JEREMIAH ABRAHAM MICKEL BIOGRAPHY, WARREN, NEW JERSEY    (part 4)

Copyright (c) 2001 by Stewart J. A. Woolever, Jr. (sjaw@citlink.net).

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JEREMIAH ABRAHAM MICKEL BIOGRAPHY, WARREN, NEW JERSEY

His plan was this.  He got up a petition for me to resign and it was signed by nearly all the
members of his family and nobody else.  There were two or three exceptions.  It was a large
family and they were very wealthy, had large farms, but they were without character from
beginning to end.  I learned about the time that the old man was coming over.  I was at home.
I had been reading my paper, the paper I got from Dallas.

He came in and hemmed and hawed and said he came on some very important business and he would
like my attention.  I told him I was there ready to hear what he had to say.

"Well," he said, "I have circulated a petition and I have it all signed up for you to make your
arrangements so as to resign the pastorate of the church."

I took out my pencil and said to him, "Will you please give me the names of those who have
signed your petition?"  He made one excuse after another until I finally told him, "Mr.
Wilkinson, it looks to me a good deal like this was a Wilkinson family matter.  Now we'll do
this.  We have a business meeting next Saturday afternoon and if you will take your petition
and read it before the church and the majority of the church ask me to resign, I will do it.
Otherwise, I shan't do it.  I have no right to resign unless the church calls for my
resignation and your petitioners are not the church and you are not in a church capacity, and
therefore I shall give it no concern whatever until it comes before the church."

"Well," he said, "I shan't take it before the church."

I said, "Very well, I will make you a proposition.  If you will pay me my salary for the time
until the year is out which is only about three months and give me my house rent, I will lay
the matter before the church about my resignation."

"Well," he said, "we can't come to any agreement, we will wait until a future time."

I said, "Very well, wait as long as you want to."

Before he went away he made a statement that he would see me and tell me what he concluded to
do, but he never came to my house again to make me any proposition whatever.  He stopped me on
the sidewalk, however, and told me what they had decided to do.

"Mr. Wilkinson, how do I know that that is the case?"

"Well," he said, "can't you take my word?"

I said, "Not by any means in this matter.  I can't bank on it nohow."

It ran along for a week or two more.  Then I met him on the street again and he said, "We have
concluded ---"

"Who is this we?"  I said.

He said, "The parties who signed the petition."

"Very well, Mr. Wilkinson, I understand that you and your wife, your sons and their wives, and
your grandchildren are the ones who signed that petition and nobody else."

He said, "Who told you that?"

"It can't make any difference.  I know who signed the petition and I wouldn't take your word on
anything."

I kept right on my pastorate and it never came into a church meeting at all.  They know his
sons, were perfectly acquainted with all of them, and they knew just exactly what I had said
and where we stood.

My pastorate year was out I think in March.  This other organization did their work in February
and by the last of March, when my time would by out, they had everything in good shape and were
holding services regularly once a month.  Just as soon as I got rid of the old organization,
they wanted I should accept the pastorate of their church.  I told them I would not do it and I
didn't.

It went along two months I think, but during that two months they had taken steps to secure a
lot and were making all preparations for building a house.  The trouble with the Holland church
not being a legal organization was that this man Wilkinson had been excluded from the Post Oak
church and had come there and organized this body of their own family and called it the Holland
Baptist Church, while a man who has been excluded in this country cannot be a member of any
other church until he has gone to the church from which he had been excluded, been reinstated
and gotten a letter.  Mr. Wilkenson had not done that and everybody around there knew when he
had been excluded from Post Oak and what the trouble was.

About the first of June, the First Baptist church pleaded so hard with me, and gave a unanimous
call with the exception of one woman, that I consented to take the work.  We went in with our
coats off, sleeves up and ready for business and took the name of the First Baptist Church of
Holland because there was no one around who considered the old Baptist church of Holland a
legal Baptist church.

I think it was, if I remember right, about the second week in July  when we got the house up
and enclosed with temporary seating so that we held services in the new house.  The house was
30 X 46.  The last week in July we commenced a series of meetings, a little organization with
fifteen members, and I think as near as I can remember that meeting ran about four weeks and
when we closed the meeting the membership of the church was upwards of eighty.  We had gathered
in all this element that had been going through Holland to Post Oak.  We had gathered a company
from Dyers creek who lived near enough to come all the time and instead of once a month we met
twice a month, weekly prayer meeting and Sunday school which was strictly Baptist.  Sunday
school had been a union Sunday school and the prayer meeting a union prayer meeting which was
no union about it.

The year before while I was yet pastor at the old organization, the summer before this work
that I spoke of was done, in the year 1889 this new organization and work was started, the year
before in the summer I was able to make a trip to Montgomery, Alabama to the Southern Baptist
Convention, a wonderful body that didn't go there with their slate made, but went there to
worship and have a grand reunion of Baptists of the South. I heard old Dr. Morrow, one of the
grandest old Baptists in the South, who died afterwards and all he had, by his request, on his
tombstone was "A sinner saved by the grace of God."  We had a fine gathering there and the last
day fifteen of us ministers from Texas went down to Pensacola, Florida, which was one of the
side trips of the convention.

We started about nine o'clock in the morning in the month of September and it took nearly all
day to run down to Pensacola through the pinny woods and the white sand.  When we got down
there we all looked as though we had been through a flour mill and hadn't been brushed off.  We
went to a hotel and called for a room and soon the colored waiter came round took us into the
bath rooms, gave us a good wash and brushed our clothes, until they didn't look as though there
had ever been any dust on them.  Then we said to the lady of the house that we would be there
for supper and wanted a fresh fish supper.  We went down to the dock, found a little steam
yacht that would rent to us and we went from there over to fort Pickens about four miles across
the bay from Pensacola.  Fort Pickens at the time of the war of the rebellion was a strong fort
and it was one that the rebels never took, and we had a great desire to go over and see it
because most of the men that were with me at that time were ex-confederates.  We went to the
fort and just one lone man with the blue on had charge of that wonderful stronghold that the
best of rebels couldn't take.  We told him what we wanted that we wanted to go through the fort
and see it.  He said, "All right, the door is open, don't disturb anything, I don't think there
is anything much you can disturb.  I don't think you can move those cannon and you won't hurt
the blackberries if they don't hurt you."

The ground was literally black with those blackberries.  We ate and ate and talked and talked
until the berries got so they didn't taste good any more.  Then we went through the fort and
viewed all the chambers and redoubts and stood by guns that when they lay on the ground we
couldn't walk over them, they were so big.

Then we got aboard our boat that we had engaged and went over to the U.S. Navy Yard but
unfortunately we were late.  We spent too much time in the fort and the flag went down just as
we had to turn around and go out again because nobody is allowed in the yards after the flag
goes down at sundown.

We were five miles from Pensacola.  We got aboard the boat and had a prayer meeting, singing
and praying until we got to the dock again.  The man who owned the boat was a man from Chicago
and while we were singing and praying that man stood there and wept.  He said, "This puts me in
mind of my home in Chicago where my father and mother are good Christian people and where I
used to go to Sunday school and hear people sing and pray.  I will be almost willing to give
you all the time I have been with you this afternoon for the benefit it has been to me."

We thanked him very kindly, paid him and went to the hotel to supper, and such a supper.  Fish,
fish, fish, fish and for just one hour fifteen of us sat at the table.  We were one hour I
think at supper.  We had lobster, we had crabs, we had oysters, we had everything that could be
named in the way of fish and the only regret that we had was that we couldn't eat more.  It
cost us seventy-five cents apiece for our supper.

After supper we went out on the street as the train did not leave until about eleven o'clock
and we thought we would see what was going on.  Soon we ran across a Negro church which was
filled with Negroes and oh, such noise and such a taking on I never did witness in all my life
as there was in that house.  It was a large building and it was packed with the Negro people
and everyone seemed to be perfectly happy, whether it was spirits distilled, of the Spirit of
the Master, we didn't try to find anything about it, but oh, the noise!  We stayed there about
a half hour and then we went back on the porch of the hotel and talked until about time for our
train to leave and then went on board.

The next morning at about ten o'clock we met the train at the junction going from Montgomery to
New Orleans so we changed cars, and went on to New Orleans.  We got to New Orleans the next
morning about ten o'clock somewhere along there late in the morning, and we couldn't leave
there until night because the train on the other side of the river didn't go out again until
near night so we took New Orleans all day.  First we went to Jackson square and Jackson Square
market, which is wonderful to go through.  All kinds of fruit, all kinds of clothing, all kinds
of provisions that ever were thought of were there for sale and it all closes at twelve o'clock
and at one o'clock there isn't a sign of anything of that kind about.  Everything is cleaned
up, the stalls cleaned up and everything clean.

At one o'clock we went to the U.S. Mint where they make the dollars and we went all through
that which was very interesting indeed to see the silver taken from the chunk and put through
the different forms until it dropped out of the mill, the perfect dollar.  We had seen it in
the big chunk of silver that weighed ten pounds, we had seen it in the long four inch slabs of
silver.  We saw it in the round chunks of silver, we saw it go under the great pressure and put
the stamp on both sides at once, and then men with what looked like bushels gathered them up
and took them to the mill, they dropped down below into another vessel, looked a good deal like
a gear box, dropped down in there a perfect dollar, stamped and the little ridges around the
side of it all turned up nice, a perfect dollar to be put on the market.  We offered to give
the man a dollar that we had for one of them as a souvenir, but he said, "No, if you would give
me five for one, I couldn't let you have it.  I can't make any exchange at all.  It is not
lawful for me to do it."

Then we went out on the street took a street car which ran to what is known as West End and in
going out there we passed through the cemetery.  The cemetery is on both sides of that line,
and while we have a beautiful cemetery in all our northern cities and especially in Lincoln, we
can't touch the grandeur of the cemetery at New Orleans.  It is just simply a white city, no
tombs for their burial ground, everything is on top of the ground from the fact that there is
so much water in the ground that they can't dig any graves at all and the tombs are made of
white marble and some of them most beautiful designs.

West End is a beer resort where the underground world of New Orleans meets day and night and it
is no trouble at all for a man to get lost in it.  We saw a man standing at the gate when we
went in and he said to us, "Are you gentlemen acquainted here?"

We said, "No."

He said, "I had better go with you."  So we went around and we were lost a dozen times while we
were in there.  It was made that way on purpose to draw a certain kind of people.

We loaded down pretty well with all of the fruit we could carry.  I brought home some fine
bananas and some fine large pineapples and after we left New Orleans there was nothing of any
importance to our trip that was worth while recording.  We were very thankful to get home.  We
had had a splendid meeting and a splendid trip all the way round.

In October, 1889, we had an invitation to go up and spend a couple of weeks in cotton fields.
A man by the name of Parish, a large farmer living about four and a half miles south and west
of Holland, wanted we should come out there and spend a couple of weeks and our two youngest
children that were with us could learn to pick cotton, and he would pay them regular wages for
whatever they picked.  He was a wholehearted man and a man that you depend on his word just as
thoroughly as you could depend on his note with a good backing.  So we went out on Monday
morning I think and we went direct with the children and his wife and himself picking cotton.

I didn't pick any for two or three days.  I never had picked any cotton at all, in fact the
children had never picked any but we put in that week and my daughter averaged one hundred
pounds a day, William, my son, made from 175 to 200 pounds a day.  The greatest labor there is
about cotton picking is dragging the sack along to put the cotton in.  The sack is made of
heavy decking and is calculated to hold one hundred pounds and not be cumbersome.  It is from
four to six feet long and a strap made of the same material as the sack goes over the head and
across the shoulder.  The sack drags on the left hand side.

We picked the cotton with our fingers out of the bolls and put it into the sack and dragged the
sack along.  Cotton picking is done on the knees, you go on your knees to pick cotton unless it
is a remarkably fine piece it will be tall enough that a person can stand up and pick, but most
of it you have to get on your knees.

Along the latter part of the week I took a notion that I would pick and I picked and got one
hundred pounds in the day.  We went to church on Sunday and let the cotton take care of itself.
Monday we went in again.  It was very fine day, not too hot.  My wife thought she would pick
some cotton too, so she went out Monday or some day during the week and she got fifty pounds
during the day.  We put in the two weeks visiting and picking cotton.  The pleasant part of it
was in the evening when we got through picking cotton when we would have a long visit.

His family consisted of himself, his wife, one son and the son's wife, and his daughter, a girl
probably ten years old.  We spent that two weeks there and went back to Holland.  There was an
abundance of cotton that year and the two children, our youngest son and daughter, made over
eighteen dollars picking cotton around in the neighborhood.  I don't remember now what they
got, but the price was pretty good because there was so much cotton to pick.  There is always a
good price for picking when there is an abundance of cotton.  When the crop is short and very
poor the price of picking cotton is very low because there are more to pick cotton than there
is cotton to be picked.

That fall, not long after that, we had a camp meeting gotten up by Rev. M.T. Martin and several
of the delegates from the different churches around there, Williamson county and also Milan
county, went over to camp on the San Gabriel river.  It was in the neighborhood of twenty miles
from Holland and they gathered together and I think we were there in the neighborhood of three
weeks.  There were some eighteen or twenty different tents and quite a good many tents were
made out of wagon sheds.  Two would join together and take two wagon sheets and make a good
tent and then most of the men folks slept in the wagons nights and the ladies slept in the
tent.

The meeting started in good shape.  There must have been in the neighborhood of eight or ten
ministers of the gospel there at work most of the time.  Rev. Lanford of Bell county was there
and Rev. Maxwell of Bell county and S.E. Whitke of Bell county were in the meeting all the way
through.  It was in a neighborhood where all the people or the big majority of them were
members of the Campbellite church and they told all kinds of stories about what would happen if
we had a camp meeting there.  But we went on with our meeting and had nothing to interfere with
us in any shape or manner except several of the members of our party had what is known as food
poison.  I was sick with it for several days and I don't know that I ever suffered with
anything more that I ever had.  It is a very painful disease.

The meeting was not a very great success as I told them soon after we got there that they
needn't look for anything very great at that time because the other party would do everything
they could to hinder and they did but they didn't hold up at all.  They kept right at work all
along.  But we had our meeting and all went home satisfied that we had a nice outing and a
chance to dispense the truth among a class of people that hold that if they  were baptized they
were all right and if they were not baptized they never could be right.

Our next meeting was what we in the south call a fifth Sunday meeting.  All of the churches
there or nearly all of them out from the big cities have services only once a month.  Every
month they have their Saturday meeting and a covenant meeting and Saturday night, Sunday and
Sunday night.  When it comes to the fifth Sunday in the month, they all gather together at one
place and have what they call a debating school, preaching at the regular hours and there is
also sessions in which questions are brought up and discussed in regard to the Scriptures.
This is called the fifth Sunday meeting.

We had a fifth Sunday meeting soon after we hat through at San Gabriel and it was held at
Temple, Texas.  Temple is in the corner of Bell county where the Santa Fe crosses the M.K. and
T railroad.  Mr. Maxwell was the pastor at Temple and he was a wholehearted man and a splendid
parliamentarian and a splendid student of the Bible.  The great question at that meeting that
was to come up was "Man's free will," that is, man had the ability and the power to will his
condition in this life and in the life to come.  I was put down three months before the meeting
came as the opponent of the principle of free will.

We discussed it for two hours in the forenoon and it was taken up again in the afternoon.  I
had taken the ground that man's will only went as far as he was willing to accept the gifts of
God and after I had occupied about an hour on the subject, a minister by the name of Rev.
Clapp, who was then pastor at a city south of Temple got up.  He said that he couldn't
understand the Scripture that way; that the turning and entering into harmony with God and into
the work of the ministry was just like it was with him before he was married.  He willed to
choose his wife as a companion for life and it was his will that accepted it.

Rev. Maxwell got up and said, "If I was of your opinion in regard to that point, Brother Clapp,
I wouldn't stay among the Baptists twenty-four hours because they don't none of them hold that
doctrine at all."

When I came to find out about this man, Clapp, he had formerly been a Methodist and that
accounted for his free will principle.

About this time in the fall I began to make up my mind that my work in Texas was about
completed.  The main object that I had at hand for changing and coming north was in order that
my two younger children could get a better education than we could give them down there.  Not
but what there were good schools there, but a man needed a good surplus at the bank in order to
keep up the expense of the schools there, because they were all pay schools.  Sometimes there
were three months of free schools provided you would buy the goods for your children to study,
sometimes there were six months of free study; but you always had to pay for the books your
children used.  I was in a quandary as to what I should do.  That was in the later part of
October or the first of November, 1889.  The church house that we had succeeded in erecting was
not yet completed.  I wanted the house finished and I wanted it dedicated about the last work
that I did.

So I began to cast about and lay my plans and we pitched into the work of finishing the church
house.  The church at Belton donated the lead and oil to paint the house inside and out so I
had an estimate of what we would want and they sent it down as freight.  We were in a great
quandary as to how we were going to get the house seated.  We couldn't raise money enough to
seat it with opera chairs or modern seats like they use nowadays, so some of the members of the
church learned of a church in Galveston that had just removed the seats from their house and
were putting in opera chairs.  We at once through the work of Rev. Maxwell at Temple, opened a
correspondence with the church at Galveston, and the number of seats that they had was just
what we would need exactly for seating the house at Holland.  They were all pews which was
common those days, straight back seats.  We could buy all of those seats for sixty-five dollars
and pay the freight on them.  So we went to work and throwing in around and got the sixty-five
dollars, sent it down to Galveston and the seats were shipped to us right along.  But it was a
hard pinch when the seats came to raise the money to pay the freight as the freight was nearly
as much as the seats cost us, but even at that they didn't cost half what they would have cost
if we had bought the lumber and had them made.  We borrowed the money, paid the freight, and
got the seats into the house and then there were four or five of the members that were very
fair carpenters that volunteered to go to work and put them down.  So we had the thing going in
fine shape and while they were putting in those seats and batting the outside as it was boarded
up and down and good old bates, while they were putting that on, I was using oil and lead
outside and getting two good coats of oil and lead onto the outside so that by the time they
had gotten through on the inside, I had the outside painted, the windows trimmed in good shape.

Then the question was how we should finish the inside and of course they had not the facilities
there for plastering that they have here in the north and it cost a good deal more to plaster
those days than it did to ceil with good boards.  So they decided to ceil, went to work, got
the lumber for ceiling and there were only two men working on it that drew any pay, the rest
were volunteer.  By the last of November the house was enclosed, painted outside, ceiled inside
and ready for the paint inside.

By this time I had made up my mind that wanted to come north.  I had had a letter from my son,
Fred, that he would be married at such a time and they would like it awfully well, if we could
get up here in time for that.  So I began to work for that point.

On the first of December I had the painting all done on the inside of the house.  I had grained
the pews imitation of oak and the rest was just a tint of yellow, just a little tint, two coats
all through and the floors were all varnished.  I had made arrangements at that time to have
Rev. J.D. Robinette of Brownwood and three or four other ministers whom I was acquainted with,
Rev. Lanford, Whitke, and three or four others, to be present on Sunday, the eighth of December
to dedicate the house.  It was completed and all of the bills that were still back were
provided for.  Everything was straight and the house was completed.

On the eighth of December or rather on the seventh, J.D. Robinette came down from Brownwood and
the others were all so near that they could get there on Sunday morning.  On the eighth day of
December we dedicated the house to the service of the Lord.  It was a great day for me because
I had made a success through the help of the Lord in establishing a church there upon a solid
bases which the strongest, ablest minister in the county at Belton, N.V. Smith, said could not
be done, and while he himself threw on the wet blankets all he could, he wasn't able to stop it
at all.  Robinette preached a beautiful sermon on Sunday morning.  On Sunday afternoon we had a
mass meeting and made every arrangement for the work of the church, elected all the officers
that were needed to carry on the work, and on Sunday night I preached my last sermon at
Holland, Texas.  The house was filled to overflowing.  After preaching an hour, I called the
members forward.  We had quite a large space in front of the rostrum and they all came up in
front.  Then I stepped down from the rostrum with them on the floor.  We stood together and
sang a hymn after which we all kneeled in prayer and I lead the prayer.  I think I have never
known in all my life an hour that was so full of joy of thanksgiving and of sorrow and regret
as that was that we spent together in prayer.

The next morning, the ninth day of December, I was to see as many as I could before it was time
for me to take the M.K. and T train for the north.  The time was very short because, first, the
days were short, and there was so much to interest the mind to look after, and so little time
to do it that it didn't seem as though it was two hours from the time I got up in the morning
till it was time to go to the depot and take the train.  Three young ladies, the two Misses
Upshawl and Miss Bettie Taylor were at the depot with a score of others and we bade goodbye all
around as the train was coming up, the two misses Upshawl and Bettie Taylor got into the train
and came up as far as Temple with us, and there ended our story of Texas.

I have never regretted that I went to Texas.  I think that my faculties as a leader in the
cause of Christ were better developed in my trials and my sojourn in Texas that they ever could
have been in the north and more than that, the associations of those men in that country who
were Baptists were worth more to me than a three years course in a theological seminary in the
north.  I thought I was a pretty good Bible student when I went down there, but I learned after
being in Texas a while and working with the ministry there that I knew but little and I have
always felt thankful to God that he so turned my mind toward Texas that it was a great benefit
to me.  I wouldn't exchange today what I learned in eleven years work in Texas for anything
that could be bestowed upon me in the north.

We mounted the train at Holland.  We came on north right straight through.  We had no mishaps
whatever and arrived in Lincoln the third day I believe in the morning.  We had to stay in
Kansas City all night and took the train in the morning and came on round by way of Omaha.

We arrived in time for the marriage of our son Fred, spent several days in Lincoln which was
but a small town at that day and in a great boom which it soon got over and received the
detriment of all booms.

On the 23rd of December my wife and I took the train in the evening and went to Marshall,
Calhoun county, Michigan, to spend Christmas time with my brothers and our friends that we had
had there years before.  We left our two youngest children in Lincoln with their brothers and
brothers' wives and brothers' children, aiming to only be gone a month or two in Michigan when
we would have made our visit among our friends and would return to Lincoln and settle down in
Lincoln.  But things didn't work the way we had planned to have them work.

We went back into the town where we had been first made members of the Baptist church.  The old
church house stood there just as it did when we went away in 1871.  Only twenty years had
elapsed while many of the members had crossed the line dividing time and eternity, yet many of
them still remained.  The church through had been quite a while without a pastor which I did
not know about when I went back to Michigan, and as soon as Christmas day was over, they came
for me to preach for them on Sunday.  I told them I didn't come to Michigan looking for work, I
had come north to make a visit to see my relatives and old friends and I expected to go back to
Lincoln, Nebraska after I had my visit made.  They insisted so strongly that I consented to
preach for them on Sunday morning and Sunday night.

The congregation was small to what it was when we went west.  Some had died, some had moved
away, some had gone west like we had, some had gone east, some had worn out with the grace of
God and taken their own course, and the Congregationalists had built them a nice new house and
were really the swell congregation of Ceresco.

The officers called on me again on Monday following the service on Sunday, and wanted me to
promise to preach for them again the next Sunday.  I told them I would let them know in time;
so on Thursday night I went to the prayer meeting and there was a very very light attendance,
very few; but I told them if they would try to get in a congregation I would try to preach for
them again the next Sunday morning and evening.  They went to work and circulated it out into
the southern part of the county and got in a very good congregation on Sunday.

Sunday afternoon they called a meeting of the membership of the church to consider the
advisability of giving me an invitation to stay and take a pastorate of the church.  This was
done and after due consideration I consented to do so.

I entered upon a work that there didn't seem to be any opportunity whatever for building up or
strengthening the membership of the church, and yet I thought as I hadn't sought anything of
that kind that it was the Lord's will that I stay there and preach the gospel to that people,
for many of them were ignorant of.  They had had preaching there ever since the first days, but
there was a great deal of it that wasn't gospel.  So I stayed and worked and I found that I
wasn't going to make ends meet unless I could manage some way to earn something during the
week.  So of course, being a painter by trade and having worked at it for a number of years
from boyhood up (when I went to the army I laid down the paint brush and when I came back from
the army I took it up again), when the little salary of $600 didn't cover so that I had any
surplus (my two younger children were coming on to an age when it would take more means to care
for them properly) I opened a room and went to painting buggies.

From that a man by the name of John Fampton, a member of the church, wanted to be a car
manufacturer, so he was making the paint for the cars, and they all had to be painted, so he
wanted I should work for him.  He paid me fair wages, but was a very disagreeable man to work
for because he didn't know anything about the business he thought he knew all about.  The last
half of the second year and a part of the third year I worked for Mr. Fampton most of the time
during the week, sometimes five days during the week and things were going along nicely.

There were some of the leading members in the church, however, who thought that everything that
they were members of had to be advertised from the pulpit every Sunday.  We had two good county
papers that were published every week and they would come with six or eight notices of meetings
of different societies during the week or the coming week.  Because I didn't want to make the
pulpit a bulletin board and told them so, some of them got quite warm in regard to the matter
and I saw that my course of Christianity and dispensing of the Bible didn't agree with those
that wished to be the leaders in the society of the surrounding country.  So when I thought I
had stayed long enough in Michigan, I tendered my resignation to take effect at such a time,
the first Sunday in May, and they wanted to know if they brought it before the church and the
church voted no, if I would go anyway.  I told them I would go anyway, it was not a matter of
courtesy because the gospel of Jesus Christ didn't consist in courtesy, it was "Yea and amen."

At that time I had on my hands a horse, a good cutter and enough worldly goods that I had
accumulated in two and a half years to fill a car, and I paid eighty dollars for a car to carry
my goods from Ceresco, Michigan to Lincoln, Nebraska, where I arrived safe and my family about
the middle of May.  William, my youngest son, who now lives at Cedar Rapids, Iowa, came with
the goods, watered and fed the horse and chickens.  We got here at night over the Burlington
all right in the evening.  He arrived the next morning with the freight.

In May, 1892, I arrived at University Place, Nebraska.  I had quite flattering prospects ahead
according to what was said by parties.  I had two houses in view, but the real estate sharks
would much rather dispose of the place known as the John Penn house.  I looked it over.  I
thought it would do very well to house me and three children that I was then making a home for.
I contracted to pay $1100 for it in installments.  I had advanced quite a little in years and I
thought I had all my eye teeth out, but I soon found out that the installment plan was a
killer, that I was paying an interest that if I should succeed in paying it out, I would have
paid about $2200 for a property that wasn't worth at the very outside $800.  Still I went right
on, but I found that every time that I paid up the interest and the amount of principal that I
had agreed to pay, I didn't have any left.  Still I managed by borrowing and working to not get
very deep in debt for groceries or wearing apparel.

I thought that University Place would some day be a nice town.  It was the school of the
Methodist Episcopal church and everything at University Place had to drift toward that body.

Jim Baldwin was one of the parties who controlled a large amount of property in University
Place real estate.  He was a real estate gambler and another man, whose name I can't remember
now, the two of them worked very close together.  To have met Mr. Baldwin as I did on the
streets without any acquaintance or any information from anyone, one would have thought that he
was an extremely wealthy man, carry around several ten and twenty dollar gold pieces in his
pocket and having them out in sight frequently.  I had it as a fact from his own brother-in-
law, Dr. Williams, that he was a great spendthrift, that he told Williams that his expenses at
the house were ten dollars a day, and he was president of the bank that was there in University
Place.

Another man came in from Ohiowa and those parties, Baldwin and Co., orated him around as a very
wealthy man and a capitalist.

Baldwin and been driving a six hundred dollar pair of horses and this man from Ohiowa soon was
in possession of the pair of horses.  I watched them a little and the more I watched them, I
found out the more they needed watching.

I had the promise from Baldwin and from several others that if I located in University Place,
they would organize a Baptist church right off and to work and build a house and I should have
the pastorate of the church, a good fair prospect from outside appearances of a beneficial
work.  It ran along for a year before there was anything done.  A few of the Baptists got
together, Dr. Merryman and a few others got to work and organized a Baptist church, but there
seemed to be a log in the way of the work all the time.  I discovered that these parties who
were prime movers in University Place, this man from Ohiowa was a Baptist and Baldwin and
Baldwin's father and mother were Baptists, and the wife of Baldwin's real estate partner was a
Baptist, and he, her husband, was a Methodist.

So after a year of so holding meetings in the schoolhouse at University Place and just about
half, hardly half, coming, they decided they would build a house.  They went to work and bought
a lot and built on it according to Baldwin's ideas and his directions a long, low building.  I
think that the building was never dedicated but I had the honor of baptizing the first and I
guess the last Baptist in University Place.  They built a Baptistery under the rostrum and they
planned to have steam pipes run through it, but the man wanted to be baptized and he gave good
evidence of being a converted man and I baptized him.  Everybody thought I would get swamped,
but I had no trouble in baptizing him at all.

Then the question came up in the church, and it was for a long time unsettled instead of
standing up boldly as Baptists ought to , they wanted to do things so they would be in harmony
with the other denomination who was boss of University Place.  We had a revival meeting and
through Baldwin and his partner's wife, they got a man by the name of Smith from Iowa who was a
Holiness man and everything run after him at first and finally he went under and in the state
of Iowa was deposed from the Baptist ministry.

In the third year that I was in University Place, I joined the Grand Army of the Republic.  Up
to that time I had never belonged and after I had joined and attended meetings for six months I
wished that I had never joined it from the fact that I had nothing to do.  There were a number
of men there who were officers in the Post and everything was according to rules and
regulations, nothing done to make it interesting for anybody, but they finally got a change
after a number of years and they have a better Post now.

I think I was in University Place about five years.  In 1896 I think it was when the terrible
financial crash came upon all parts of the US. I then made up my mind that I had been long
enough in University Place.  I got a small work at Cortland in the southern edge of Gage county
so I moved down there in March, 1896, but the financial crash was so great and the great hue
and cry was free coinage of silver and the presidential campaign created so much strife between
man and man that I made up my mind that as soon as opportunity came that I would change to
somewhere else.

My son, William, had secured a job in Omaha on the Western Newspaper Union and after he had
been there perhaps a year, he requested that if I could do so to move to Omaha so that he could
have a home.  He didn't like boarding and having no place that he could call home.  I finally,
in the spring, concluded that I would make an effort to help him along and he would probably
help me some.

I went to Omaha, I secured a house next door to Mr. John Dolan.  John Dolan owned the house.  I
paid a half month's rent in advance so as to hold the house.  I moved to Omaha, got settled
nicely and was in a very pleasant neighborhood and was living there at the time of the great
Trans-Mississippi Exposition.  I found good friends in Omaha, plenty of them.

We put our letters into the church on the corner of South Tenth street and worked with them and
I supplied for about every Baptist church in Omaha while I lived there and that helped me along
nicely so that I didn't suffer nor I didn't get in debt.

After the Exposition was out, it was that winter that Edward's wife went to Texas to be gone a
good share of the winter.  Ed wrote me and wanted to know if Mother and I couldn't come over to
Lincoln and keep house for him while she was gone.  We didn't see any reason why we couldn't.
My son William, had by this time gone on a job that he secured at Cedar Rapids, Iowa and our
daughter was doing very well at the dress making business.  So we came over to Lincoln and we
were getting along nicely when Ed took in his mind that he would like to have the walls in his
kitchen painted and wanted to know one day if I would do it for him.  I didn't see any reason
why I shouldn't and told him to get the material and I would put it on for him.  The first day
that I was working at it , I was filling up the holes and the cracks in the wall with putty,
using my thumb for a great deal of it and several times during the day I felt a sharp pain in
my thumb.  I couldn't see anything the matter with it and it ran along for several days, kept
getting worse until it developed into a real, full-fledged felon.  I had all that I could tend
to then without doing anything more at painting the walls.  In about a week, it got to be very
painful.

About that time a carbuncle started on the front of my leg, below my knee, nearly two inches
across when it got matured.  I had both at the same time to take care of.  I don't know, I
never did know how I got through but I do know from that on we had no pleasure and it kept me
in severe pain on until up to the middle of February when I had made up my mind that I would go
over to Cedar Rapids and occupy the house that William had secured for me.  So I had our
daughter go over to Omaha, pack up our things and ship them to Cedar Rapids.

The night we left Lincoln for Cedar Rapids was as cold a February as I have ever experienced.
It was a number of degrees below zero but our goods had gone and it was absolutely necessary
that we should go.  We went over the Burlington to Ottumwa and at Ottumwa we had to go across
to the Milwaukee depot.  We got there and found no fire in the depot but a passenger car out on
the track was fitted up for people to use as a waiting room.  The furnace had given out and was
out of repair in the depot and the only way to make the people comfortable was to heat up a
passenger car and house them in it.  We stayed there until two o'clock in the morning, took the
train and went on up to Cedar Rapids, arriving there at seven o'clock in the morning.  It was
cold, and I was suffering the pain of my thumb and of my shin and we went to our son Jesse's
house (he was living there then and stayed for a few days until it moderated and we could get
around.

I had many very choice friends at University Place, one especially was the grocery keeper, Rude
Daily.  He was the support of the University almost during the terrible financial crisis.  Many
of them went to the store and were supplied with things to live on when they hadn't a dollar in
the world to pay him with, but he was one of those men that it would be better by and by and it
was, and he finally came out all right after losing a great deal, but he had been the stay of
that town for three or four years.

An old Englishman, who was a wall-digger, by the name of Hansacker, a fine old man, a good
friend to everybody and a man that I appreciated very much even to this day, and with score of
others, it was very pleasant for me to be in University Place, but it was not of financial
benefit.

When I arrived at Cedar Rapids, the weather was so cold that they had to let the water run at
the hydrants in the house to keep it from freezing and it took a whole day to get straightened
out so that we could see that there was a place to live.  Fair weather came after while and we
went on.

About April, I think it was, that our daughter got it into her head to marry and she married
over at the county seat.  We continued on, occupying that house through that summer.  During
the summer Hartwell, our second son, plead very strongly for us to come down to El Paso, Texas,
in the fall and stay through the winter.  I didn't know how we could, but our boys got their
heads together and October I think it was we came over to Lincoln, stayed two or three days,
and took the train for El Paso, Texas.  We arrived there in due time, no accidents on the road,
spent the winter in a fairly pleasant climate, but the society of the city generally was to the
bad.  While there we went to church every Sunday almost and it wasn't only a few weeks till we
found that the church was in debt and that they were trying with the aid of the pastor to lift
the debt from the church property.  I there put a little money, ten dollars, into the southwest
corner of the state of Texas to help those people to raise their money and pay off the
indebtedness from their house.

We stayed until about the middle of March and in that locality everything is advanced spring.
The peach trees were in bloom, the grass was green and nice, everything looked very fine.  We
concluded that we would start for home and did so I think about the middle of March.  The first
day out, on the Texas Pacific road, we went right along and the first night was all nice,
everything going along fine until about daylight, good fair daylight, we had a collision.  The
west bound passenger ran into the east bound passenger at a switch in a hollow where both
trains were on a down grade.  The west bound was to take the switch, the east bound had gotten
there on the main line and was standing waiting for the west bound to come up and take the
switch.  After a time it was noticed that the west bound was coming.  It was quite a steep
grade and in coming down that grade the west bound couldn't stop.  It was said that the brakes
failed to work, something went wrong with them and it ran into the locomotive of our train
which was standing still.  Had we been going at the same rate the west bound was going, there
would have been a fine pile of kindling, but it injured our locomotive pretty badly so that it
wasn't able to go. The front trucks had knocked around almost across the tracks.  A large hole
had been made in the boiler and the car that we were in was the third one from the locomotive
and while we felt the great jar very sensibly, it broke the glass in the door on the east end
of the car, and my wife picked up a piece of the glass and kept it as a souvenir of that wreck
for a number of years.

We got into Fort Worth, the wreck was about 150 miles from Fort Worth, we should have gotten
there a little after noon.  We got there just about a half hour of sun.  There we took the Rock
Island for Columbus, Iowa.  We should have gotten to Columbus the next evening at four o'clock,
but losing time and getting behind, the weather getting cold, we didn't get to Columbus until
daylight of the second morning out of Fort Worth.  The thermometer registered six degrees below
zero and it was quite a change from peach blossoms and green grass to ice and snow covering
everything with a dilapidated depot full of all kinds of travelers.  We waited until nine
o'clock in the morning for our train for Cedar Rapids.  The snow was flying, the wind was
blowing, the cold was sufficient for any kind of zero weather.  We arrived after noon and were
housed in a good room and felt as though we had quite an experience on our homeward trip.  I
think that was in 1901.

Soon after we came back I found there was a small, new cottage just completed on Mt. Vernon
Ave. about one block from where my son, Jesse, lived on the same avenue.  I went to the man who
was a clerk in the banking house of the Rapids to ascertain if he could let it.

"Why," he said, "I haven't offered to rent it.  I have it for sale."

I said, "How much do you want for it?"

"Thirteen hundred."

Property was very high there and I said, "How much time would you give on it?"

"Fix the time," he said, "just to suit you.  Any way that suits you will suit me."

So we arranged and I talked with my son, William, about it and we concluded we could make it
all right and by my son's help, we were able to make the payments whenever they came due and
kept the interest all up.

About the second year, it was in 1902, my brother died in Michigan and the folks were very
anxious that I should be down there to the funeral.  So we concluded we would go providing I
hire a little money.  It came at a time which was the end of the quarter and I didn't have much
change on hand.  We succeeded in borrowing from a relative and my son, William, went with us to
that funeral and while we were there, the next day after the funeral or the next day but one,
we got a telegram that our daughter would be home from Minneapolis at such a time and all we
could do was simply to make our arrangements to leave for home the next day where we arrived in
good shape and her little boy Mark awaiting our return.

In the spring of 1903, Congress passed a bill raising the pension of all invalid soldiers.  I
expected like the rest to get a raise probably of $10.00, that was generally what they raised
them, but while I was waiting to hear from them, I got word from the pension office to go to
the examining board in Cedar Rapids and be examined, a thing that I had never been asked to do
since I had been a pensioner.  I didn't know what it meant, but I thought it was worth while
doing, so I went down found the board and the first day I didn't get examined because there
were so many ahead of me.  The second day I went down, I found that the board were all army men
who had been surgeons in the army and when my name was called they examined me thoroughly and
the oldest surgeon who was examining me found out that the cuticle under my left arm was so
tender that I couldn't possibly wear an artificial arm.

"Why you can't wear an artificial arm."

I said, "No, I tried it but it didn't work."

Then he said to the clerk, "Put this man down for full pension."  In about a week's time I got
my full pension which I should have had for years and years before.

That fall William, our son, took it into his head to marry and marry he did, a lady who had
been a school teacher most of her life.  Her father was wealthy, living with his second wife,
and she was the only daughter and no sons.  I think it was the first he was married, in the
fall, and I think in the spring following her step-mother was thrown out of the buggy on the
crossing the island at Cedar Rapids and killed almost instantly.  Of course that made a change
all round.  William and his wife had been living in the house that William bought as he paid
most of it, and her father wanted them to move over across the river to his home and keep house
for him.  They did so.

We stayed until the next spring, in 1905 I think it was, that we concluded that we would move
to Lincoln again.  I wrote to my son, Jesse, who lived then on south Sixteenth, to find me a
house as I was coming to Lincoln the first of April.  He secured the house on south Fifteenth
and held it for me until we came over.

One object we had in coming to Lincoln and locating was to be as central as we could for the
children when they wanted to come home and make a visit.  So I secured 1832 on south Fifteenth
street.  On April 1, 1904, I took possession of the house number 1832 south Fifteenth street.
My wife had stayed at Omaha with our daughter while I got the house cleaned up and our goods
moved in.  I think about the fifth of the month I went over to Omaha after my wife and we
returned the next day.  I started in on a flat $15.00 a month rent that included everything.
There was no gas in the house and no light only by lamp.

About a year or so after that the property changed hands.  David Moore, and old man of the
city, purchased it at which time he wanted me to pay the water rent.  I told him no, I would
not.  I had contracted for the house at $15.00 straight and if he wanted $15.50 I would find
some other house.  So he concluded, as he had been notified that I was a good renter, that he
had better let it stand just as it was.  Everything went on smoothly for two years, had no
trouble with anyone and had but very few callers after the property had changed hands.

I think it was in 1906 Mr. R.R. Randall, an old soldier, purchased some real estate on that
block and on that part of the block, only one house between his property and where I lived.
The old man used to come and make me a visit nearly every day because he was up improving his
property a good deal of the time and he always came over and saw me and we got to be good
friends.

Along in the summer he got to teasing me to join Farragut Post.  I told him that I belonged out
at University Place, that my membership was out there and I didn't know that it was best for me
to change it.  He kept working at me and I kept working off, but he was the stronger worker and
finally induced me to make the change.  So I went out to University Place, got reinstated, got
my transfer, brought it down to present to Farragut Post, I think it was in August, 1906.

That year the GAR national encampment met at Minneapolis, Minnesota.  I secured by Mr.
Randall's assistance the delegateship from Farragut Post to that meeting.  At that day Captain
Bax was also an active member in the Post and he insisted on my going because he was going and
then he had a daughter there that he was going to stay with and he had her invitation to bring
all the old soldiers he wanted to.  So I went to Minneapolis on the Great Western line and it
was a hard jaunt.  We left here at six o'clock in the evening and got to Minneapolis the next
morning about ten o'clock, rode all night had no chance to get anything to eat until about
eight o'clock we stopped in a little town to wait for another train and got a little something
to eat.

Minneapolis is a very pretty town, but oh, the crowd that was there was immense.  It was
impossible almost to get standing room on a street car and I not being very spry I didn't
undertake to force it any.  The second day was the day of the march.  We had a splendid march,
a long line, and it was three o'clock in the afternoon before we got through.  I made up my
mind that it was too big a crowd for me to be into comparatively alone.  I had not been with
the post but a few weeks and didn't know but few and there were many of the members that went
up there as delegates.  Those who went generally had all they wanted to tend to with their own
affairs.  So I made up my mind to come to my boarding house (the daughter of Captain Bax) told
her I would take my luggage, pay my board and start for Lincoln on the first train out.

So I left Minneapolis that night at nine o'clock and the next day at noon I was in Omaha;
tired, sweaty and hungry.  So I went into a barber shop, got a shave and a wash and a general
clean up and then I went over to a restaurant on South Tenth street and got my dinner of fresh
fish, mashed potatoes, coffee and bread and butter.  That afternoon I took the first train over
the Burlington for Lincoln and arrived home.  My folks were not looking for me at all, but I
found everybody well and all right at home and I was glad that I was home out of the crowd.

At that time we were figuring a little on officers for the coming year.  It ran along until the
time in November when the nominations were made and Mr. Randall was post commander that year.
At the nominations he got up and nominated me as chaplain of the Post.  I tried to back off but
it was no good, so I was elected at the close of 1906 as chaplain of Farragut post and I have
occupied that position ever since.

I found the place that we had located was very comfortable, although very little convenience
about it, but I thought that we could get along only the two of us and so we went along that
winter all right with the exception of my wife being afflicted a great deal with heart trouble.
She couldn't do much of anything and I had about all the work to do and the work of the post
besides.  That year we got along without death or sickness but in the fall of 1907 we had a
very severe trial.

My wife was sick and sown with grippe and for a number of weeks she was in a very critical
condition.  I had to get a nurse and I couldn't raise the means to hire a nurse and woman to
keep house too, so my daughter-in-law, Carrie, found a woman who would come at $10.00 a week,
who would do the cooking and the nursing.  So I employed her and I think it was somewhere about
two months before my wife was so that she could be around the house.

Then we managed to get along in pretty good shape during that year.  The coming year, 1908, we
had no severe sickness.  We got along in right good shape, got all paid up on the back on the
place, and in 1909 I made up my mind I would make application for the chaplainship of the House
of Representatives.  I did so and the comrades at the Post took off their coats and went to
work with a will.  While I was a Republican, the House was Democratic and it was quite a
question how it was that I had secured that.  Mr. A.B. Chamberlain, who died this past year
(1915) was one of my best helpers in getting the position.  One old soldier from Omaha wrote
back that he was for me as chaplain first, last and all the time and it was through him that I
received the appointment in the Democratic House.  There were others who were aiming for it but
they didn't have as good a hold on it as I did.

That winter we went through without any sickness to amount to anything.  The trouble with my
wife's diseased heart we got along with as best we could.  I would get down to the House in the
morning at 9:30, perform my duties there and get home again as soon as I could, and it helped
me very much because I needed it to make up my deficiency that sickness had brought upon us.

All went along nicely for two years.  Old comrade Randall was still alive and old Captain Bax
and all those old comrades and we had a very nice time.  At the next election the Democrats
carried the House again.  I made my application for the chaplainship and received it promptly.

About the time the Legislature convened, my wife was again taken with grippe and soon worked
very close to pneumonia.  Then I had to get a nurse and woman to help do the work.  So I got
along very well without calling  anybody for any assistance that winter during the sickness.
Before the close of the session I had made up my mind, although I had the assurance from many
of the representatives that I could have that position just as long as I wanted it and the
Democrats were in control.  I made up my mind though before the close of the session that there
was nothing in it but simply politics.  The idea of standing there every morning and offering
up to God a prayer was just simply dead form because the law demanded it, therefore it was ,
while there was no solemnity, nor devotion exhibited in the House.  I had known men to stand in
the desk when the prayer began with a cigar in their mouths and at the close they were in the
same shape.  The room was blue with cigar smoke, almost continuously.  So, while I had the
promise of good, substantial men and old soldiers, that I could have it if they were in control
the next two years, before the time came I made up my mind that consequently I could not endure
that any longer.  So I made no application whatever in 1914 because as I told the comrades when
they learned that I was not going to make application for it, I just simply told them that my
conscience as a Christian man and as professor on the salvation through Jesus Christ our Lord,
would not permit me to go into that again.

The Post has been very much improved since I became chaplain of the Post.  The first two years
I let it run along just as it had been year after year.  The comrades that smoked all came in
with the pipes and cigars and they smoked from the time they came in until they went out, a
perfect cloud of tobacco smoke continually.  The third year they nominated me unanimously,
nobody else nominated, and I just felt it was my time to stand up for righteousness and truth.
I told them I had served them two years and if the circumstances would permit I would be glad
to serve another year, but I said, "Under the circumstances I can't do it.  I will accept your
nomination only on one condition.  If this Post will banish smoking of pipes and cigars during
opening services of the Post, I will serve you as chaplain, but if they will continue to smoke
during the hour of opening, I can't stand up before my God, One who I serve, and have my lungs
filled full of tobacco smoke when I approach the throne of Heavenly Grace."

I said nothing further.  They elected me to the chaplainship again without even one vote
against it, and from that time until this present time such a thing in Farragut Post isn't
known at all and the moral condition of the Post is superior to that of any Post out in the
state.

When the state encampment was at Hastings, I don't remember the year now, but I know it was at
Hastings that Major Ferguson introduced me on the floor at the encampment as a candidate for
the department chaplain.  There was another man running for it from Omaha backed by Grand
Island and Fremont.  When it came to a vote, I got almost two votes to his one.  I held it that
year and gave complete satisfaction, so much so that the next year at the state encampment
there wouldn't anybody else run when they heard that I was going to run again.  So I held it
for two years and then I thought I would drop it, but no, I must hang on, so I held it one more
year.  When the state encampment was at Kearney, they were determined to run me in again.  I
told them I didn't care anything about that, it had to go on again.  On the last day of the
encampment in the morning was the nomination of officers.  I got up, got my baggage and took an
early train home so that I wasn't on hand at the election of encampment officers and I have not
been bothered since.

There are some things about the GAR that do not exist anywhere else.  There are ties between
old soldiers that I would almost say are equal to brothers and sons, and in many cases lies
far, far ahead of the brotherhood of the flesh.  I have been chairman of the sick committee of
the Farragut Post for ten years.  During that time I have visited men, comrades in the army, in
all stages of sickness.  I have seen them in their hours of consciousness and there have only
been a very few cases but what have passed away quietly.  Some temperaments are so nervous that
they soon seem to lose all control of themselves.  I could write a large book of incidents that
have occurred at the sickbeds of my comrades while I have been on the sick committee.  Some of
the members of the Post knew exactly the condition of things in my home and they helped me so
that Comrade Jingry was appointed this year as chairman of the sick committee.

I continued living at 1832 year after year.  Old Mr. Moore, the man who owned the property,
passed away, and his son Jesse Moore was the head to whom I continued to pay rent month after
month.  By 1914 they got anxious to sell the property and people were coming from near and far
and looking the property over and every day nearly we were pestered with people to look the
house over.  Finally I saw that they were going to sell and it then got to be the latter part
of August and I didn't think it best to stay there although they wanted me to and be sold out
in the winter and then be unable to get a house that would suit me.

I knew of a house on 1455 Poplar street that if it was going to be vacant I thought I would
change.  I saw the property.  The man who owned it, Gifford, said it would be vacant the first
of September.  I said, "That suits my hand exactly.  My time will be out the first of September
where I am and I want to change."  So I made the change and moved to 1455 Poplar, September 1,
1914.

In 1913, September, my wife and I took a trip to the South by the way of Omaha, Louisville and
Nashville.  Nashville is where my son, Edward P. Mickel, lives and my wife went down there and
stayed with him while I went on down to Chattanooga, Tennessee, to attend the Grand Army
national encampment.  It was a great affair although the weather was very unpleasant, for it
rained just enough to make it disagreeable to be out.

On the last day of the encampment William Gifford, Tom Majors and another comrade from Pawnee
City and myself about four o'clock in the afternoon went up on top of Lookout Mountain by the
incline way.  That was a cable car that was hauled up the almost perpendicular side of the
mountain.  When I got up and was about to step out of the car, the thought occurred to me; what
foolishness on our part to take those chances when we could have taken a trolley car, gone
about nine miles and gotten on top of the mountain without any chances of accident, and I said
to the comrades, "The next time I make such a fool move as that, I hope somebody will be on
hand ready to kick me."

The next morning I left Chattanooga for Nashville, Tennessee where I had left my wife.  I got
up there along late in the evening.  My son had been down waiting for me at the depot but I was
on the next train and he didn't know that there was another train following.  I got off the
train, went up onto the street, and I met a postman.  It occurred to me to ask him what car to
take to get out to West Side Park.  He told me, "I am going right out there and you get on the
car where I do."  We went out, I took the lay of the country and took the street I thought I
should, and I was right, went right up to my son's house and found them all right, eating
supper and not expecting me out there that night.

We had a very pleasant trip going down all the way, but coming back it was a very heavy task.
We took a sleeper at Nashville and came on to St. Louis.  At St. Louis we took a sleeper to
Omaha, but we were alone.  We had nobody we could be sociable with at all and it made it very
unpleasant trip.

Instead of going to Omaha, we got off at Council Bluffs and spent some three or four days with
our daughter and rested up before coming on home.  We got through all right.  We had a very
interesting trip and had no accidents and arrived home safe and sound.

We passed a very pleasant winter in our new location. found excellent, good neighbors all round
us and on our left one door from us found an old comrade and his wife who were Michigan people,
and Mrs. Price was born and raised in the county west of the county where we lived in Michigan.
We were in Calhoun county and she was in Kalamazoo county.  We had many very pleasant chats
together and on the whole they were among the very best of neighbors.  Mr. Wm. Gifford, a
comrade of the GAR, is a whole-hearted man and we have spent many pleasant hours with Mr.
Gifford and his family.  They are number one without alley.  We have many, many dear friends in
Lincoln that we cannot go to visit because of the weakness of my wife's condition all the time.

In 1915 my regiment, the Twentieth Michigan Infantry, had a reunion at Ypsilanti, Michigan, on
the 16th of September.  I had been for years wanting to go and meet the old regiment but
something always occurred that didn't help to forward my desires at all, but this year it
seemed to be all fixed just right.  I told my son, Fred and his wife, that I wanted awfully to
go but how could I go?  What could I do to have my wife taken care of while I was gone because
I wanted to be gone in the neighborhood of two weeks?  They said, "If you want to go, we will
come and take care of Mother while you are gone."  So they volunteered their services and I
went to Ypsilanti to meet the Grand Army boys and members of the old Twentieth Regiment.

I left Lincoln on the night of the 14th of September, 1915.  I arrived in Chicago in the
morning, took a transfer over to the Michigan Central depot and at 1:30 PM I was in Battle
Creek, Michigan.  About the thing I wanted the worst at that time was something to eat as I had
only had a light lunch in Chicago for my breakfast.  I went into a restaurant and had a good
dinner.  Then I went over to the barber shop, got a wash and a shave so that I got rid of a
good deal of the car dust.  At 2:10 I got onto the interurban that runs between Battle Creek
and Marshall.  I got off eight miles east of Battle Creek and one mile north of Ceresco, county
of Calhoun, state of Michigan.  I walked over to Ceresco where my brother , the only brother I
have, resides.  It had been fourteen years since I had seen him and it was a real enjoyable
meeting as he and myself are the only ones left of the family.

I spent the afternoon and the evening with him, aiming to start the next morning for Ypsilanti
to meet in the reunion of the old Twentieth Michigan Infantry, and I was more than rejoiced
when he told me that he and his wife were both going down there with me.  We got onto the
interurban at Ceresco, but we had to change cars at Jackson because the car we were on was a
local and at Jackson our local didn't go any farther.  So we took a limited at Jackson and we
whirled down to Ypsilanti so that by ten o'clock we were at Ypsilanti.

The boys turned out fine, had a splendid reunion and everything was in the best of order.
Upwards of two hundred old comrades of the regiment besides their wives, their children, a good
many of them were present.  I there met the old commander that led the brigade charge in the
terrible battle that we had at Spottsylvania Court House when the brigade charged the rebel
stronghold.

I also met Henry Walkenchaw, a member of my own company, Company I, and many of the other boys.
Dinner was served at one o'clock and I couldn't stay after dinner because my brother and his
wife wanted to get back home before night.  So I bade the boys all goodbye and got onto the
interurban, went back to Jackson.  At Jackson I took a local for Lansing at six o'clock in the
evening.  I should have been at Lansing before dark but it was the county fair. the Jackson
county fair was in full blaze and the crowds were so great that it took us a half hour to get
past the fair grounds and out on the open track, so it was considerably past dark when I got to
Lansing, and it was raining quite a sprinkle of rain.

I had my sister's-in-law address, and I ran down on Michigan Ave. to about the center and I
asked the conductor if that was the best street where they made the stops or whether they went
on to a regular stopping place.  He said, "Our stopping place on Michigan Ave. is all the way
from the capitol down to a certain hospital" that was on there.  I told him where I wanted to
get off and I got off.  I didn't seem to know anything about where my folks were living so I
went over to the sidewalk and a man that was spieling for a picture show I think a big sign out
on the sidewalk.  I thought it would be a good place for me to make inquiry.  I went up to him,
very much of a gentleman, I told him what I wanted.

"Well," he said, "it is about five blocks down the avenue here to the street you want,
Bingham."

I didn't know anything about the city, and I said, "Bingham street is five blocks from here?"

He said, "Take the next car."

I said, "I don't want to bang around in the dark, I don't know the way out to their place."

He said, "I will fix you up.  I will call a taxi."  Soon the taxi came and twenty-five cents
took me to the door and not only there but he helped me onto the porch.  They knew I was coming
but they didn't know what time I would be around, so it was a time of rejoicing.  My sister-in-
law and niece and Mr. Mott, had a great time, got me a good supper and entertained me like a
lord.  The first thing they wanted to know was how long I was going to stay and I told my
sister-in-law. that I would stay until I could get away because I hadn't given it a thought.

The next morning my niece came to me and said, "Uncle, I am going to fix up a little package
for you if you are willing."

I said, "I cannot dictate to you in your own house and you will have to fix it your own way and
I'll try to be agreeable to it."

"Well," she said,  "I want a little party tomorrow afternoon, the eighteenth in the afternoon.
I want to invite about a dozen of the old soldiers that are here that we are acquainted with,
some of them belong to the Twentieth, and I want you to meet them and you can't meet them
better than to have them come and have a good visit."

My niece's husband, Mr. Mott, took me across to the fire house opposite their house and
introduced me to all the firemen and I had a grand time visiting with the firemen.  In the
afternoon he came up from the store about four o'clock, took me down to the store and took me
all through, a big wholesale grocery stock, and introduced me to all the proprietors and there
I found out that he himself was vice-president of the organization.  He offered to give me a
box of cigars to use while I was there and another to bring home, but I told him I didn't
smoke, I had quit.  We went back to the house in his automobile and spent the evening just
splendidly.  He and his wife wanted to take me down to a picture show down in town.  I told him
I would appreciate the ride but I didn't care for the show at all so we fixed up the automobile
all full and rode around town all the evening.

The eighteenth dawned beautiful.  Oh! it was a beautiful September morning and I spent the
forenoon in looking over the town.  I went up to the capitol to see if I could find a nephew of
my wife's by the name of Jay Woods.  I hadn't seen him for about forty years and it was a great
surprise to him and it was to me to see how aged he had gotten.  I was the oldest by ten years,
and the men in the Capitol that were there on state jobs told him, "Why," they said, "Woods,
your uncle is a younger man than you are."

"Well," Jay says, "I guess not."

"Well," they said, "but he certainly looks younger than you do."

Jay said, "Well, Uncle, how old are you?"

I said, "I will be eighty-one this November.  I was eighty last November."

"Well," Jay said, "He is almost ten years older than I am."

He wanted I should go right with him down home and have dinner  I told him no, that I had an
engagement for the afternoon and my sister-in-law would expect me to dinner and I would make a
date with him to go on Saturday to visit his wife and have dinner with him.

So I went back.  After dinner, about one o'clock the old soldiers began to come in and I never
in all my life spent an afternoon so completely full of enjoyment as that afternoon was, just
like a cup full, running over all the time.  I met the Commander of the Post and the Chaplain
of the Post and a man by the name of Cook. Comrade Cook, who was a member of the Second
Michigan Cavalry, and by the way he is just a number on man, and he told me a good deal of the
doings of Lansing in the past few years.  We talked over the old times and old occurrences in
the army and one comrade said, "Do you remember Cow Huller?"

"Well," I said, "I do remember Cow Huller."  It was a place on the other side of the river from
Washington near Arlington Heights where we were encamped the first night after we got down
there in 1862, in the fall, in September in 1862.  There was a cow , some boys said it was a
wild steer, that was on the outskirts of our camp.  The boys were in for fun, they had just
come down from home and Jackson and they began to load up their guns and shoot at the animal,
and it wasn't very long till we had quite a racket.  Anyone outside, not knowing anything about
it would suppose that we had been attacked.

The old Second Michigan was returning from the the second Bull Run fight and supposing that we
were being attacked there, that the rebel had gotten around them, the officers came over to see
what the matter was.  There was no harm done, the boys hadn't gotten used to guns enough to do
any harm except to scare the poor cow.

We talked all about that occurrence and at six o'clock, my niece and sister-in-law had their
dinner ready and we went in and if there had been a preparation for a high marriage supper, it
couldn't have surpassed the supper that we had.  It was just grand and we sat there for almost
an hour talking and taking care of that supper.  After we got through, my niece's husband, Mr.
Mott, brought around the automobile, took the Commander and the Adjutant of the Post and myself
into his auto and away we went.

I didn't know where we were going, nothing about it, nothing had been said to me about what was
going to be the evening.  We went and took the Post Commander home.  Then we took the Adjutant
home and at the Adjutant's house as he got out and was going into the house, he said, "Just
hold on a few minutes, I will be out again."  He went in, got his wife and daughter and his
son-in-law, brought them out and introduced them to me and we visited there nearly a half hour
out by the curb, then we took the Post Chaplain home but he didn't say wait, he said, "Come
now, get right out and come in."  So my nephew Mott and myself got out and we all went in and I
got an introduction to his wife and he showed me all through his house below stairs into his
own private den, he called it, where he had all the relics he could accumulate since the war
hanging around on the wall.  I spent over an hour there with him visiting and then we went out,
got into the car and went back up to his home, and while I was tired, yet I was so full of
enjoyment that I couldn't feel tired at all.

The next morning I went over to the other side of the block to see Mr. Cook, but he had gone
down town.  When he came back he phoned over for me to come over in the afternoon and he would
be at home.  I went and spent the afternoon with him.  I never regretted it because he gave me
his whole history from beginning to end and it was just splendid all the way through.  He was
suffering from lung trouble and was not able to do anything any more only to write a little.

On Saturday about ten o'clock I went up to the Capitol and with my nephew I went down to his
house and he has a very nice little German woman and a very fine cook.  We had our dinner and
then it commenced raining and we took chairs out on the porch and we talked over way back in
1860 and 1861 and part of 1862.  Then we had to break off because from that time until the time
I saw him the day or two before, I had never met him.  We spent the afternoon till four o'clock
and we talked about all our relatives, about the mean things they had done and the good things
they had done was very small history.  About four o'clock he took me to the car, paid my fare
and told the conductor to drop me off at Bingham, so that I got back over to my niece's and
sister's-in -law that evening.

That was on Saturday and the next day Mr. Mott had planned that he would show me all there was
of Lansing to be seen with the naked eye.  So his wife and her mother, my sister-in-law, and
myself got into the car and we rode all that afternoon.  When we got in, in the evening, he
said we had been thirty-five miles, the car registered the distance.

On the following Wednesday I had planned to go over to Ceresco to my brother's by way of Battle
Creek.  My sister-in-law said, "I am going, too," so in the afternoon we got onto the Grand
Trunk, went over to Battle Creek, took a local interurban and went up to Ceresco.  On the local
we found my brother's son, my nephew, who works in Battle Creek and we went on together.

I spent the balance of the week visiting among old acquaintances in Ceresco.  On Thursday night
I went down to the prayer meeting and they have a very live pastor and a very solid gospel man.
By the way, I got an invitation from him to preach for them on Sunday and I accepted it and
preached for them on Sunday morning.  It was a very rainy day and my nephew carried me down
with his covered buggy so that I would have no excuse.  The turn-out was very small.  I found
they had made very great changes in the whole house, taken out the old gallery, turning it into
a prayer meeting room below and a class room for Sunday school above.

I spent the balance of the time visiting with my brother, his wife, his children and my sister-
in-law.  I know that was one of the sweetest points in the track of life that I shall always be
glad to remember and look back to with joy.  While I would have been far better pleased, the
enjoyment would have been much greater, had it been so that my wife's health had permitted her
to have gone with me, but we can't have all the good things at once.

I had planned before I left Cedar Rapids, Iowa, that in 1906 if we were spared to live to that
time, we would endeavor to have a reunion of the family at our fiftieth wedding anniversary.
So after I came to Lincoln, I still continued the same plan and I was permitted with my wife to
live to that time, July,5 1906.  I had some invitations printed and sent them out to our
friends east, west , north and south.

When the time arrived the friends came and we had a very enjoyable and pleasant time with one
or two exceptions that I need not mention.  I hired a lady who was recommended as a splendid
cook and she took the whole charge of preparing a dinner for that occasion.  There were present
at that dinner: Rev. L.M. Denton and his wife, and from out of town there were Mrs. J. Marsh of
Ottawa, Kansas, Mrs. Julia House, of Kansas city, Kansas, Mr. Lem Woods and his wife from
Chanute, Kansas.  My son Jesse and his family were then living here.  The children were all at
home with the exception of Ed, my son Ed's wife and one of the children who is now dead, and my
son Hartwell and his wife were both present and all of their children, I think there were six
of them then, five girls and one boy.  I had two great grandchildren but they were neither of
them able to be present.  My son Fred and his wife with their two children were present.  My
daughter Susie, my son William and his wife and son from Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

We had a very enjoyable afternoon and evening.  I appreciated very much the way in which Rev.
Denton managed things as far as was his duty and privilege.  It was very fine.  A nice song was
sung by my son Jesse and his little boy.  The title of the song was "In the Days When We Were
Young."