232                         HISTORY OF CLAY COUNTY


vated and it was coming into ear, we had to protect it from the turkeys
by day and the ‘coons by night. I lay out there in that patch of corn,
by the side of a fire, accompanied by my dogs, many more nights than I
have fingers and toes. To do our milling from this place, we had to take
a little corn and go to Craig’s mill, at the mouth of Eel river. The first
time I went there I had to wait two days to get my meal and work for the
mill man during that time to pay for my boarding. But out of our
necessities we made the mortar and pestle for pounding the corn and
reducing it to meal, and then we had ‘pound’ cake which beat your fine
modern pound cake of to-day. Uncle Joe Griffith built the first hand
mill here, using the ‘upper and nether’ buhr-stones. This was operated
by two men, one feeding it by hand, throwing in a few grains at a time.
Then we began raising potatoes, and we used the pulp as a substitute
for flour, mixing it with meal, which made excellent biscuit. We went
over on the Wabash and bought a few bushels of wheat, and in the fall
of 1827 we put to seed the first wheat ever deposited within the virgin soil
of Clay county. My old grandmother, a Pennsylvania duchess, came
out to live with us and longed for ‘wheat cake.’ When we sowed that
wheat she felt hopeful that she would soon realize the gratification of
her longings. In the latter part of January, 1828, we had a big snow,
more than knee deep, which melted on top in the first days of February,
and then froze up very suddenly, forming a very thick crust, which bore
up everything, even the cows and horses. This continued until March,
and the earth at some places was literally covered with feathers. where
the wolves had caught and devoured the turkeys. Well, after the snow
melted away that wheat looked puny but soon grew vigorously and was
as rank a growth as I have ever seen, but in course of time it all turned
to cheat. When father observed this and told grandmother, she cried
as a child. Made a trip to the Ohio river and brought back a hundred
weight of flour, the first ever brought to this section.
    “Father and I thought that we must go out and get a bear. On a
very cold day, a big snow on the ground, we started out east, toward
the present Marion Mills, where there was a large thicket. We started
up several panthers, but our anticipated Mr. Bruin, to our disappoint-
ment, did not put in his appearance. As we were on our way back,
passing a large hollow poplar tree on the old Presley Owens place,
father observed marks which he insisted meant that our bear was in that
tree, so we plied our axes to fell it. Before it was ready to fall father
stationed himself with gun and dogs at the point where the bear would
come out, provided he were in. The tree fell after I did a little more chop-
ping, but no bear came out. But instead of the coveted bruin a large
amount of honey was exposed by the falling and breaking of the tree. It
was then a question as to how we should be able to take all that honey
home. But a way had to be devised. In the early times we wore
wamuses, and mother had just made me a new one, which I then had on.
I pulled off my hunting garb so as to get off the wamus, to which I
applied a buckskin thong, drawing up the corners, and into ths I
scooped the honey. I then mounted my horse and father lifted up to me
the honey, which was placed in front on the horse with the arms of the
wamus tied about my neck to steady the load and keep it in position. It
was so cold it soon froze the honey dry, so that none of it was wasted
on the way, and we must have had as much as three hundred pounds
of the purest and sweetest honey imaginable.