JEREMIAH ABRAHAM MICKEL BIOGRAPHY, WARREN, NEW JERSEY (part 2) 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 I went on regularly each week with the singing, practicing with them through the winter but I had not yet made any step towards uniting with any organized body. In March, about the first of March in 1866 our people started a revival, and just how it came about I don't know now. We had a fine Sunday-school and the revival started up and kept growing and the attendance got to be very large. They would come for six or seven miles south and north with loads in the lumber wagons to attend those meetings. They were a great blessing to the neighborhood, to the church especially. During the revival meeting Mr. Salter, M.J. Salter, living six miles south would come every night with his entire family in his lumber wagon when the mud was so deep that the axles would almost drag in the mud. There were a great number converted and my wife with the rest so that the way was open for me to go forward in the work. The latter part of March the meeting closed. We had presented ourselves to the church for baptism and membership. On Sunday the wind was in the northwest and was blowing plenty strong and the snow was flying. There was a large number baptized in the mill pond, breaking the ice and going into the ice cold water, and my wife and I were among the lot. That water wasn't cold at all. I just simply enjoyed it and went from the pond up to the house, the distance was about three blocks, without changing my clothes. Then I was in a position where great burdens were laid upon me and yet I never felt them as burdens. What little I had been able to do in helping get the singing had all been shouldered off onto me. I had to provide all the singers and tend to all that matter in the church and sunday-school. The biggest and heaviest burden I had to life at all was in the covenant meeting. Those days it was the custom to hold covenant meeting every month, Saturday afternoon of the third or the fourth, but that was the way the matter stood, and for months in taking part in the covenant meeting I had to take hold of the pew in front of me and pull myself up onto my feet and steady myself so I could say just a few words to honor my Master. But as time wore on and I got nearer to the Lord and Master, it began to be a great enjoyment for me at the conference and covenant meeting and at the prayer meeting and at the Sabbath day services. As I have already stated, I had to lead the singing for the church service and also for the Sunday-school so that I had to have two nights every week to practice our singing, one with the Sunday-school and one with the choir, but we got along fine and Mr. M.J. Salter was elected superintendent of the Sunday-school, a splendid man, afterward became lieutenant governor of the state of Kansas. Our Sunday-school was getting so interesting. We had no lesson helps. We used the scripture without anything only what books we could get hold of with notes. A great many New Testaments were printed those days with footnotes. The conversions in our Sunday-school were frequent and everything was alive. The lady that had the young ladies' Bible class moved away from the place and the Bible class selected me as their teacher. There were six of them. In less than six months that class had developed so that it took one whole side of the room in the meeting house to seat them. We studied where we thought it would be the most benefit to us; sometimes for six months in part of the Old Testament and another six months in the New, but it was a grand work. I think it was in 1868, late in the spring, that our pastor exchanged desks with the pastor at Albion. Our pastor's name was (blank). The pastor's name at Albion was Van Winkle. When he came down the church had gotten into a very low spiritual condition. He preached on Sunday morning a very stirring sermon from the text, "As the body without the spirit is dead so is faith also without works dead." At one time in his sermon in the morning he greatly amused the congregation, especially the young people of the congregation, by asking the question if any of them every knew of a dead corpse kicking and he just left it that way. But before he got through with the sermon everybody was very much interested in the subject that he was discussing. At night he preached again and stated if it was agreeable with the deacons and officers of the church they would have services again the next night, Monday night. They all agreed that it would be one of the very best things, so there was service Monday night. We had a deacon in the church by the name of Cole, a very nice man but a great desire for making money and brother Van Winkle knew him. On Monday evening he had set apart a half-hour for prayer before the public service began and he called on Deacon Cole to pray after two or three others had prayed. Deacon Cole got down on his knees and prayed all over the world and took in everybody except the church of Ceresco and rose up. Brother Van Winkle said, "Brother Cole, I wish you would pray," and he got a very little nearer home, said "Amen," and Brother Van Winkle said, "Now for God's sake Brother Cole pray for this place." That woke up Deacon Cole and that started the revival that swept in every nook and corner of that whole community. There was nearly forty conversions in the Sunday-school and of the larger scholars of the school. Tuesday afternoon was appointed for prayer meeting and our pastor came home from Albion Tuesday morning not expecting to find a revival meeting. But when he came in and saw and heard he entered right into it with all of his heart. That meeting continued for four weeks right in the busiest part of spring weather. In the spring of 1869 M.J. Salter sold out his possessions in Michigan and took his family and went to Kansas. About the middle of the same year my father-in-law sold out his possessions and went to Kansas. He had a son already there and he was so taken with the beautiful prairies that he couldn't stay away. By this time I had gotten into my regular old business again of painting houses, barns, carriages, wagons, anything that wanted to be painted. One Sunday afternoon an old acquaintance of mine by the name of Vary, who lived about three miles east of me, I had done a great deal of work for him before the war. One Sunday evening about an hour of sun, he came down to see if I could do a job of painting for him, and of course when he made his business known I said, "Mr. Vary, this is the Lord's day and I don't do any business any more on this day. I am ready to do your work if we can agree, but I make no contracts on the Lord's day and you can appoint any other day you see fit and I will either come up to your house or you can come down here and we will tend to it." A good old staunch Presbyterian and an elder I think in the Presbyterian body. He came down two days after, we talked the matter over and came to an agreement. "Mr. Mickel, I thank you for reproof you gave me last Sunday," he said, "I'll never be found trespassing on the name of Christ hereafter." In the winter of 1866 I had a little time of visiting. My cousin, George Major, lived at Rochester, Michigan, north of Detroit. We concluded we would go and make him a visit that winter. We got a boy to come and stay with our folks which consisted of my wife's father and mother and our two boys, Edward P. Mickel and Hartwell A. Mickel. So we arranged things in good shape so that the old folks would be comfortable while we were away and we had to go to Detroit and take the Detroit and Pontiac road out to a station I believe called Three Forks. It was nothing but a signal station on the Detroit and Pontiac road and my cousin had written that that was where we would get off and take a stage for Rochester, 15 miles away. So we got off there just between daylight and dark in the evening and the stage didn't go out until the next morning. Fred W. was a infant in his mother's arms, born the 21st of August before. I looked around the place and there was one old dilapidated sidelight of a tavern, couldn't be called a hotel, more like a stage barn, and I made up my mind I didn't want to stay there all night, so I looked around for someone who would carry me over to Rochester that night. After a good deal of inquiry I found a man who would go 15 miles. I told him to get ready. When he got ready he had a smart looking horse and a nice, body cutter, but there were three of us with a baby and grip to get in. But we all piled in and we started. The air was very cold but very calm, one of those sharp, quiet, cold nights. We drove on until he said we were half way. There was a tavern, a stopping place for the stage. We got our, went in and got well warmed and loaded up again and started for our destination. In just two hours and a half we had covered the 15 miles on a nice plank road with a most beautiful sleigh and went into a very nice hotel at Rochester. Of course, the chief thing was to get was to get something to eat. The folks got us a very nice supper. We had our supper and went to our room which was neat, clean and nice and there was a big stove on the floor below and in the room that we occupied was what we called a drum attached to the pipe of the low stove so as to heat it and heat the room. We had been out in the cold and in getting our baby ready for the night so he would be comfortable my wife got him a little too close to the drum and burned his foot, and then we had music without a band and he kept it up for some time, but finally got quiet and went to sleep. The next morning was Sunday morning. My cousin lived some two or three miles out of Rochester. The people all round there knew him and knew he would be in to church so one of them went over about time of people gathering for church and told him we were there ready to go out to his house. He drove around and we piled into the big sleigh and we went over and stayed three or four days with him, had a splendid time. There was an abundance of snow on the ground and one afternoon he suggested we go coasting. It was quite a steep hill close by his barn, he had quite a large barn and good farm. We took one of the --- and we coasted on that --- over an hour till we got so warm that we couldn't stand it any longer and concluded we had had enough coasting, so we went in, continued our visiting, talking over old times, the way we used to chop cord wood together. I think after four days we started back for home. Arrived at home and found everything all right with one exception. The boy that we got to stay with our folks had the itch and both the boys got the itch so we had that job to do, cure them of the itch. My first investment in church house was at Ceresco. I think it was the summer of 1867. The house had been built quite a long time. It was pretty near bare of paint outside and the pews had been painted white inside and the children had marked them up badly with lead pencils so that they looked very shabby; so I concluded that the best thing I could do would be to go to work and repaint that house. So I bought the material and hired one man on the outside that I was in hopes and expected that he would go up and paint the tower and the dome, but when it came to a test he wouldn't go, so I gave him what pay was coming to him and I went up with a rope tied around the tower some sixty feet from the ground, I went up and got inside of that rope and painted that tower and finished up the out side and then I went to work on the inside. I grained, varnished imitation of oak the whole of the inside of the house. All were pleased with it and yet nobody offered to help pay the expense. That was my investment in a church house and the last time I saw it which was some fifteen years ago it was just as nice and just as good as when it was done in 1867. In the spring of 1866, my township, the township of Marshall, held its election, what we called township election, and there were a good many soldiers that had gotten home and they all wanted something to do. Some of them, like me, went back to the old trade, others picked up something new and I wasn't looking for anything. I was satisfied with my condition. Everything seemed to be going on nicely. Mr. R. Mathews came to me one day and he said, "Look here, Mickel, I want you to go with me up to the town meeting," and named the day. "Why," I said, "There's no use of my going to town meeting. I haven't anything to do there. The caucus will fix up everything and when it is time to vote, I'll go up and vote." He said, "I want to tell you now that I want to nominate you for treasurer of this township and I want you to be there." I said, "There are others that want it." He said, "But I want you to have it because you are justly entitled to it. You are crippled up by defending our homes." A man by the name of John Ogden had come home discharged about six months before I did, but he had no wounds. He had been electioneering as I found out after I got up to the town meeting to be nominated for treasurer and when it came to that point in the work of nominating for treasurer, Mr. Mathews, though a young man barely 21, got right up onto his feet in the schoolhouse where we held the meeting and made a speech and at the end he nominated me for township treasurer. It was put to a vote and carried over everything and when it came to election I had 17 votes more than there were Republicans in the township, but they were all honest votes given by Democrats. I held the office for two years in succession. It was very disagreeable work from the fact that it all came in the coldest weather in the winter and the treasurer had to drive all over the township and see every man if he couldn't meet him Saturday at the county seat, he must go to his house and see him and get his taxes. After my father-in-law moved to Kansas, I moved over into the town of Emmet and of course I had to close up all my office work in the township of Marshall. The next year I still lived in the township of Emmet. We were getting along very nicely. I had a great abundance of work, but my father-in-law was dead set on our coming to Kansas, so in the spring of 1870 I closed up everything and to gratify his desire and comply with his request, we left for Kansas with four boys. We had a safe journey, arrived at Ottawa, Kansas, where we had to stay and wait until my wife's brother came over from Burlington with his team to haul us with our little effects over to Burlington which was twenty-five miles. We arrived there, I don't remember the day, but I remember the time of day. The sun was just going down and we were tired and ready to stop. We couldn't bring our goods with us at the time because there wasn't room in the wagon for them and the family and besides instead of going right across we went by way of Garnett, Anderson county, but in the course of two or three days we went back, my brother-in-law and myself went back, loaded in our goods and brought them over. I didn't know just what I was in Kansas for, any more than to make my father-in-law and mother-in-law contented and happy what little time they had to live as they were quite advanced in years. The first Sunday that I was in Burlington I had been inquiring a little about where the Baptist church was and where I would find the people. So I got acquainted with one or two of them before the Sunday and I concluded I would go down to church. I looked around for the place. They said it was in the room over Mr. Beattie's store on Main street. I found Mr. Beattie's store, went up some narrow, rickety stairs and in an attic, almost an attic, it couldn't be called a hole because it wasn't height enough to it. It was only a story and a half building and the lower part was used for a store by Mr. Beattie. The Baptist people met there and found them at work in what they called a Bible class. They made that answer for Sunday-school. I think there were some half-dozen there beside the minister and they held discussions and tried to find out something about what was meant by Paul's declaration "They that have not the law are a law unto themselves." I sat and heard them for sometime and I was pretty well up on that question because we had it in our Sunday-school two or three weeks before in Michigan. Finally the pastor turned and asked me if I could give them an idea on that. So I expounded the page to them to the best of my ability and as soon as the class closed he came up and asked me if I was a minister. I told him no, that it was a sunday-school question that we had unraveled in the Sunday-school in Ceresco, Michigan where I came from. In a few moments church was called and he got up and read his essay and when he got to the end he pronounced the benediction and services were over and they were all going home. I said I would like to ask a question or two. "All right." "Don't you folks have any prayer meeting?" "Well, don't you folks have any Sunday-school any more than you had this morning?" "No, there are no children to come to the Sunday-school, so we have a Bible class in the morning." I said, "I propose that we have prayer meeting next Thursday night at some brother's or sister's house, because I believe that where God's people live is a very suitable place to have prayer meeting." An old sister who lived about a block away from where I was stopping with my wife's parents, says, "You can come for it at my house," so that was settled. I said, "I propose that next Sunday morning at ten o'clock we organize a Sunday- school." Well, they were abundantly willing, "but where will we get the scholars?" I said, "The scholars will come if we have Sunday-school." That week we had a splendid prayer meeting and we had more at prayer meeting than we had at church Sunday. Sunday morning came. We got together and organized the Sunday-school. The members of the church were pretty generally there and we organized the school, put it on its feet with five scholars and three of those were my children. It soon was very apparent that the place was going to be too small for us, that we would want more room, and as I was selected superintendent of the school, I began to look around to see where we could find a place. There was a new building, standing right on the banks of Rock creek that had a very good hall up stairs. It was a two story building and up stairs was a good hall. I found out that we could rent that hall for a very reasonable sum. So we secured the building and our Sunday-school began to grow, and attendance at church began to grow so that we had to get out of Beattie's attic entirely. Soon after we moved out of that, we had some very valuable additions both spiritually and financially, people moving in. Mr. Wigston and his wife, his daughter and her husband, Mr. and Mrs. Lang, were added to our number. But prior to this, I believe it was the second Sunday that I went to church, I handed our letters to the clerk of the church. When the pastor came, in two weeks, they were read and accepted. Before the middle of the summer we had the largest attendance of any Sunday-school in Burlington and the best order in our school. They were all very much elated at the success that we were making. Along in the fall, early fall, our Pastor Brundig had an appointment six miles south at what was known as Big Creek where he went Sunday afternoon when he preached for the church at Burlington in the morning. I had been with him I think about two trips, no means of conveyance, only on foot. The third afternoon we were going he got sick and he said, "If I don't feel better tonight, you'll have to do the preaching if there is any done." "Well," I said, "I'm no preacher. I make no pretense of preaching, no how, no shape, no manner." So we got pretty near to the house of the family by the name of Paine who were Burlington people and members of the organization on Big Creek. He said, "I'm feeling so badly, if there is any preaching done, you will have to do it." Well, there came up before me a demand. There were good people there wanting to hear the gospel, and I believed that it was God's message for me to do some work there and I had vowed to Him that I would to whatever he showed me was my duty to do, His Spirit helping me. So I went outside, it was not very warm yet it was not very uncomfortable. I worked a while out in a grove and one of the passages that was in the trial of our Blessed Lord and Savior came to my mind. "They plaited a crown of thorns and put it upon His head." When the time came for opening the service, it was in a schoolhouse and the house was full, so full that it was uncomfortably warm. We had to raise the windows to let fresh air in. I announced a hymn and started it off and all the whole congregation joined in and we had a splendid singing. I had asked Brundig prior to that if he would offer prayer and state how the matter was to the people, so that there wouldn't anybody think I was rushing myself on. He did so. While I had never been a public speaker in all and in my younger days would not even take part in a debating club or make any public remarks whatever, yet I commenced speaking and for over a half hour I had no trouble whatever in confining myself to my subject and the people were all interested so that nobody went to sleep or no one took their eyes off from me and when I got through what I thought had ought to close, I did so and offered prayer. Brundig pronounced the benediction. We went home. I never saw Brundig afterward. He never came back to Burlington and never went back over to Big Creek. On Saturday before the regular time for service on Big Creek they sent a delegation over to Burlington to see if I would come over there Sunday and hold service. I told them, "Why, gentlemen, I am no preacher. I just simply helped Mr. Brundig out of his difficulty. He was sick and couldn't fill his appointment and I helped him out." "Well," they said, "We have heard nothing from Brundig since and we don't know where he is, and we want service Sunday and we would be very glad if you would come and hold service on Sunday afternoon at our regular time." In the morning when we came together for the Sunday-school, we held our Sunday-school at its regular time and closed in time for preaching but we had no pastor. So they throwed it onto my shoulders to occupy the time so that they could have a service that morning. I complied with their request but with many misgivings. About this time there was a man on Otter creek, six miles west of Burlington by the name of Solomon P. Ryan. He came down to Burlington to find a minister to go out and hold funeral services for a child, a little upwards of two years old. The parents of the child were not professors at all but they wanted a religious service at the burial. I told Mr. Ryan, I cannot do that. I am no preacher and here are plenty of ministers here in town and I think you ought to get one of them instead of picking up any layman." He said, "I have been to every minister in the city and they all have excuses and can't go." I finally went, held the services and as soon as the service was over the child was taken off some five or six miles across the country to the place of burial, but the people came together and one man moved that I be invited to come back Sunday and hold services there and it happened to be at the off Sunday. I complied with their request and went. The schoolhouse was well filled, just as full as could be and they all rose up at the close of the service and wanted to know if I would come back and preach to them in two weeks. I said, "Gentlemen, I am only a layman and there are plenty of regular ministers in Burlington and I think you ought to secure someone to come out here and hold services," and I didn't agree to go back to them. But during this time the Methodist folks were holding a series of meetings in that district and they had gathered in some seven or eight young people whose parents were Baptists and members of Baptist churches. So about the early part of the next spring there was another death in that neighborhood. This same man, Ryan, came down again. He was a great standby of the whole neighborhood and it was pretty cold, so that it froze ice on the water that stood on the ponds. He came horseback and I couldn't get rid of going. So he got me onto his horse and he went afoot. We had gone about two miles and I saw that he was a considerably older man and was getting pretty tired and I insisted on getting down and did get down and he rode about a mile. Every step we took through the ice. Then he got down and I got onto the horse and made it through to the schoolhouse. At the close of the funeral service he got up and announced that I would preach there on such a Sunday. He hadn't asked me whether I would or whether I wouldn't but he announced it. I said again, "Gentlemen, and ladies, you are certainly misinformed or making a willful mistake for I am not a minister. I am only a layman, and as I have said before there are plenty of ministers in Burlington that I presume you can get." But there was no let up. I had to go. That summer a man by the name of H. K. Stimpson, a Baptist minister who had long been a member of the Home Mission Board moved into Burlington where he had several children living. He was a man of about sixty-five years old at that time and he had been in the west a good deal and knew all about the customs of the west. He was called to be pastor of our church in Burlington and I then got the Otter Creek to get him to come out and preach to them. It worked nicely and I was rejoiced that I had gotten it all off from my shoulders with the exception of the work on Big Creek. I still continued to go over there and run the Sunday-school in the afternoon and preach at night and then walk home six miles. I told the folks at Big Creek that my circumstances were such that I didn't think I could come over to hold services with them any longer, although during this time, about the time that Mr. Stimpson moved into Burlington I had started a series of meetings out on Otter Creek and they were running fine, so prosperous, and the outlook so fair that some of the Methodist friends got very mad. I got Mr. Stimpson to go out there and organize the church and to receive these converts for baptism and then at the end of the meeting when it should please the Lord to close the meeting I wanted him to come out and baptize them. I didn't think those days that I could baptize anyone because I had no license to preach nor had ever been ordained or anything of the kind. So when the meetings closed, the old brother came out and put the church on its feet and received 19 for baptism. Then I got the church at Otter Creek to give him an invitation to come once in two weeks and preach to them so he did so and I was loose again and working, doing all that I could for the work in Burlington and building up there. That fall the church in Burlington concluded to build a church house. Rev. Stimpson was sent east to raise funds from churches that he was well acquainted with in New York state and in Michigan and that left the church without a working pastor. They got together and without my consent or asking, licensed me as a minister to preach to them. Then I sat down and wrote to my old pastor, Rev. Hamlin, the condition I was in, laid it all bare before him, more so than I am now. His answer to me was this: "Don't refuse to preach the gospel. Your excuses that you bring up remind me of Moses, that he was slow of speech and that he wanted to be excused, "but", he says, "if you couldn't go to school which would be a great benefit to you, read much and read for a purpose." That was the answer I got from my pastor. Then I accepted their license and I went to work and for two years I worked at my trade all day and almost every night in the week I read until after midnight, sometimes till the roosters crowed for day and I kept reading. I had this work at Otter Creek on my hands, I had the work at Big Creek on my hands and work at home. Brother Stimpson was gone all that winter and in the spring he returned and they commenced to erect the house. Mr. Wigston and Mr. Dickson and four or five others that I can't remember the names now were very active members and good financial help, yet none of them rich. They commenced the erecting of the house. I had no money, about all that I could do to keep my family and take care of them was my pension was only $12.00 a month and yet I wanted something in the house. So I told them if they would buy the paint, the lead and oil, I would see that it was all put on inside and out as my contribution toward the house. That was the second church house I began to put money in. So Brother Stimpson was pastor at Burlington and I had the Otter Creek and Big Creek churches. The year following I held another series of meetings at Otter Creek and our great success and power must have been of the Lord because there was no strong man. When that revival meeting commenced we had 27 live members in the church. When it closed we had 60 and our work was done in morning prayer meetings at houses, cottage prayer meetings. Many of them were in a log house and yet there was a continual gathering in. I baptized one lady there that was 71 years old. The work at Big Creek didn't seem to prosper so well. There were no real go ahead members in the Big Creek church. But I continued on there during the summer after the revival at Otter Creek until fall. In the fall the Lord sent along Brother John Heritage, a man who had been a missionary in England among the coal miners and I persuaded the church to call him to the pastorate. They did so. He stayed with them a long time. During this summer after the revival the church at Otter Creek called for my ordination. Up to that time I was simply a licensed minister. I told them to set their own time and I would try to comply with their request. So they set the time for the 14th of July, 1872, and invited delegates from Burlington, Big Creek, and Ottumwa, Kansas to meet on the 14th of July. On that day at Otter Creek with the Otter Creek church I received my ordination with C. J. DeWitt, moderator, James Smith, clerk, and E. A. Patterson. Then war commenced. One of my Methodist friends had been very warm because in the commencement they lost seven of their young people whom they had gotten into their class while Mr. Ryan told them on the start that they were Baptist and they would go to the water. They went so far as to put an injunction on the schoolhouse so that I couldn't use it for holding services. but Brother Ryan was true steel and he took the whole matter onto his own shoulders. Instead of trying to force anything he offered a large wooden building that he used for a granary. It was in good shape. He went to work and took all the inside out of it, put in some windows and a good door and then went and bought the lumber and made benches and turned the granary into a meetinghouse and we worshiped there until these Methodists got tired of fighting and till the matter comes to court and before the court had a chance to decide anything they went and withdrew it. Then we all went back to the schoolhouse having been absent from the schoolhouse about six months. The day and night we went back to the schoolhouse held services in the morning and again at night. The house was densely packed and it was very warm because of the pack of people in it. The weather was cold outside and the snow was enough so that it was good sleighing. That night after closing service I got into a sleigh and rode about five miles before I got to bed and when I went to go to bed it was a cold room without a fire of any kind anywhere near it, but there was plenty of covering and I went fast to sleep and never took any cold from it. The next spring (1873) was a hard year from the fact that it was a dry year. That year there was nothing raised in the state anywhere except on the river bottoms and there it was very light. A good many of the members were homesteaders. They hadn't proved up their homes yet and their crop was but small even when it was good and when it was a total failure it looked very much like starvation. I stopped one day, I had been out on some other work, with an old English woman to see how she was getting along and nothing must do but that I stay and take dinner with her. That poor old woman said in tears while I was there that she saw me come said without some reason. She had nothing in the world to set before me but a cup of corn coffee and corn pan cakes with sorghum molasses. I ate of it and thanked God that she was not as bad off yet as the widow of Serepta because she had a good sack of meal in the house. That year I don't know how I lived. God seemed to take care of us, something always to eat and we got through the year. I think I received from the State Mission two boxes and they were clothing and groceries and all very acceptable and we were in great need of it. If we bought any coffee it was $0.50 a pound in the green berry but we got through and the next year was a year of plenty. The next year (1874) I opened a work at a place known as Neosho Rapids. It was about twenty miles from home up the Neosho river. Neosho Rapids is a small town of about 500 inhabitants. I held two services there Sunday and arranged for special meetings later. In the early fall of 1873 I got a pony. I didn't buy it but Mr. Ryan and the Otter Creek church procured it for me. That fall the Neosho Valley association held their annual meeting at the town of Hartford, a small town on the Missouri, Kansas and Texas railroad running out to Manhattan. There was a very good attendance at the association and the matter came up in regard to what could be done for the Baptist church at LeRoy. While Hartford was in the east edge of Lyon county, LeRoy was in about the center of Coffey county. The church had been in a bad shape down there for quite a while. They had no pastor and didn't send representatives any more to the association, so the association decided in their conference meetings in LeRoy to see if we couldn't build it up. The reverends John Heritage, Pettit, and DeWitt and several others with myself agreed to go sometime in November. We set the time when we would all endeavor to be there on Saturday, hold a service on Saturday afternoon and all through Sunday and Sunday night and if it was promising to remain and hold meetings there. The effort seemed to be very promising. I preached on Saturday afternoon. Reverend Pettit preached Saturday night and DeWitt preached Sunday morning, and Reverend Heritage, the oldest man in the work in that association, preached Sunday night. The house was quite filled, even to the galleries and the people seemed to be much interested in the meeting, so much so that we concluded at the close to take a vote of the professors of religion irrespective of denominations in regard to continuing the meeting. The vote was unanimous. There was quite a strong element of Methodists there and also of Campbellites. So after the service was dismissed, we held a conference meeting for a half or three-quarters of an hour and during that time we arranged how we would run the work at the first of the week. None of these volunteers that had come down there had made any arrangements to be absent from home. They all had to go home Monday morning from the fact that they were nearly all working men like myself, trying to make a living for their family, and it fell on me to remain Monday and Tuesday. Brother Heritage was to be back on Tuesday morning and the rest of them according as they had arranged, but all be back in time for Sunday. At this time I was pastor at the home church at Burlington and holding two services there a month so that I could stay because there would be no service at the home church. The next day, Monday, was quite a pleasant day and there was a good turnout on Monday night but no general turnout as usually is the case on Monday night. So we held a prayer and conference meeting and it was very interesting and very much spirit was manifested. That night about ten o'clock came up a good big snow storm and some sleet with it so that Tuesday morning looked very unfavorable as regards the atmosphere. The brethren came in. Tuesday night was a small turnout from the fact that the weather was very unfavorable. On Wednesday afternoon we had a prayer meeting and at night Brother Heritage preached a stirring good spiritual gospel discourse and the people were much interested in it. Finally Brother Heritage thought best to take an expression of the people who were there, how many were ready to go to work in a special effort for bringing in souls to Christ and building up of Christ's cause in LeRoy. The Methodist pastor, who held services every Sunday, was one of the first to raise up and offer not only his own services but also his church, so that by Thursday the work was going in nice, promising shape. We went through that week and held right on over Sunday. I went home and left the others to look after it. I went home for the morning service and went back down to LeRoy, twelve miles and was there for night service. That night we concluded to hold a sunrise prayer meeting and the nest morning at sunrise there were in the neighborhood of thirty persons in to engage in prayer. The work ran along in nice shape all the week, souls were being brought in and the work was being revived very much. Along toward the last of the week, there was one man living there who was a school teacher, an old New Englander and one who thought he knew all that was worth knowing, but he didn't like the way we had gone to work because we had let the Methodists come in and join us in our prayer meeting and in our general work. At he same time it was distinctly understood by all who were concerned that it was not a Union meeting, that it was a meeting held by the Baptist association. But he got pretty ugly and he would come into the prayer meeting at sunrise and offer prayers that were calculated to throw a wet blanket over everything. His name was Marshall. I will have more to say of him later on. We went right on with the work. When the next two weeks came round I was obliged to be home both morning and evening. At the close of the morning service as I was about to pronounce the benediction I saw a man from LeRoy by the name of Quiggle. I mistrusted something was wrong. He stepped right up to me and says, "You must go down to LeRoy tonight. Old man Marshall has put everything in a whirl. He insisted on preaching this morning and would preach anyway and he turned his arrows all loose at the Methodists on the subject of baptism and everything is topsy-turvy and Brother Patterson says you must be there tonight." I stated the matter to the church and they at once said, "We will dismiss our service tonight and you can go." I went home, got lunch and got into the buggy and drove with Mr. Quiggle back to LeRoy. Then I found that this man was determined that if he could have it his way that he would run this man Marshall. He had been forcing himself onto the people at LeRoy for over a year by doing his own janitor work and insisting on preaching to them every two weeks whether they wanted it or not and without charge, and every sermon was a sermon on baptism. It was said that if he would take the last line of Revelation or the first line of Genesis, he would always preach on baptism. I met Brother Patterson, a deacon of the church with the clerk of the church as soon as I arrived in LeRoy, about sundown. They told me what their plan was and that they were going to hold a meeting before the regular service that the church would hold a business meeting before the service on Sunday evening and "We are going to appoint Marshall as chairman and then we are going to call you to the pastorate of the church and we want you to accept by all means." Well, I told them it was a matter that I (we) hadn't considered at all and it looked to me as though there was trouble ahead but they insisted on it and finally it turned that way. Mr. Marshall said nothing that night but he at once commenced his fight and while the meeting ran on for two weeks or more afterward with good results among the professions made was Mr. Marshall's daughter, a young lady about sixteen or seventeen years old. She with about twelve or fifteen others asked for baptism at the hands of the church and church membership. He just told her plainly in public that she couldn't join that church. He afterwards gathered some five or six of his adherents and went and baptized her one Sunday without asking the church anything about it at all. The trouble began to thicken from the fact that there is no dog so mean but what dogs will follow them and he got some eight persons living out in the country down the river from LeRoy to join him to oppose the church. He would come in to our conference and covenant meetings and create discord every time. He insisted on being moderator at every meeting when the church came together to transact business and hold their church covenant, and Brother Patterson made the statement in the conference that they had a pastor and it was not only the privilege but the duty of the pastor to be moderator and he for one would insist on the pastor's occupying the chair as moderator. Mr. Marshall got up and made some very cutting remarks after which Deacon Patterson moved that the church retire and the clerk and the deacons and the members, all that lived in LeRoy and east of LeRoy went with Deacon Patterson up into the gallery and Marshall and his six adherents were left alone without any church book and without any deacons. I gave notice from the gallery that until proper acknowledgements were made by Mr. Marshall that I withdrew the hand of fellowship as a Christian man and a Baptist from him. I went on with the work at LeRoy at the same time having that kind of a man to torment me continually. He would frequently step up to me just before time for service when I came in and make some sarcastic remark. It worked on that way until the church became so disgusted with it and he was doing so much injury to the growth of the cause that the church decided to call a council. They did so. They notified Mr. Marshall and his adherents that at such a time they would hold such a council. The council came together and a man from Emporia, pastor of the Emporia church, was chosen as moderator of the council. He said, "Before the council proceeds I want a statement from both sides or an agreement that each will abide by the finding of the council. I rose right up and stated that in behalf of the church I would abide by whatever the findings of the council were. Mr. Marshall wouldn't do it and the result was that he was excluded from the body. Then he went out and started a church on his own hook. About eight or ten persons he had, while the home church at LeRoy numbered at that time nearly sixty. He remained there independent and separate from the church entirely but in the fall when the association met he came to that association with a petition for his church to be admitted into the association. It went before the association and the matter as it stood was all stated and when it came as a report from the committee on new churches the committee reported that they didn't know any such church, that they had no standing in the association, and therefore they couldn't accept them. That was the last effort that Mr. Marshall made to tyrannize the Baptist church at LeRoy. That closed it up. My finances were always very low during the time that I was in Kansas. The fall that I came home from the association at Hartford we had raised considerable money there for the work of the association and I had given the last $5.00 that I had anywhere in sight or expected, and when I started home I started penniless. I didn't know where any was to come from although I had several good jobs of work. On my way I met a man that was present nearly always in the morning service at the Otter Creek church. I knew him well and knew that he was strong unbeliever almost a universalist. I stopped and passed the time of day with him and as we stood and talked he put his hand in his pocket and said, "I have heard you preach lots of times and I like to hear you preach awfully well, and I have never done anything to support you. Take this anyway," and handed me a $10.00 bill. I went home through the Lord's interference with $10.00 instead of $5.00 and left the $5.00 with the association to do the work. I might be thought by my children and grandchildren or any person who might pick up this book, how in the world did I live and take care of my family and do so much work in the ministry. From the time that I first started until about 1880 I always carried on the work of painting. When I went to Burlington I went at once and got a chance in a shop where a man by the name of John Harding manufactured wagons. I would work generally five days, four or five days in the week and would do my studying nights and days when I was at work. Many a day I have picked up a passage of scripture at our morning worship and have taken it with me out in the field and carried it in my mind and on my heart behind the plow all day or riding upon the mower and gathering hay for the winter it was the same. I had no reserved room for study because I had to make something to take care of my family. As the churches were all poor, my salaries were light and therefore I must labor like Paul so that I wouldn't be a burden on the churches. About the close of 1873 Rev. H. K. Stimpson came back to Burlington and that left me free of the work there because he was the man for that place and I stepped right to one side and told the church to employ him. Yet my home church was at Burlington. I still kept on the work at Otter Creek. Late that fall, right in the edge of winter, I went up to Neosho Rapids and undertook to hold a series of meetings with them but they were so much absorbed in worldly things that the members of the church which was small had no heart for the work of the Master. I stayed there a week and had to be back to Otter Creek on time and found that the Otter Creek church was ripe for another series of meetings. We held that meeting, lasting from four to five weeks. I had no evangelist and once in a while Rev. Stimpson would come out from Burlington and assist me a little. In that meeting we had the most marked evidence of the presence of the Master of any meeting that I was ever in. The number of conversions was upwards of twenty and all were ready to go to work. It was the last revival meeting that I held with the Otter Creek church. In the summer of 1874 we held a associational conference meeting with what was known as the Turkey Creek Baptist church. That was some fifteen miles south of Burlington. We gathered at the church under very peculiar circumstances. We arrived there on Saturday afternoon early and the committee assigned the parties around to different places. Rev. J. Heritage and myself were assigned to a man's house by the name of James Baldwin, now dead. His wife was a member of the Otter Creek Baptist church. I went there to supper and it was a good deal like going out of a hot sun into a refrigerator. They were very wealthy people. He owned seven hundred acres there in the Turkey Creek bottoms all connected in one body. His wife was a splendid woman but all so formal. Brother Heritage and I sat that night, after we came down from church, on the floor in the bedroom assigned to our use and till after 12 o'clock we conversed upon different topics of scripture. In the morning early Mr. Baldwin, who had returned home during the night came to our door and rapped and said, "It is time that preachers were getting up," and of course we got up. Brother Heritage was well acquainted with him but I had never met him before. I went over there about two months afterward to help Brother Heritage in a revival meeting over there and there were some wonderful conversions, men that had stood up against the gospel for years gave way. On Sunday was to be baptism in a nice pool in the creek where the trees shaded the water and Mrs. Baldwin was to be baptized. She had always worked with the Baptist people and as the old man said, she leaned that way and everybody supposed that she was a member in full fellowship in the church, but in the meeting she just threw off her formalism and confessed that she would never feel right and satisfied until she was baptized and received into the church. Mr. Baldwin knew that she was going to be baptized that day and he told me afterward that as he was riding over the prairie with some 200 head of steers and his men, that he had employed to help drive and herd, he looked at his watch and as he looked at his watch he said, "My God, now, at this very time, my wife is being baptized." He called to the foreman of the men and he said, "You take these cattle and put them into such a place, I am going home." He put spurs to his horse and rode furiously and arrived at the water's edge with the company that was there just as his wife was stepping down into the pool for baptism. In less than a week's time Mr. Jim Baldwin made one of the finest talks when he gave himself to the Lord of any man I have ever heard. It changed the whole house of the Baldwins. The formality and coldness was all gone and when you went into Jim Baldwin's house you felt that you were right at home. So wonderful a change I never knew in any household as it was there. In the year 1876 which was the centennial year, I went as a delegate to the Kansas Baptist State Convention which met at Leavenworth. Rev. H. K. Stimpson went as a delegate from Burlington and I went as a delegate from the church at LeRoy. There I first learned what the leaders of our denomination were doing. That they were letting go of the grand principles upon which we stood and the true word of our God and Savior and for the sake of popularity were catering to the wishes and practices of the world. The question came up in the Convention on the problem of innocent amusements and one of the most prominent leaders from New York, a secretary of the Home Mission Board, made the statement upon the floor that social dancing had come to stay and that the best thing he thought to do was to not fight against it. That many of our young people didn't think any more harm in attending a social dance or sitting down to a social card party than they did of taking a drink of water. An old man from the eastern part of Kansas rose up and trembling said, "I have been praying for years for God to deliver me from evil and when I hear such men as the brother that has just spoken take side with the world, the flesh and the devil, I will have to have the Spirit of God to interfere in order that I may escape." Old Brother Stimpson replied to it in cutting words. He was well acquainted with the word and was astonished beyond measure that such a man should advocate that kind of deportment to a Baptist membership. I had always been a very stern advocate of what the New Testament taught and I had opposed everything that was practiced that wasn't taught there. One Sunday I had been over to the Otter Creek church, preached in the morning and for some reason, I don't know now why it was, we didn't have any service at night and I came home in the afternoon. At evening my wife wanted me to go with her over to the Methodist church in Burlington and I told her before we went, "I won't more than get in the house than the pastor will be down and want me to go up onto the rostrum." Just as I expected we had not been there five minutes when he came down (he had been presiding elder in the South). I was well acquainted with him and he cordially invited me to go up and take part in the service. I went up and offered prayer. I sat on the rostrum and listened to him. His subject was "Born of water and of spirit." He went along with quite a nice discourse but he never got even his toes into the water. He didn't say a thing about the water at all, but after he got through he stated there were several persons that were ready to be taken into full membership with the church and if they would come forward and if there were any persons there that had little children to baptize to bring them forward. I sat there ready for any emergency and when he stepped down off the rostrum to sprinkle these candidates I stepped off from the rostrum and went down the aisle and took my wife and went home. The next day I was down on Neosho street and I met him on the sidewalk. "Why," he said, "What in the world made you leave last night so quickly, before the service was over?" "Well," I said, "it is something like this. I have been praying for a long time like David of old for the Lord to turn my eyes away from sin and therefore I thought it was best for me to do my part of the turning and leave the result with the Lord." He said nothing more to me about why I went away. I was still holding my work at Otter creek, a real working body of people and one Sunday evening after I had finished and pronounced the benediction a man whom I knew came up the the desk and said, "Mrs. Buckles wants you to come over to her house tomorrow morning at ten o"clock." I knew that Mr. Buckles had been very sick and no probability of his ever getting well. He had been out hunting wolves with several others, he was a great hunter and a splendid shot; some six or eight of them had been out and while he was putting his horse through at a lope, his horse's four feet struck into a wolf den and pitched the horse onto his head and the man off from his horse, and as he went he threw his gun off to one side and it struck with the hammer down and exploded and the charge of both barrels went into his legs. It had to be amputated. After amputation gangrene set in and it had been amputated again. He suffered awfully. He was very high officer in the Masonic order but Masonry was his religion. His wife was a member of the Baptist church at Otter creek and also his daughter. I knew very well that he was dead. I stayed as I frequently did with Brother Ryan all night. As soon as reasonable time to go to bed I told Mr. Ryan that I wanted a light and the privilege of staying up till I got ready to go to bed. I knew what I would have to meet the next day. The weather was very warm and I took my Bible and sat down and tried to find something upon which I could base remarks that would be suitable for the occasion and some consolation at least to the bereaved wife and children, son and daughter. When the clock struck four in the morning I had decided what it should be and after asking the Lord for strength and guidance, I went and lay down and slept from that time till half past six. I woke up and got right up. Mr. Ryan said he wasn't going to call me before nine o'clock but I woke up. He hitched up the team and we went right across the river from the place to Mr. Buckle's place. I saw Mrs. Buckles and after a little conference with her, I was well satisfied that I had not made a mistake in my subject. I was only to have 20 minutes at the Methodist church in Burlington at two o'clock in the afternoon. The way we had to go we had about ten miles to make and the weather was very warm. The sun was shining bright and the air was filled with dust so that when we arrived at Burlington we were all covered with dust. There was no time to make any toilet. There was no time for anything only to go right into the church just as we were and so we went in the church. I met the man that I had talked with on the sidewalk and we went right up into the pulpit. The Masons were preparing everything. In the center of the house old Brother Stimpson sat in a pew with his chin leaning on his hand and his hand on his cane. He told me afterward, "I was praying and trembling for you lest you should make a mistake in trying to do something great, but," he said, "as soon as you announced your text I thanked the Lord right there that you were all right." I occupied the 20 minutes from one of the Psalms, "What wait I for now." I occupied the 20 minutes and then the Masons took the whole business. From there we went out to the cemetery, a brass band leading, put on all the glory of the world that was possible and I returned home from the cemetery one of the tiredest men that there was in all the vicinity. At another time I had to go to an appointment some eighteen or twenty miles up the Neosho river and I couldn't make it so as to start on Saturday afternoon. I arose early Sunday morning, my wife got my breakfast for me and about the time sun was up, I was in the saddle and off to that appointment. I always traveled with matches in my pocket although I didn't smoke, but I always carried matches because I never knew when I might meet a prairie fire. This morning about nine o'clock, I saw a dark cloud of smoke rolling up ahead of me. I knew the cause of it and it seemed to be coming right down the track I was traveling. We had some very thin roads in that country those days and I was on one of those trails making the journey as short as I could. Pretty soon I saw the flames were rolling toward me. I went up on to a higher part of the prairie and was satisfied that it was coming. I got off, struck a match and set fire to the prairie near the trail. I soon burned a patch up to the trail and as soon as it got to the trail, my pony got into the burnt patch and we stood there while the prairie fire went past, while if I hadn't had any matches there wouldn't have been any burnt patch to wait in and my pony couldn't have gone fast enough to keep out of the way of the big prairie fire. (Two pages of manuscript missing) ...of the daughters, sisters of my wife. We buried her in the Burlington cemetery and that summer my oldest son, Edward, bought out a county paper at Neosho Falls. That was in the southeast corner just out of the corner of Coffey county. He wanted I should come down there and help him to get along with the paper, give it a little prestige, because he was but a young man not twenty years old yet. I sold my property in Burlington, went down to Neosho Falls. Then I had to give up my work at Otter creek as it was too far for my to keep it up but my work at LeRoy was about as near as it was from Burlington. He got along very nicely with the paper until a tramp came along, a tramp printer, a young man pretty sharp and after a month or two persuaded my son to go off with him on a tramp, left me in the lurch like the fellows that went out sniping, I was holding the sack. It was a great blow but I felt as though it would cone out all right and prove a lesson to the boy. They went off into Missouri and having no money the other fellow left him and he found a place with an old Missouri man, a farmer where he could shock corn in the cold fall weather. I had not become discouraged. I told the man that owned the paper that I knew nothing about newspaper work and therefore he must take charge of his property. I turned everything over to him and took a receipt for it. After about three weeks I thought perhaps the boy had been punished long enough and hard enough, I indirectly sent him $10.00 to get back with. A physician in Neosho Falls with whom he was quite familiar and who corresponded with him, I went to him and told him that I wanted him to send my son $10.00 and not to let him know where it came from, to have it appear as though the doctor had felt such interest in him that he had sent the money to help him back. He came back, worked a spell, and then got acquainted with a company that was going overland to Texas and he hitched up with them and went to Texas and that left me free. I had no work in the ministry except at LeRoy and a friend of mine came over from Greenwood county which was about thirty miles west and a little south of Neosho Falls near the county seat of Woodson county. He said there was a lot of good people over there and there was great opportunity to help them and to build up something permanent. I went over and viewed the ground and left an appointment for two weeks. On my route from Neosho Falls over to Greenwood county I went right past Mr. Jim Baldwin's. I always had to stop there both ways, going over to stop for dinner (it was a little over two- thirds of the way) and coming back I had to stop always and make them a visit. On my second trip over to Greenwood I found a small piece of very choice land that could be bought cheap. I looked it over, found out the title was good and it was just a piece of land in there on the Verdigris bottoms. It was a nice terrain and was all surrounded with timber excepting on the south side there was an opening south across the river that let the south wind in there so nice that it made it a pleasant place to live, but it was what they called lowland, no improvement on it. The timber had been cut off and most of it taken away, yet there was a good deal of old timber down on the ground. I bought the place, 9 acres for $75.00 and after I had bought it of course the next thing was to make arrangements to do something with it. I at once set about planning to build a small house cheap that would do till I could do better. Before I got the house up I hired a man to go over it with a plow and break the sod and I followed along after him and dropped in corn so that I would have some corn coming on to use in the winter. That year I made nearly 75 bushels of corn to the acre on sod ground and if there hadn't been so many stumps, I might have made a good deal more corn. Along in the fall I left Neosho Falls, Woodson county and took what little effects I had over to Greenwood county about nine miles from the county seat of Woodson county and 18 miles from the county seat of Greenwood county which was Eureka. I had one white cow that I paid $20.00 for. I had my horse, harness and buckboard, and my family all in good health. The fall before, when I was living at Neosho Falls, the Neosho Valley Association met over in the northeast corner of Allen county, the county that joined onto Woodson county. The evening before the association Reverend Stimpson, Reverend Coffey and two others came down from Burlington and LeRoy to spend the night with me and we would all go together the next day to the association. They came with the double-seated spring wagon and a good team. We passed the night together and early in the morning as soon as we could get our breakfast we started for the association. It was hard drive. It was at least 15 miles. I had made great calculations on that association because I had been appointed the year before to preach the annual sermon at the association. Six months before the time for the association I had selected my scripture and I had worked very hard on a sermon for the occasion. I had written it and rewritten it until I thought I was so familiar with it that I wouldn't get into any trouble. In the morning we started on and had a nice ride until the sun got up pretty high and it got a little warm and the dust was very bad, and we chatted along and visited. One subject and another was conversed about until we got within sight of the place where the association was to be lead, and all at once it came to my mind I had left my sermon at home. There it was 12 o'clock and the association was to convene at 2 o'clock but the attendance was very small, probably not to exceed 15 delegates. None of them knew the fix I was in, but Brother Stimpson who was the oldest man in the association got up and moved that because of the light attendance the hour for the annual meeting be changed and that they would spend the afternoon in prayer and conference, and the annual sermon would be preached at night. Will, I felt a good deal like going up and grabbing him and putting him on my shoulder and toting him around on my shoulder, but I asked to be excused for a while and I took my Bible and went out about a half mile in the young timber and there I got my sermon ready for the night so that when night came I was ready but I couldn't think of a bit of the sermon that I had worked on so hard and so long to put together in any kind of shape. So I selected a passage, in Hebrews I believe it is, "I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ for it is the power of God unto Salvation to everyone that believeth, to the Jew first and also to the Greek." We had grand meeting that night, just splendid. Everything worked fine and the next day in the afternoon Rev. John Heritage preached a sermon that just gathered in all the rest from the first to the last. I think there were six sermons preached at that association but he gathered them all in and preached a splendid sermon on Sunday night and we broke up ready to go home Monday morning, everybody saying we had the finest meeting of the association that we had ever had. When I moved into my house in Greenwood county there was a wonderful sight of work to do in the way of the ministry and also in the way of fitting things up and getting ready for winter, but we got through with it nicely and everything went along well only my wife was so homesick that she would have given anything in the world to have gotten away from there. But she got over it after a while and we were getting along nicely until the second fall. Then sickness began to bother us a great deal. Although we had everything in the way of living that anyone could ask. I got me another horse, I had gotten me a plow, I had gotten me a two horse wagon and the first summer I found a man out on the prairie that offered to let me have a piece of land to put into wheat and I went to work and plowed the ground and a neighbor living a little ways out by the name of James Smith sowed the wheat for me and I made a very good harvest so that I had all the wheat that I wanted to use in my family. My nearest point to a good mill was Eureka, the county seat of Greenwood county. So I would load up my wheat and go over to Eureka and get my milling done and get back before dark. I had two shoats and I was aiming to raise some nice Berkshire hogs, the small Berkshire, but that didn't pan out good so I got some Poland Chinas and the second fall we were on the place I cribbed almost eighty bushels of corn to the acre. I raised a great many pumpkins, so I got hold of a big iron cauldron kettle that I found some man had out on the farm. I bought it, took it down onto my ranch. I had plenty of corn, take and load up the wagon box full of corn and take it over to the county seat of Woodson county, nine miles, and have it chopped, cobs, corn and all together. Then I boiled pumpkins and when they had gotten well cooked I put corn into the hot mash and put that into barrels, kerosene oil barrels, that I got, and fed up my pumpkins and corn into some shoats I was raising so that before holidays I had plenty of meat on foot and butchered it and put it away. My side meat I cut up, put in barrels and pickled it, put a brine over it and kept it. The hams and shoulders I cured them, smoked them and then took boxes, laid in a layer of meat and then covered it well with shelled corn or wheat and I kept my meat that way so that throughout the year we had the very best of meat to eat. Our side meat we sold to farmers out on the prairie. They would come down and get the meat at twelve and one-half cents per pound and thought they were getting it cheap. I traded the old white cow to a man over in Coffey county by the name of Weiver. I went over there visiting and he had a very nice three-year old heifer that had a calf about three or four weeks old. He was buying up cattle and I bounced him for a trade to give him the white cow that I had brought up from Neosho Falls for his heifer and calf and he took it and he helped to drive the heifer and calf home over to Greenwood and brought the cow back. We came very near losing the cow and did lose the calf but my wife kept working with the cow until she got her back to milk again and she was a fine, fine cow. I afterwards sold her for $50.00. I bought a young heifer coming three years old at an auction in the spring. I gave $13.00 for her. She would be a cow in May. I kept her until I sold out and I got $22.00 for her. I had three yearlings and they all brought a good price. The next year I had my ground in better shape and I had a little more of it to use from the fact that I had taken a job on Christmas morning of the commencement of the third year that we were on the place. I had a very large oak tree standing out in the corner of the patch and I wanted the tree sawed up into lumber to make me a kitchen and a garden fence, sawed into paling to make a garden fence. I went out Christmas morning, told by wife I was going to down that tree. Before eleven o'clock Christmas it went down to the ground. It was over two and one-half across the stump by measure. I got three 10 foot logs off from it beside a wonderful pile of wood. There was a portable saw mill that came within 25 rods of me that winter and I got a man who had a heavy ox team to come with his oxen and roll the logs upon to the trucks and hauled them to the sawmill and had them sawed up and they made a wonderful pile of lumber. Then I had some lumber from trees I had cut down and took them to the sawmill too. I had them cut up into two inch planks. I hauled those planks to Burlington, 30 miles, and sold them for a good price. For the first two years that we were on the place all the spare time that we could gather, we were working up the old wood that was on the place and the old logs into fire wood so that we always had a good big pile of nice dry fire wood. Hartwell was at home with me then and we put in all the time that we could get. That fall, Mr. Jim Smith gave me a piece of prairie and I could plow it and have all I could raise on it for the first year. I broke it out early in the summer; in the fall I replowed it and sowed it to wheat but I never harvested the wheat from the fact that I sold out before that time. I used to make two or three trips to Burlington during the summer. I would start from home about three o'clock in the morning generally have a load to carry over and I would get to Burlington about two or three o'clock in the afternoon. I would do all my business, make all my purchases of stuff to carry home and about sundown, after my team had had a good rest and feed, I would hitch up and get into my wagon and go home in the night. I would get home about two or three o'clock in the morning. My team was trusty, they would keep to the road, they didn't turn off for anything. Everything was in nice shape. It was very nice in the timber in the winter. I hardly ever put on a coat out doors unless I wasn't at work, but in working I hardly ever had a coat on. It was warm in there and the men coning in off from the prairie thought it was almost like a southern climate. But all the food things are not found in one place in the world and our great trouble was sickness, chills, chills, chills. The second summer my son Edward was quite a lad and he used to take the horses right down to the river. We had a pair of bars that kept everything out and he would let down the bars and then as the horses came to go through the bars he would step on the bars and then jump on the horse. One Sunday, I believe it was, he was practicing his smartness, he missed the horse and broke his arm below the elbow bone joint. We sent about six miles up the river for a physician we were acquainted with who came down to set the fractured arm, and our little daughter, Susie, was suffering very much at that time with chills. Dr. Morton, the doctor who came down to set the arm, said, "What in the world are you letting that child die with worms?" "Why," said my wife, "I didn't know she had worms. She has chills every day or two." He said, "If you get rid of the worms she won't have chills." He left some little powders and before she had taken them all up she was rid of the chills and didn't have any more chills. But the next year was a great deal worse for sickness. The water was low in the river and the wind from the south all the time blew malaria up from the river and we suffered from it. That summer Fred had chills for a long time. They got pretty bad. Finally one day just at dinner time he had been lopping around with a chill all the forenoon and about eleven o'clock he had gone and laid on the bed. We were at the table eating and I heard a peculiar noise from the bedroom. I went there and I say that he was either dead or would be soon. I at once put Hartwell onto a horse and sent him over to the river for the doctor. Bet we didn't wait for the doctor. We had quite a bunch of cayenne pepper and commenced rubbing him. chafing him with the effect that when the doctor got there he had passed the crisis. The doctor stayed and fed him quinine all that afternoon and left big powders for him to take till bedtime and then the first thing in the morning, so as to stave off the chances for another congestive chill and he didn't have any more. I don't think he ever had a congestive chill afterward. About that time I was negotiating with a church within five miles of Kansas City. My trip to Kansas City was to look over some work that was offered to me within five miles of the city. I didn't think much of it, held two services on Sunday and came home on Monday, paid my own expenses. The winter of 1877, we were living at Quincy, Greenwood county. One cold winter day I rode on horseback from Quincy to Otter Creek thirty miles away. It was very cold. I placed newspapers inside of my clothes all around my body as well as I could and started out on the trip. A young man by the name of Henry Ryan had engaged me to come over a officiate at his marriage. It was a tedious, long, cold trip. I would ride two, three or four miles, then I would get off and walk two or three miles and then ride my horse. My feet would get so numb I would have to do it. But I got there early in the evening and found them all in good shape prepared for the ceremony which occurred about eight o'clock in the evening after which they had a farmers' supper, plenty of everything that was good to eat. The groom remained with his wife's parents that night. In the morning he came up to his father's where I stayed, a distance of about two miles and gave me the large sum of $2.00 for my part of it. I got my horse ready, the weather had moderated, and I struck out for home and I felt as though I would like to have somebody kick me all the way home. I arrived home in good shape, didn't suffer any with the cold going home. At on time I was over at Turkey Creek helping Rev. Heritage in a special meeting. He wrote me, wanted I should come over and help him through Saturday and Sunday, and he thought the meeting would close on Monday night. I went, found a very interesting meeting, a great deal of interest and Rev. Heritage very badly worn, having been three weeks without anyone to assist him. The meeting held Monday night and closed Tuesday afternoon so that we stayed on Turkey Creek that night and the next morning we started for home. I think I rode with Brother Heritage. Coming home we had to pass by a very wealthy ranch man by the name of Crandall. He and Baldwin were partners before Baldwin was converted and after Baldwin was converted he sold out to Crandall, didn't want to have anything more to do with the cattle business. We stopped with Crandall. Mrs. Crandall was a real nice, sociable lady but they were all of the world. They belonged to the world's people. We hadn't more than nicely got sat down in the sitting room until Mrs. Crandall went and got a large pitcher of new cider that they had made the day before. Rev. Heritage had on the Murphy badge. I had no emblems of any kind attached to me and as Mr. Heritage was the oldest man, she passed to him. He took the glass and she filled it from her pitcher. She then came over to me with another glass and handed it to me. I said, "If you please, if it isn't too much trouble, please fill that with water. I am quite thirsty and I think a drink of water would do me good." She said, "Don't you drink cider?" I said, "No, I don't drink cider." She said, "You eat apples?" I said, "Yes, I eat apples and in my boyhood days I ate corn and rye. That was about the only kind of bread we had in Pennsylvania in those days and I ate the corn bread and rye bread regular and because I ate the corn and rye was no reason that I should drink the juice from them." She was very much taken back and the color came into her face. Finally she said. "Well, everybody had their choice." I said, "Certainly. If you and Brother Heritage want to drink cider, it don't hurt me any, you can have your own way and I only ask the same privilege." So after we had left the house, going along, I asked Brother Heritage if the Murphy order permitted drinking cider. He said, "Well, not as a beverage." I suppose you are kind of sick then is the reason you took the cider," I said. "No, but I don't know how to refuse it like you did." My post office address was Quincy, Kansas. There was little neighborhood grocery there and sort of a drug store and some very good folks around it. Mr. Jim Smith, a neighbor, took it in his head to rename the place and called it Tailhert. It was so small he thought that was a proper name for it. I held services there every two weeks. It was just about a mile and a half from where I lived. There was a man came into the neighborhood claiming to be a Christian, and of course I never have had used the names of professed Christian people by designating any organization especially Christian organization. I always call them by their father's name, the Campbellites as Alexander Campbell in 1847 organized the first society of that kind and then they were called Disciples by him. I preached one Sunday morning on the office work of the Holy Spirit. This Campbellite man was always on hand and I made some quotations, and there were seven or eight infidels and universalists in that neighborhood, and they met together every Sunday to discuss the Scripture while none of them believed any of it but to pass away the morning hours they would gather about eight o'clock, they would spend an hour hunting up and reporting what they had found in the Scripture. This man went to them and said, "Gentlemen, don't believe in that. It is all bosh. There is not a word of truth in it I know." He went all around the neighborhood ridiculing the subject I had discussed on Sunday. I heard nothing of it until Saturday afternoon. Mr. Jim Smith, a great friend of mine, and I think a good Christian, came and told me what they were doing. He said, "Now, I could have told you this Monday but I have been at a stand whether I ought to tell you or not. I couldn't get rid of it till I came and told you." I said, "Our next meeting is three weeks from the time we held the last service. I don't know but I feel a good deal just like throwing the thing over to him and letting him do just what he has a mind to with it." I took the matter under consideration and the more I thought of it the more I felt it was my duty to defend the truth. So I told two or three of the brethren the middle of the week before the Sunday that we were to occupy the house that I had concluded to defend the truth and that I was going to do it in just as mild a way as I could and yet just as firm a way as I could. The Campbellite man was there sitting down right close in front and he had out his blank paper and his pencil. When I got around to the point where I wanted to make the killing stroke, I called the chapter and the verse and the book and read it, and there were three of four of those men that he had been trying to lead off there and had their Bibles. They had had their Bible meting in the morning and stayed around there attending service. Then I read the same scripture that I had quoted three weeks before and then I turned to him. I said, "Now, as you value the salvation of your soul and the honor that you should bestow upon Jesus Christ who sent the Holy Spirit, don't ever again dispute that part of God's word." The man looked as though he wanted to get out of sight somewhere but he couldn't. All eyes were upon him and the church was full, even the windows were open high and they were full. The schoolhouse was packed full and they even sat in the wagons outside looking in. The next morning that same man had left the neighborhood between Sunday night and Monday morning with the wife of another man and he never came back to that neighborhood. I went to the work at Quincy because of a special call. Two young men, George James and Vol Pinik were converted in a meeting held by the United Brethren at Pleasant Valley which is located across the Verdigris river about a mile west of my home at Quincy. They had been immersed, baptized, by the United Brethren minister and they had been in the house of Pinik's sister changing their clothing and the minister came in and went up stairs to make his change. While up there Pinik's brother-in-law, husband of his sister, went up and in their conversation about baptism, the minister said that he hoped he never would have another call for that kind of foolishness again. He always dreaded it and he was in hopes they would get enlightened enough so that they wouldn't insist upon it. Now, here's what he told Mr. James and Mr. Pinik; that he was always glad to immerse people when they wanted to be immersed because he was immersed himself and after they had heard that conversation they just declared they wouldn't stay in that church. There was quite a little Baptist church in that neighborhood but they hadn't a minister, hadn't had for a long time and they begged of me to come over and hold a meeting and stir up the church to the work. I went over and held a meeting. We had some seven or eight conversions who all came into the Baptist church and the Sunday that we baptized in the Verdigris river, Mr. Pinik's sister was there, the wife of the man to whom the preacher had made the statement. She came up to where I was and wanted to be baptized. "Well," I said, "I'll call the church together and then you may relate your experience to the church and if they say for you to be baptized and to enter the church, become a member of the Baptist church with your brother, I am more than willing and ready to perform the service." She said, "I don't want to go into the Baptist church. I just want to be baptized. I have been sprinkled and the United Brethren won't baptize me." "Well," I said, "That is a bad fix to be in but I have no authority save the church and when the church tells me that they are satisfied with such an individual and they want to come into the church, I am ready to perform the service, but aside from that I have no authority and we are not taking in washing for other denominations." About that time I got me a good two-seated buggy or, commonly called, a spring wagon, so that I could go of a Sunday and take my family all with me. They came up from Greenwood, that was a school district right south and a little west of where we lived, about four miles off. They came up to Quincy one Sunday and plead so hard for preaching in their neighborhood and by the pressing request of them with Brother Jim Smith who lived at Quincy, I consented to go down and visit them. So I went down and held meetings there about a week. I was a little off to go down there from the fact that it was one of those districts that was controlled a good deal by some four or five young men. The Methodist preacher had been thrown out there and the United Brethren and Presbyterian. When they didn't like the man they would just walk up to him and lead him to the door and escort him. I kind of thought there might be trouble ahead but I was satisfied the Lord had always led me through safely and I trusted to Him. I went down there and the first night there was quite a large turn out. District schools in those days were very large for communities to teach had large families. So I went down on Sunday and preached to them in the morning, also at night and at night I thought best to take an expression of the congregation. I told them I had come down there by request and I didn't feel like forcing myself onto them any further, but I wanted to know how many wanted to have meetings continue during the week and the whole house rose up. These young men were pointed out to me. They rose up with the rest. They had been in the habit of lighting the room with lamps that the neighborhood brought in, so when we went up to the schoolhouse on Monday evening we found nice bracket lamps all around the schoolroom so that the light was splendid. Everybody could see nicely. I was told the next day that these same young men that had always made so much trouble were the men that went and brought the lamps and put them up. Well, we went on through the week, and a splendid meeting, but I was tied up so I couldn't stay any longer and then an old deacon, I can't recall his name, I well call him Deacon John, arose up and made a motion that the membership and congregation would request Mr. Mickel to come back and preach to them a week from the next Sunday if he could. Everybody in the house rose up and the vote was all one way. So I had that point on my hands and I had to shape my work so as not to conflict as I had to work at home some of the time if I could, in order to make a living for my family, but from that time on all through that fall and winter we held regular service at Greenwood every two weeks and the congregation was splendid. Everybody seemed to be interested and there was a question about whether to organize a church or not. I looked the ground all over and concluded it wasn't best; that a church and one at Quincy couldn't exist a great while. They paid me a little for my labors with them and every two weeks we would load in all of our family and drive down to Greenwood. Nights I generally went alone. One Sunday after holding morning service down at Greenwood, we came home. There was quite a little snow on the ground, enough so that the ground was covered nicely and while I was putting out the team I saw tracks in the snow. They were a good deal too large for chickens, of course we had chickens running all around there, but the tracks were too large for chickens so I thought it must have been either wild turkeys or some neighbor's turkeys had been over there. So the next morning I was out in the cornfield husking corn and my daughter came out and said, "There are some turkeys up in the corral, a whole lot of them, too." So I went up to the house as soon as I could get there but they were flying off. I had no gun that I called a gun at all. It was an old Belgian musket and we always knew when it went off not only by the noise but by the shooting both ways. The next morning I took the gun and set it out by the side of the house and told my wife to signal me if the turkeys came up there. She put out the signal but before I could get around they were gone again. The next morning I did the same thing and she put out the signal at another point. I got there, got my gun, got around behind the corn crib and it was a beautiful sight to see that flock of turkeys. Oh, how I wished for a double barreled shot gun. I crawled up by the corner of the corn crib, about four rods from where the turkeys were. I waited a little for them to bunch up together but they didn't bunch, they were going one by one. I said, "Here's my only chance." I pulled the trigger and dropped a good large turkey. Had I known as much then as I do now about turkeys I might have gotten the whole bunch by building a rail fence with an opening at the bottom with rails at the top, so nothing would get out. They would go in at the bottom, then I could close the hole and I would have the bunch. But I didn't know that. We had a splendid feast on wild turkey. That same winter there was quite an uncommon occurrence on our neighborhood. There was a young lady lived about two miles north of us and a young man by the name of John James was trying his level best to marry her. Her folks were opposed to it and wouldn't let her go out with him any more so they planned to have a little romance with it and she was to climb out of the upstairs window and he was to meet her at a certain place and they would be married. The first attempt failed. Her folks got track of it and blocked it. The second attempt succeeded and one night about eleven o'clock his brother William, a boy about fourteen years old came down to my house, woke me up and wanted I should come right up to their house as John and the girl were going to be married. They wanted me to come up and marry them. Mr. James was a member of the church at Quincy I said, "You tell John I will not be there. I don't do any of that kind of work and the justice-of-the- peace lives a mile south of him right on the road there and he can go down there and have the justice-of-the-peace marry him." "Well now," William said, "John expects you. He said he told you some time ago he wanted you to marry them when they were ready." I said, "Yes, but I didn't promise him and I have no promise to break and if I had I would not keep it under such circumstances and you tell him I will not be there and he had better go down to the justice-of- the-peace," which they did and were married. In the fall after we got our corn all husked and in the crib, we went out with the lumber wagon one afternoon, my wife and all of the children went out into the timber to gather black walnuts. We were about an hour and a half at the job. We drove in and we had the big wagon with the side boards for holding corn, we had it a good deal more than half full of black walnuts with the shells on. We had a fence only about twenty feet from the house, a rail fence and we backed the wagon around at the fence and then we dropped the black walnuts all out in a pile in the corner of the fence. They laid there all winter and we had black walnuts when we wanted them and there was a lot of them left when it got so warm in the spring that black walnuts weren't very good. Our Daughter always took special privileges when she went to church with me. She always took her seat up on the rostrum along with me and in prayer she would always kneel down and when the prayer was ended she would always say "Amen." She would never annoy anyone, she would never make any disturbance of any kind, but sit there and pay the closest kind of attention all through the service. We finished up that winter. The next summer was our hardest summer that we ever had, I think. The health of the entire family was extremely poor. Hartwell was sick for over three months that he wasn't able to do anything hardly as to be about and Fred was attacked with chills and he kept having chills until he had a congestive chill in which he came very near dying. He had been sick with a chill all the forenoon and when I came in to dinner, had washed and we had sat down to dinner, the bedroom was right off from the dining room, a little way, and we hardly commenced I think yet. I heard a noise, an unusual noise in the bedroom. I went in and I saw at once that Fred was just as near gone as could be. I at once sent for the doctor but didn't wait for the doctor to come. We had camphor and cayenne pepper in the house. I took the spirits of camphor and the cayenne pepper and we commenced chaffing him with that until by the time the doctor got there, which was not to exceed a half hour, we had gotten him so that he began to look quite like a living person. The doctor stayed with him all that afternoon and he gave him large doses of quinine every hour. He said if he could get quinine enough down him, he would be able to head off another chill on the morrow. He said, "If he takes another chill, he will never come out of it." He stayed and gave him quinine and left large quinine powders to give him through the night. By midnight he began to look quite like himself. The next day the doctor came over and said he wouldn't have another chill but we kept giving him the quinine. That was the last of congestive chills. He didn't have any more. To stay there was because we had been making money even since we had gone onto the place but the doctor's bills, the inconvenience of sickness and the disagreeableness of being sick was more than I could stand so I concluded that simmer that I would sell out if I could before another summer. I had several offers but they didn't suit me. It was part down and if I sold I wanted to sell for cash. The field of work was an interesting field because they were all good people. We went all through the summer without having any serious sickness. Along in the fall a man living about a mile from me said he wanted the place. I told him how he could get it. "Well," he said, "I can make it," so we made a fair square contract and along about November he bought the place and I gave him a warranty deed and I gave him possession the latter part of March all understood and all agreed. Then I began to shape myself to know what to do. To stay there I couldn't; while I liked the place and it was the only place I had ever been where I made money out of my work, we always had what there was in the cut and plenty of it but to go out and farm on the prairie on shares I couldn't do that. To go back into the town I didn't see any show whatever for making a living so I kept along at work and studying, trying to find out what was best to do. Along in February I got out bills, notices for my auction sale and before that month was out my brother-in-law and his wife, my sister, and six children and his brother all came from Michigan and of course came right to me. They knew nothing about my circumstances and it made a pretty big family, so after they had been there a couple of weeks, my wife and myself thought we would go and have a visit over at Otter Creek to Mr. Solomon Ryan and Mr. Neivers and several others that we wanted to visit over there. While we were there and hadn't made our visit more than half, I think it was Fred came over horseback from home to tell us that his Uncle Sam's brother had died the day before. Of course we fixed right up next morning and started home, but he was buried before we got back and I came pretty near getting into the swamp by being a relative. Of course he had to go to an undertaker and get his brother buried. Instead of taking him back to Michigan and burying him with his own folks, he buried him in a little lonely wayside graveyard that I suppose by this time is a farm under cultivation. After he was gone, the undertaker came to me to find out where he could find such a man. I told him he had gone back to Michigan. "Why," he said, "he was a relative of yours, wasn't he." I said, "Yes." "Well," he said, "he told me that you would settle the bill." I said, "He had no authority to say that at all. You as a business man ought to have known better than to take such a promise as I am under no obligations to foot his bills. The man he buried was no relation of mine. I had known him as a boy but he was no relation whatever." And he went back to Michigan with that bill of his brother's burial and his doctor's bill unpaid. But that wasn't all. He put up a story to me that his money was all in drafts and he couldn't get a draft cashed short of Kansas City. He would have to get to Kansas City, borrowed a $20.00 gold piece of me and was to send it back from Kansas City, took my post office address and everything all right and it is coming yet. I never heard from it or him afterward. My sister, his wife, died some two or three years after he went back.