A. W. Farley, McIntosh County, North Dakota The casual reader may think I have given undue space to one who did not pioneer and build through long years of hard living, but, in the telling of this story. I feel I am giving to my father one last tribute as his just due. Albert William Farley, my father, was born in Lapeer County, Michigan, June 30, 1842. He was educated in the Almont High School, the Dickerson Institute at Romeo, and the University of Michigan. He died June 3, 1887 at Ellendale, Dakota territory. His great grandfather Ebenezer Farley, was a Minuteman and was one of the 92 militia men who were in Col. Prescotts' troopers that marched to Lexington April 19, 1775, and stopped the British at Concord. Fabyan Farley was a direct descendent of William the Conqueror whose name was Williamus De Falaise. Eleven different spellings of this name are found in the Farley history in England, some being De Falaise Fairleigh, Farlea, Farlegh, Farlee, Farley. The first Farleys to come to America were Thomas and George, sons of Fabyan. Thomas, with his wife and a servant, Nicholas Sholter, came to Virginia, February 4, 1624, on the ship Anne, the third ship after the Mayflower. They had a child Anne, named for the ship in which they crossed. They landed at Archers Hook opposite the old site of Jamestown. George came over in 1640, as a result of religious persecution in England and arrived at Charlestown on the ship Lion. They settled in New Hampshire, Connecticut and later in the Ohio Valley. My grandfather, Mark Farley, came from Ohio into Michigan in 1835. He settled on the banks of the Belle River in Lapeer County and five children were born to him and his wife, Mary Swan Farley. There were Susan, Albert, Nellie, Kate, Alice and Charles. My father was given a good education as he was a natural student and my mother often referred to him as a "walking encyclopedia". He was a man of fine character and perfect integrity. I never heard him use the mildest form of oath and he never touched tobacco or liquor in any form. When he left Ann Arbor he was for a time a professor in a town near there, but owing to his father's death, he went back and took over the large farm leaving behind his literary ambitions. Here on this farm his own five children grew up in the large colonial home. Skating, fishing, rowing on the Belle River, playing in the sugar bush in the spring and romping through the woods and big apple orchards through the summer. In later years the incurable disease of asthma developed from which he suffered many years. At last specialists in Detroit advised a change of climate as the only relief. So it was in 1886 that he went on a tour of investigation into the west and landed at Ellendale. There he heard of a new unsettled county in the interior. He took the stage, driving 50 miles to McIntosh County, where he filed on three claims allowed every settler, and spent the summer months there, returning to Michigan much improved in health, and with considerable enthusiasm about the new western country. All winter he was busy closing up business and preparing for the sale in March, in preparation for the trip to Dakota. It was hard to tear up by the roots, the foundation laid through three generations. After the sale three cars were chartered and filled with stock, feed, seed, implements and household possessions. Father, my oldest brother and a man John Gummer started in March 1SS7 on the long tedious journey. They disembarked at Ellendale, and in April mother with the rest of the family followed. The roads to McIntosh were nearly impassable so father rented a farm west of Ellendale where we made our home that summer. Part of the men put in the crop on this farm, while the others were constantly on the road teaming lumber and goods over to the claim. First a shanty home and shed for tired teams was built, a well dug and garden started, mostly for the benefit of the greedy gophers which abounded everywhere. To these little animals with their ravenous appetite for green garden vegetables and grain were attributed the following chain of events. The men had been working at the buildings on the claim and doing other needful things, when it came time for another trip to the Ellendale home for supplies and materials. It was decided that Arthur, my oldest brother, and a hired man should stay on digging the well, while my father and Allison, the next brother, should take the two teams and empty wagons back over the road for more loads. Before leaving, father went into Hoskins and bought a few provisions, also a small packet of arsenic poison to be distributed over the garden for the gophers. These purchases were all placed in one larger sack and carried back to the claim shanty that evening. The groceries and the arsenic were taken from the sack, which was thrown aside. The next morning they were up betimes getting ready for the trip home. Father prepared lunch for Allison and himself, putting it in the sack which he had thrown aside the night before. Afterwards, he recalled that he had noticed that some of the poison had leaked out through the paper and into the larger package, but in all the hurry and worry he forgot it that morning. On all the trips hack and forth between the two places in the two counties they had formed the habit of stopping in the hills to eat lunch and feed the horses. On this particular day they ate lunch and rested as usual before going again on their way, but even before starting they began to feel ill. Driving on towards home, they became more and more ill until finally, unable to sit up and drive, they lay in the bottom of one wagon, having one team tied behind the other. For a long distance through the hills and the flats below, there were no homes nor help, but at last they did come to a farm home where they stopped and asked for milk. Father had thought it all out during that long drive and through hours of suffering. He remembered the gopher poison and the fact that some of it leaked into the sack which he had later used for their lunch. He well realized the fate that might be theirs. They drank milk, bought more, and again resumed the terrible ride homeward. Father must have taken more of the powder, for he was much weaker. Allison would get up from the wagon bed, whip the horses into a trot, and then lie down again. But the horses were clumsy and slow, and it was hard to hurry them, so that agonizing journey was prolonged. At home we had prepared supper and were waiting and watching for the men, who came about every third day. We kept looking towards the west in order to catch the first glimpse of teams far out on the horizon line. At last we saw them coming, but slowly. As they came closer we could see no one in the wagons, which were tied so closely together. All afternoon, mother said afterwards, she had a premonition of impending disaster. As the wagons drew nearer, father raised himself on his elbow that he might look toward the house and see his loved ones. The teams drew up to the house and we rushed to them, all asking the same question, "What is the matter?" Pale, haggard, and hollow-eyed, they rose from the wagon, and father said in a weak, changed voice, "I think we're poisoned." With fear in our hearts we helped them into the house and to the tiny upstairs bedroom. Mother immediately sent Karl, my youngest brother, to Ellendale for the doctor, but as he hurried away on horseback, father said, "It's no use; it is too late." Brokenly he told us what had happened. We did what we could for him and for my brother, who appeared to be less seriously ill. After an anxious hour or two of waiting, the doctor came. There was nothing he could do except for my brother, who recovered after days of sickness. And thus my father passed away, out in this lonely prairie country far from his old Michigan home, friends, and associations. He saw the end of all his high hopes and ambitions, a victim of one of the many tragedies occurring in pioneer life on the frontier. He died at ten o'clock that night, with mother and I beside his bed. After a small funeral at the house with a few kind neighbors assisting, we drove to Ellendale to put father upon the train for a last lonely journey to the old Michigan home. John Gummer (the man who came west with father) accompanied the body back for interment in the family plot in the old Webster cemetery. As he stood in the door of the baggage car where the the coffin lay, and as the train began slowly moving away, the tears coursed down his cheeks, as he looked back at the little group on the depot platform, left behind leaderless and alone. Poor father! He was a comparatively young man, only forty-five years old. Such a fine man, so good, so above the average that the pity of his untimely death haunts me to this day. Such was the price he paid for his small part in the building of our great northwest, and the settlement of McIntosh County. Extracted from: Along the Trails of Yesterday A Story of McIntosh County by Nina Farley Wishek Author of Roseberries in Autumn The Ashley Tribune Froh, Pohl, Moench 1941