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.