things for week or two we were living in our new house and found it exceedingly pleasant and comfortable, and I have never found a house since that I liked as well and I hope to occupy it as long as I live. It has now sacred associations. My children have grown up in it and all but one gone to other homes and built up families of their own, and from it our youngest little daughter has gone up to a higher and happier home to live and rejoice with angels.

The spring of 1859 -- the second new court house in Clarion was begun. The cellar was cleared out and enlarged. Daniel English, who had the contract to rebuild, had two or three wagons hauling away clay, sand and brick bats. He said he would haul as much stuff as I wanted to fill up around the house, and think he dumped not less than three hundred loads around the house and between the house and office. It was the handiest place he could get to unload, and with what came out of our own cellar it filled up the lot so that the water runs away from it in every direction. I was afraid I had gotten it filled up too much, but I got Alfred Slick to grade and give it the proper slope. He was pretty slow, but he had a good eye. I told him to take his time and make a good job of it, and I was entirely satisfied when he got it done and I found I had none too much filling and that I would have a nicely graded, dry yard.

Then that spring I bought twenty-eight dollars worth of evergreens, shrubbery and trees and planted (nearly all of it died but the Larch and Norway Pine at the window east of the front porch). Then I got a peck of blue grass seed from Martin Kearney and sowed over the whole yard, and lastly I got some real well rotted horse manure and gave it a light coat and Slick raked it well into the soil. Instead of the blue grass coming up, a fine crop of clover and timothy made its appearance and grew vigorously, notwithstanding the big frost on the 5th and 11th of June of that year which killed nearly all the fruit and wheat in the county, but in a year or two the blue grass began to show and soon rooted out the timothy, but the red and white clover held its own and some of it, particularly the white, is growing in it yet. The poor clay out of the cellar when mouldered down by the frost and the lime and sand from the courthouse, sent up a vigorous growth and the trees and grass grew stronger on the new made ground than on the native hard pan. But we soon had a nice sod and trees growing and a very agreeable home.

As soon as the house was finished, a pailing fence was put up along the front, west side and rear, and a high board fence next to Mr. Love. The front of the house is thirty feet back from the street.

That same spring I got Charley Harkless to go out into our woods and dig up half a dozen maple grubs and he and I planted them in front of the pavement where three of them are growing yet. We also planted two little hemlocks in front of the front porch where one of them is growing yet. The other maintained a precarious existence for a number of years and then died. I guess the children shook it too much.

I had spouting put on the house and I got Toney Paster to cut out two long stones -- I think about 14 feet, and cut a nice channel in the face and sunk them in the ground under, the spouting to carry the water from the roof away from the cellar and front porch. They are there yet.

I kept an accounting of the cost of the new house and when everything was done I found it had cost me about four thousand five hundred dollars. I rented the old house for a number of years after that and then sold it to Mrs. McCrea for a thousand dollars. While living there I liked it very well as a home, but as soon as I got to living in the new house I never cared anything about it. The yard was so much larger and so much more pleasant for a playground for the children that I soon lost all interest in the old home. [Note: a photo of the Campbell house is in the on-line Photo Album for this Web site.]

Section 37:  Killing Frosts of 1859

The heavy frosts of June, 1859, made that a gloomy summer. The apples were as large as pigeon eggs and they were frozen to the core -- not one apple was left in my lot and but few in the county. The wheat that year promised an unusually good crop. It was well grown, in the shooting blade when struck, and full of sap and the heads were frozen dead.

Old man Myers had a nice patch of three or four acres on the Potter farm. Not a grain of wheat was left. Some time after it was cut for hay and it made good feed for his stock. Pretty much all the fall grain in the county was cut for hay. At that time it looked hard for our people. I could not see how actual want could be avoided. Not the one-half of the laboring men and farmers had anything laid up ahead to fall back. I immediately ordered flour from Pittsburgh to last me a year and paid a round price for it. But all the farmers went to work to sow buckwheat and it turned out a good crop. Special attention was given to potatoes and corn. I suppose there was no absolute want in the county. It was reported some Dutch settlers up about Lucinda Furnace lived for a week or two on buttermilk and potatoes, but the year passed with less trouble than was expected.

The wheat was not killed on the Fox farm at the mouth of the Clarion and Samuel M. Fox made himself popular that fall selling wheat to the farmers for seed at a dollar and a half a bushel when the selling price was two and a half and as high as three dollars. The loss of the wheat crop was felt less from the fact that Clarion County always imported flour ever since I came into it. When the furnaces were in blast in the county, a large portion of the flour was brought from Pittsburgh and today the flour sold by our merchants is principally imported from abroad, though most of them have less or more county flour -- which I prefer to the Vienna or White River and always use.

Section 38:  The Civil War

As far back as my college days, the great doctrine of State Rights was agitating the country. Statesmen of the south made fiery speeches in Congress in favor of it. The leading newspapers of the south, almost without exception advocated it. Public opinion was not only formed but inflamed, and secession was openly taught in the cotton states, particularly in South Carolina.

General Jackson, with strong southern proclivities, would not tolerate and in 1832 Webster's reply to Haynes of South Carolina gave it a backset. But the excitement was kept up in the interests of slavery. It was not claimed that the United States as a government was inimical to slavery, but that the northern states had become a refuge of fugitive slaves and instead of arresting them and sending them back, they ran them off to Canada. The aggressive and defiant sentiment of the south awakened the liberty loving spirit of New England and the north and the antagonism became more bitter and hostile on both sides.

The election of Buchanan in 1856, a northern man with southern principles, was an unfortunate event for the country. He would not go far enough for the south and too far to please the north, with not enough of backbone to stand up firmly against either. The power in the south was all in the hands of the slave owners and slave property was estimated at twelve hundred million of dollars. The owner of this property dominated the south.

From 1856 to 1861 the country was in an increasing state of excitement. The right of secession was everywhere south of Mason and Dixon's line fiercely contended for peaceably if they could and forcibly if they must. It was everywhere proclaimed that in the event of a conflict the mudsills of the north would go down before the chivalry of the south, and the tone of the secessionists became exceedingly exasperating and insolent -- even contemptuous to the north.

At this time what made the controversy look serious was that while the cotton states were a unit, the north was divided. Many Democrats strongly sympathized with the south. President Buchanan flatly denied the power of the government to coerce a state. The navy was scattered to foreign stations, and by the connivance of Jacob Thompson, Secretary of the Interior, eight million of Indian bonds was abstracted from the Treasury. The small army was distributed through the south and west and by the close of that administration the Treasury was bankrupt.

Sumpter had been fired on; several states had gone out; members of Congress and one Senator Brackenridge had abandoned their posts and gone to join the forces organized to destroy the government they had sworn to protect. Forts were seized. The gold in the mints and custom houses was stolen and appropriated to organizing rebel armies. President Buchanan expostulated and did nothing.

The attack on Fort Sumpter [sic] went through the north like an electric shock. A feeling deeper than politics was stirred and thrilled through the free states. The wavering were made solid and the disloyal were silenced. The deepest emotion was awakened and with the masses a savage determination to save the national government and to whip the rebels, and the formidable motive of the rebellion only increased the stern resolution to crush it out.

When it became inevitable that war was upon us, the public pulse beat about as fiercely in Clarion as anywhere else. While there was only talk there was any amount of that done in our street and a good deal of swearing. But when the echoes of the firing on Fort Sumpter [sic] reached us, there was blood in the air.

Wm. Lemon of Strattonville began to call for volunteers. Several of our boys joined him; others came from the country around, and in a short time a meeting was called and they met in Clarion. At that time there was no organization, no commissary department and no provision for subsisting the company or mustering it into the service. A full company met here and that evening my partner, Charley Lamberton and two or three others started around town and in an hour or two raised seven hundred dollars in cash and people gave blankets and that night the company was encamped on the fairground and everything provided to make them comfortable. They elected officers -- Lemmon, Captain, and next day started to Pittsburgh; went on to Harrisburg and were mustered into the service. The company fought through the war. Captain Lemmon went into the navy and was killed before Newburn. Major Wetter came home but left one leg on the battle field. Some were killed and some died in the hospitals and a few came home.

This did not exhaust the war feeling, and soon after Colonel Knox gathered a company of fine material for soldiers and were mustered into the 10th Reserve Corps. I think they also did much hard fighting and made a good record.

The next company to leave our town was Major B. J. Reid's. He had a full company of good men who did excellent service. The next was I. B. Loomis -- raised a company of volunteer cavalry -- saw hard service. Captain Loomis was killed and Lieutenant M. Beaty carries a chunk of rebel lead in his back as a reminder of the late unpleasantness.

The next I believe was Captain Mackey. His company got away into North Carolina and was taken prisoner and for a few months enjoyed the luxury of a southern prison. Dr. Klotz took a company out from over in Richland and Beaver Townships. Major Laughlin, I think, took out the last company. But Colonel Craig took out a company from about Greenville. He was soon promoted to be Colonel (155th Regiment) and fell in battle.

Besides these, many went out as recruits to fill the ranks of the fallen and many went out in squads of two to six and attached themselves to different arms of the service. Captain Core also took out a company recruited from about Curllsville.

Our town and county contributed their full share of the greatest army ever seen on the continent and that, after four years, crushed a rebellion that would have overthrown the most powerful government of Europe. This may be saying a good deal, for the German army that whipped France was splendidly equipped and did some magnificent fighting, but if Lee and Johnston's armies in their most palmy days had been between the Rhine and Nancy or Paris, there would have been no Sedan and Metz would still be a French city. But if Grant and Sherman had been there as their armies were at the close of the war, Paris would not have smelled German powder.

Our people felt an absorbing interest in the success of our armies. I have seen our people go from the post office with bowed heads and anxious faces when disastrous news came, as it frequently did, but there was this peculiarity -- that the longer the war progressed the more determined the people of the north became to put down the rebellion and subdue and reclaim every foot of territory belonging to the United States.

Nobody but the disaffected complained of the taxes, and they were pretty heavy. The feeling was take everything -- the last man and the last dollar, but put down the rebellion. Besides the loss of life and property, several things were taught us by the war. In the first place, we learned that war is a trade to be acquired by study and practice; that it took two or three years to learn to fight; that a disciplined "mudsill" was a more useful soldier than the most valiant knight untrained; that individual bravery did not count much in deciding the great contest. There were quick raids by such men as John Morgan and Mosley that destroyed property and made a noise in the papers at the time, but accomplished nothing. It was the great battles and the onward march of the great armies that broke the back of the rebellion and exhausted the resources the south.

At the commencement of the war, the negroes were an element of strength to the states in rebellion, but at and toward the close, after the emancipation proclamation, were a source of weakness and at the end of the war the south was not only greatly impoverished but a badly whipped community.

Another effect of the war was to kill the belligerent and warlike spirit previously prevailing both in the north and south, but principally south of "Mason and Dixon's" line. The last year all the pride and glory and circumstances of war was knocked out and it was nothing but hard fighting, carnage and the destruction of property. Both sides were heartily tired of it, and while the present old soldiers live there will never be another internecine war -- and the result left the nation so strong that no nation of Europe will, for the next century, want to encounter it.

The system of finance and currency by banking on the national credit furnished the north the sinews of war and enabled the government to sustain the prodigious strain on her credit. The confederates proved themselves better soldiers than financiers. The confederate money was simply promises to pay in a given time after their independence was recognized. At first this was regarded as sufficient endorsement and the man who refused it was regarded as a traitor to the south, but as the war progressed, their independence became more uncertain and further off and the enthusiasm that had made it par at first was found to be not strong enough to float it, and it became worthless and the millions that were issued are today not worth a cent.

Their armies were very hard to whip, but when Richmond was taken -- and Lee surrendered, the whole rebellion bursted like a bubble and all divisions of their armies seemed to be in a hurry to surrender and go home. And the armies of the north were marched to Washington, were disbanded and sent to their homes which they found about as comfortable and prosperous as when they left there four years before; the southern soldier to impoverished homes over which northern armies had marched to victory and the war was over and the sunshine of peace was over all the land.

Section 39:  Judge James Campbell

Before these great events had taken place, a considerable chance had taken place in my business life. The Hon. John S. McColmont some months before the expiration of his judicial term, resigned his position as Judge of this Eighteenth District. There were a number of candidates for the position of whom I was one. When Gov. Curtin had been a candidate for the office to which he was afterwards elected, he wrote me if I would get him the delegates from this county he would give me anything in his power. He got our delegates and when McColmont resigned, I wrote to him as an old acquaintance, recalling his promise and asking him for the appointment of the Judgeship till the election that fall. To that letter I never received an answer, and Judge Schofield was appointed to fill the unexpired term. I don't know that I have ever seen Gov. Curtin since -- I know I never spoke to him.

At this time I had some popularity in Clarion, Jefferson and Forest Counties, but Judge Gordon, I knew, was a candidate and I made no attempt to interfere with him in Jefferson and but little in Forest, and he got the delegates from both these counties, though I think they were uninstructed in Forest. The convention met in Franklin. All the five counties were represented. After balloting two days, Wm. M. Stewart of Mercer was nominated, and I came home. I found a good many of our people were dissatisfied and was told that other counties were disposed to kick. In Jefferson quite a storm was raised and I got a letter signed by quite a number of both Republicans and Democrats stating that they were going to run me and all they asked was that I should keep my mouth shut, that they had circulate my tickets there and in Forest County and had sent packages to their soldiers in the service, and that if I went back on them I was politically dead and buried. Very soon after John M. Stevenson, a leading member of the bar in Mercer, came all the way over here in a buggy to see me and urged me very strongly to run. I told him I would not be a candidate against the nominee. The fact that some men were going to vote for me, I knew -- that it placed me in very embarrassing circumstances; I would vote for Mr. Stewart and I would ask no man to vote for me. If in the face of this statement I was voted for and elected, I would do the best I knew to serve the people of the district in an office that I had not solicited and for which I was not a candidate. I think I made a statement of this kind in writing which found its way into the papers. After this I declined to say anything or be interviewed. Some of my Republican friends wanted something more from me, but I declined and I stayed quietly in my office and really knew but little how the campaign was going.

I was approached by friends of Stewart and friends of my own. I felt myself in a delicate if not a false position and I remained obstinately silent. It turned out that the canvass pretty lively. The Democrats all turned for me as well as a pretty large number of Republicans.

The election came off in October, 1861, and I had a majority in Clarion County of about 1,800 without counting the soldiers' vote, some 800 in Jefferson County and a majority in both Venango and Forest. Stewart had about 1,100 in Mercer County and I was elected.

Some Republicans reflected on me for not peremptorily refusing to act and so publishing to the people of the district. I thought I did all that party allegiance required by refusing to be a candidate, soliciting no man to vote for me, and voting myself for Mr. Stewart which I did.

Judge Schofield held only one court for, as he told me, he would not be a candidate and seemed to take a friendly interest in my success. After being over the district he said he thought I was the choice of the voters and if I would simply remain quiet they would elect me.

In looking back to that time, I am conscious of a strong desire to get the office, but I am not conscious of any act or conduct inconsistent, unfair or dishonorable on my part to secure it.

As soon as I received the certificate of my election, I immediately shut down on the practice and turned over my business to Lamberton and Lawson. I had scarcely thought of the change it would make in my life. Financially it would be no advantage to me. The district consisting of five counties, I knew it would take me from home about half the time. My old clients and friends would be clients no longer and the intimate relations sustained with many of them would be suspended for ten years at least. And being the legal exponent of the law, I could not discuss legal questions with the bar or on the streets as formerly, as I might have to pass upon the same questions judicially and I found I was at another turning point in my life.

I don't recollect of entertaining any fears that I could not discharge the duties of the office respectably. I had been a lawyer for twenty-one years, was reasonably posted in the decisions and practice and was very confident that the purity of the judiciary would lose nothing in my hands. That I would make mistakes I had no doubt, but I intended that the judicial ermine should receive no stain while worn by me, and it never did.

In my term of ten years in passing on many perplexing questions, I can say with a clear conscience that I never delivered a charge or rule[d] a case that I did not honestly believe to be right and true at the time, though some cases I found on reflection and examination to be wrong, but I was never or rarely reversed where I had time and opportunity to investigate the case and I don't think I ever reversed more frequently than other judges and few in the State had as much to do or a wider range of questions to decide. But all I claim for myself is that I did the best I could.

At that time the Judicial year commenced the first of December, and on the first week of that month, 1861, I held my first week in Clarion. It was in the Presbyterian Church, the new courthouse not being then finished. The business was not important and I found no difficulty in running the court.

The next court I held was in January, 1862, in Mercer County -- 2 weeks, and the work was not only important but new. An old celebrated case of Fell vs. Gollop was for trial and it involved the original title to land west of the Allegheny River and the Conewango Creek. With these titles I was not familiar. The title by settlement was different from settlement rights east of the River and under a different Act of Assembly. Fortunately the parties were not ready and the case was continued. By the next court I was read up on the subject and felt easy, but on the criminal side of the first court I formed an indictment for murder against a man named Dennes Taylor and that was tried and it was a close case whether the jury would find murder in the first or second degree. They were out all night but in the morning brought in a verdict in the second degree, and Taylor was sentenced to the penitentiary for 12 years -- the full term.

The case was taken to the Supreme Court and reported in 8 Wight, page 131. This was a pretty good breaking in and on my way home I held a 2 weeks' court in Franklin.

At this time the oil business was developing very rapidly and with it a great deal of litigation. Leaseholds and contests about oil property became very frequent and bills in equity were resorted to and were more appropriate in much of the litigation growing out of the oil business. Before that equity practice was not general in our courts, and I found it necessary to post myself on that practice. In the course of the four or five years I held the courts in Venango County, I had a great many bills before me.

The case of Funk vs. Halderman was said to involve some three hundred thousand dollars. It was also in the Supreme Court and is reported in Third P. F. Smith 229. The bill came before me for an injunction which was granted, and before the case came on for final argument Mercer and Venango Counties had been cut off into a new district and the final argument was made before Judge Gordon who had been appointed to that district, and his decision reversed my decree on the preliminary injunction. The Supreme Court however sustained my decree. The statement that $9,000,000.00 were involved is probably an exaggeration of the reporter. On page 241, Justice Woodward, as a reason for giving the case more than ordinary attention, says "two learned judges in the court below passed upon the questions arising out of this maze of conveyancing and came to exactly opposite conclusions." I may have had the advantage of Judge Gordon, for after hearing the argument I bundled up the papers and brought them home and did not deliver my written opinion till the next court, at which time the decree of 28th April, 1864, was made.

During the great oil excitement in Venango County from 1863 to 1865, the criminal calendar became greatly burdened and we frequently held night sessions to get the jail cleared out. I recollect one week in that county three homicide cases were tried. It required active work to clear the docket in all the time I could give to that county and I frequently gave them an extra week on my way to Mercer.

I think I held as many as 32 or 33 weeks' court in a year and my traveling was all done in the stage or private conveyance. I sometimes went by rail from Franklin to Greenville and then by hack to Mercer, and I thought my mileage was pretty dearly earned money.

The first four years I was kept pretty busy and I think held no court outside of my district only one week in Meadville for Judge Deneckson. The county seat of Forest was then at Marienville, but generally two courts in the year was all that were needed. The last five years of my term I held one court for Judge McGuffin at Newcastle, Lawrence County, and I held court for Judge Buffington a good many weeks, and I think as many as four or five weeks in Indiana. I had a high regard for the old gentleman and with age he became feeble and it was a tax on his strength to hold the courts in his district and I was always willing to help him. He was one of the poorest men I ever knew and had most exalted views of the dignity and responsibility of the office -- not only on the bench but in everyday life. To him it was a sacred trust to be guarded with the utmost care.

Up to the time when Venango and Mercer were erected into a new district, I found my time as fully occupied as at any time in the practice, but the labor was different. The lawyer has constant anxiety and work in hunting up and securing the evidence for the trial of his case. On the bench I had no concern with this, but just to take the evidence as produced in the trial. My previous training had taught me to concentrate my whole attention to the case while on trial and I found no difficulty as I took notes of testimony in revolving the case through my mind as the facts were developed, and unless the case was very long and complicated, when the evidence was all in I easily retained it and ordinarily wrote my charge while the counsel were arguing the case. I was under the impression that courts were sometimes annoyed by the points put by counsel on the law, but I found it otherwise, and it was frequently an easy way of stating my views of the law to the jury.

The mental process of the judge is to balance himself carefully on the law and evidence brought out on the trial; that of the lawyer is to work with all his vigor on one side and do all he can to weaken the other.

Justice Thompson of the Supreme Court, in a conversation just after I was elected, said it was a good plan for a judge on the trial of a cause to fix firmly in his mind that he don't care a snap which side whips or is defeated, and there is a good deal in it for the court is bound to protect the rights of the meanest scamp in the country exactly as it is those of the most respectable citizen.

As I became familiar with the duties of the office I liked the practice and position and thought I had some aptitude for trying cases and administering the law correctly -- or at least sufficient conceit to make me enjoy the office. The criminal side of the court, particularly small offenses and misdemeanors, gave me little trouble and I rarely took notes and relied on memory to charge the jury; but in higher crimes I usually took notes and charged the jury from written testimony. The common pleas judge has not the same chance of being right on every legal question that comes before him that the Supreme Court has. The judge of the lower court has to carry the whole case with him on the trial and while taking down the notes of evidence and revolving the case he is sometimes suddenly confronted with difficult and nice questions of evidence and often without much argument or authorities quoted or time for reflection, is required to decide, while the same question in the Supreme Court is fortified by authority, printed argument and time to give it full consideration. With the same opportunities and aids the court below would in most cases arrive at correct conclusions.

I recollect two cases tried before me in Armstrong -- Sheaffer vs. Eakman and Bower vs. Cravener, in which I was reversed on points of evidence suddenly sprung in the trial, and they were long and complicated cases. A number of the cases in Armstrong County were old cases in which Judge Buffington had been counsel. In some of them the cause of action extended back for almost a hundred years. In fact I cleared the docket of many old cases that had cumbered the records for years.

But there are close questions, and sometimes the best judges in the State, after careful study and examination, have been reversed, and I was no exception, but I recollect of but few reverses where I had time and opportunity of full examination.

One other thing I did. As soon as I was elected I made up my mind to drop out of politics entirely, and I never attended a political meeting while I remained on the bench and rarely took part in discussion on that subject even in private. Being away from home so much and out of business with the people of the county, I soon lost the intimate acquaintance of many of my old friends, and it soon became apparent to me that I ought not to be specially intimate with anyone, especially if he had litigation or business in court, and I could not permit an old client, however friendly, to talk to me about any business that might come before me on the bench. In this way without feeling the least bit puffed up with the dignity of the office, I gradually lost my acquaintance through the county and my social intercourse became generally limited to my neighbors and the members of the bar.

Section 40:  Daughter Mary Goes to College

In the meantime my children were growing up. About 1864 or 5 my daughter, Mary having passed through the schools at home, I took her down to the "Pittsburgh Female College" under the care of Dr. Pershing. At first she had a violent attack of homesickness. I was holding a court in Kittanning at the time and at the end of the week I went down to Pittsburgh and took her with me to the hotel, and after staying with me over Sunday she became more reconciled and went back on Monday morning quite cheerfully and was never afterwards so much troubled with that miserable feeling. I could appreciate the lonesome feeling of the child for I had experienced it very forcibly when I first left the farm in 1831. But she was a good student and made satisfactory progress.

After remaining there a year or two, I thought I would give her the benefit of one of the highest female colleges of the land, and so I sent her to "Vassar" at Poughkeepsie, New York. Being engaged at the time I could not go with her and so she went up to Erie and her Uncle John Hallock went with her and got her introduced into the school, and she made good progress and had pleasant surroundings and every facility for mental and physical improvement.

The second year she was there, early in the fall term, typhoid fever broke out in the college and Mary caught the disease. We were telegraphed that she was sick and if she got worse we would be informed. A few days after I got a telegram to go on immediately. I thought of sending her Mother on but concluded I had better go myself, and in an hour or so after receiving the message I was on my way to Phillipsburg in a buggy, and there took the train and traveled as fast as steam would carry me.

I arrived at the college about the middle of the day on Sunday. I found her a very sick girl and flighty, but she knew me and by talking quietly and soothingly to her I thought she was not affected by my sudden appearance, and I was very glad to be with her. I made up my mind to stay with her till she got well if it took all winter. I noticed enough to know that she was carefully and tenderly nursed and had good medical attendance, and I believed from the report of the college physician she had taken the turn and would get along unless she changed for the worse.

In a day or two or three her mind was settled and she was rational and evidently on the mend. About a dozen of the young lady pupils had taken the disease nearly at the same time and caused quite an alarm, and the parents and friends of the sick came on and in a few days we had quite a society of people looking after their sick children. The worst case was a young lady from Burlington, New Jersey. Her father and her aunt were there and for a week or ten days it was thought she would die, but by skillful treatment and careful nursing she pulled through. Just as soon as she began to get better, her father who was a physician, became the jolliest fellow in our party, and I spent some very pleasant time in his company. Though there were about three hundred and fifty girls there, the building and accommodations were ample for all and no expense or care was omitted to restore the sick. I very soon made up my mind as Mary got better to bring her home along with me and I rejoiced to see her improve every day, but still I saw it would take some time for her to grow strong enough to travel.

As they got better, two or three of the convalescent girls were put into a common parlor with separate sleeping rooms opening into it and I went in and talked with Mary every day and fed her and her companions with oranges, and I thought the talking and laughing with them did no hurt and amused the girls.

I was there some three weeks in November, 1868; made my home at the Morgan House kept by a Mr. Putman, a very clever, obliging landlord and a good house, but I was at the college every day and long enough to form an idea of the institution, and while not attempting to describe it, I thought and still think little is wanting, if anything, to make it the most extensive and best female college in the United States, and I doubt if in all its arrangements for the health, comfort, exercise and mental, moral and physical training, it is exceeded in Europe. Certainly no expense has been spared to make it perfect. The 200 acres of ground besides the buildings proper, contain a gymnasium, a large pond of clear water with a fleet of boats, an observatory, a vineyard, and not least a flock of thirty milk cows kept in the grounds with a shepherd and his dog constantly with them to keep them off the walks and trees planted throughout the enclosure.

While staying at the Morgan House, I made the acquaintance of the celebrated "Josh Billings" and found him an entertaining talker and a pleasant companion. I got tired staying there, but at last Miss Avery, the college physician, told me Mary might be taken home, and one evening I got her into a carriage and taken down to a steamboat and got her into a berth and we steamed down the Hudson past Newburg and West Point and before daylight lay at the dock in New York, and slept on the boat till morning and got our breakfast; then took a street car down to the Courtland Street landing, crossed the river and got on to a pullman car and got a bunk for Mary to lie down and were on our way home through New Jersey by way of Easton and Reading.

At Easton I bought a tumbler of milk and some bread and butter for Mary, but she had not time to drink the milk before the train started, and I threw a quarter off the platform to the boy to pay for it and she brought it home and, I suppose, has it yet.

A lady in the car asked Mary if she had not been given any stimulant as medicine. She said she had been given wine. The lady said they had had a good deal of typhoid fever in their family and pure rye whiskey was always given during convalescence. She said she had some and proposed giving her some. On referring to me, I told her to do so, and she took it -- I think two or three times during the day. In the evening we stopped off at the Logan House in Altoona and stayed all night. The liquor seemed to have so good an effect that in the morning I bought a small bottle of it and allowed her to drink as much of it as she pleased. We took the morning train and got to Pittsburg at 1:40 P. M. and I was pleased to see that Mary had an excellent appetite for her dinner. We stayed that night in Pittsburgh and next day came up by rail to Weavers at Phillipsburg and stayed all night, and the next day, through snow showers but well wrapped in blankets, I brought Mary home in the stage, and never felt more relieved in my life than when I handed her over to her Mother, and found she was none the worse of her trip. At home she improved rapidly but went no more to "Vassar." She was then a pretty good scholar -- probably quite as proficient in the Latin as I had been when I graduated.

Section 41:  First Trip West

When I was a young man I often had a desire to travel and see the world, but there were two insurmountable obstacles in the way. At first I had not the means and later in life I could not spare the time. In the spring of 1855 my wife, with her two children Mary and Robert, the latter a baby a year old, as early as April took a trip out to Illinois and Wisconsin to see her two older sisters. I could not leave home at that time on account of the court coming on the first week in May. As soon as that court was over I followed her.

Being my first visit to the west, I stopped off a day at Chicago which was then a growing and lively city. I had twenty-five hundred dollars in gold with me and I looked around the city with a view of investing in city lots. I was told that the mortgages and encumbrances in the docket amounted to more than the city was worth and a large part of it was for sale. High prices were asked, and on the south the ground was wet and marshy, and cellars would have to be made on top of the ground and streets filled up to make it habitable. I could have bought property that as the city developed would have paid handsomely, but I was not smart enough to see it.

The next day I went on to Beloit in the southern tier of counties in Wisconsin, stayed there all night and next morning hired a little dutchman to take me out to Mr. Paine's in a buggy. We ascended up from Rock River over beautiful country, pretty well inhabited. On the top of the rising ground was a belt of wood land and descended on the north side to a fine rich valley of land in which Mr. Paine lived. Mary, who was about seven years old, saw us coming and was at the gate greatly rejoiced to see her Pa. Mrs. Paine was my wife's oldest sister, and I was glad to meet my wife and boy.

The farm contained some sixty or eighty acres of very good land, partly plain and partly woods, and capable of being made a nice home. Mr. Paine had a son some 18 years old, an intelligent boy, but I soon saw that neither he nor his father were good farmers and like everybody in the west wanted to sell and go further west.

After being there a few days I found the time hung heavy on my hands and one morning Jason Paine and I started on foot and walked five miles to a station on the rail road leading from Beloit to Janesville. We took the train to the latter town where I stopped off. Jason went on to Milwaukee. The court was in session and I enjoyed myself looking around the town and talking to the people. The next day I took the train and went up to Madison, the capital of the state, which I found located on a swell of land between three beautiful little lakes of clear water. The day was perfect in May and I thought it the most attractive place I had been in. I there met Dr. Gray from Cambridge, Crawford County, Pennsylvania, and went with him around the city and was introduced to a number of people and spent a very pleasant day. At the hotel I sat at the table with an old gentleman and his lady and had a good deal of talk with him. He had a rather countrified exterior, but was a good talker and appeared to be unusually well posted on the topics of the day. We got to talking about the great controversy between the United States and Great Britain, about the northern boundary on the Pacific Coast, then recently settled, and the great number of speeches that had been made on the subject in Congress. He seemed to be very familiar and well posted on the controversy and gave the credit to Senator Benton of settling the question after some hundred and forty speeches had been made in the lower house. I told him I had read many of the speeches and next to Senator Benton the best speech I had read was made by a man named Hudson from Massachusetts. His wife looked up at him and smiled, and I noticed that he got a little red in the face and looked embarrassed. The old lady burst into a laugh and said that was a nice compliment coming from a stranger, and said this was Mr. Hudson. Well, this was an odd kind of an introduction, but for the day or two I was there I found him a very pleasant companion. He was going out to Mineral Point where his wife's father lived -- a very old gentleman. The next morning we parted in different directions and I never saw him again.

I came back to Mr. Paine's the way I come and walked the five miles from the depot on a very warm day. After a day or two I started down again to Illinois to visit another sister of my wife on the Kiskaukee below Belvidere.

My wife and the children had been there and it was arranged that she and Mrs. Paine were to go to Chicago and take a steamer and go to Cleveland and from there to Conneaut, Ohio, where their father was living, and I would take a turn further west and meet them there on my return.

I got to Mr. Wright's on Saturday and found my wife's cousin Hattie Thompson and her husband there on a visit, and we remained over Sunday. I found Cousin Harriet a bright, intelligent woman and we soon became well acquainted. They were all pleasant and I had a nice visit. On Monday, Mr. Wright accompanied me back to Belvidere and over to Rockport where I stopped a day and waited for Mr. Paine who was going out to Iowa to hunt a new home. I accompanied him as far as Galena.

By that time I thought I had seen as much of the west as I wanted at one time and I stopped and stayed there all night, and in the morning took a steamer for Rock Island and Davenport. I have pleasant recollections of that day on the Mississippi River. The day was perfect and I sat out on the guards gazing on the ever varying banks of the River and enjoyed myself. The passengers on a western boat or road soon form acquaintances. We had a number of passengers and we sat and talked and I had quite an interesting day.

In the evening we got to the rapids, 12 miles above Davenport, and the captain thought the water was too low to venture on through and so we landed and made the rest of our way in stages and got to Davenport about dark. Next morning I crossed the River to Rock Island and spent the day with Christ Myers of our town who was then living there.

The next day I came up by way of Geneseo, Peru and Joliet to Chicago, and come right on through to Conneaut and stopped with my father-in-law. The women and children did not get there for a day or two afterwards, but we all met there and stayed two or three days -- went a fishing in the Conneaut and caught as many big catfish as we could carry home. An old lady sister of Mr. Hallock's we found there from York State [sic] on a visit.

I was getting anxious to be home again, and so one morning we hired a carriage and with old Mr. Hallock we started for Meadville. We got to Conneautville and took our dinner with Capt. Stone who was married to Jane, another sister of my wife's. That afternoon we got to Meadville where we left the old gentleman, and next morning took the stage and traveled all day, reaching Clarion late in the evening, and the next day was the 4th of July.

We were glad to get into our own home again and the children were delighted to find it just as they had left it three months before. Rob stood the trip very well. He was just beginning to walk and soon became an active little toddler.

The morning we came out of Madison an incident took place that caused no little excitement. It was getting daylight as a pretty large train containing a large load of passengers pulled out and crossed the head of the lake into the woodland, when a very sharp whistle of down brakes was heard, and just as the train was coming to a stop we felt a little jar. Nothing was said to the passengers, and the train again started but we had not gone a mile till the same thing was repeated. Windows were thrown up and heads projected out -- my own among others. That time the train stopped without a jar, but I saw the train hands run ahead of the locomotive and roll a chunk of a log off the track. As nearly as I could see it was 12 or 15 feet long with the limbs cut off a foot or so from the trunk and set end-ways on the road so as to throw the train off. When this was discovered there was a hoarse growl went through the cars that indicated a most savage feeling. However, the train again started with a sharp lookout ahead and in a short distance a third log was found. I never saw such a blood-thirsty load of passengers in my life, and if the perpetrators had just then been caught, their chance of swinging to the limb of a tree would have been excellent. Some six months after I saw the result in a paper. It appeared that the farmers along there had given mortgages on their farms to raise money to build the road, and the company had assured them that the road would keep them clear. About that time some of the mortgages had been foreclosed and they were likely to be sold out and they became bitterly vindictive toward the road and took this way of avenging themselves.

Two Chicago detectives were sent there and hired among the farmers and in two or three months found out the guilty parties. They were tried and two or three sent to the penitentiary. That was the nearest I ever came, so far as I know, of meeting with an accident on a railroad.

Those southern counties of Wisconsin contain magnificent farms and the climate, though cold in the winter, is good.

On that same trip in coming up through Illinois I fell in conversation with a man who had charge of five hundred acres of land in Livingston County near Odell station on the Joliet cutoff of the Chicago, Alton and St. Louis railroad. Though I never saw the land, it resulted in my buying it and holding it thirteen years and making about ten thousand dollars in the transaction.

Section 42:  "I Was Done with the West"

Two years after that, in the spring of 1857, Col. Coulter and I took a trip to Minnesota, stopped over night in Chicago, and next day went on through Illinois to Dubuque in Iowa; stayed there over Sunday and the following Monday evening took passage on the Gray Eagle for Winona. Saw little of the Mississippi that night, but the next day out viewed the banks and margin of the great River. Had a very intelligent load of passengers. Stopped a short time at Prairie du Chien and La Crosse and the second day landed at Winona where we stayed several days and admired the site of the city. Though at that time it was small, any amount of town lots were offered us at what I thought were high prices. Though strongly urged, I declined to buy. Col. Coulter bought two lots with nothing on them for thirteen hundred dollars and he never made more than interest out of them.

We again took a boat for St. Paul and I cannot now recollect how long we were getting up, but I recollect of passing up by St. Croix and Hastings. We landed at St. Paul in time for dinner at the Winston House. In the afternoon took a hack and went through most of the streets in the city. I understood that my Uncle Andrew W. Oliver was living there and I got a directory and examined it, but his name was not in it.

The next day we took a stage and went up to St. Anthony's Falls and wandered round there all day, crossed over to a saw mill or two on the breast of the falls. Some places from the pitch, back for a considerable distance, the rock rose up and no water passed over. The mills were built on these islands and a head race cut through the rock. The fall was 15 to 30 feet and the water power was immense, and the greatest flouring mills in the world have since been built there. At that time no such mills were there, but the saw mills seemed to be doing a large business and there was said to be four million logs in the dam held by a boom. The saw mills were so constructed that as the board was cut off it dropped into a plank box set up on scantling and extended out to the east shore and away down the river two miles to a board yard and rafting station. About six inches of water was turned into the box or tail race and the boards and sawdust went off and the mill was as clean as a kitchen.

I intended going over to Minneapolis, but we spent so much time about the mills and walking around St. Anthony that we had to take the stage again and get back to St. Paul. I afterwards found out that my Uncle Andrew was living within forty rods of where I had been on the Minneapolis side.

We thought of taking a steamer to St. Cloud, but finding it did not go up till the next Tuesday, we gave it up. We came down and stayed all night at the Winslow House and next morning took a steamer and went down to Hastings and there got a stage for Faribault.

Soon after we left the river we crossed a little stream called Vermillion River and ascended on to a rolling prairie, found very good land with scattered settlements; soon came down to the Cannon River which we followed. Took dinner at a place called Cannon City, but there were only two or three houses in it.

Continuing up the river we came to Northfield on the edge of what was called the big woods, extending through to the Minnesota River. Northfield is beautifully located with groves of trees and prairie presenting a nice appearance. From there it rained on us and the road being through woodland and the mud deep, we made poor progress and did not get to Faribault till dark in the evening. There we found D. Morell and Alfred Lumberton and some others we had met in Winona. The town, though very new and very muddy, was a lively place and a number of houses and stores going up.

Faribault was apparently an educated man, half French and half Indian -- had a fortune of some three hundred thousand dollars, largely obtained from the government in buying out the reservation called the "Half Breed Reservation." I suppose the purchase was made through Mr. Faribault. The Indians, both of the half and whole blood, seemed to rely on him and every evening while I was there a dozen or two came to his house and were fed and turned in to a large wood house he had to sleep.

The girls and women that I saw appeared less intelligent than the men. Faribault had plowed a field on the river bottom for corn. It was not harrowed or marked out into rows, but about a dozen of young squaws were planting the corn. On about every third furrow, with a little bag of corn round their neck and a small hoe in their hand, they dug a little hole and dropped in and covered the corn; worked very slow and frequently squatted on their haunches and rested. Two active men would have done as much as the whole of them. They looked pretty coarse, high cheek bones, pig eyed with long black hair hanging down their back and did not look very clean. Their faces had no expression; their motions slow and stealthy, and I suppose they were the slaves and beasts of burden of the male sex for ages -- at least that was the impression they made on me. Faribault's wife was said to be a three-quarter blood and was darker than her husband or daughters.

When coming out in the stage, a young half-blood traveled with us. He said he was going out to get the money coming to his mother and himself. His share was three and his mother's eleven hundred dollars. We asked him what he was going to do with his. He said he intended the first thing he did was to take a spree. A young man named Snow talked to him a good deal and told him if he got on a drunk he would lose the money and that he ought not to get drunk, and advised him to get Faribault to put it on interest at 10 or 12 % and that his mother could live on it and he could work and make his living. He said there was a company going to start from St. Paul to Pembine and that a man had offered him two dollars a day to drive an ox team across the portage to the Red River, that it would not start for two weeks and maybe he might go along. Snow advised to go by all means and to save his money and not to get drunk, and he promised he would not. A week after that I had come back to Hastings and was walking around waiting for a boat. Someone touched me on the shoulder. Turning round, here was Natribe, our half-breed, smiling and extending his hand. He sat down with me on the hotel porch and we had quite a talk. He was a good-hearted fellow and had taken Snow's advice -- had put his money on interest, made a contract to drive the ox team, and was going to Pembine to stay a year and go with the man who hired him to explore a river there in search of copper, and seemed a good deal more of a man than when I first saw him in the stage. I told him he was on a fair way to make a man of himself and never to touch liquor and to work steadily for money and to be honest and faithful and he would do well. The steamer came in about that time and I shook his hand and left him and never saw or heard of him since.

Col. Coulter started from Faribault a day or two before I did. He had to go home through Michigan and I had to go down to LaSalle in Illinois to pay the taxes on the land bought two years before.

While in Faribault I had a good deal of talk with the old gentleman for whom the city was named, and bought from him one hundred and sixty acres of land up the Straight River for about five hundred dollars. There was about 40 acres of prairie on it and the rest was woodland, principally sugar trees. This lot, a good many years afterwards, I sold to my nephew, James D. Campbell, and young Cumings for sixteen hundred dollars.

On my way down the river I stopped a day at Winona. About the time I started from there, I fell in company with an old Virginian named "Lamsden." He lived in Chicago, was a wide awake, intelligent old gentleman and a great talker; had been a planter on the Roanoke River in his native State, got to trading in New York and came to Chicago and became a speculator in western land and made money, and knew more about the west than any man I had met -- seemed to have acquaintances everywhere. We traveled together two days and I enjoyed his company. At Freeport, Illinois, we parted and I never saw him again, he going on to Chicago and I down through Mendota to LaSalle to look after my land. I stayed at the latter place till the next day, paid my taxes and made arrangements for having them paid as they fell due.

By this time I was getting anxious to be home and took a train for Chicago. Left there about eleven o'clock at night and next night got to Pittsburgh in a heavy thunder shower, and next day came home and found all well. I had seen enough of the west. I admired the vast extent and fertility of the land but I saw no spot I would prefer as a home to the poor soil of Clarion County. I have never been as far west at the Ohio State line since.

It always seemed to me that a little house out on a flat prairie away out a mile or two from anything, without a shrub or tree or stream of water in sight was a melancholy, lonely, desolate object, and in passing such a place I have thought if I were living there, if I did not commit suicide I would certainly get out of that as fast as I could, and the thought of such a place in a long winter night, with the wind raving around and the thermometer at or below zero gives me the shivers. And then in the summer nothing but grass and corn in sight and the monotony only relieved by blizzards and cyclones. The best township of land in the west would not have tempted me to set my stakes there for life, and I know many a poor fellow got out there in such a home too poor to get away, lived a life of desolation till he had it shaken out of him with the ague. And yet as the country became settled up, trees planted and good buildings erected and wealth acquired, his children and grandchildren may be living in luxury and comfort.

In my former trip I met an old man in Wisconsin who had brought out his family two years before and had a pretty good house and a good large farm, diversified by rolling land and woodland, and a grown family of nice young boys and girls, but he mourned for his Vermont home and the grove of sugar trees where he had spent his better days, and it was all his boys could do to keep the old man from going back to leave his bones in his native hills. The young members of the family were satisfied with the west and were making money. The old man told me if he could get back to his old home with his family as he had been in Vermont, he would live on two meals a day and thank God the balance of his life.

Well, I was done with the west.

Some years before that I had received a commission to attend the World's Exposition at Paris as a Commissioner from this State and I intended to go, but I had loaned three thousand dollars to a man who about that time became a little shaky and I got at it to secure that before starting and it took so long a time to get it in shape that the time I had appropriated to the expedition became exhausted and professional business became pressing and I had to give it up, and perhaps it was as well for I could not have stayed over two months and would have been hurried to see as much of the old world as I could in so short a time.

I have never been in Boston or Washington, and with the exception of the above two tramps west, but little outside of the State. Once I was in Baltimore, and in 1863 with Judge Myers and others I made a trip to New York. That, I think, was in 1863 during the war, and there was a great Fair in New York to raise money for the sick and wounded soldiers. Judge Myers and I went over there one afternoon and next day visited the Fair and walked and rode around on street cars all day and in the evening were pretty well tired out, and got on the night train and came back to Philadelphia.

I often went to Philadelphia and Pittsburgh when I had business, but I rarely took pleasure trips only to the valley, and I rarely missed a year going there before my Mother died. I enjoyed traveling around where I was born and raised and being among my relations -- more than going to watering places or the sea shore. Once or twice took my wife and children along and frequently took one or two of the children with me.

Section 43:  Raising Boys; Temperance

The boys were growing up and running wild. I had nothing for them to do but drive the cows to pasture. They went to school, but the summer when I was busy, they ran with the town boys and I could not look after them good deal of the time. I thought Rob would be better on a farm learning to work and hardening his muscle, and when he was about eleven years old he and George Lathy went down to the valley and Rob stayed with his Uncle Oliver and George, who was several years older, worked for my brother Robert on the farm. I don't suppose Rob worked very much, but he learned to plow and work on the farm with his Cousin James D. Campbell, and then he was a great deal with my sister and Mother and it was a good place to be and he had a good influence around him. He was there three or four summers and I think one winter and until he had to be sent away to school.

He had commenced a classical course in the winters he was at home and then went down to Port Royal in Juniata County to an academy under the care of my old classmate, David Wilson, where he remained a year or so and then went to Allegheny College at Meadville. I also sent John Keese Summer down to his Uncle James Oliver's where he worked a little on the farm. I then or soon afterwards sent him to Phillips Academy at Andover, Massachusetts, where he remained a year.

The trouble with boys is to get them trained to industry and steady habits and to depend on themselves. Generally those raised to bone labor and are poor make the most successful scholars, and there are few boys or men who have no regular work who do not fall into bad habits. It don't require extraordinary talents to make good men -- it is industry that leads to success in life.

The boys both showed some aptitude for mathematics. Rob, I think, has more than usual talent for mechanical engineering and perhaps ought to have been a mechanic, and in certain mechanical work would have been successful, and his mind runs in that direction.

I don't believe I had much skill in training boys -- I know I never whipped either of them unless I was in a bad humor, and that is the time I should not have done so; but if I waited, it always seemed like cold-blooded cruelty to switch a boy half a day or a whole night after the offense was committed, and I rarely if ever did it. My children were all affectionate and obedient when I was with them, and behind my back the boys, I guess, were no worse than others; and I now say that I don't think I ever needed to chastize [sic] a child I raised -- I could easily control them without it, and a quiet talk always had a better effect than a whipping.

I suppose I had not enough of patience with my children and therefore was not a success for a model parent. Rob always wanted me to tell him stories, and when the little fellow asked too many questions which he nearly always did, I would order him to bed or shut him up with cross words. I was then often busy or my mind occupied and sometimes vexed with matters of practice or business, and I was not as amiable in my family as I ought to have been. But I always took a pride and pleasure in providing for and giving my children the advantages of an education and never begrudged the money spent in qualifying them for usefulness in life.

I married late in life and perhaps was not by nature as domestic in my disposition as many men, but I took a great deal of pleasure in my family and enjoyed taking my boys with me to the woods and to hunt, as much as most men, and they soon became as fond of it as I was. I trusted them with the shot gun when they were quite young and I was sometimes uneasy for fear they would injure themselves, but they happened to get along without being hurt and as they grew up became expert hunters of small game. I am now wearing a pair of boots made of the skin of the first and only deer John K. ever shot. He killed it when living in the valley on the back mountain, and had the hide tanned over there.

The training of the girls, and while young of the boys, was left very largely to their mother, and they owe a great deal more to her than to me, and I have no doubt all will testify that her regimen and government was much more mild than mine; but I don't think our rule was specially tyrannical or that their home, while they remained members of the family, was not pleasant.

In a small village like ours, boys from ten to fifteen will run with other boys and soon learn all the mischief that is practiced by the worst in the town and this cannot be avoided, and the most I tried to do was to keep mine at home at night and this was pretty hard to do; and they soon learned to use tobacco. I tried to keep them from it but as I used it myself they followed example rather than precept. When I was a boy at home on the farm, my Father kept whiskey in the house and we had it in the harvest field till about 1829 or 1830, and I learned to take my "nip" with the older hands and liked it. I believe I had an appetite for it till I was eighteen, but after that I seemed to care nothing about it, and although I occasionally drank some in company afterwards, I never acquired a taste for it, and when I began to have children in the house I banished all intoxicating drinks and I have been a tee-totaller for some thirty-five years, and whatever sins I have to answer for I never clouded my brain or injured my constitution by intoxicating drinks, and I have used whatever influence I have had against intemperance and advocated total abstinence. I say this in no boastful spirit, but I desire to leave on record the convictions of my life -- that intemperance is the giant evils [sic] of our land and I sincerely hope none of those inheriting my name and blood will ever be found indulging in this disgracing habit; and the only safe and true rule is to never taste stimulating drinks as a beverage, for all drunkards were moderate drinkers before they became drunken sots. My solemn charge to all my descendants is to be sober, honest and truthful men and women, and it will brighten and smooth your pathway through life.

The human system is a complicated piece of machinery, and every stimulant causes an unnatural tension of the nerves and the recoil leaves the whole man weaker and more depraved mentally, morally and physically, and if persisted in the strongest become weak and worthless and die a wreck as has been proven in a thousand instances. A healthy man ought to, and sometimes does, live a hundred years, but it is not the man of intemperate habits.

Section 44:  Return to Lawyering

It requires a good deal more than a lawyer to make a successful business man, but the experience of a lawyer, if properly utilized, gives him opportunities for profitable investments occasionally that many others do not possess. I had been brought in contact with nearly all the business in the western part of the state outside of Pittsburgh, and had formed an idea of the value of property I had -- had money invested in a store and a good many pieces of land, and in 1870 I became a stockholder and President of the Directors of the Discount and Deposit Bank of Clarion. We were merely a banking company without a charter and on the whole I made the investments pay pretty well.

In the meantime, my official term was running on and drawing to a close, and I gave more attention to outside operations. A year or two before my time ran out, I seriously contemplated not resuming the practice of law. I was worth a hundred thousand dollars, or thought I was, and I thought at fifty-eight I was or would be too old to regain and build up a new practice -- still did not form any definite opinion on the subject. I had an interest income of some five thousand dollars a year beside my salary, and I could live and educate my children, and I thought I was pretty well prepared for old age, but I felt that I still had some years of work in me but did not know how long this feeling would last; and so the time ran on and occasionally received flattering notices from members of the bar that they would regret my retirement from the bench, but I knew the Democratic party would elect a judge of their own political faith to succeed me and I had no ambition for further judicial honors, and I made not the slightest efforts for renomination. It is an honorable office, but requires labor, firmness and integrity and withal involves great responsibility.

After holding my last court in Jefferson County, without any intimation the following resolutions were sent to me by the members of the bar of that county:

"Brookville, Pa., December 15th, 1871. The members of the bar met at the Court House at 11 o'clock A. M. The meeting was called to order by electing the following officers -- Hon. W. P. Jenks, Prest., R. R. Means and Wm. Altman, Vice Prest's., J. M. Stick, Secretary. On motion of A. L. Gordon, Esqr., a committee of W. F. Stewart, Hon. I. G. Gordon and R. Arthurs were appointed to draft Resolutions. The following were read and unanimously adopted.

"Resolved -- That while we welcome with pleasure our new President Judge, it is with feelings of regret that we part with his predecessor, Hon. James Campbell.

"Resolved -- That we express our sincere thanks for the kind and courteous treatment we have always received from him. That the many pleasant associations connected with his ten years' administration will never be forgotten by the members of this Bar.

"Resolved -- That as members of the Bar and in behalf of the citizens of Jefferson County, we express our high appreciation of the wisdom, firmness and impartiality he has always shown in the discharge of his duties; that his profound legal knowledge, combined with purity of heart and entire freedom from political and selfish influences, has rendered this court a mighty ally in the cause of right and justice; that he bears with him the respect and high regard of all our citizens, having shown himself worthy the great confidence reposed in him. We hope his useful life may be long continued and he may be often the recipient of public favors and at last be gathered to his fathers to receive from his Master the plaudit of 'Well done, thou good and faithful servant.'"

These very complimentary resolutions were filed on record and a certified copy forwarded to me. I had no reason to doubt the sincerity of the above resolution with perhaps a few exaggerations by way of Lathy, but I knew all the commendation I was entitled to was honest effort to be right, and with the experience I had, if was not remarkable I should more frequently right than wrong. I returned a respectful answer to the communication, and that is the last I heard of it. The insertion of these resolutions may savor of conceit, but it is put here simply as an incident in my life, and I think I could have referred to other but less formal approval of my ten years on the bench.

In the fall of 1871, before I held my last courts, I was solicited to accept retainers in business coming on after my time would expire, and I think I had received a hundred dollars fees by the first of January, 1872, and almost without noticing it I was again in the practice, and during the year 1872 I took in nearly three thousand dollars in fees and I declined to take business outside of Clarion County. I recollect of refusing business in Venango and Jefferson Counties.

It is not uncommon to find an ex-judge going back to the practice not as successful as when he left it. Much of the skill and ability of the lawyer is shown in a thorough preparation and skillful arrangement of the facts. The judge on the bench has nothing of this kind to do or look after, and at the end of ten years he finds it annoying and vexatious to go to hunting up all the evidence and introducing it in the proper order, and with increasing age he may lose his keen appreciation of facts on the minds of the jury. There is not a doubt that a skillful lawyer in a close case often uses comparatively unimportant evidence with telling effect on a jury. The practice and duty of the judge is to call attentions to the leading facts and endeavor to draw the attention of the jury to the true merits of the case, and as the law requires, leave the facts to them. In this way a judge goes back to the bar at a disadvantage, and as a jury lawyer is rarely as successful as he was prior to going on the bench, while as a judge and expounder of the law he may be stronger.

The most striking instance of this kind that I recollect was Hon. Thomas White of the Indiana court. He went on the bench when he was a bright young lawyer, made an able and useful judge, went back to the practice at about 60 years of age, was industrious and indefatigable. I have tried cases with and against him, but after he left the bench he was not a strong lawyer. He argued a case to the jury much as he had charged the jury and several of the young lawyers of Jefferson County argued facts to the jury with more skill than the judge, though his knowledge of the law and practice was probably superior to any of them, and I have often enjoyed talking with him on legal questions and been instructed by his suggestions. This may have been to some extent the case with myself, though in the next fifteen years of my life I tried and assisted to try many important cases and as my paper books will show, prepared and argued a number of cases in the Supreme Court, a practice that I rather liked.

Many changes had taken place during the ten years I was on the bench. At the commencement of my term, many papers had accumulated in the office; among others the wills of eight or ten of my old clients had been prepared and left with me. At the close of my term all these wills had been called for, and my old friends were gone. Most of the business men of 1840 had dropped out and I noticed new faces attending the courts.

About the time I resumed the practice, G. W. Lathy, Esq., the last of the original set of lawyers who gathered around the council table in 1840, removed to Erie, Pennsylvania, and my subsequent practice was with a new generation who had come to the bar in later times. Buffington and Johnston of Kittanning, Purviance and Gilmore and Smith of Butler and Howe and Snowden of Franklin are all dead and all the members of the bar in Clarion with whom I contended and tried cases in my young days are dead and scattered, and I look back to those stirring days with regret and sorrow, and it is surprising to me how soon "time's effacing finger" has wiped out this energetic and talented race of men who so lately wielded no small power in the courts of these western counties.

Section 45:  Reflections

Even a long life is too short to accomplish much in this world. The old Emperor of Germany, who has just died, February 9th, 1888, is numbered with the dead just when it is most important that he should live, and the peace of the nations of Europe may be broken by the snapping of the thread of his life. The world may be growing better, and I hope it is, but the mind of an old man reverts to the past and to the associations and warm friendships of his younger days. With blunted perceptions and weakened powers he sees but little sunshine in the short remnant of his life and instinctively he turns back to the days of his boyhood and younger life and to the events that brightened those halcyon days, and without regret he contemplates the day when he will sleep with his fathers and like his compeers be forgotten; and this don't necessarily imply that his days of senility are unhappy. The mere matter of rest is grateful to him, and if unburdened with unusual cares and at peace with his God, looks forward to a future life -- it may be with uncertainty but still with trust and a consciousness that he is ripening for a future world and losing his interest in the life around him.

When I was a boy of twelve years old, I often thought how unfortunate it was that I was not born sick so I could wear my Sunday clothes all the week, and have nothing to do; and I often studied what I could do to make money so I could wear my store clothes all the time to work and make fifty dollars a year for twenty years and then I would be worth a whole thousand dollars which I thought would be ample to keep me in affluence the balance of my life. The difficulty seemed to be that this calculation left out a very important item -- that of getting and supporting a wife, and the twenty years would put me away beyond the proper age for securing that valuable acquisition. I had read of lotteries and I thought it would be a nice thing to buy a ticket and draw a handsome prize and save all those twenty years of weary labor, but that savored too strongly of gambling, and I had been taught that all games of chance were mortal sin; but I revolved a great many schemes to set myself up in life and all seemed to center in the one great desire to get along comfortably through life without work.

Our Father and Mother raised us in the old Scotch-Irish rule of strict observance of the Sabbath. The stock had to be attended to, but no cutting of wood for the fire was allowed on that day; no play or noise was tolerated.

After worship in the morning, most of the family got ready and went to church. After church, along about three o'clock, a meal was cooked and sometimes in a summer evening, Father and Mother would take a quiet walk down the lane and when a small boy it was my delight to join them, but I was not permitted to throw stones at the birds or catch butterflies.

Towards dark Mother would gather us all around her and have us recite the shorter catechism. Father would sit at the table reading the Bible and when we were through then family worship and then to bed. At that time I thought very hard of these restrictions on my natural liberty. The right and wrong of it I then traced no farther back than the orders of Father and Mother and I thought the farm was a very hard place on boys.

The children of our tenants had easier times than we had. It was not the mere matter of work that troubled me for I don't know that I was specially indolent, but to have to wear poor clothes and work for a living when I saw other boys playing and idle I thought was not quite fair. It never occurred to me that I was drinking in fresh air on the farm and by steady work and exercise I was gathering strength and vigor and acquiring habits of industry, and it was keeping me out of mischief and contracting vicious habits and was worth more to me in after life than fifty thousand dollars. And now, after having lived nearly three-quarters of a century, I regard the farm the very best place in the world to raise boys and when matured to make the highest and best grade of men as has been shown in thousand [sic] instances in all the higher walks of life. When to this is added the careful training of a religious Father and Mother, it is the best inheritance ever left to a healthy and intelligent boy, and is a better send-off than Vanderbilt's millions.

It doesn't require the highest order of talent to make a successful business man. The labor and business of the country is done by ordinary minds -- common sense, industry and education give tone to the world. The extraordinary intellects and original thinkers are apt to be erratic and their use is to make suggestions in science or morals which are reduced to practice by the common sense and working minds of the world. The worst fate that can befall a young man is to be raised without care, work or the necessity of making his own living. A high moral tone, integrity and a conscientious discharge of duty are the traits that will most certainly insure success in business and the greatest amount of happiness in life and secure the influence and respect of neighbors.

It is said "that an idle brain is the Devil's workship [sic]." However this may be, I have known but few men who followed no regular calling and led lives of indolence who did not sooner or later fall into evil habits and they were men of peculiar temperament and not naturally active or energetic. In this country I have no doubt all men possessing health and common sense may by industry and economy acquire property. It may not be a great deal, but enough to raise a family and live comfortably, and I believe the best citizens and the happiest men we have are those who follow regularly some healthy work and save a little money every year. His home grows more attractive and he has no time to wrangle and quarrel with his neighbors, or loaf in a bar room and he will always have a dollar to pay to the church or a loaf of bread to feed hungry children.

Section 46:  Two Funerals & a Wedding

1871 was to me an eventful year. With the close of that year my term as Judge of the Eighteenth Judicial District expired. Our little daughter Virginia died. My Mother died and our daughter Mary was married to Rev. T. J. Sherrard, and all these events occurred within a month and a half of the end of the year.

Our little girl, being the youngest, was the pet of the family, possessing a vigorous constitution and always healthy with an exuberance of animal spirits and an unusually affectionate disposition. She flitted through the house among the family like a sunbeam. At her fourth birthday she was a well developed, bright faced, happy child, of loving nature and often played through the live long day if she had companions of her age, and no one could be fonder of her playmates. Anne Rhea was one of her favorites. On any controverted question, Anne could always bring her into subjection by threatening to go home. When playing on the pavement in front of the office, she would occasionally rush in and take me around the neck and the next minute her merry laugh would be heard out among her companions. A wailing cry at this time was rarely heard from her lips, and when heard was a sure sign she was hurt or wounded in feeling, but she was not a crying child. Her constant activity made her a good sleeper and when night came she needed no rocking to sleep. I recollect of many times as she finished her supper her eyes would close and her bright little face would sink on to the table and I have frequently carried her to bed without her waking up. We would hear of her no more till greeted by her musical little laugh when she got awake in the morning.

Along in November we had her vaccinated, and while her arm was still sore and inflamed she got sick. One Saturday evening when I went in to supper her older sisters were hauling her in her basket wagon in the dining room. She did not look well and I noticed a peculiar faraway look in her eyes. We thought there was more the matter than the fever caused by the vaccination and sent for the doctor. He seemed to think the trouble might be caused by the sore arm, which was a good deal inflamed, but said he could tell better by the next morning.

When he came back in the morning he said she had symptoms of scarlatina but thought it might be light, but said it would take time to tell into what form of the disease it might develop.

From that time on she was carefully nursed and watched day and night. Sunday and Monday passed and by that time Doctor Ross admitted that she had the most malignant form of the disease, and we felt that her life hung in the balance. At one time on Monday afternoon, we hoped that she was better, but by evening we found our hopes fallacious and were forced to the conclusion that she was a mortally sick child. She was restless and often got up and walked over the bed and sometimes on the floor.

One evening Hattie was leaning over the bed when she reached up and caught her around the neck, saying, "Oh, Hattie, Hattie, your poor little sister is very sick." Neighbor women came in and stayed at night. On Tuesday night old Mrs. Aldringer had come and I lay down in the bed in the little west room. Hattie and Emily had gone to bed. Virginia got up and walked across the floor; in a few minutes after she lay down the mysterious change, the precursor of death appeared on her face. Mother called me. As soon as I got to her bed I saw she was dying. In a few minutes her fine, sensitive little spirit had gone out from us to bloom in the bowers of Paradise forever. It was half past nine o'clock in the evening of November 15th, 1871.

The children got up. Hattie and Emily were quite broken up, and a somber shadow rested on our house for many days. On the following Thursday we took her to the graveyard and buried her by the side of her little sister and on the marble stone at her head was engraven "And there shall be no more death."

Rob was away at school and we did not bring him home to the funeral. It was a severe affliction to the family -- so sudden had been her sickness and death, we could hardly realize that she was gone. But it is a wise dispensation of Providence that time mitigates sorrow and heals all such wounds, and while now she is not forgotten her bright young life remains as a pleasant memory. We had mourned the loss of two children before, but they had passed away before they were a year old and had not the associations with them that we had with Virginia. She had been with us four years, two months and ten days, and had become a favorite in the family.

My Mother was a good sized woman, rather slender but active and of a nervous temperament, possessing a good mind and was a fluent talker and a good reader; was an affectionate Mother, was unusually kind in sickness and was often sent for to see sick neighbors and had excellent judgment in administering medicine and suggesting remedies for sick children, but in serious cases advised calling in the doctor. Till after middle life while her children were young, she was subject to sick headache and among my earliest recollections was being taken out to play in the orchard so Mother could have an afternoon sleep, but ordinarily she did her own work in the house and took care of her children. It was always a gloomy time with me when Mother had the headache.

We were always an early rising family. In the fall and winter we usually ate our breakfast by candle-light. I believe I was the most sleepy-headed one of the family, but when I got fairly awake and had my breakfast, I was but as lively as the rest.

As Mother grew older she became a healthy woman and had charge of the house. She raised, besides Rachel Haggerty, two poor children -- girls who had when quite young been left without homes, and both did well. Her influence in the neighborhood was considerable and was exercised for good. In fact, until she became quite old she always had charge of children, either her own or girls she had taken or her grandchildren. Robert's children were in her charge for a while after his first wife's death and last Oliver's James and Anna, and all who were under her care loved her and revere her memory, and I think none will forget the effort made by her to impress on their minds religious truths and correct moral habits.

By my Father's will she and her youngest daughter were left a home in the old stone mansion, but after Oliver came back a widower to live in the valley, they both lived with him and took care of his children till he married his third wife. Then the old Armstrong house was moved out into the lot in front of his house and there Mother lived till her death. Father died in 1845 and she survived him more than twenty-six years.

In 1852 in the fall she came out and stayed with us through that winter. At that time she was a pretty smart old woman and took great pleasure in teaching our Mary, then about five years old, to read and commit to memory her questions. I think before she went away Mary had learned quite a number of questions in the shorter catechism. After Robert came out in the spring and took her home, she frequently visited around among her relations and her house was a kind of a home for Oliver's children and our Robert when he was down there. They were company for her and Rachel Jane, and their evenings were usually spent down there. When visiting in the valley I made my home with them.

As she advanced to eighty, her memory and her eyesight became impaired, but she had generally good health and seemed to be contented, but when I was with her she talked a great deal about my Father and often wondered why she lived so long when all her associates and companions of her age had gone. On the 3d of March, 1868, her daughter, Rachel Jane died, but her mind had failed and her memory was so broken up that she did not feel it as she would have done ten years before. She seemed only to realize that something had happened and half the time could not mind what it was.

I went down to Sister's funeral and when I could get her attention fixed on something that had occurred when she was young, she could converse but bring her to talk about recent events and her mind would wander and she could not collect her thoughts to carry on a conversation.

As stated, Gran McIlwain took charge of her and lived with her till she died. After the death of her daughter she took little interest in anything; lay in bed and slept more than half the time and rarely left home -- I think never only as far as Oliver's. In this way she lingered on till the 29th day of November, 1871, and without any perceptible sickness, breathed away her life and was laid in the grave beside my Father, wanting two days less than two months of being eighty-nine years of age, and her death was only fourteen days after the death of her little granddaughter.

She had long wanted to depart; she had survived all the associates of her young days, felt alone in the world. The last few years of her life she merely existed. When around she could talk about her young life, but to her the present was almost a blank. Her hearing was good till the last. I was glad when I heard that my dear old Mother was at rest. The next time I went to the valley I went to see her grave and was startled by the number of grave stones over my relations.

Although Mary recovered her usual health after she came home from Vassar she never went to school again. She was then a pretty good scholar and in the course of the next year I understood she had been receiving attention from Rev. T. J. Sherrard who was about finishing his course at Princeton Theological Seminary and they contemplated getting married in the fall of 1871.

On account of the death of her sister and my Mother, the wedding was private. Early in the morning of the 21st day of December, 1871, they were married in our house -- a cold morning, and the same day started down to Steubenville to his father's, and we lost another member of our family -- or at least the circle was again broken. She had been at home with us two years and we read the same books and talked about them and she had become an intelligent companion, and her departure made a great void in the house; but she married a good man in whom we had implicit confidence and we rejoiced that she was settled for life and have even learned to believe that she is happy and that her family relations are altogether satisfactory, blessed as she is with four bright children.

Section 47:  Thoughts on Tobacco

As far back as I have personal knowledge and recollection of my ancestors, they were chewers or smokers of tobacco. My grandfathers were chewers and my grandmothers smoked pipes as long as they lived. I don't know at how early a period they commenced. My Father chewed from the time he was a man and our Mother smoked from the time she was seventeen years of age till she died in her eighty-ninth year. It is not remarkable, therefore, that before I was fairly in the "teens" I had learned to chew tobacco. My appetite for it became very strong and I had not stronger powers of resistance than many others, but there was enough of brimstone in my disposition to induce me now and then to rebel against a slavish habit and I have a recollection of shutting down on the habit more than once before I left home to go to College, but still got back to it.

After I went to Cannonsburg I quit for two or three years. I think from when I was about 19 till perhaps 22. This probably caused my form to mature more perfectly than it would have done with the nicotine poison. I don't now recollect why I quit at that time, but usually when I quit it was caused by some little disgust and I seemed to enjoy a fight between a filthy habit and myself. And I think I never let up till I felt myself the master and till I was thirty I don't know why I returned to the habit after a longer or shorter abstinence; but after that age when I quit a year or two, I had a tendency to grow confident. After I came to live in Clarion I took a notion one day and broke short off and did not taste tobacco for more than five years. When I quit my weight was about 175 pounds. I had noticed myself growing fatter, but one day I happened to get weighed and found I had run up to 204 pounds, and being still a bachelor and feeling myself growing lubberly, I went right back to the tobacco.

I don't know how many times I quit after that, but generally I used the "weed" on till about 1870. About that time I was sitting one evening in the office trying to read and at the same time smoke a hard and strong old tobie. I recollect of pulling away at the old cigar and trying to read for a good while and made very poor progress at either, when a strong and sudden feeling of indignation took me and the old tobie went into the grate with a force that broke it all to pieces. I thought no more about it till next morning after breakfast when I thought of a cigar, and I thought well, you may starve a while. Well, the result was that I did not taste tobacco again for fifteen months and in that time I ran up in weight from 216 to 227 pounds, and so I thought I had better go to smoking again, which I did. I believe it reduced my weight some 10 or 15 pounds.

I then continued to smoke till about the first of April, 1888, when I again quit, and I found the appetite about as strong as it was when I was fifty years younger. I can't say that I know of any particular injury that tobacco did to me. My nerves are pretty good for one of my age and my appetite is regular, but still I might have been a stronger man with better intellect if I had never tasted the weed. But why any human being should use it is most extraordinary. The habit is filthy and disgusting to others. The first taste of it is nauseating and sickening to everyone and it requires some time to overcome the disgust and abominable taste of tobacco.

Section 48:  Further Investments

In the fall of 1862 I was over in the valley and the heirs of Andrew Semple got at me to buy their farm. Their father had died leaving a family of 7 or 8 children, most of whom were married, but the oldest son, Cyrus, and two maiden sisters lived on the farm and at Greenwood. I had little notion of buying, but paper money (greenbacks) were accumulating on my hands and soon were at over 200 percent discount. Purchasers of Bingham lands took advantage of the good times and abundance of paper money and I suppose I received as much as twenty thousand dollars in a year, the half of which was my own. In this situation I made an offer for the farm and the heirs told me if I would go a thousand better I could have it. I declined and came home and in a short time I received a letter telling me to come on and take the farm at my offer. I thought the farm was at that time better than the money and so I started back and bought the farm; I think about 162 acres including the mountains and stony land along the joint of the ridge.

Subsequently I bought 41 acres adjoining it on the mountain. It was not the best land in the valley and a vast amount of stone had been picked off part of it and some of it was clean, smooth land, but spouty and wet. I had drains made and filled with stone and got the place in pretty good condition. Brother Oliver and his son, J. D. Campbell, and Rob worked on it a year or two. A man named Gettys and his two sisters had it rented for a few years. The barn was old and out of repair, and in 1876 I had a very good new barn erected on the place -- 80 by 46 feet, and I have been trying to improve and keep it in order and generally it produces very well. One year I know I raised (or rather the tenant did) 800 bushels of wheat on it. It is now occupied by Clay Henderson and is farmed pretty well and produces good crops, but at the low price of farm produce the last few years, don't pay over 3 percent on the investment and some years not that much; but I have never made any effort to sell it and at present could not sell for what I ask for it.

If I had put the money I paid for it into government bonds, I would have made more money, but at that time the government as well as her bonds looked a little shakey and it seemed quite possible at that time that the rebels might gobble the government, but I thought my two hundred acres of stony land could not readily be carried off and I had no fear of confiscation. I have never regretted buying that farm and have enjoyed many a week over it and along the lane, and I hope it may yet be the happy home of some of my descendants when the sod is green on my grave. Forty years' work on it by an energetic farmer ought to make it a very desirable home and there may be stove coal or other mineral under it that will at some time in the future add greatly to its value.

I am not in the habit of indulging in dreams of imaginary gold mines, but when I see in the county in which I live the actual production of more wealth from under the ground than from the surface, I am ready to believe that we are trampling over untold wealth where we least expect it. The buckwheat farmers on Oil Creek had no conception of the wealth beneath their feet till Drake uncovered petroleum and set them all crazy. But five hundred or a thousand dollars judiciously expended would clean the stone off and as much more would put them into desirable fences around the farm and convey the water to every field on the place.

The last ten or fifteen years real estate in the valley has been depreciating and would now not sell for much over half what it would have commanded during the war. Nevertheless, real estate is the best property for a man not skilled in speculating to hold. Mouths will increase faster than bushels of wheat and in the next hundred years there will be a demand for all kinds of cereals at remunerating prices, and the man who tills the soil will be the surest of a good living, and the wherewithal on which to retire when overtaken by old age. As the land becomes cleared of stone and in a higher state of cultivation, the buildings better and more comfortable and a large part of the hardest work done by machinery, life on the farm will be more sought after and then as now the healthiest and best specimens of manhood will be found following the plow and raising families of hard-fisted, stalwart sons and bright-eyed, sun-burned daughters.

Section 49:  Wood to Coal to Gas to ??

Until I left home in 1831 I had never seen a coal fire only in a blacksmith shop, and at first only charcoal was used. In clearing the field above the barn in 1830 we used a portion of the wood in making a coal pit and burning it for the blacksmith shop. I don't now recollect how long that lasted, but when I read law in Lewistown they hauled stove coal from Phillipsburg for the shop, but it was not thought of for fires in the house. When I went to the Germantown Academy, wood was used for the dining room and cooking purposes, but the rooms were heated with anthracite coal. While we found it a little dusty to take up the ashes, it was a great improvement on wood fires. When we removed to Easton the same kind of coal was brought down the Lehigh in large quantities and was used in the college.

When I went to Cannonsburg we had no anthracite, but every hill was full of bituminous coal and that was the fuel all the time I was there; but in 1838 when I went to Lewistown nearly everybody still used wood, and going along the street at any time from October to May you were rarely out of sight of a wood rack and wood saw and a darkey.

The canal had been made long before that and hard coal was brought to Lewistown but it had not at that time come into general use or superseded wood. Then when I came to Clarion when wood and soft coal were both plenty, I used coal in the office in an old canon stove with a flat top, the ruins of which are lying at the back of the office today. But after we got to housekeeping for a number of years we used wood for the cookstove. Every fall I would get 8 or 10 cords hauled and cut into stove wood for the winter and for some years after moving over to the new house I have a recollection of Charley Harkless cutting and piling the stove wood in the wood house. It was thought the stove coal was too dusty to cook with, but along about 1860 it took the place of wood. It was then the universal fuel till after the railroad came into town when some of our more costly citizens got to using anthracite. This continued till along about 1882 when gas was discovered and brought into town.

I was among the first to take stock in the gas company (Light and Heat Co. it is called), and I have that stock yet. That is by far the best heating agent we have found yet. Our girl, Mary Elsner, said it took nearly a half off her work and it was pretty hard work carrying in coal and carrying out ashes. Of course we cannot tell how long it will last or whether or not it will not be superseded by manufactured or artificial gas or electricity. These are among the changes in the short period of my life, and wood for fuel is less valuable today than it was when I was ten years old. At that time old people used to shake their heads and say what will the next generation do when they will not have wood enough to cook their victuals. The houses are far better adapted to the convenience and comfort of the occupant than they were sixty years ago. Gum clothing or boots were unknown; indeed boots of any kind were rarely seen and then only on the feet of the preacher or some very distinguished gentleman.

Section 50:  Essay on Health

Whether people are healthier now than fifty years ago I cannot tell, but there is no doubt they are better protected from wet and cold and are better housed and fed. On the other hand they are far more apt to be drugged with medicine and dosed with candies and highly seasoned food. It would be at least a curious experiment to raise an army of boys and girls as Lycurgus raised his Greek boys so as to develop the greatest amount of bone and muscle and animal courage and make perfect men and women. Whether the perfectly developed bodies would not produce equally vigorous minds, and they or their children reproduce a race of men like Plato, Aristotle and Socrates.

This I have no doubt of -- the more perfectly all parts of the body are developed, the more masculine and vigorous the mind will be because the brain, through which the mind acts, is part of the body and the harmonious development of all the members and parts of the body, the stronger, broader and higher will be the moral power and intellect of the man. Now there are indications that more time and attention will in the near future be given to the physical culture of our youth, and this map be found far more important than stuffing education into an effeminate and nervous brain, and then the athletic frame can use the acquired knowledge with far more power and effect than the weak or diseased. Whether physical culture will ever be successfully cultivated will be a problem for the 20th Century.

In this climate of ours it has been claimed that the human species deteriorate. There is some grounds for this. I have noticed in the course of my life that the children of heavy-boned, broad shouldered, large men are much smaller than their fathers, and some are dyspeptic and effeminate. While this is not universally the case, it is so general that it may be said to be the rule. My recollection of the men that first settled and cleared the land in Kishacoquillas Valley is that they were larger, stronger men than their sons and grandsons who inhabit it today. There are very few families whose sons attain the size or possess the strength of the first settlers. Our own stock of people have been in the valley for a period of about 115 years. The grandsons of old Robert Campbell, the first settler, are generally good sized and some of them quite large men, but as a rule the great grandsons are at least two sizes smaller men.

The Amish that first settled in the valley were a stalwart race of men, some giants in strength. As I see them now when I go to the valley, the present race is generally little, short, stubby fellows, probably industrious, good workers, but have not the muscle of the old stock.

Now conceding that there has been a loss of bone and muscle and that the race has deteriorated in the last seventy-five years, is it caused by the extremes of heat and cold or other climatic influences? Is the climate injurious to the healthy development of the human species? Or is the running down caused by the food or manner of life or other temporary cause? Or may it be caused by the process of becoming acclimated to a new climate? If this is the case, a generation or two ought to bring the race up again to the original standard and possibly may, but it is not unlikely that the great amount of pork and other strong food that is consumed and less heavy outdoor work such as logging and clearing land may retard the healthy growth and perfect development of the younger stock. I do not think there is any poison in the climate of Pennsylvania, only malaria, and that has got to be counteracted by observance of the laws of nature and hygiene and abstaining from highly seasoned, deleterious food.

There is scarcely a doubt that our climate causes the freshness and beauty of our women to decline earlier than in England where the extremes of heat and cold are never felt, but I know of no data that would show that the average life is longer there than in the United States. The delicacy and effeminancy of our women is probably caused by the want of outdoor exercise and active life. But as society is formed and the country grows older, common sense and the laws of nature will teach our people how to live to promote health and get the most out of life. And this will insure the greatest amount of happiness to the greatest numbers.

To make a living a man ought not to live in a constant strain, or fret because he cannot accumulate all the world; on the other hand no man or woman, rich or poor, has any right to sit down and twirl his thumbs for exercise. The human animal needs a little shaking up now and then to keep a healthy digestion and the blood circulating and develop the higher virtues of man and womanhood.

Section 51:  John Campbell; Childhood Snow

In the early part of this history I spoke of my old Grand Uncle, John Campbell, in a way that would lead one to suppose he was a very intemperate man and that for this reason he was under the necessity of selling his farm and removing to Stone Valley. I desire to correct this statement and do justice to one who is revered by his grand children and descendants as a good man. From many slight circumstances and facts that I have heard I do not think he was as thrifty a man as his brother-in-law, and I have no doubt he drank a good deal of liquor, but at that time drinking freely was common and unless to intoxication was not considered disreputable, and the old gentleman was a church member and a christian man, and not a suspicion of dishonesty or immorality ever attached to his name. And while he was a large man of powerful frame, he never used his great bodily strength to injure his fellow man, but was of a kindly, peaceable disposition and affectionate in his family.

In the year 1823 the spring opened early. We had a five acre meadow east of the far orchard on the old farm that had never been farmed. It was not wet or swampy and that spring it was to be plowed for corn. It had been cleared and mowed many years, and there was not a stump in it. Being a hard sod, the plow was started in it along about the first of April.

On the Saturday before Easter about dinner time it began to rain and soon turned into snow. By evening it was falling fast and the wind coming from the east and the ground well covered. Then next morning there was more than a foot of plumb snow and it was coming down in sheets with a steady current from the east.

Being a stout boy nearly ten years old, I went up to the barn at feeding time and I thought the proper thing for me to do was to look over into the sheep stable or shade, for it was open at one end. I saw the sheep crowded into the shade and standing close together. I was specially interested in a lamb that I claimed as my own property, but I could not see it, and so I got over into the sheep yard and there I found my infant sheep lying in the snow and the old stock tramping over it. I caught it and set it on its feet, but it could not stand and so I picked it up and carried it down to the house and my Mother assisted me to wrap it up in some warm old flannel and I laid it in the corner near the fire. I warmed milk several times that day and poured some of it down its throat, for it would not drink or hardly open its eyes. However, I nursed it carefully but after all about sundown the ungrateful little wretch died.

The snow continued to fall till along in the evening of that Easter Sunday. It was said to be two feet deep. On Monday morning the sun rose without a cloud in the sky. The wind had got around to the south and the air was balmy and warm. By evening the snow was all in slush and every little stream was over its banks. In a day or two the ground was bare and before the end of the week they were again plowing.

I have seen many spring snows since that but I never recollect so deep a snow so late in the season, though in the winter I have often seen deeper snow. 1838 and 9 and 1855 and 6 were severe winters with deep snows, and in 1843 the snow was abundant and the sleighing excellent on the first day of April, and the ice was in the Clarion till the 8th or 10th of that month. I went to Brookville in the sleigh on the first day of April that year. The deepest snow I recollect was about the beginning of the year 1839. It was about or nearly four feet and badly drifted in our valley, and now this sixth day of April, 1889, two weeks before Easter in the morning the snow was about 14 inches deep and fell rapidly from 9 o'clock of the evening of the 5th till this morning at 9 A. M., but has wasted fast and this evening is more than half gone. And it is just about sixty-six years since the big snow of 1823.

At the date of the first I was approaching my tenth year; and now I am just about as near my seventy-sixth year and yet it don't seem so very long between those dates, and I have quite a distinct recollection of the events of that early time. It is probable Easter came later in the month that year than this, for I think the apple trees were in blossom, or so nearly so that the fruit was killed and that we had an apple famine that year or at least they were scarce. Of the two large orchards we had at that time, all the trees but two or three were native fruit, but a good many bore good fruit -- while quite a number bore hard, knotty and sour apples only fit for sour cider and not very good for that, but we rarely missed having an abundance of apples. During all the time I lived at home I only recollect of one or two seasons when there was a scarcity. I think the trees had not as many enemies then as now -- I don't mind of hearing of borers in those days, but there was a white worm used to eat into the roots of the peach trees and we put wood ashes around them to protect the roots from vermine. Some years we had large crops of peaches, but they were never so certain a crop as the apples.

Section 52:  A Campbell Family Legend

There is a romantic story connected with your family -- comes down from our remote ancestors, which may have been true but is unsupported by any reliable evidence and my Father never took any stock in it, but my Uncle Joe and my old maiden Aunt Ibby had considerable faith in it.

The hero and heroine were said to be the grandparents of old Grandfather Robert Campbell. As the story goes, sometime along in the 17th Century this Campbell, whose name was Robert, was the owner and captain of a fast sailing vessel engaged in the disreputable and dangerous trade of smuggling goods from St. Malo in France into the Hebrides and the northern parts of Scotland. His crew, of course, were a band of outlaws and ruffians and could only be held in subjection by the superior intelligence and bravery of the Captain. By the aid of friends in the interior of Scotland, the skill and daring of the crew and the speed of their craft, they succeeded in eluding the police boats and vessels and through a series of years introduced a large amount of contraband goods into Scotland. The Captain, if not rich, became quite a property holder and felt not the slightest compunction at defrauding the government. As in the days of James the Second, it was under Catholic influence, and our revered ancestor was a violent Protestant and cordially hated the Pope and all his adherents. But about this time William of Orange landed in England (Nov. 5, 1688). From Torbay to London was rather a walkover than an invasion, and without a serious battle William and Mary were quietly seated on the throne of England, and the Revolution of 1688 was an accomplished fact.

Against this government Campbell did not wish to be an enemy or a marauder, and having something of the cunning of the canny Scot, he saw a chance of selling his ship at a good price and as William wanted soldiers for his campaign in Ireland, he also saw an excellent chance of making his peace with the government and discharging a conscientious duty by fighting the Pope in Ireland. So he formed a military company out of his crew of ragamuffins and secured a pardon for all illegal acts and went with the army to Ireland. Having gotten his business matters comfortably arranged before embarking for Ireland, like many another Scotchman, he fell desperately in love with a young lady of the Douglass family and wanted to marry her, but not liking him or his antecedents, or for some cause, she promptly and peremptorily rejected him and to settle the matter, quietly married another man.

So having nothing to detain him, Mr. Campbell -- and probably in no very amiable frame of mind -- started off to thrash the Irish. What he did there has not been recorded and can only be inferred from the fact that a nice little piece of confiscated land was assigned to him when the war was over. And he went back to Scotland and found his lady love a childless widow and he again made overtures for her hand, but she was still obdurate and turned up her nose at him. This was more than our ancestor could stand, and so gathering up some of his disbanded company one night they surrounded her father's house and after his campaign in Ireland seemed to have had no conscientious scruples in carrying off the young widow by force to an old castle he had on the Isle of Man.

The Douglass family of which she was a member appear to have been of better blood or more ancient stock than the branch of the Campbells to which he belonged. At any rate the Douglass family instituted a vigorous search for the abducted member, but Campbell had been too long dodging police officers and hiding smuggled goods to be caught, and the search was in vain. Abductor and victim seemed to have vanished from Scotland, and the old soldiers would not betray their Captain.

It was not till some months after that a rumor reached the Douglass mansion that the young widow was at Campbell's old castle on the Island, and the father and brother lost no time in hastening to her rescue. They landed on the Island and had no difficulty in finding the castle, and the first man encountered was Campbell himself. The old man angrily charged him with the crime and demanded his daughter. Campbell, with great politeness, assured him that his daughter was safe and well but that he could not possibly spare her, but if he would go around to the back of the castle he would see his daughter. Seeing that the drawbridge was up and having no means of forcing an entrance into the castle, they were forced to accept the proposal and went around to the point designated where they were to see the widow. And sure enough, they had hardly gotten to the position till she appeared at an upper window, beautifully dressed and looking splendid.

Her father told her to come down and they would take her home in spite of all the Campbells that ever stole cattle from the lowlands. She assured them that she could not get down or out, but that she was used and waited on as a princess and that Campbell, instead of treating her rudely, had been as kind and good to her as her own relatives could have been. Her father told her to be careful and patient for a short time and he would be back with a force that would rescue her and inflict summary and terrible punishment on her abductor, and not leave a stone of the old castle standing; but his daughter told him she would have no cruelty practiced on a man who had been so thoughtful and gentlemanly with her and that in view of all the facts, she had concluded to marry him. This greatly disgusted the father and brother and they told her if that was what she was going to do, she might go and take care of herself.

The upshot of it was she married Campbell, became reconciled to her friends and he became a stern Presbyterian and a supporter of the Kirk and a believer in the "Solemn League and Convenant [sic]." In a word, he became a shining light in the church and a bigoted old Scotchman, but always revered and loved his beautiful wife.

Their first child was a boy and they called him Dugald -- not Douglass. The former is an old name among the Campbells of Scotland. He grew up to be a man and married in Scotland and was sent to Ireland to occupy the confiscated land given to the old smuggler. There Dugald Campbell lived and his first child and son was Robert. While quite young his Scotch Mother died and in a few years Dugald Campbell married an Irish wife -- probably a Catholic -- at any rate she proved to be a stepmother to the first wife's son, and as soon as he became a man he crossed the ocean and finally married a woman of his own name, and no doubt descended from the same race or clan and became the founder of our family in this State. I never knew of him having any communication with his Father's family after he came to Pennsylvania the second time, and I know he had no love for the Catholics.

Our old stock traced the quick and vicious temper of the Campbells to the old smuggler, and all that was good, pure and amiable to his beautiful wife, and to this day Douglass is a favorite name in the family -- but at least half a dozen Roberts perpetuate the name of the old smuggler.

Section 53:  The Johnstown Flood

July 25th, 1889

I have arrived at another milepost in the journey of life. In the last year I have been twice east of the mountains -- once in September, 1888, and once in May and June, 1889 -- the latter as far as Harrisburg and came home through Center County. Spent a week in the valley each time and each time was caught by unusually wet weather.

The great rainfall that swept Johnstown the 30th and 31st of May found me in the valley and on my own farm at Clay Henderson's. On the morning of the first of June I knew by the torrent roaring down the little run by the house that a great rain had fallen, and while little damage was done there I was not surprised to hear of the great damage done further down the valley and along the Juniata.

The first rumor from Johnstown placed the loss of life at 15,000, and the story was so extravagant and improbable that I paid little attention to it. On Saturday evening authentic reports came from Lewistown that the storm was even worse than expected. On the Monday following, Mr. Henderson took me in a two horse buggy to Center County. On Tuesday I went up to Pennsylvania Furnace and had telephone communication with Tyrone City, but all I could learn was that no railroad communication was open to Pittsburgh on the west. I therefore stayed at James Oliver's till the following Friday, when John Archie took me in a buggy to Tyrone. The agents of the Pennsylvania Road telegraphed for me in all directions and found that I could get across the mountains by the Bells Gap Railroad to Punxsutawney, and so that afternoon I got over to Punxsutawney and by Saturday evening arrived at home.

I had telegraphed to the family two days before and they had been telegraphing to me, but I got none of theirs and mine arrived in Clarion an hour before I got there myself. The great loss of life at Johnstown had caused uneasiness among my friends at home.

Section 54:  On Growing Older

It is probable for a person of my age my health is unusually good. I have not an ache or a pain, my voice is firm and my hand steady.

I have some strength yet and my mind is still pretty active. I lead a pretty temperate life, eat plain nutritious food, use no tobacco, liquor or highly seasoned food. Still I am conscious that the infirmities of age are growing upon me. I have lost the action of a younger man. I notice in writing my hand is stiffer, though my nerves are pretty steady; my eyesight is failing and I find difficulty in reading fine print at night -- have thought of having my eyes examined by an optician to see if I cannot get glasses better suited to my sight, but science cannot make young eyes out of old ones. I do not discover that my hearing is at all impaired. I notice that my memory and perceptive faculties have failed to a considerable extent -- names and dates I cannot recall as formerly, and the power of distinguishing faces and persons is greatly diminished.

The ambition I once had to get along and get up in the world has died out and I think I care far less for anyone but myself and family than I did forty years ago. I don't see but I enjoy life as well as I ever did and while not a philosopher nor a scientist to take pleasure in obstructions and the thrones of the day, I enjoy picking up the news of the day and knowing what the world is doing.

One of the painful things to an old man is the loss of companions of his own age. Memory often recurs to the associates of younger days and active life, and as he realizes that one after another have gone, a sense of loneliness comes over him and he is apt to think old friends and old times better than the present. It is true it is mostly on account of blunted faculties and the want of capacity in himself. But the old man notices the difference and not unnaturally finds the fault outside of himself.

I desire on this my birthday, and the sun never shone down on a day brighter or more beautiful, to record my grateful and sincere thanks to the Great Author of my being for all the mercies and blessings with which He has crowned my life, and I humbly commit myself to Him for the few years that may remain.

Section 55:  The Lumber Mill Partnership

I have little more to say about my business life. I continued on practicing law, generally made from two to three thousand dollars a year. I had taken Rob in as a partner, but the business soon began to run down and less money was made by the profession, though as I was getting old the practice may have fallen off faster in our office than in others in town, but as the oil business declined the practice fell off generally. I did not care much about it on my own account, but the government paid off my government bonds and this greatly diminished my interest income and I did not know what to do with the money. Some time before that I had loaned to Granfill Blake and Geo. S. Lacy twenty-five thousand dollars at 7-3/10 interest.

After the government paid my other bonds I found difficulty in loaning the money, but had made several small loans, when in 1881 Mr. Blake sold two-thirds of the interest of his land in Farmington and Highland Townships to Elias Ritts, R. L. Buggard [sic -- Buzzard?] and Patrick Graham for one hundred thousand dollars. A few months later Blake became anxious to sell the remaining third to Mr. Ritts, but he declined to buy, stating that to carry so large an interest would embarrass him, but advised me to take it. I knew but little about the tract, only that it contained a large amount of pine timber, but had but slight knowledge of the value of it. Mr. Ritts assured me that he had been over it and knew it well and that if it was handled right it would be profitable and said they would like to have me a member of their company.

I thought the matter over carefully and concluded to take it. Rob wrote out a deed the next day and I paid Blake his note and $1,000.00, making twenty-six thousand dollars, and gave him four promissory notes of six thousand dollars each, lifted my deed and was the third owner of the property. I reserved the right of paying my notes in advance, and I guess they were all but one paid within the year and the last in a few months afterwards.

We immediately went to work and had a mill running the fall after I bought. I gave this matter some attention for I had a good deal of money in it. I went up over the land with other members of the company, saw a great many pine trees, some very large, nice ones, but the cost of building a mill, stocking and manufacturing them into boards and lumber, running to market and selling were all items that I had to learn.

R. L. Buzzard, one of the owners, had been appointed manager of the whole concern when I bought. Our whole purchase contained some twenty-eight hundred acres including certain pieces we had bought for right-of-way to a landing on the Clarion River. One source of profit was to be building flat boats at the River and at the start a nicely graded plank road was laid all the way from the mill and a complete boat scaffold was built at our landing, and to secure slack water a dam was built across the Clarion and we got started in good style -- having spent money pretty freely.

The first freshet the boats again began to come down over our dam, and to our consternation several of them were injured seriously in going over the breast of the dam. The result was the curses of all the lumbermen of the upper river, and a rush of our manager to get hands and tear the top off our grand new dam. It had cost us a thousand dollars to build it and something to tear it out and we paid for damages for craft going over it fully another thousand dollars. This was a damper on the boat business and I don't believe we ever made enough out of it to more than pay our losses.

Still the business of making and selling lumber and logs seemed to pay well. We ran out the first two or three years a large amount of square timber and did well with it and then as soon as the railroad was made up through Tylersburg station, we made a branch in connection with Leeper Arnold and Co. down to our mill (we had then built a new mill), and I soon satisfied myself that with advantage of this road to market our lumber, the river would be of little use to us and since then our money has been principally made by shipping boards, lumber and bill stuff to Pittsburgh at all seasons of the year without waiting for the freshets in the river, and the success of our establishment soon became an assured fact and I have never made a better investment and we have probably fully two years work to clean off the timber yet, though we cut from six to eight millions a year.

The members of the firm continued the same till the fall of 1884 when our manager, R. L. Buggard [sic -- Buzzard?] sold his one-sixth interest to Charles Leeper who took his place as manager of the firm. Since then Elias Ritts sold his one-third interest to G. W. and F. M. Arnold; Patrick Graham is dead, and one-half of his sixth interest is now vested in M. Arnold, and I am the only original member and indeed I did not come in till two or three months after the first sale by Blake to Ritts, Graham and Buzzard.

We pay our manager about twelve hundred dollars a year and his clerk a thousand, but they are both pretty good and competent in their places and I think the profits of the store pays all or a good part of our manager and clerk hire. Our books are well kept and monthly balances are furnished to me every month. I think I get more out of this investment with the least labor than anything I ever embarked or took an interest in. We have sold off probably a thousand acres of the tract after the timber is off it -- tried to reserve a portion of oil or mineral, but the prospect of oil or gas is not very good. If any is found, it will be clear gain. In any event, we will have no reason to complain.

In the management of this concern I do no active work. Sometimes the partners consult on matters outside of the routine of business, but in the ordinary affairs of the firm the manager has the entire control. In a business of this kind the great matter is to have a competent manager and men of business for partners. Mr. Leeper, our partner and manager, is altogether a self-made man -- without education, but by energy, good sense and great industry he has become a successful man. He is with his hands pretty determined and exacting, but just and prompt in paying. No man ever came to him with a just claim but got it promptly.

Section 56:  "An Educator of the Law"

I suppose I possessed naturally but little talent as an educator of the law or indeed of anything else, but yet in the course of my life as a lawyer a number of young men studied law in my office, most of whom were admitted to the practice and some became and are successful lawyers and other pursuits and avocations, and have perhaps done quite as well as if they had remained in the profession.

Amos Myers read with me from 1843 till 1845, was admitted and practiced some years with J. S. McCalmont, went to Congress, afterwards became a Baptist Preacher and as I am informed, is still the pastor of a congregation up somewhere in York [sic] State. Some years after that a man named Mason studied law with me. He was married to a Miss M. Coy, near Strattonville, had some ability and was a good student. He removed to Wisconsin and I do not know what became of him. Then along in the early fifties, Stewart Barber, the son of my old friend and client Captain Robert Barber, studied law with me and was admitted to practice, but shortly afterwards took the typhoid fever and died.

About 1856 David Lawson and John F. Craig entered as students of law with Campbell and Lamberton. Both were admitted in this county and both went west for a few years, but in a few years drifted back to this county, Craig to go into business with his father and brothers and became a successful, upright and energetic business man and is now one of the leading men of capital of New Bethlehem in this county. He never practiced law in this county. Lawson has been for many years a successful practitioner in this town, a leading member and elder in our church and a man of sterling worth -- few if any more useful men in our town.

There was a son of Dr. Bowser read law in this office a year or so but he did not finish his course and was not admitted. About 1861 or 2 W. H. Fitzer read with me and was admitted and practiced in this office a short time while I was on the bench. He married the youngest daughter of John Clark. In a few years he also removed to the west and succeeded in raising an interesting family and securing a competency and a good home in Iowa. One or two of his sons are said to be in responsible positions on a railroad there at Omaha.

Then along about 1870 or 1871 John W. Reed who had been going to school to Miss Haldeman commenced reading law in my office. Miss Haldeman evidently had seen something in the boy worth cultivating. It was said she took much interest in him and as he said himself when he did anything wrong she lectured and talked to him till she would cry and he said not infrequently till she brought tears to his eyes. It was not remarkable that he became a moral, upright man. At first he studied Blackstone diligently but did not seem to have any peculiar aptitude for the law. I think he was away one winter teaching a public school, but the last year he was in the office I never had a student worked harder or made more progress, and he entered the profession having a pretty thorough knowledge of the elements of law. After admission he tried Brookville a while, then went to Green Forks in Wisconsin, but drifted back to Clarion and is making a reputation in the town in which he was born.

My son, Robert D., commenced reading with me before Reed was admitted and was himself admitted a year or so after. This is the extent of my labors as a teacher of law.

I always liked to teach "Blackstone," "Jones on Bailment" and "Chitty on Contracts." It was interesting to notice how a young mind took hold of Blackstone. I never had two students who caught the spirit and drift of the law alike. With me those who at first were slow to understand legal principles seemed to get the most perfect understanding of elementary law in the end -- probably by harder work -- than those who seemed to catch on to the spirit immediately. My observation has been that it is the hard worker rather than the brilliant mind that makes the successful lawyer.

It is a singular fact that while the population and wealth of the county are increasing, the legal business and fees of the lawyers seem to be diminishing. In the first place the land titles are generally settled; then shrewd and experienced men have got to conduct their business more methodically and the mass of people are better able to pay their debts. Thirty to forty years ago a large portion of the lawyers' fees grew out of collections and sheriffs' sales. Now this practice is insignificant. The vast increase in the volume of the currency -- particularly silver -- has brought business and trade very largely to a cash basis and has resulted in the accumulation of vast fortunes in the fortunate and sharp business men of the great trading centers. Millionaires are about as plenty now as men worth fifty thousand dollars were seventy years ago.

Section 57:  Future of the United States

Seventy-six years ago steam as a force was in its infancy; not a mite of railroad was in the United States. Between Philadelphia freight was transported by the Turnpike and the Conestoga wagon drawn by six horses was an institution in the State and the traveling public were transported from the east to the west by two lines of stages, one on the northern and one on the southern pike.

During my lifetime wood for fuel has been superseded by stove coal and in many towns in the western part of the State, natural gas has taken the place of coal. During my lifetime the tallow candle and the tin lamp fed by hog's lard have been snuffed out and their places supplied by petroleum, natural and artificial gas and electricity. I can easily recollect when our wheat was floated in flat boats down the Juniata to Baltimore to market. The Pennsylvania Canal was not made till about 1828 or 1830 and the railroad not till ten or twelve years thereafter -- crossing the Atlantic by steam, the telegraph and telephone are still later inventions.

All these, together with the vast growth of the country, show in some slight degree the changes that have taken place in one lifetime. It is hard to conceive that as many or as great changes will take place in the next three-quarters of a century.

Will the country continue to advance, or will it go back? Will the next generation grow better or worse? Will the Twentieth Century see established and practiced among all nations "Peace on earth and good will to men"? Will they learn to war no more? The history of the past gives little light on this subject.

The crowding of people into cities generally has caused an increase of poverty, vice and crime. Where the masses have to struggle for life there can be no improvement. The man becomes a mere animal, his moral nature is starved out. Can any one devise an effectual way of multiplying the necessities of life so we will have no poor? If so, it may do much to hasten the millennium.

Section 58:  Brother John Oliver Campbell

On the 29th day of October, 1889, all that was mortal of brother J. Oliver Campbell passed from earth and his body was laid in the old graveyard of the West Kishacoquillas congregation to sleep with his fathers and kindred until the "last trumpet" shall sound and the grave give up her dead. It is not fitting that I should write his eulogy. It would be ghoulish to recall his defects over his freshly made grave, and I can only remember the loved brother, the companion and playmate of my young days, the laborious and energetic man, the support and protector of his aged Mother, the consistent Christian who met the ills and bereavements of life (and he had his full share) with manly fortitude. I therefore leave his character to be judged of by his surviving neighbors and friends who knew him best, and his soul to his God.

At the time of his death John Oliver Campbell was seventy-eight years, one month and twenty-one days old, being born on the 8th of September, 1811, and died the 29th day of October, 1889. With the exception of ten or twelve years on his farm in Centre County, he lived his whole life in the valley and died within a mile of where he was born. His third wife, two children and four grandchildren survive him, but his old home at the stonevalley road is broken up and sold to strangers. It is associated in my memory with Mother, Brother and Sister, all of whom died upon it, that I never want to look upon it in the possession of strangers. I can hardly realize that the passing out of one quiet life should change one of the brightest spots in my memory into so dark a shadow and all in a few short months. I do not regret his death, for with his powerful constitution he struggled long and suffered much with an incurable disease, and when at last he succumbed, the pale messenger came as an angel of mercy and the worn body and wearied soul welcomed the release, and now he is at rest "after life's fitful fever he sleeps well." He was a daily reader of the Scriptures and a firm believer in the doctrine of the New Testament, an officer and active member of the Presbyterian Church. Without understanding a word of any language but his own, his life was an illustration of that grand old Latin text, "Ecce agnus die qui lottet peccatto mundi."