JEREMIAH ABRAHAM MICKEL BIOGRAPHY, WARREN, NEW JERSEY Copyright (c) 2001 by Stewart J. A. Woolever, Jr. (sjaw@citlink.net). ************************************************************************ USGENWEB NOTICE: These electronic pages may NOT be reproduced in any format for profit or presentation by any other organization or persons. Persons or organizations desiring to use this material, must obtain the written consent of the contributor, or the legal representative of the submitter, and contact the listed USGenWeb archivist with proof of this consent. The submittor has given permission to the USGenWeb Archives to store the file permanently for free access. ************************************************************************ JEREMIAH ABRAHAM MICKEL BIOGRAPHY, WARREN, NEW JERSEY My thanks to John Hargreaves for the info. St. Paul, Minnesota 1 September 1960 To the descendants of the Reverend Jeremiah Mickel: The accompanying autobiography of the Reverend Jeremiah Mickel (1834-1922) was dictated by him during the period 11 January 1915 to 2 March 1916. The dictation was taken by Marie A Mickel (now Mrs. Roy E. Johnson) who made a single typed copy. This has now been duplicated to the extent of 50 copies. The original typed copy has been reproduced without any attempt at editing or rearranging of material. Copies are being sent to his one surviving child, Mrs. Susie Johnson; to all surviving grandchildren (except Jesse's daughter Helen, whose address is not known to me); to great grandchildren (except the children of Robert Mickel whose addresses are not known to me); and to great grandchildren wherever possible. Clarence E. Mickel Autobiography of Jeremiah Mickel Dictated to Marie A. Mickel, 1915-1916 Duplicated by Clarence E. Mickel, 1960 My parentage is of straight German on my father's side and on my mother's side it is English and French. My grandfather on my father's side came to this country from Germany in the last years of the eighteenth century and his name was Mickel, Jacob Mickel. My grandmother on my father's side was German and her name before marrying me grandfather was Stem. My mother's grandfather, my great grandfather on my mother's side of the house was born in England. His name was Runyan, Joseph Runyan. He settled in the country some years before the Revolution in one of the colonies and during the Revolution he was aide-de-camp on George Wahington's staff. My father was born in this country some six months after his father's family came over. He was the third son of the family and was born in 1801 in the eastern part of Pennsylvania near to the county seat of North Hampton county, which is the city of Easton. My mother was born in New Jersey. Her father's name was Majors, William Henry Majors, and her name was Elizabeth Snider. She and my father must have been married about the year 1830. I was born in Lower Mount Bethel, North Hampton county, state of Pennsylvania, in the city of Easton, on the Lehigh river in 1834. I was the second son of the family. My father's family consisted of four sons and three daughters and my father's name was Abraham Mickel. His youngest brother, John, was a regular in the United States Army during the time of the Florida war. His next older brother was Samuel. He died and an early age in eastern Pennsylvania. One sister, the aunt that I knew, married a man by the name of Weaver and lived in New Jersey not far from the village of Belvidere. My mother's family lived to a good age. Her oldest brother, William Henry Majors, my uncle, was a Methodist preacher in the state of New Jersey near or in the village of Belvidere. He lived to the age of seventy odd years. Her other brother, Cunrod Majors, was a farmer living in New Jersey. When we were to move from Pennsylvania to Michigan, he came and carried us from our home to Morristown, about fifteen miles, across the Delaware river into New Jersey. There we took a mixed train with our luggage and all together and rode in a box car to Jersey City, crossed the river between four o'clock and sundown in the month of May and took the steamer up the North river to Albany. My father was a carpenter by trade and also a cabinet maker. When we lived about nine miles west of Easton at a little cross roads called Potts Corners, he worked all the time then at cabinet work. When we were living there, I can remember very distinctly, that there were three of us children in the family; my brother two years older than myself and a sister about two years younger than I was. I was probably in the neighborhood of five years old then. There was common back of the house where we lived, up a clay hill. There didn't anything grow there but pennyroyal. My father made us a little wagon and we used in the afternoon to take my little sister Mary, in the wagon and go up and pull pennyroyal, tie it up in bundles in hay and bring it home. But that same fall my only sister died and we buried her in Pennsylvania. One other interesting incident occurred, I think it was in the winter of 1842. My cousin was living with us that winter. His name was Abraham Majors, named after my father whose name was Abraham. It was a winter of a great deal of snow, and we had to wade the snow a good deal above our knees, a good deal of the time through the timber to school. About the middle of the timber was a little brook that came down from the higher land on down through there to the creek. My brother, cousin and myself went sailing in the winter on that brook. The cold weather froze it all over and we would go up to the top of the hill where the brook came down and get down on our breasts, stick up our heels and our heads and go skiting down the brook. The result was that we were very late home often from school and our clothes terribly wet. Of course our folks thought nothing of our being wet, only of our being late. They thought the snow we had waded through made our clothes wet. One evening we were all on the brook sailing, and it was real fun, and I suppose it wasn't very quiet either; youngsters generally make a noise when they are having a good time. Just as we were coming to the path one evening, we looked up and father was standing by the brook on the path. He said nothing to us except to hurry home, but I knew from his look that there was going to be a reckoning. He went on over to the village and tended to what he had to do and when he came home he had three good switches made of what we called pussy-tailed willow. He had two of those willows twisted together. He had three of those. We had a big fireplace in the living room. After supper was over he took the willows and put them into the hot embers and ashes and then he told us boys that we had no doubt had a great deal of fun, but he felt it was his duty as a father and as the watch care over his nephew to punish us, "and I am not going to punish you particularly for the act that you did, but for the fact that you lied to us. You told your mother that school did not let out on time, and I am going to punish you for lying". I shall always remember that punishment. It was not harsh but how it did smart. Those willows did find our arms and legs until we could dance without a fiddle. In Pennsylvania we had to go a mile and a half to school without any road. A path through the woods over to what was known as the little hamlet of Flickville. Our schoolhouse would be a curiosity to a scholar of today. It was all in one room, the teacher occupied one end with his desk; on the two sides was a desk the whole length of the side. On each side a long desk and long punchion benches for the scholars to sit on. They sat facing the windows and their backs to the teacher. Twice a day we had thirty minutes for writing. We wrote with the goose quill pen which the teacher remained after school nights and sharpened up for the next day. The stove was in the middle of the room and there were three benches, two of them about twelve feet and one about eight feet, and the stove in the middle. Whenever a scholar disobeyed the rules of the teacher, he was placed on one of those benches and just before noon the teacher got down his six foot gad and whipped out all that were on the bench, gave them a good thorough flogging. When we were writing, if we didn't hold our pens just right and obey all the rules of the teacher about writing, the first thing we knew about being out of order, the ruler came down on our knuckles. This was the system of teaching school those days. The teacher had to be a man who could teach German and English both because many of the people were German and they wanted their children to learn German first. We used to go over to the same schoolhouse on Sunday to Sunday school. We didn't have a modern Sunday school, but we had a Sunday school where the scholars went, there were not very many, and learned the scriptures, the New Testament especially. The second summer that I went over there to Sunday school I memorized the whole first chapter of John's gospel so that I recited it without ever missing or being assisted by anyone. That chapter has never left me. I remember it today as plainly as I did in the Sunday school. For that I received six blue tickets. They used red tickets and blue. After getting so many red tickets you could get a blue ticket, but it was more to me and my work in years after than one hundred tickets would have been. About that same time I went with my father one day to what was known as the rope works. Father went over to make ropes for our beds that we used to cord up the bed to lay the ticks on. My mother spun the yarn on a little wheel out of tow and we took the balls of yarn and went over on the other side of the Delaware river about three miles from home and made the ropes. It was a great curiosity to me to see those threads from four different balls run through a little opening in a block and then hitched to a sort of a windlass at the other end. When Father got them all straightened out and doubled up to suit him, he went to that little windlass or crank, and turned that crank until it twisted those strand all up into one solid tow rope about one- half inch in diameter. Thus we had, without costing us anything, rope enough to put new cords in all our beds and Mother had spun all the yarn or tow for it. As I stated above, my father's family consisted of three girls and four boys, nine in the family of which but two are living up to this time. When I was about eleven years old, I had a very warm job that lasted me for some time. My father had a shop a little east of the house and we had a driveway between that and the yard where we drove in with wood or anything we wanted to unload. In the summertime and warm weather my mother used the shop to do her washing in and the stove for her baking purposes, rather than to build a fire in the house. She told me to go out to the shop and build a fire so she could bake some bread in the afternoon. I went out and got my kindling and stuff ready and started my fire. In the shop over the bench my father had his gun and powder horn. I thought it would be a nice thing to get the powder horn down, put a little powder and start the fire a little faster. I know it was against the rules but I thought I could run it and nobody would know anything about it. So I got the horn and poured a little powder in my hand and didn't put the cork in the horn. I threw the little bunch of powder in my hands into the stove and the next thing I knew I was in a pretty warm atmosphere; burned my face and hands badly and my hair, even my eyewinkers, and having my sleeves rolled up, burned my arms up to my elbows so that it was all a big blister before sundown. My folks sent for and old man down on the river who claimed he could take fire out of burns, by some mysterious process. He came and talked over me and worked his hands above me but it didn't get any of the heat out. The best thing we found was cotton batting and sweet oil and I was done up about two days and then I had a warm time from that on. In 1847 there was but one railroad in the state of Pennsylvania, running from Philadelphia to New York. We were sixty miles up the Delaware river from Philadelphia and there was no railroad in the state nearer than sixty miles, so we had to go over into New Jersey which took two days with the wagon and horses. From there we went to Jersey City on the Hudson river opposite New York. There was only one railroad running then in the state of New York. That was the New York Central which went from New York to Albany. While traveling on the Erie Canal we were in plain sight of the railroad trains several times passing up and down the river. There were, to the best of my remembrance, from four to six cars in a passenger train. I don't remember of ever seeing a freight train on that line. Often there would be a freight car mixed in with the passenger cars. We had a good deal of fun traveling on the canal because we had a boat that all we had to do was to ask the man at the helm to draw the stern near the tow path and we could run and play on the tow path and keep up with the boat, and when we got tired we had only to motion him to throw the boat over to the tow path and he would do so and we would get on again. So we had a spell of walking and riding just as the notion came. When we arrived In Calhoun county, Michigan, near Marshall, the prospects for wheat were very fine. We had not been in a wheat country at all. In the part of Pennsylvania where we lived, they raised no wheat, but down on the Delaware river there was a good deal raised there and when we went out into the wheat fields in Michigan, we thought it was just wonderful; fifteen, twenty and thirty acres; thirty acres was considered a good large wheat field. In the spring of 1847 we moved to the state of Michigan, county of Calhoun, township of Meringo. The first work I did after coning to Michigan was to carry lunch and water to the men in the harvest field, a neighbor whom my father knew in Pennsylvania years before, and whose name was Paul Broat. The first work I did in the fall after we came to Michigan was to husk corn. I was just a kid, I couldn't husk very much, but still I made out so that we got some corn to feed the chickens. I believe after about three weeks of husking, and by the way corn was all cut up in shocks in Michigan, no big fields of corn standing all pressed out with the frost and snow like it is out west, but a man who had ten acres of corn thought he had a big piece. I think about three weeks after I commenced husking, I took a chill and I didn't husk any more corn that fall and the next spring I was attacked with what they call fever and ague, dumb ague, shaking ague and all kinds of ague was in the air and all we had to do was to sit down in the sun and drink a pint of buttermilk and we would have a chill. For thirteen months I never was without the ague a month at a time and I thought I was pretty stout, but it came pretty near using me up. Finally and old lady told me to take all the hops I could grab in one hand, put them into a quart of water in the evening, let them stand in that cold water all night. The next morning I was to put it where it would get very hot, not to boil it, but let it get very hot, let it steep and simmer away until I got it down to a pint. Then when I felt the chill of the ague coming on, the cold chills crawling up my spinal column I was to drink that pint of hot tea. Well, I had the ague so long and had been so pestered with it that I was ready to take anything to get rid of it, so I drank that pint. It was about twelve o'clock and that afternoon I didn't know anything. It was so awful bitter, I threw down the cup and ran about ten blocks and then I fell down in the street and I didn't know anything about what occurred. They picked me up and carried me into a house near by and I was there all the afternoon, In the evening I was better so I went home. We got very nicely through that summer, but that fall there was a great deal of sickness and especially to persons who had recently come into the state. Our family consisted of Father and Mother, five sons and two daughters. In September of the same year, 1847, we were all down sick at once except my youngest brother. One wasn't able to help the other at all. The disease was bilious fever, so-called by the physicians. The neighbors, though, were very kind. They came and helped us and stayed with us nights and fortunately all of us got up again and got over the fever. We were feeling well until October and then the fever and ague struck and for thirteen months I wasn't without fever and ague for one month at a time. I would try to work and help to get something to live on as our finances were very low and I went out to husk corn; three cents for a round basket full. I would husk corn one day and part of the next until the ague fit came on and then I would have to tend the ague fit the rest of the day. ---1848--- The next year my father bought a little piece of land a mile east of Marshall, the county seat of Calhoun county. That was in 1848. He built a house upon it and we rented a house nearby for $3.00 a month and lived in it. One day I was out on the little piece of ground that belonged to that house up near some heavy timber and there came up a very severe wind and hail storm. The wind was a tornado. There was a big stump close where I was working some corn and I fell upon the ground and grabbed that stump with both arms as best I could. The noise of the wind in the trees was so great that I did not know that I was in any danger until the wind had stopped and raised up. A large limb had been broken off by the wind and had fallen laying within a foot of my body. The hail was very heavy. We had been fixing up the house to live in. Father had just gotten the windows in and the hail broke every window on the west side of the house, cleaned it out. After the house was fixed up we moved in. We lived there right along. Father was out at work at his trade all the time and we boys were doing what we could in clearing up the piece of land. Chopping Wood (about 1848 or 1849) After a day's chopping, in which each one of us put up two cords of four foot wood besides leaving our rail cuts, which was a piece of the tree eleven feet long which was to be split up and made rails of. In that country those days, everybody had to fence against everything. All kinds of stock was free comers and people that had yards and fields had to fence in order to keep the stock out. The fences those days were not barbed wire. It was either rails or boards. After chopping all day from day light until sundown and after, we would go and get our supper and then go down town which was a mile away. There was a nice path alongside of a ford fence, nearly all the way down and we would go down there to the grocery stores and visit around. Sometimes if it was cloudy and rainy it would be very dark. In our path along by the fence there was a large stump about breast high. One night in particular, my cousin was leading, I was next and my brother was bringing up the rear. When my cousin came to the big stump he said nothing, merely turned out around it and went on. I knew we must be very near to the stump so I reached out my hand and when I felt the stump I stepped around it and went on. My brother, hurrying to catch up with us, came up against it full force. "Why didn't you tell me that stump was there?" Our cousin said, "Nobody told me it was there." We got home and had a great deal of fun over going around the stump. We had special days in our chopping for making rails and when we made rails we joined forces, all three of us working together. We were very fond of making rails because we got a half-cent apiece for them which made up a little of the lack on the price per cord of wood, so that we made just as many rails as we could out of what we called cuts. Sometimes we could get three nice cuts off of a white oak tree. Thus we spent our winters and Sundays we generally took the little dog and went out after rabbits, but no gun, we didn't have any guns, so we went rabbit hunting without a gun. The winter of 1848 I went to school three months. That was about the length of school in the rural districts at that time and all the western part of the state was rural district. The next summer, 1849, I worked at jobs as I could get them. When winter came I went to school again the three months. With the time I had in school before coming to Michigan, made me five winters of fifteen months in all. In 1848, one year after coming to the state of Michigan, my father contracted with a man by the name of John Roamey for me to work for him two months driving a breaking team consisting of six yoke of oxen. The country was all new, there were very few clearings, and my work was to drive those oxen, feed them at noon, unyoke them at night, put two bells on them and turn them out into the brush. My work in the morning was to get up at daylight and to out and find those oxen, bring them in, feed them a little grain and yoke them up. Then I could have my breakfast. About that time of the year and in that part of the country what we called the yoke opening, the brush was about as high as a man's head, and when I got in with the cattle in the morning I was as wet as though I had been through a very heavy shower, but I went out to break and drove until I got dry, no change of clothes. My whip was a hickory stalk about eight feet long with a six foot lash on it made of ground-hog's tanned hide and it was about all I could do to wield it and I don't think I hurt the cattle much. But I made a success and for which I got my board and $4.00 a month paid to my father. ---1849--- My next place of work was with Mr. Ezra Lusk on a farm. It was no easy work, and I stayed with him all that summer at $4.00 a month and board. During the time I had to take the team and do a man's work in loading wheat from the shock and passing it off from the wagon onto the step. In the winter of 1849 I went on probation in the Methodist Episcopal class (church it is called). I made what they considered a very heinous offense to the church. In the coming summer after I had gone at my trade, I with one other was called up before the class leader to tell why we did so. Our offense had been in going to a show. The show was on mesmerism and ventriloquism, which at the present day would be no offense in a Methodist member at all, but if we didn't ask the forgiveness of the church we would be turned away. We talked it over among ourselves and concluded that we had not done any wrong and therefore out we'd go. We did go out and I never put myself under the guidance and control of the Methodist Episcopal church afterwards. The same winter an incident occurred at school where I was going. As I have said before, I had two months of school each winter. The schoolhouse was in two large rooms and the furniture of the school room was very much different from what it was in Pennsylvania, and the teacher, whose name was Joseph Mills, was a very fine gentleman and a good scholar. He read the scripture every morning at school and offered prayer, and during that time no scholar could get into the house, large or small. There was no vestibule to the room, there was no shed anywhere near the schoolhouse, and a little child that got there one minute late had to stand out in the cold all during the opening exercises of the school. A few of us concluded that it was inhuman and that we wouldn't stand it, that we would purposely be late to help the little children in out of the cold. George Covert, Richard Meachan, and three or four others with myself were late. We formed a line from the door back and our aim was to kick the door in. Meachan was the son of the lady with whom I lived and where I was learning my trade. He stepped up, gave the door a kick, but made no impression. They each filed up and kicked the door. The scholars inside said that every time anyone kicked the door it gave a little bit. I was at the last of the line, the last one. I had on a heavy pair of stuggy boots and I ran with all the strength I has and I jumped with both feet against that door and through it I went. When I had made the opening, the scholars stepped in and very quietly stepped up to the stove to get warm. We made no further noise. Everything was quiet until "Amen" was said. The trustee of the school was on the rostrum with the teacher. We didn't know it. We were called up at once and asked a number of questions and given two minutes to decide which we would do, leave the school or take a ferruling (that was a big rule on the open hand). Meachan said he would take the ferruling. They took it individually in turn, one after the other, and all of them concluded to take a ferruling rather than leave school. My common sense told me that the law would never go with that teacher because it was so inhuman. He came to me and wanted to know what I had decided to do, leave school or take a ferruling. I said, "Mr. Mills, neither one. How high do you suppose your prayers go while those little children are out in the cold suffering? I don't believe this school board will support such an inhuman act as that, and while I broke in the door, I can't say I did it all because all the others kicked at it too. I did it out of sympathy for children six or eight years old standing crying from the cold, and Mr. Mills, I would do it again tomorrow morning." He said, "You'll leave school." I said, "I won't." So I stayed in the school room until noon, went home to my dinner, came back to school and continued to go to school and was never brought up before the school board again. I had then come to the age when I knew right from wrong. While my father and mother were praying people and were consistent professors of religion, I seemed after the natural man to drift away and I kept drifting until I took a great deal more pleasure in staying away from church and Sunday school than I did in going. One incident happened in the winter of 1849 by which I came very near losing my life or killing myself. My father had made a pen out by the barn of poles and had put long poles from the center out. He filled that with straw, put a large stack of straw for the cattle and things to go around under during the winter. There came a very mice warm time when my older brother and myself used to go out there Sunday stealing away from Father who was in the house reading, climb up onto that stack and put our hands onto one of those poles, turn a somersault and land on our feet. It was very nice exercise, but the last time I tried it, I forgot to turn my feet over and went down head first. My brother took me to the little barn and got me as comfortable as possible, then he went to the house. After perhaps a half hour I got up and found that by stirring around I would feel better, and worked towards the house, but it came very near breaking my neck. ---1850--- In the spring of 1850 I wanted to be a house painter and my father found a man down in Marshall, in the city, that wanted a apprentice. He bargained with him that I was to come and live with him and he was to board me and clothe me and give me a little pocket money occasionally and send me to school three months in the winter when there wasn't much work to do. The man's name was John Hodge. He was an Englishman, born in England, come over to this country and was doing a very good business at house and carriage painting. I was to stay three years and at the end of that time, he was to give me a good extra suit of clothes and do what he could to find me a job of work. He had a friend, an old English acquaintance, living in what was then known a Ohio City, and now is East Cleveland. Mr. Hodge went down there and saw the man and visited him and told him of me. My time wouldn't be out with him though, until the next spring, but he thought it was good plan, I suppose, to change the program a little, so he agreed with Mr. Henry Hale that I was to come down there and he was to give me employment under instructions. The first year of my apprenticeship was 1850. In the latter part of the summer and early fall, in the month of September, my youngest brother, John Mickel, about six years old, took sick with the disease that was then prevailing throughout the state, and died. The same day that we buried him, before we got home, my father was taken sick and in a week's time we buried my father. My brother two years older than myself was all there was of age sufficient to be of any help. I was tied up in the contract and my mother thought it was best for me to continue on in my trade. When I was sixteen years old and serving my apprenticeship at my trade, I was among Methodist Episcopals or as they call them, Episcopal Methodists, and I was raised up in that line although my father and mother belonged to an organization which was called the German Evangelical, which is just about the same then as the Methodist Episcopal or Episcopal Methodists. The man and woman whom I lived with in Marshall, county of Calhoun, state of Michigan, were quite prominent members in the Methodist church and the church had a revival meeting the first winter I was at my trade and got stirred up pretty high. I was induced to unite with the class on probation, that is I has to go along six months and if I hot along pretty well and didn't backslide and disobey the rules, why they would take me into the church and take care of me. It ran along till in the summer. They had a nice Sunday School and met every Sunday and I was getting along pretty well. But in the summer there came along a ventriloquist, old Winchid, the greatest that there was going, and I went to the show and the lady's son who was also on probation went. We went, and before the week was out the class leader came around to give us a lecture without a curtain. We heard him all through and we just told him that we couldn't see that there was any harm in that at all, there was nothing immoral in the show and there was nothing to induce young people to go astray. Well, it was a show and he thought we ought to come to the class the next Sunday morning and acknowledge we had done wrong. "Well," I said, "look here, supposing that we came and acknowledged that we had done wrong and that it wasn't the place for us to be at that show, and at the same time we would think the same as we did when we went to the show, that there was nothing wrong in it. How would that harmonize with the truth and veracity? To please you and the church we would acknowledge that we had done wrong, but wherein is the wrong? Is it just because the church said we oughtn't to do it, and they hadn't notified us and we didn't know we were breaking any rule. As for me, I'll not do it. You can cross out my name if you please, but I'll not acknowledge it because I don't think there is anything wrong in it." That was the first of my membership with the Methodist church and that was the last of my membership with the Methodist church in any way, shape or manner. ---1853--- In the spring of 1853 I went from Marshall, Michigan to Cleveland, Ohio and went to work there for Hale. I lived there for about two years, then I came back home and I didn't know what to do best. I wanted to help to take care of the family and I went down to the city and went into the paint shop of a man by the name of William Sweet. He gave me employment that season at $1.25 a day and I had to walk one mile every morning and night and carried my lunch with me. The same year, the winter following that summer work, I couldn't get anything to do. There was no work for anybody, only very heavy work, so my brother and I and my cousin, George Majors, who now lives, if he is alive, in eastern Michigan, got a job of cutting wood and we cut cord wood all through the cold winter. That winter we got twenty-five cents a cord and the following spring I went to Mr. Sweet and he said yes, he would give me work all summer. I was to board with him and he was to give me $45.00 a month and my board. I saved up a little that summer but we couldn't get along doing nothing in the winter, so we got another job cutting cord wood. During the summer my cousin had worked at a livery stable for a man named Ezra Lush. Winter came on and we got another job cutting cord wood about a half-mile from home. We got a little more this winter. We got two and six pence as they called it, being about six cents more than we had received the year before. We cut wood all that winter. ---1856--- The next spring I went back to work with Mr. Sweet again. During that summer I became acquainted with a young lady, who lived six miles west of Marshall and I went to visit her. We concluded that we could agree most of the time and we set the time when we would be legally joined together as man and wife on the fifth day of July, 1856, and we were both financially poor and we had to work all kinds of honorable ways to make a living. ---1857--- In August of 1857 our first son was born; then I began to feel as though I was getting a burden on my hands and I worked at my trade all the time during the spring, summer and fall that I could, and Mr. Sweet gave me employment right along until 1858. Then I went to work for myself doing jobs of painting and took contracts and hired men. Some of it I did well and some I didn't do very well. I continued through the summer working at my trade and had a very good line of custom, many very kind farmers that gave me their work and I had a good run of custom. After my marriage I seemed to have no thought for anything only pleasure - enjoyment with a class of people that knew not God, a class of people that were following the leadings of the god of this world. After I had been married about two years, I got to frequenting the tavern at night in the little town of Ceresco. The tavern was less than a half-block from where I lived with my wife, one child, father-in-law and mother-in-law. All of my young associates would gather at the tavern at night. Saloons were not known those days, there was no such thing then, but every tavern kept a bar and we would gather there and flip pennies, tell stories and pass the evening and frequently treat all round. The treating curse was just as bad in the tavern as it is in the saloon. I kept on until I couldn't stay away more than one or two nights in the week and frequently I would get pretty full. One night I remember particularly I had a grand time of fun over at the tavern and I noticed in going home that I couldn't keep up right straight. I went home and after getting home I began to think over what a fool I was. While it didn't take much money those days to treat, because whiskey was very cheap and lager beer was unknown, the more I thought it over, the more I saw what a big fool I was, and I declared that I wouldn't go back over there again to spend the evening, but during the day I would drop in occasionally and get a sniff of whiskey. About that time the temperance folks organized a society, a lodge of Good Templars, and several were going into it, and I then and there went into it and signed the pledge that I would abstain from the use of all intoxicating drinks as a beverage. I have up to this time kept that pledge. At the same time I would work seven days in the week if I could make an excuse to work. I used to rather delight in going down to my shop which was about three blocks and start up a fire in my shop and work all day at painting buggies or wagons, and in the summer it was the same way. I kept that up until I enlisted and when I went into the army of the United States as a volunteer I was at the same time a volunteer for Satan. I used a great deal of profane language, but never around my home. I never gambled for anything. The nearest I came to it was when we were at the tavern clicking at flip with two or three others. The one that came nearest and the one the farthest off had to treat the rest. That was the nearest. Another game with, I think a man by the name of William Miller. We used to meet together after working hours and shake pennies. We got them in a hat or cap, shook them up, and one had all that were heads and the other got what were tails. In 1862 I had worked up a good line of custom and was doing well, but in 1861 the War of the Rebellion started and in July 1862 I enlisted. I left my wife and two sons, Edward and Hartwell at my father-in-law's, Aaron Preston (I should have given the name of the lady I became acquainted with and married which was Harriett T. Preston) and his wife Sarah Preston. We rendezvoused at Jackson and on the eighteenth day of August, 1862, I was mustered into the United States service. On September first we left Michigan for Washington, DC. My regiment united with the army at Antietam, Maryland a day after the battle of Antietam or Sharpsburg. When I went into the army I didn't purpose any man or any boy be able to use any bigger words than I could or tell any uglier stories than I could. I could play euchre with any of them for fun but not for money. I never threw a card for a cent in my life. So I went on serving self and sin until marching from Annapolis, Maryland over to the Rappahannock river. I was troubled all the way about what a life I had been leading and we were marching along and would stop and fall out each side of the road for a rest. When the rest would have a blanket down and be playing cards, I would take out my little pocket testament and read God's word, and always that first chapter of John would come to my mind first and would cause me so much misery that I would turn to some of the epistles and change the reading. A good many have asked me in later years if it wasn't awful hard work to live a Christian life in the army. I said, "No, it is not." The reason I gave for it was that I didn't do any work when the boys would fall out by the side of the road to rest. I could lay back on my knapsack and to all appearances be taking a little doze, but at the same time I was asking God's Spirit what course to take and I let God do the work and I did the obeying, and from that on until we got to the Rappahannock river I wrestled through the matter. Thus I entered into the service of the United States to defend the flag and the constitution of our home. November, 1862, we forded the Potomac which was then waist deep, marched along the valley at the foot of Blue Ridge on the Sulphur Springs, Virginia and to Falmouth on the banks of the Rappahannock river opposite the city of Fredricksburg, Virginia. There I had a very severe attack the night we got into camp of yellow jaundice. I didn't get rid of it until New Year's, 1863. In February of 1863 the ninth corps to which I belonged moved to Newport News, Virginia, and we laid there until March recruiting, drilling and getting ready for the summer campaign. In March we went aboard the steamer, Robert Morris, and went up the Chesapeake Bay to Baltimore. There we took the B & O railroad, went over to Ohio across the Ohio river at Parkersburg. There we took steamer and went down the river on a bright moonlight night. The weather was mild and bracing. Arriving at Cincinnati in the morning after sunrise, held there for an hour, we steamed on down to Louisville, Kentucky. There we left the steamboat, took cars for Bardstown, Kentucky. We laid there one day and then we were ordered to march to another town eighteen miles away over a macadam road called a pike. When we got to the end of our march that night, we were worse used up than though we had marched for over three months. Then we went from there up to Crab Orchard to escort the remains of Gen. Nelson to their burial. After that we went out into the mountains and had considerable brushing with John Morgan and in June, 1863, I think about the seventeenth of June, we got orders to go south. We came back and took the cars at Louisville, Kentucky and went to Cairo, Illinois, where we took steamer down the Mississippi river to Vicksburg, Mississippi. We were there until about the twentieth of July when we came back up the river and went into camp at Nicholasville, Kentucky. There we stayed in camp until September, when we crossed the Cumberland and went on south into eastern Tennessee where we remained until April, 1864. Then we marched back over the mountains to Nicholasville, Kentucky, where we laid about a week and then got orders to join the Army of the Potomac again at Antietam, Maryland. We arrived I think about the last days in May. On the fourth day of June, 1864, we were with the great Army of the Potomac on the Rappahannock river again. That day was a very interesting day to me and always has been. I look back to it as the day and time and hour and the surroundings when I enlisted again, not to an earthly government, but to the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. The next day we started and went across the Rappahannock, kept with the march and the army through the Wilderness, through all its marches around to Petersburg, Virginia, where the army came in contact with the Confederate army. There I was enabled to be with the army that fought out the great victories. I was with the army all the time from the time we went around there until the discharge. In July of that same year there was a great deal of typhoid fever in the army and especially in our regiment, the Twentieth Regiment. I was detailed as a nurse to help take care of those sick men who were sick with typhoid fever. For four or five days I stood over them nearly all the time day and night and I took the disease myself and they carried me off to the hospital. On the day that they carried me to City Point I was so bad that I had no impression of what was being done. They carried me on to Washington, DC, put me in a general hospital there and after they got me fixed up so that I could realize about where I was, I couldn't sleep, neither day nor night. The next day I had nurse write my brother, who was located over a Alexandria, Virginia, a card that I was there. The next day the doctor came to see me. He had been trying his best to get me to sleep and had failed completely both day and night. The doctor said to me, "I hate awfully to blister you, but I guess I'll have to because I haven't got a man who can hold the cups." Just as he told me that my brother came in the door. I told him, "I think there is a man who can hold your cups." I introduced him and the first thing he asked him was if he could hold the cups. My brother said he could do it. The doctor gave him an order and sent him down to the office. He came up and put the cups on and they all worked fine. He emptied them and put them back again and before he got them all back I was asleep. I slept until sundown while this had occurred about ten o'clock in the morning. I began to get better right along. I could sleep just as easily as I ever could and we had written home to my wife that I was improving very much and that I would probably go to my regiment in a day or two, That afternoon a lady came into the hospital and passed around among the patients. I had never met her and I don't know today who she was, but before night, perhaps about five or six o'clock, one of the nurses brought to my couch a furlough and before dark I was on the train going home so that the next day in the afternoon I arrived home. One very pleasant afternoon while I was home on furlough an old acquaintance and friend invited me to go with him that afternoon on a ride in his buggy and I had nothing to hinder, so I accepted the invitation. We took a long ride, the gentleman's name was Josiah Hendricks. He and I never agreed in politics and heard one man say in regard to him years before that he was a mean man; but we visited along very nicely, made a drive way out through the country between five and ten miles south and west of Ceresco. One the way back we commenced talking politics. He being a rebel democrat and I a Union republican, we didn't agree very well before the war, nor did we then while I was home, but I thought best to leave him have his way and see what he would say and where he would end. He began to tell me that there was no use of my going back to the army and reporting, that the thing would be all settled in November when the election came off because they were going to elect little Mac because it was all fixed up and Lincoln would not be elected in the next election and little Mac would be elected and that would end the war. "And now , if you'll just stay, I will fix it all up with the authorities so that you will have no trouble no way and no how." That was about as much as I could stand. I asked him if he would just stop his horse for a minute. He reined up the horse and stopped. I got out of the buggy and told him to drive on. "Why," he says, "get in and I'll carry you back to town." I said, "No, I have taken the last ride with you Mr. Hendricks. If you were in the South and in the rebel lines I should take special pains to see that my gun found you, but," I says, "You're a coward and you are not worth the name of a man in those times when our country's in such peril." He drove on and I went on home about two miles. He never mentioned the matter to me afterward nor I to him. I spent my thirty days very pleasantly and went back and joined my regiment and remained in front of Petersburg during the rest of the time up to January 9, 1865 when I was wounded in my left arm at the elbow with a piece of thirty-two pound shell. There on that couch with my left arm gone I made a covenant with the God of Heaven, with the Keeper of my life, that if he spared my life and permitted me to get home to my family, I would do what ever He showed me was my duty to do. In March, 1866, my wife and I were immersed in the Kalamazoo mill pond at Ceresco, Michigan, six miles west of Marshall and united with the Missionary Baptists. I have never been anything but a Baptist since. I have net all kinds of Baptists, Free, Loose, Hardshells, Campbellites, and all kinds that there are going; I have been with, talked with, and discussed with, and at the last Sunday in March, 1916, places me in the Baptist church and a Baptist for fifty years. At Washington, while we were passing in review before President Lincoln, I knew little of what was going on. On the night of June 4th when we arrived at Rappahannock at about five in the evening, we barracked close to another regiment. Their chaplain was holding a splendid conference and prayer meeting not more than forty feet from where I lay. I could hear all that was said, I could hear every prayer, and there on the banks of that river, during that evening meeting which lasted till fully ten o'clock, before they got through I promised the Lord my services the rest of my life. The next day we crossed the river and went into action in the neighborhood of Wilderness tavern at Chancellorville. We skirmished all that day. At night we rested on the line of battle. Next day we pushed on into the wilderness and our regiment was sent off to the extreme right to form a line across the flank of the line. We held that position until about two o'clock in the afternoon, when a message came to us to report at once at brigade headquarters. We went on the double quick, which is a run, for about a mile and one-half to where the regiment was. There we had to form a line before the Twenty-seventh Michigan regiment who had broken because their officers were not strong. We rushed them into line again and they went on and held their ground the rest of the day. The next day fire broke out in the rebel lines opposite us and it was a terrible fire. We moved that night, leaving the line. About midnight we moved to the left and brought up to the extreme right of the line in front of Spottsylvania court house. The 12th of June we charged a battery at Spottsylvania and the brigade was badly cut to pieces. We had fall back, and after we fell back we came in contact with the rebel brigade that had over charged one of our batteries. We had a hand to hand fight for a little while, but as I was falling back to my own line a twenty pound shell came right over my left ear and came so near to my head that I felt the wind of it very distinctly and looked down. The shell was there before me, just ready to explode. I obliqued to the right without any order and didn't wait to see whether it exploded or not. But there I had reason to believe that the Lord protected me; and more, on the side and behind me so that as I lay there just behind a little stump there were three dead soldiers lying around me. I got out of there without being scratched. Another evidence I had of God's care for me was at Cole Harbor when a shell was coming seemingly directly for me. I dodged down (I had just come in from the picket and was cleaning my gun). I dropped down below the breastworks and the shell took the little tree off which I had been leaning against. When I was wounded, I considered that I was in perfect safety. I was eight feet under ground and no opening, only the door where we went in and out at. Mr. Simon Feltz was my tentmate, and he and I were in the pine brush and thought we were perfectly safe, but at the top of the door there was a space about eighteen inches long and about twelve inches wide that anything falling from above might fall in at. We had been having an artillery duel that morning and about one o'clock it seemed to have all died away and was quiet. I went to the door and looked out over the edge of the fort, and said to my mate that I guessed the dance was over as the music had stopped. As I said it I looked into the air and way up yonder I saw a cloud of white smoke. I knew right off it was a shell and as I saw that smoke I turned half way round. Had I been one second later in getting turned, instead of a piece of the shell striking in my left elbow, it would have hit right in my side. About two o'clock I was carried to the defense hospital three miles away, went under the influence of chloroform, my arm was amputated above the elbow. I came to my mind, raised up and looked out of the windows at the sun which was about fifteen minutes up yet. The boys came in, told me my arm had been taken off. I said, "No, it is not. I have my arm just the same as I did and I can move my fingers and all, and I can move my arm back and forth as I did before." To convince me that I was wrong, they turned the covers down and raised up the stump of an arm that was left. Then I had to believe that I was a cripple for life. Two months at the field hospital three miles from camp. This hospital belonged to the Ninth Army Corps. It consisted of seven wards. The ward that I was in was sixty feet long and thirty feet wide. On one side was quite a large fireplace built of mud and sticks and on top of the chimney outside were two pillars to brace it up above the ridge of the tent. On the other side was a middle opening that went into the doctor's room, so that it gave room at both ends for iron bedsteads which were placed five on each side of each end of the hospital. Those beds were single beds and when I went into the hospital there were only three vacant beds. In less than two days they were all taken. There were no sick men in that ward. They were all wounded men. The hospital was very comfortable from the fact that a large amount of fuel was kept on the fireplace day and night. For three days and nights I was not permitted to raise up in bed. I lay on my back and the nurse told me that if I would obey and follow his directions, I would get along all right, but if I rose up in the bed, the probabilities were that the ligatures in my arm would give way and I would have a bad job on hand. I told him I enlisted in the army to obey orders and I considered the orders of my nurse just as important as any. After three days, in the morning he came to me and said he would raise me up and help me to eat my breakfast, but as I raised up I found that I had but very little strength and my head whirled around pretty badly. He steadied me for a few moments and then the cook came with my breakfast, a baked potato, a nice cup of coffee and some nice buttered toast. My nurse was a old man, sixty years of age. He was a half-brother of the Secretary of the Treasury who served all through Lincoln's administration. This man's name was Sherman. He had become disgusted with the style of living and aristocracy in Washington when he was a young man. He left Washington and went to the northern part of Michigan, near to Pere Marquette. He married an Indian woman and raised a fine family. He had six large, tall young men in our corps. He never had used any glasses and there were no gray hairs in his head. He would have passed readily for a man of forty-five of fifty years. The first surgeon of the hospital, whose name was Dr. Fox, came from Battle Creek, Michigan, with the Twentieth Regiment. He was a very kind man under some circumstances. He was a very wicked man and a slave to alcohol. After being in the hospital ten days I saw that there was a prospect, or a chance at least, of my being sent north to some general hospital. That was entirely against my wishes from the fact that there was ... and a great many of them were full of disease such as ... I knew that the hospital in the field would be safe and I didn't know what to do nor how to work. Dr. Judd, a subordinate, came around the next morning and hung a white card on my bed. That, I understood from my nurse , was "To be sent away." So I kept quiet and when Dr. Fox, the first surgeon came around about ten o'clock in the morning, I said to him, "Now here, I don't want to leave here unless I have to. I want to stay here until I get well enough so that I can be sent home." He reached in his pocket and took out a little book, tore out of it a blue card with a string tied in one end and hung that over the head of my bed and he said, "There isn't power enough in this army to send you away as long as that hangs on your bed." I thanked him. About this time I became acquainted with a young man in the hospital whose name was Lane, who was suffering very much from the loss of his eye. On the picket line, he undertook as we all did, to build a little fire to keep comfortable at the reserve post. The fire didn't seem to go readily. He got down to blow the fire and some one had left a package of cartridges in the fire. They exploded and burned him badly and put out both his eyes. I became very much attached to him and we used to talk across to each other, he was four beds from me, and I interceded for him with Dr. Fox, that he might stay at the field hospital. The doctor went and hung a blue card on his bed. So January passed on, all quiet, and I kept improving right along. Along about the first of February there came an order up from headquarters demanding that every soldier, every occupant of the hospital that was wounded or sick should be sent to City Point. City Point was on the James river, the base of communication. The order came about eleven o'clock at night and the doctors who received the order at once went to the hospital and commanded the nurses to pack up every man. My nurse came around and told me that he was very sorry but he couldn't help it, his orders were to pack up. So he folded my blankets and put my overcoat and cap on me, everything in good shape and I sat on the bed waiting for the orders to march. It was about a mile and one-half from the hospital over to the railroad where we were to take the cars and go to City Point. While I was sitting waiting, Dr. Fox came in at the west end of the hospital. He stopped and looked around, saw that Mr. Lane and myself were all packed up ready to move and with tremendous oaths he began to curse the nurses and the man who had charge of the hospital. "And now," he said to my nurse, "do you unpack that man put him to bed; and that man over there (meaning Lane). I have left cards on their beds and you had no business to meddle with them without notifying me," and we were put to bed. The rest marched out for the railroad. About eight o'clock the next morning I stood at the door of the tent and looked over toward the railroad and there were all those wounded and sick men waiting in the cold February morning for a train to get aboard. When Dr. Fox told the nurse to put us two to bed, he said, "If anything occurs that it will be necessary to move them, I have two good ambulances and two good horses and if there is nobody else to drive them, I will drive them myself and see them safely at City Point." We had a very fine cook at the hospital. He was a Pennsylvania man and there was nothing in the hospital too good for a wounded soldier. He would come in every morning to my bed and inquire what I would like to eat and if it was in the hospital I was sure to get it put up in right good appetizing shape. After three or four days in the hospital I began to realize the condition I was in; that I was cripple and any little misstep of unguarded act might cost me my life because the doctors had told me that there were very few of the old soldiers that were wounded in the left arm above the elbow that recovered. So I began to think about the matter. The more I thought about it, the more I was fully convinced that it would be just as my Heavenly Father thought best to do and that I was under Him, and while I would do all that was possible, yet it depended entirely upon Him whether I recovered and got to my home and met my loved ones or not. So then and there I entered into covenant with God and I realized at the time that it was a great move for a human creature to ask any special favors of the God of the Universe. But I promised God there upon my bed that if he would spare my life and bring me home to my family, that whatever he showed me was my duty to do for Him, I would do it. About a week afterwards a chaplain from the Fourteenth Michigan came into my tent with tracts, leaflets little books and papers for the wounded men to read. I entered into conversation with him and found where he was from and that he was chaplain of the Fourteenth and that he was working also for the Sanitary Commission. He handed me a leaflet. I looked at it and it was Bunyon's "Holy War." I said, "That is just what I need." So he left me two or three more little pamphlets and as I talked with him, I found that he was the same chaplain who was conducting the prayer meeting on the banks of the Rappahannock on the night of the fourth of June, 1864, the night that changed my whole life and aims for this life. I was there at the place, was there listening to the work that was in the prayer meeting that was not more than four rods from where I lay in my blanket. I took great pleasure and comfort in reading Bunyon's "Holy War" and later years in my life I had the privilege of buying Bunyon's complete works which I have yet in my little library. Thus my time was spent day after day in meditating and reading and prayer. The men in the hospital were very few of them, in fact I don't remember a one that was or claimed to be a Christian, therefore I had to depend entirely upon the Lord, the Holy Spirit, my New Testament, and what I could get hold of to read to pass away the hours. Some of them were very pleasant hours, some of them were hours of battle, not with gun and lead, but with the prince of this world. So the month of February wore on and I kept getting stronger until the old nurse came to me one morning and said, "I am going to let you get up this morning and set there beside the fire in front of the fireplace and I am going to bring in a little table and you can eat your breakfast on the table." I thought that was an oasis in the desert. When he had washed me, dressed my wound, and got me all right, be brought me clothes just to slip over my clothes that I had on in bed. He said, "You won't be able to stay up more than an hour and then you can come back to bed and quiet." I swung around my feet out of bed and he was going to take hold of my lamed arm and shoulder and help me to the fire. I said, "I can so that by myself. I don't need any help." He said, "I am going to let you try, but you will fail sure." I took two steps and it was his arms that kept me from going flat on the ground. He helped me to the fireplace and I sat there, and in five minutes the old cook had my breakfast on the table and I did enjoy that breakfast. I was up just three-quarters of an hour and I was very glad to get back to the bed. The next morning I got up and the old nurse helped me to the fire and I spent an hour and a half there at the fire talking with the nurse and the boys that were able to be up and would have stayed up longer but the nurse said,"No, that's enough." So in less than a week from the time that I had first gotten out of bed, I was walking around the hospital and out in the fine warm sun close to the hospital. So, as days wore on my strength increased and I got strong so that I thought I could walk to the camp to see the boys. They had been coming over, some of them every day for the first month and I thought it was my turn to go over there. The doctor told me I could take the horse and saddle and ride over, but my nurse said, "No, you are not going to take that chance. You are lop-sided, and if you got onto the horse any little thing might throw you off and all would be lost." So I didn't go but contented myself by obeying and staying at the hospital. The morning of the 26th of February Dr. Fox said, "The board will meet tomorrow morning and I think I will examine the wound tomorrow when it is dressed, but I think you are in good shape to be discharged and I will let you know tonight. After the board gets them, you can come up to my office in the morning and I will go with you over to the board. It began to look very encouraging. I was very cheerful all that day and at night the doctor said, "I will be ready to go with you in the morning about eight or nine o'clock. So at half past eight the next morning I went up to the doctor's office and to my surprise he set me a chair and asked me to be seated which is entirely outside of military etiquette. The private must never have his hat on in the presence of his superior officer nor sit down. I sat and waited for some little time before the doctor got his things straightened up and then he said, "We'll go over." We went over to the board's headquarters. He took me in, introduced me and left me. I had on my hospital gown which was a long gray gown with a cord around my waist and my overcoat drawn over my shoulders. I stood there with my cap in hand waiting for the will of the officer. After some length of time the president of the board looked at me and said, "Well, young man what do you want?" "Well, sir, nothing in particular. Whatever you propose to give me. I suppose you know I have been in the hospital a couple of months." "You look well enough to go to the regiment." "All right, I am at your disposal." "Well, what's the matter with you?" I drew back my overcoat from my left shoulder and held up the stump of my arm. He made no reply. All he said was, "You can go to your quarters." This was on the morning of the 28th of February. That was all I heard from the whole thing during the day. I didn't know what would be the outcome, but before sundown an orderly came in and handed me my discharge signed and fixed in good shape. The next morning I started for City Point, Virginia, on the James river. There I took boat, went down the James to the mouth, went around Newport News to Hampton Rhodes and along on Fort Comfort into the mouth of the Potomac river, headed for Washington. I got off the boat. I never remembered the name of the boat. I got off the boat at Alexandria, Virginia, eight miles down the river from Washington, D.C. My oldest brother who is now dead (dictated Jan 27, 1915) was hospital steward at Alexandria, Virginia. My idea was to stop there and make my headquarters at that hospital until I got my affairs all straightened up with the government before I went home. My brother took right hold of the matter and helped me in every way, secured me a pass from Alexandria to Washington on the railroad so that I could go over to Washington every morning until I got through. I think it was over a week before I could get my claim in, there was so many claims at the time, but I finally succeeded, got everything straightened up and drew a little over a year's pay. Along about the 20th of March I got my pension claim in and got it working, took my transport for Marshall, Michigan by the way of Fremont, Ohio, Adrian, Michigan, Jackson, Michigan. I went over to my brother that night, stayed with him at Alexandria, put up a good strong lunch, and by the way, he dressed my wound every day from the 2nd of March, when I got there, until I left, so that my wound was in fine condition when I left Washington. I made a successful trip from Washington to Marshall, Michigan, did not have an opportunity though to have my wound dressed on the way, but it was not giving me any trouble and got along all right. At Adrian, Michigan, I gave a white man 10 cents to wash my hand and he took it. At Jackson there was no incident occurred worth mentioning. I arrived at Marshall some after noon and I found parties from Ceresco that were up there with conveyances and invited me to ride down with them. I arrived home about 4 o'clock P.M. and I shall never learn the words so that I could express the gratitude, the thankfulness of my heart toward my Heavenly Father for his guidance and His protection over me from the time I was wounded until the time I arrived at home. Life at home was very tiresome to me and yet very enviable when I realized that I was at home safe and no possibility of ever going back to war again. The days were full of pleasure and at the same time they were full of anxiety and care. I had my family to take care of. I had but the one hand to make a living with and I couldn't go to work until my wound had become healed over. The doctor at the hospital told me "When you get home, you keep quiet until your wound gets thoroughly healed over." So it put me in a condition that I couldn't work much of any and until April I didn't do much of anything only go around visiting the old friends and associates, and up to the time when the news arrived that Abraham Lincoln, the president of the United States, was assassinated, I had not done a day's work of any kind. Prior to that we had the news on the 12th of April that Lee had surrendered the army of Northern Virginia to U.S. Grant, the leader of the army of the Potomac. It was a flash of electricity that startled this whole nation from center to circumference. In the North it was with the greatest joy and relief. In the South it was sorrow and remorse. At once we set about to have a jollification in our little town on the western edge of the township of Marshall. There were all kinds of schemes thought of by which a demonstration and noise could be produced. We gathered everything that we could get hold of that would make a fire and on the corner of the street, the town line road and one of the village streets, we commenced building a bonfire. After we had gathered all together that we could it didn't satisfy. We wanted something higher. We wanted something that would make more of a display, so we got three men with teams to go three miles south to a tamarack swamp and bring all of the long dry tamarack poles that they could haul. About three o'clock in the afternoon they came with the poles and we set them up on and around our pile that we had accumulated and from the ground to the top of the longest pole was fully thirty feet. On top of that pole we placed Jeff Davis in effigy; then we got turpentine and coal oil and poured all around everything at the bottom of this pile and by sundown it was ready to touch fire to. I think that we had four anvils and we fired four at every salute. We put a charge of powder in them, then we had a wet piece of leather, laid that over just leaving a little place for the powder to ignite and set the other anvil upside down on it. We used nail rods in those days. They had plenty of eight foot rods that they made horseshoe nails of. We put them in the forge in the blacksmith shop and kept them hot so that four men were busy tending those rods and some eight men were assigned to loading the anvils. Just at nice dark we were ready for everything and we started off by giving four heavy salutes and before the noise had died away the big pile was on fire and flames riled up and rolled up until they consumed Jeff Davis and all the pile went down in a heap together about 10 o'clock at night. That was the first days work I had attempted to do and I feared that I might have overheated myself a little and my wound be injured, but I never received any harm from it whatever. The month of April was the month that was irksome to me from the fact that I wasn't making anything, only just staying around hearing what was said and I had some very warm discussions with men that were in sympathy with the rebel army, but too cowardly to go and join them. I remember very distinctly the first Sunday that I went to church. I think it was about the first Sunday in April. The minister was a stranger to me. I had never met him before. I went with my family and sat down in the church. He announced his hymn, read it over, and nobody to sing. He couldn't sing for all the wealth that could be piled up before him. He couldn't sing, and the congregation sat there quietly. After he had finished reading his hymn he sat down and nobody started to sing so he then arose and read the scripture, offered prayer and announced another hymn and the hymn through but nobody to start the song. I thought it was the most shameful thing that I had ever experienced like that of educated people and could sing if they would, but what was everybody's business was nobody's business and the result was that they were Sunday after Sunday without any singing. I didn't go to the mid-week prayer meeting but I had been told it was just the same at prayer meeting. There was no singing. So I began to cast about a little and I think it was along about the first of May that I had gotten four or five interested enough in the matter to say that they would try to help sing. Mr. L.L. Lewis and his wife, Mr. Corwin Godfrey and his wife and Mr. Ross Mathews of whom I shall have more to say later, and myself with Oliver Godfrey gathered in the church about the center of the house with the determination to make an effort, make of break. The result was that we broke down on the first piece and we gathered again and showed our willingness to make an effort to help. I suggested that that week we would set apart one evening and come together at some of the houses and have a practice. So we did so. The result was that on the next Sunday we got along pretty well for new beginners in the singing. The pastor, Elder Town, applauded us very much for the effort we had made. He said, "It seems more like worship to have singing mixed in with the opening of the services than it does to have it all so quiet." We kept right on with practice and after my oldest brother came home from the war in June, he joined with us and another man by the name of Edward Warin. We practiced right along all through that summer. Every week we had our night of practice and we went to the pastor of the church and had him pick out his hymns and let us have the hymns that we would want to use on Sunday at the night of practice. Along in the early fall we had gotten quite a respectable choir and we had made great strides in our practice, but we had no instrument. We had to depend on the tuning fork. So we began to think about getting and instrument of some kind. Some wanted a melodeon and some wanted an organ. A musical instrument, especially an organ was worth a good deal of money those days for poor people. So we began to cast about to see what we could do. Some of the members of the church were very much opposed to having instrumental music but we kept to work and we raised, as poor as we were, inside of the membership of the choir we raised $80.00. We wanted $125.00 to get an organ; not a cottage organ but just simply a plain organ with two stops. I with Mr. Lewis took the paper to show what we had done ourselves and took it to the deacons of the church to see what they thought about asking the church to help us get an instrument. Up to that time and for six months after I had not joined any church at all. I was laboring, doing what I could do on the common. We presented our plea to the deacons. Robert Gould was the senior deacon of the church and he says, "Well, I will give $10.00 toward the instrument and I will make special effort to present the matter to the members of the church that have means and can help and I think we will be able to get the instrument." The money was raised, the instrument was bought. We placed it in the gallery. It seemed to be the only place because the rostrum in the house was small and the gallery was unoccupied, extending across the front end of the house and we placed it up there. The first Sunday that we met to use the instrument everybody in the audience, and there was a good audience, turned their backs on the minister to look and see what the choir was doing. That commenced my work with the professed people of God. I kept right on with the work and did a great deal of reading in regard to church membership and the Methodists and the Congregationalists, the Seventh Day Adventists and the Baptists were all furnishing me with their books setting forth their creeds and their customs. I read the Methodist discipline. I was no more of a Methodist when I got through than I was when I began. I compared it all with the New Testament and that didn't agree with what Christ and the Apostles had laid down, I cut out and for a long time during that winter, the winter of 1865-66, I was very much opposed to the form of government of the Baptist church. I had lived always among people who practiced open communion and the Missionary Baptists were restricted communionists. I thought it was terrible that my mother couldn't come to the Lord's table with me because she was an evangelical or in other words, a Methodist. I worked over that for some time until I got hold of the book, "Theodosia Ernst, or the Heroine of the Faith." I read it carefully, compared the scripture quotations and made up my mind at least from what I had learned, that my objections to restricted communion were but a shadow. One of the hardest tasks that I had during that summer and fall of 1865 came along about the latter part of September as near as I can remember. My father-in-law was a Methodist exhorter and class leader, a good man in every way, stood high in the community, but from the time that I first knew him until that time he never asked a blessing at the table nor had family worship. I professed to be a follower of Christ and having promised to do whatever it was shown my duty to do and whatever He asked me to do, I felt it very incumbent on me, having a family of my own, to have family worship. I finally got strength and courage sufficient so that I asked my father-in-law if he had any objections to our holding family worship in the morning before we took our breakfast. He said he had none at all. So the next morning I took the Bible and sat down and read one chapter of Paul's letter to the Colossians and the weakness of the flesh and the trembling that was brought on was so great that I was almost induced by Satan to ask my father-in-law to lead the prayer, but I did not. I went to the Lord and forgot all about the rest and we had our family worship and we continued it from that time on until 1868 when my father-in-law moved to Kansas. That was one of the heaviest tasks that I had that year.