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.