Robert R. Clough
Americans and Their Labors
At Home, Union County, Iowa
Post Office: Ellston, Iowa
December 19, 1898
I, Samuel Clough, sit down at age 74 to write a few past incidents and memoirs of my life, works and travels.
My father's name was Samuel, his father's name was Daniel (Jobe) Clough My mother's name was Hannah, her father's name was John Philbrick
I was born April 26, 1824 on the same farm where my father was born in the town of Alna, Lincoln County, State of Maine.
After I was of school age, I went to school in summer for a few weeks until I was 9 years old, when I quit summer school and went to winter school for about two months in the year until I was 19 years old. When I was 9 years old I began to plow on my father's farm. I could hold the plow and drive oxen. From then on, my principle education consisted in learning how to work the little farm until December 1 before I was 20 years old.
On December 8, 1843, I shipped on board the ship Ontario with Captain Barstow from Wiscassett to New Orleans, as a green hand before the mast for $8.00 per month. Out of that, I paid 20 cents per month tax to support the Marine Hospital leaving savings of $7.20 as wages. The ship arrived in New Orleans about the third of January, 1844 after a rather pleasant journey. The ship laid there idle until the next summer as I understood afterward. I stayed with the ship until about the 20th of April. I had received one months pay in advance to fit me with some clothing which I needed, but got little money after that. When I left the ship I had $20 due me, but I could get none and I had no shoes, and I owed one dollar to a man who a few weeks before had loaned me the money to have a tooth pulled with which I had suffered for several weeks.
It had been getting rather dull in New Orleans and warm weather coming on and I wanted to be learning seamanship, so I thought I would find another ship and go to sea again. Freighters were low, times on sailors were rather hard, wages were low. The only chance I could find was to go to Liverpool, England on the ship Laura with Captain Show of Bucksport, Maine for $7.80 a month and had to agree to go without any pay in advance. Now, I was going to Liverpool, had no shoes, owed a friend a dollar, but had not so much as one red cent. I had been barefoot for two month, but it was not very cold in that latitude even in February and March but I expected to get up North where I might see icebergs in April. I expected to get money out of Captain Barstow until within six hours of the time appointed for the ship Laura to sail. I worked on the ship Laura three days before she was to sail in the evening. About two hours before she was to sail, I went to the Captain and told him I wanted one dollar, and if he would let me have two dollars, I would be very glad. He put his hand in his pocket and pulled out one dollar and fifty cents and says here take that in such a gruff tone that I dare not say more. So I took it and marched off. I could not pay the dollar and buy the shoes with that, so I decided to pay the dollar (I owed) and went to Europe totally barefoot for want of a dollar to buy a pair of shoes.
It was pretty cold part of the way across the Atlantic Ocean, but I lived through it and quite nicely. That was the last time I was out of money. When I got to Liverpool, the first thing I bought was a good pair of English shoes made to order. They done me more service than any other shoes I ever had. They cost me $2.50. The ship carried cotton and was 43 days on the passage. I remained with the ship until she discharged her cargo of cotton and took a general cargo for Boston, Massachusetts, where she arrived about September 12 as near as I remember.
September 19 , 1844, I began work for the Boston and Maine Railroad Company for Seven and 6-pence a day, $1.25, and took board of Clark Durgan on the corner of Canal and Causway Streets at $2.50 per week. I continued to work for the R.R. Company until about the first of January 1845.
Sometime in January 1845, say about the 10th, I went out to the pond and worked for Luther Wyeth, some six miles from Boston, cutting ice for $1.00 per day at first, but soon he advanced my wages to $1.50 and gave me charge of part of the work. I worked there during the ice season until about the middle of March when I went in to Boston. While cutting ice, I boarded with a shoemaker and farmer in the neighborhood whose daughter kept house for him.
About the first of April 1845, I began work for Jeremiah Wetherby and Company to learn to cut stone in Boston, Massachusetts. I worked the first three months for my board, that is, they paid the price of my board $2.75 per week at Mr. Durgan's. The next three months, they paid me $10 a month and board, that completed my apprenticeship. From then on until I took the Variloid, they paid me $1.52 a day and I paid my own board. The small pox got into my boarding house from which I took the Variloid, and was sick about a week.
When I got well, I went to Methuen and began to work February 13, 1846 to cut stone for John A. Carpenter and Company to build a dam across the Merrimac River at Methuen to make water power for manufacturing purposes. I cut some of the first stone put in the dam. I got $1.50 a day all winter, the highest wages paid for cutting stone for the winter. The stone was quarried and cut in Pelham, New Hampshire about seven miles from where the dam was built. The stone was drawn with oxen and horses on wagons. Some sleds were used in the winter. Since that time a very large city called Lawrence has been built.
About April 3, 1846 I went back to Boston and the 9th of April went to work for Wetherby again for $1.75 per day to cut stone. Sometime after this, Wetherby's got a portion of the stone work for the reservoir on Beacon Hill in Boston. He wanted me to go to Cape Ann where the stones were quarried and some of them were cut for his custom in Boston and other towns around, for they done a large business in stone work. They were to pay me $2.00 per day to go to the Cape to cut stone for the Reservoir, and when I got there, Mr. Clifford, the foreman and partner thought I could not earn $2.00 a day as I was only an Apprentice the season before and said he would give me four cents a foot and up special measure for cutting bed and build work as it is called. So by this time, I found out that I was no slouch as a stone cutter. I concluded to take it and went to work and in about three weeks, he found out I was making $3.00 a day. Then he wanted me to cut some Cornist stone for a depot. Said he would give me $1.75 per foot in length.
So I cut Cornist along side of his old friend, Flood, an old hand who had worked for the firm several years and was counted as an extra hand was working for $3.00 a day. Messers Clifford and Flood watched me pretty close until they found out I was making $5.00 a day. Flood was mad and Clifford went back on the price and that knocked me out of a job for I would not work for them any more.
I demanded settlement, picked up my tools and went to Leadbeater's Island in Penobscot Bay in the State of Maine, and worked for Mr. (I have forgotten the name) who was getting out stone to go to Key West in the Gulf of Mexico for a port. I cut stone for the port and made $3.00 a day until fall. About November 1, 1846, the Brig Lucy Watts, Captain Watly of St, George, Maine came to the Island to load with stone for Key West and he wanted a man to go as a sailor. I shipped and went to Key West, thence to New Orleans, was 33 days on the passage and received $17.95 including unloading at Key West.
December 16, 1846, I took board at Mrs. Smith's at $3.50 per week. The 17th, I began to work for Clark Day and Stamper for $1.25 per day. They kept a large store of Hardware consisting of iron, tin, lead, farm implements, mechanical tools, oils, boat mill stones, grindstone portable mills, etc. January 8, 1847 began to board with A. Ruth on Jefferson Street, New Orleans at $12.00 per month. February 14, began to board at Mrs. Hogdens, Poidras Street for $3.00 per week. Sold to Mr. Beain of Buffalo, New York a pair of calf skin boots for $3.50. He paid me $2.50 and that was all I got. He soon went back to Buffalo, N.Y. About April 10 1847, I began to board with Mrs. Verrieges, Phillips Street, New Orleans at $3.50 per week. I worked for Clark Day, Stamper and Co. until January 1 when I had $40 a month the first of November 1947, then $50 per month until January 1848. Then I was supposed to have such wages as they paid their other help which was then about $75.00 per month.
But in the spring of 1848, my father died and it seemed necessary that I should go home to take care of the little farm and my mother who lived on it at the time. Perhaps, I should say here that my father's farm and home sold under mortgage after I went to sea. The next spring while I was in Boston learning to cut stone, Elbridge Peasley, a neighbor of ours in Alna, Maine was up to Boston and he called on me and said that father's farm was sold and nearly past redemption and that if I could redeem it, it would help them. I was a little past 21 years of age but had no money. But my sister, Eliza, had been working in Boston a number of years making boots and had 4 or 5 hundred dollars in the Savings Bank. She said she would loan me some money if I could use it to save the place. So I went home and found I could buy the home part of the farm containing the buildings, and the best part of the land by paying $100 down and the balance of the debt against it in a year or so. I went back to Boston, borrowed $100 of Eliza and back to Maine, made the arrangements and saved the place. Soon after, I finished my trade and began to earn money and paid all the debts off. My father lived on it while he lived and Mother used it as long as she wanted free of rent. After that I sold it to brother Albert.
Sometime in April 1848, Messers Clark Day Stamper and Co. allowed me to go home and paid me according tour contract so far and kindly sent their team to take my chest and baggage to the ship without charge. When I left for Boston, to save traveling expenses, I looked for and found a ship loading for Boston. I says to the Captain that I wanted to go to Boston with him, that I would like to work my passage. He said I might go, so I went on board and turned to, the same as any sailor and did not expect any wages. But when the Captain paid off his men, he paid me as much as any of them, which was $14 per month. We were just one month on board. From Boston, I went to Maine where I arrived about the first of June as near as I can remember.
My brother Albert had planted some corn and potatoes and he had gone to Gardiner to learn the carpenter trade and so I hoed the corn and potatoes and cut the hay and shingled the house and made some other repairs and provided for Mother. I harvested the corn and potatoes for her, left her what hay she wanted for her little stock and employed my Uncle Daniel Clough to bale some hay and sell it and rented him the hay ground for the next year.
In the fall I went to New Orleans again by way of Boston, Albany, Buffalo, Sandusky, Cincinnati, Memphis and on down the Mississippi River. Found work with a wholesale Drug Store and Real Estate Company. Soon after, the cholera broke out in New Orleans. I was boarding at Mrs. Smith's and my roommate died with the cholera in about two hours after he was taken sick. In a few weeks after that, I left New Orleans, and came up the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers by steamboat. One the way up, there was eight deaths on board the boat by cholera and one death by drowning before we reached the mouth of the Ohio River. I think that was in the beginning of the year 1849. The great cholera year. I was sick in New Orleans with the symptoms of the cholera and thought it best to leave there. I did not fine employment in Cincinnati, so I went north to Sandusky City. By this time, I had nearly got out of money and was obliged to hunt work. I soon fell into cutting ice for Mr. Roosevelt who had just received a lot of ice cutting tools of Mr. Wyeth of Massachusetts for whom I had worked cutting ice on a fresh pond six miles back of Boston a few years before. Mr. Roosevelt had never used these tools before and needed some expert help. I had used the tools and he was glad to have my help and I was glad to get the job. I worked at cutting ice and cribbing until I got money to go to Cleveland, Ohio by stage. I was intending to make my way back to Boston with a view of working at my trade of cutting stone again. At Cleveland, I found work with the Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati Railroad Company which had begun to build their R.R. the fall before. I got $25 a month helping the engineers to stake out the line and set grade stakes. I worked there until navigation opened when I took the first boat to Buffalo, New York and thence to Albany by rail. When at Albany, I thought I would like to see New York City as I had never been there. So I took one of Vanderbilts fine steamers, and run down to New York. The passage cost only 12 1/2 cents or a york shilling as it was called in those days.
The United States had begun to build a dry dock and engine house of Maine granite in the Navy Yard in Brooklyn. I applied for work as a stone cutter. They put me on trial for a week and then gave me work at $2.00 per 10 hour day and I worked all summer. This was in 1849. I had a very pleasant time that summer. Good wages, nice job in a nice city and a good boarding house with Mr. William Bovis and family, corner of Hudson Ave. and High Street. They were a pleasant family to board with. The dry dock was a very nice job of fine cut granite and so was the engine house. At one time that summer, there were near 200 stone cutters at work and there was a rule that if you made a mistake in cutting, he would be suspended from work for a day or more. I was one of the very few who was not suspended during the seven months I worked there. I was one of the last four stone cutters that was discharged when cold weather come on and the work was stopped for the winter.
While in Brooklyn I bought, unseen, 600 acres in Tennessee. On December 17, 1849, I started to go see it. I took maps and charts to sell along the way. I took the cars to Reading, Pennsylvania. There I began to sell maps and travel on foot in the direction of Cumberland, Maryland. Thomas Jones, a stone cutter, went with me as far as Cumberland. We bought maps and charts published by Ensign and Thayer, No. 50 Ann Street, New York, New York. I took $25.25 worth which was about what I could carry and sold them before I got to Cumberland. I made about $1.00 a day and expenses. Thomas Jones got tired and went back to New York. At Cumberland, I fell in with an Englishman and his son. We footed it over the Allegheny Mts. to Brownsville on the Monongahela River, where we took passage on boat down the Monongahela and Ohio Rivers to the mouth of the Cumberland River where my English fellow travelers and I parted company. They went on to St. Louis and I took another boat and went up the Cumberland River to Nashville, Tennessee.
Here I stopped to see of the land I had bought had been recorded. I found the lands had been deeded by the State to parties who sold them in New York and deeds recorded all right, so I pushed West on foot some 60 miles to the east bank of the Tennessee River where my land was supposed to lay. My journey West from Nashville was through some very sparsely settled country for more than 2/3 of the way with many streams to ford. One stream was nearly up to my neck. I took off my clothes and tied them in a bundle to my valise, held them on my head and waded across.
On arriving in the district where my land should have been and on inquiring, I found my purchase was a perfect swindle. It came about this wise: Since the State had sold all the land of a certain District lying on the east side of the Tennessee River that would sell for a very small price, it passed a law to grant any one who would pay the expenses of entering and surveying the remnants of land not sold (and that was a very small part of the land District), it appeared that the then Entry Taker and the then County Surveyor worked up a plan to make petition entry takers book and in the surveyor's book and got deeds for them from the State and they were recorded in the State Capital and the old Quaker of whom I bought in New York told me that 18,000 acres of those lands had been sold in New York in one winter and the citizens of Tennessee told me that large lots of those Title had been sold in the large cities of Europe. Those petition entries were located largely on the east bank of the Tennessee River, where the land was supposed to be good. In 5,000 acre tracts along the bank of the river, they were eleven entries deep, one on top of the other. I found this out by examining the County Surveyor's Book to which I had access during the two weeks I was there.
The former Entry Taker had died and the County Surveyor who had done this work had left the County. In order to find where my 600 acres was located, I had to begin according to the survey, at a point just below Forms Creek on the east bank of the Tennessee River. Well, after finding out how easily and how badly I had been swindled, I concluded to pocket the loss and go back to New York. So I sold most of my spare clothing and my valise to help pay expenses and lighten my load and walked back to Nashville. There was one stretch of woods, hills and valleys, 12 miles between houses on the way.
It is now February 1, 1900 and the things I am writing about today happened in the winter of 1849 and 1850 according to an occasional date furnished by some old papers that I had kept. In 50 years, I find that I have forgotten many things, places and names which I would like to recall. There are some things that may seem trifling to others that I will put in here because my life has been made up of little lessons and I will relate one of them here.
When I got back to Nashville, I was having a very bad cold and sore mouth. My mouth was so sore, I could not eat much for several days and I think it was caused in this way: When my English comrade before mentioned and I had taken deck passage on a boat down the river from Brownsville, we needed to provide ourselves with something to eat on the way. We thought to join in buying provisions and cooking utensils and board together. They wanted to buy a coffee pot, dishes, frying pan, etc. I thought we had better buy cooked food and do without cooking. They couldn't see how to get along without coffee. I said we could live very well for 5 or 6 days on water. I finally said could do without any drink and concluded to try the experiment. So I lived on dry food such as bread, cheese, smoked fish, etc. without a drop of fluid of any kind for six days. I felt no great inconvenience for the time for the want of drink, but I believe it was the cause of my sore mouth for a week or two.
After I rested in Nashville for about a week, I took deck passage again down the Cumberland River and up the Ohio where I bought some maps and sold around Cincinnati until I could order some maps and charts from New York, which I received in a few weeks. Then I went up the Ohio to Bordersville, Virginia where I began to walk toward New York and sell maps on the way I think it was in March 1850. I put in the following summer selling maps through Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, Penn., New York and New Jersey and arrived in New York City about the beginning of October as near as I can remember. I zig-zagged all the way on foot to within 50 miles of New York City. I struck on my way: the Kanawha River, Charleston, the Hawk's Nest, Greenbrier County, the Natural Bridge, Lexington, Staunton, Harrisburg, Woodstock, Winchester, Harpers Ferry, Louden County, Fairfax County, Mt. Vernon in Virginia, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York. A good way to find out how large a State is, is to walk over it. It was pretty hard work to sell maps from house to house, but I enjoyed the trip very much. I enjoyed the scenery of the country and I liked the people who were generally kind and hospitable. I made my journey and I made fair wages and it was a good experience, although my land purchase and land hunt was a failure.
After getting back to New York, I called on Arnold Buffern and Co. 11 Park Row, New York. I told him what I had found out about my Tennessee land and he paid me back $50 of the $75 which I had paid down and we played quit. Having had success in selling maps, I concluded continuing in the business and also concluded to invite my brother Albert to join me in Providence, R. I. and we would go South and sell. In the meantime, I took out maps and went up the Hudson River to Vermont and across the state east by way of Mt. Tabor and Woodstock to the New Hampshire line all on foot. Then I took the cars to Providence where I met Albert. Thence we went to New York and took out maps and went to New Jersey and began to sell. After this, our cousin Samuel Sevey came out and joined us in the business and we distributed maps, charts and pictures through the country about Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, Northern Virginia and Maryland. Sevey worked with us some 2 or 3 months then went back to Boston. Albert worked with me some 8 or 9 months and concluded to buy the little farm of me for which he paid $400 and he went back to Maine and went to farming.
I continued map selling until the spring of 1852 when I concluded to go to Iowa by way of Cumberland, Cincinnati and St. Louis and landed in Keokuk Iowa in June 1852. I walked from Keokuk to Fairfield where the U. S. Land Office was. In the next winter, I bought 240 acres adjoining my other land. I entered my first land in Henry County I think in July 1852. I then looked about the County and sold maps a few weeks, went up to Muscatine. From there I went down the Mississippi River by steamboat to Burlington. By this time, I had made up my mind to go to work on my land, so I ordered a cart made to be used with oxen on the farm. I bought a scythe, a rake, and pitchfork and walked back to my land and carried my tools about 30 miles and began to mow some hay, as I was intending to buy some young cattle which I did the next winter. I paid $6.00 a head for 11 pretty good spring calves from Mr. George Ramsey, east of London. I bought other young cattle until I had about 36 head before spring and fed them on the hay I had put up.
I boarded with Mr. James Martin about 2 1/2 miles north of my place. This was the nearest house to my place. Mr. Samuel Andrews lived in the next nearest, about 3 miles northwesterly. The nearest house on the east was Carson's and the Jervises about 5 miles along the Virginia Grove. The nearest house south was Mr. Baxter's about 6 miles. The village of New London was nearly 11 miles south. Mt. Pleasant about 15 miles southwest Mr. Sym (?) was the nearest neighbor in that direction, about ten miles from my place.
This was situated in a beautiful gentle rolling prairie, no timber within 5 miles but about 200 hundred acres on Crooked Creek about 1 1/2 miles from where I built my first house, Virginia Grove on the northeast 5 miles in sight. All else was prairie grass, thousands of tons of it. How I loved to mow it down, dry it and stack it.
There are a great many things and happenings, pleasures and pains all along journeys through life I would like to write about, but time will not permit and I will have to content myself with the mention of a very few. I have been very industrious and saving. I was determined to make a home and have some property and have a farm before I married. I have always enjoyed my labor whatever I done. When I went to sea, when I cut stone, when I cut ice or sold maps or cut hay, I was happy and especially was I happy when I secured a thousand acres of as fine a land as I ever saw and had it paid for.
I regard labor as one of the greatest blessings that nature bestowed on mankind or any other creature. I have done a great deal of work. I have made 13 farms. I have raised thousands of tons of feed and food for man and beast, such as grain, hay, beef, pork, fowls, vegetables, fruit, butter, eggs, honey to supply the wants of my fellow man. Labor has been no punishment for me partaking of the fruit of knowledge. Work is pleasure, knowledge is power. Labor and knowledge enable us to make an honest living and be at rest when we die.
Now in the fall of 1852 after putting up the hay and building a little house 14 feet square, I went back to Maine and made a short visit. I went there by finishing my maps, came back to Henry County, Iowa, bought a little more land and on the 17th day of April (1853), I married Mary F. Morley, daughter of John and Grace (Smith) Morley. We moved into our house and began to improve our house and began to improve our land as fast as we could, though it was a slow process when timber was 6 miles away and our principle market was Burlington nearly 30 miles away and our team was made up of young wild steers.
In 2 1/2 years, we got our timber, stone, and lumber and built a good substantial house 16 by 18 feet and with a good cellar under it walled with rock and a chamber (small room above). Then we hauled the first house to within 19 feet of the new one and built a room between them, then we had a house with three rooms, a cellar and a chamber. Soon after this a portable circular saw mill came into the neighborhood of my 20 acres of timber in Virginia Grove, about 6 miles from home and we went to work cutting logs and hauling them to mill and sawed out a frame for a barn 38 by 44 feet, posts 16 feet high and brought boards from Burlington and built a most substantial barn. I done nearly all the chopping, hauling, quarrying, and digging for those buildings with my own hands, with steers to haul. I also fenced ground as fast as I could, but it was three or four years before I raised much grain. In the meantime, I made much use of the prairie grass and hay. We continued to improve our land and farm and sell a piece of land once in a while for over 11 years when in the summer of 1864, I sold the last 1/2 section (320 A.) and my 20 acres of timber in Virginia Grove for $7500. In the spring of 1863, I began to build a substantial house 30 by 40 put a good cellar under all with rock wall and was plastering it when I sold, so finished the house and did not move into it. The sales of all the tracts of land I had here amounted to $12,000, including my improvements.
In September 1864, I made a sale of personal property and moved to Union County, Iowa where I had previously bought of the United States, 2 sections and 1/16 of a section - 1320 A.
We arrived in Union County, October 1, 1864. We brought five children with us to this county and moved into a spare house of Uncle Daniel Clough about five miles from where we built our home where I now live. The county was very new and sparsely settled. No lumber to be had, I went to work, dug out rock in the bank of 12 Mile Creek for a cellar, before the ground froze and hauled them to our place to make a cellar in the spring. Then to get lumber to build, I logged on shares on Uncle John Clough's land and hauled them to Kentrel and Shepard's mill about 1 1/2 miles away and gave half of the logs at the mill. During the winter and spring of that year, I got the logs sawed and lumber hauled to my place and as soon as the frost was out of the ground, dug a cellar and laid up the walls and put up the house during the summer and fall and moved in just a year after we arrived in the county. The house was 18 by 24 but substantially built. Sheeted and shingled from the ground up, but not plastered. I filled the cracks with mortar and it was quite comfortable. We lived in it about six years, by which time, built another house 30 by 40 feet put a cellar under all with a rock wall. It will be noticed it took me a whole year to get our first house up including the breaking of about 30 A. of ground and putting up about 10 tons of hay and tending my family.
Everything was wide apart from where I built to the timber and mill was about six miles. From the mill to my farm, it was five miles from where I lived to the quarry then on to the farm was 4 miles. So to complete the circle was about 18 miles more or less and to do this, I had to cross 5 streams that were unfordable often. In crossing 12 Mile Creek at one time, I got the best horse I ever owned drowned.
I paid .15 a lb. for nails to build my first house in this county. I paid $8.00 a barrel salt, $6.00 a cwt. for flour and went to Winterset in Madison County for it. I paid $1.00 a bushel for corn and .50 a dozen for sheaf oats of Levi Wright. It may be seen that it took money as well as time to make a home in this new county at that time. But we lived through it all and enjoyed ourselves nicely.
In the fall of 1865, October 1, we moved into our house and went on to improve our land as fast as we could by fencing and building. I bought timber on Grand River, some of it 6 miles north and some 3 miles east of our place to fence and build with. I fenced with rails that I made myself and hauled them mostly with oxen. I fenced 9 farms with rails and 4 with posts and barb wire.
I improved 13 farms in Iowa, the smallest 40 acres, 2 of them 160 acres. Three of them were 40 acres and the rest were 80 acres each. I built 10 dwelling houses on our land. Two of them were 30 by 40 feet each. They were built on 160 acre farms. They had good cellars under all with good rock wall. These houses were most substantially built and finished throughout. The farm on which I live in Union County, Iowa has three good substantial barns, two good wagon houses and corn cribs combined and other buildings to the number of 15 good substantial buildings. As I would get my lands enclosed with rails, I would plant hedge inside until I have made about 7 miles of good osage (orange) hedge fence. Much of the fencing and building material was hauled 10 miles and some of it 13 miles from my timber to the farms. I believe all the hauling of timber stone, and sand to make all of these improvements would average as much as 7 miles. Some I hauled 5 miles. Some of the long timbers for barns which were of pine, I hauled 30 miles. All the fencing was got out of my native timber which I chopped, split and hauled myself. My boys helped me some, I hired very little. I have made 5 cellars all walled with rock. I have made 14 good wells on the land, all walled with rock which I quarried and hauled myself. I did all the walling of the wells and cellars and did most of the digging myself. Beside this improving of land, we have done a lot of farming. We have raised thousands of tons of good things to feed and eat: wheat, corn, oats, and other grains, beef, pork, mutton, poultry, vegetables, fruits, honey, butter, eggs, etc. Besides this work, I have done considerable business in the way of entering land and selling it, paying taxes and loaning money, sometimes at a profit and sometimes at a loss. On the whole, I have done moderately well. On the whole I have enjoyed my labor and been happy and believe I have done some good in the world. We have had 13 children and they are all living this 9th day of March 1900. When I look back over our work that my wife and I have done, I wonder how we could have done so much and have done it so well.
Having arrived at the age of 75 years and work becoming so hard and my children having all left us but 2 and they not likely to stay much longer, I concluded to sell our farm and home and stock and tools and go to some small town where we live comfortably and rest from our labors. So we advertised a two day sale on the 17th and 18th days of October 1899. We sold our personal property on the 18th and the farm on the 17th. The personal property brought about $3200. The 160 acre farm was bid off by Ed Sherwood but was not taken and was afterward sold to Lew Taylor for $8000 and we moved March 5th to Arispe, Union County where we had previously bought a house and lot for $500 where with some addition and repairs, we have a good home and not much work to do. This 28th day of October, 1901.
Samuel Clough