Adams County IN Archives History - Books .....Chapter XI W. P. Rice 1896
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Joy Fisher sdgenweb@yahoo.com February 17, 2007, 8:49 pm

Book Title: Reminiscences Of Adams, Jay And Randolph Counties

CHAPTER XI.

    I came to this state in 1835, with an older brother, Benjamin, and worked in
the woods on land my father had entered from the government the previous spring.
This land was in section 14, Root Township. We built a log cabin, one story
high, with puncheon floor, clapboard roof and an old-fashioned wooden chimney,
with the back and jams of mud. We boarded with Benjamin Pillars, who had settled
here the previous year. Our experience that first year was no exception to that
encountered by every pioneer. Nature had been on the ground a good long while,
and when we, as the van guard of approaching civilization, undertook to take
possession of the small territory which the government said was ours, Ben and I
had to fight for it. Father and the other children came in the spring of 1836. A
few years later he built a hewed log house, a story and a half high, where he
died in 1848. He was born in London County, Va., in 1789, and was a soldier in
the war of 1812. I was born in Culpeper County, Va., in 1820, the 1st of
January, and like other boys, worked at home until I was "of age." I then went
to work for myself. The first man I worked for was Thos. Fisher, receiving $9.00
per month for clearing, making rails, &c. The next was George A. Dent, from whom
I received §11.00 per month for similar work. I remained with him until I saved
enough money to pay for entering forty acres of land. On this I built a shanty
in the year 1842, and a year later, with my "pardner for life," went to
housekeeping in the woods, not on Brussels carpet and under gas lights, but on a
puncheon floor, lighted by "tallow dip" or sometimes a grease lamp. Our
household goods were not what people buy, but what your grandfather used to
make. I have loved a small house ever since, for in it I learned to make
sacrifices and to be hospitable. This home in the woods was four miles southeast
of Monroeville, and we lived there until 1865. In that year I bought the farm
owned by George A. Dent and moved to it early in the spring. For this land I
paid $15,000—280 acres. I have lived in this county sixty-one years. I have seen
the coming of the telegraph, the railroads, the telephone and the electric
light. My memory is more clear upon the events of those early days and what
happened in them, than upon the happenings of this age of bustle. Some young men
of to-day will beg rather than work for less than one dollar a day, while their
grandfather has probably made rails for 37 1/2 cents per day, as I have, then
set down to a dinner of corn bread and bacon. Store box politicians will tell us
of these "hard times," while they chew tobacco, earned by their wives washing. I
wish they had been men in 1835, when flour had to be hauled from Piqua, Ohio,
and cost $12.00 a barrel. We had no churches, no schools, no railroads and no
canals, and 30 to 50 cents per day was good wages. Then with an appreciation of
what they cost, look to-day at our magnificent school system, backed by the laws
of the state, our beautiful churches in which to worship. The railroads with
their wheeled palaces, the telegraph with its language of truth, and the
telephone, which makes-the residents of New York and Chicago neighbors. Then, in
the name of the improvements of the past sixty years, I say, y,oung man, get
down off that box and go to work, if you wish to have a man's place among the
men of your town.
                                  W. P. RICE.


Additional Comments:
Extracted from:

Reminiscences of Adams, Jay and Randolph Counties

Compiled by Martha C. M. Lynch

Ft. Wayne, IN: Lipes, Nelson & Singmaster

Circa 1896

File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/in/adams/history/1896/reminisc/chapterx477gms.txt

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