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.