CHAPTER 1.

The tone of my mother s voice had not only startled me, but my baby brother also, who was being held in her arms, and he was crying. She was on the front seat of the wagon holding the horses while my grandfather was out looking along the swale to find tracks of the wagons that had gone before us. The entire prairie had been burned over by a very recent fire. He found the tracks where wagons had preceded us and with great relief we started on, and in a few hours time we reached the Osage River, which we forded, arriving at the little town of Osceola, in southwestern Missouri.

My father had rented a house and was building a fire in the recently set-up cook stove when we reached it, as dusk was falling. The household goods were all about in confusion.

These are the first recollections my memory holds of life. I cannot clearly recall anything before this incident. But this particular picture is as plain to my mind today as though it happened yesterday. My mind holds a hazy memory of the night my brother was born. I was then between three and four years old. The unwonted commotion in the house had evidently awakened me, and I heard a very strange cry—it probably being the first sound he made. I rushed out into the room and was promptly hustled back to bed by one of my aunts, but I have no clear picture in my mind of this occasion. One of the family stories was about my terrible behavior that night.

1 also remember dimly the excitement when my Uncle Charles shot a deer on my father’s farm, about three months later. My father and his two brothers, Uncle Charles and Uncle Scott, had gone to a distant part of one farm to do some fencing. About 10 o’clock in the morning my father came running up to the house, all out of breath, and in reply to questions as to what was the matter, panted out that he wanted the shotgun. He secured the gun and started back, hurrying as fast as he could. He said nothing as to what the trouble was. As a matter of fact, he was too much out of breath to have talked much. The women began to surmise all kinds of evil happenings. We children became uneasy over it.

It so happened that the whole family were over at Uncle Charles Nesbit’s house that day. After three-quarters of an hour they saw a wagon coming slowly toward the house with two men on it and what looked like another man lying on the boards which covered the running gear.

Then there was excitement! They were sure somebody had been shot—that something horrible had taken place. But, finally, when the wagon drew near, we could see the driver, who was my Uncle Charles, waving his hat and he was evidently in good humor. So it was assumed that nobody had been killed anyway.

When they came to the house we learned that it was a deer they had shot. The story then told was that while working on the fence, the cattle on the open prairie not far away, Uncle Charles had noticed a deer grazing along with the cattle. Deer were rather scarce then in that section, and he told my father to run back to the house and get the shotgun. The horses had been unhitched and put out on the grass and there was no time to catch and harness them as it might frighten away the deer.

So my father had hurried to the house, nearly a mile away, secured the gun and returned. He turned it over to Uncle Charles, who was the crack shot of the family. Uncle Charles and Uncle Scott had wrapped long prairie grass all about Uncle Charles, tying it around his shoulders, back, and head, and with this disguise he crept slowly toward the cattle. Finally he got into position so he could shoot the deer without hitting any of the cattle.

We had a great feast of venison then, for it was a fine buck about three years old. This incident, together with the skinning of the deer and dressing it, and the drying of the deer meat, etc., gave us quite as much excitement as any movies or theater performance of today would give to any family in the city.

My cousin Tressie, who was also a little child then, and I were allowed to help hold the legs of the deer while it was hung up and the men were dressing it.

This incident of the killing of the deer was recited so many times in later years to the children born subsequently that much of my memory of it may come from hearing it told; but that I did remember something about it was clearly proven when, some years later, with my chest swelling with boyish pride, at the recital of how Tressie and I had helped dress the deer, I put in, "Yes, and we helped grandfather find the bones." This created quite a laugh among my elders at that time, as they did not understand what I meant. But the next time I saw Grandfather Nesbit he confirmed my statement. There were certain pointed light bones in the deer’s legs he had drying on a bench, and they blew off into the grass. He bored holes in the larger ends of these bones and used them as needles for sewing leather, heavy overcoats, and rough heavy clothing. This was a trick he had learned from the Indians in Pennsylvania.

But the incident when he thought we were lost on the prairie is clear in all its details, and is my first memory of life. I even recall how we forded the Osage River into Osceola just as darkness was falling.

Osceola was the county seat of St. Clair County, and it was to be my boyhood home. Here I was to see the remnants of a previous migration to the West, made by families from Virginia, Kentucky, South Carolina and Tennessee, who had brought their slaves along, determined that Missouri should be a slave state, and determined to add its votes to the hard-pressed pro-slavery party in the House and Senate at Washington.

Osceola was to show us several stark, grim, brick chimneys, blackened by the fire which had been set to the town by "Jim Lane and his gang of Kansas Jayhawkers," which was the only title by which General James L. Lane, U. S. A., was known to the residents of St. Clair County. He had captured the town and also a large quantity of stores for the Confederate army and then burned it.

These early settlers brought the customs and flavor of the aristocratic life of the Old South. This remote little town had its brick buildings, the bricks being made by slave labor.

I frequently visited boys with whom I became acquainted at school, in some of these Southern family homes. Well I remember my first visit with Walter Cox at the home of his grandfather, a Mr. Harris. His residence was entirely foreign to any house I had ever seen. A large Colonial mansion situated on a vast estate. A fenced-in yard about the house, with lilacs and flowers of many kinds I had never before seen. I saw peacocks, turkeys and geese, as well as the familiar chickens. I remember the strutting peacocks and turkey gobblers. Then there were the very numerous servants about the great house where, to my amazement, the ladies wore, as it seemed, their Sunday-best clothes every day.

Two of the daughters, Miss Sally and Miss Mamie Harris, taught in a girls’ seminary in Fayetteville, Arkansas. One taught Music and the other English Literature. They seemed like princesses to me. They wore such wonderful clothes all the time. And there was the Lilly home which I saw later. This was another of the colonial-type Southern mansions. And the home of Dr. Lewis, a relative of George Washington’s family.

These people were stripped of everything they possessed by the Civil War, except their lands. And, except that they owned great tracts of land, they had little more than the new emigrants to the country, coming now in great numbers from the North and East and a few from Europe. Had I been able to understand, the fact that these young ladies were teaching school would have shown the family was hard pressed for cash and credit.

Osceola was important chiefly because it was the county seat; but it was also a distributing and trading center. The Ozark foothills lay on both sides of it, but to the west and north they flattened out into the vast and almost boundless prairie which spread westward to the Rocky Mountains.

Osceola was the victim of the contest between the slavery and anti-slavery elements of our population which raged along the Kansas and Missouri border for seven or eight years before Fort Sumter was fired on. The Southern people who had first come into this section did not like the prairies, nor did they appreciate their possibilities, but even if they had, the time was not ripe for their development. When they came West they depended upon the rivers for transportation. The prairies were only possible of development as the railroads were built.

One reason our people selected St. Clair County was that they liked timber and when they bought their prairie farms of 160 acres each, they also purchased a sizeable tract of timber land about 11 miles distant, and near the Osage river. The Southern settlers, who liked only the timber lands, farmed the rich bottom lands lying along the rivers and the tributaries, and no richer soil is anywhere to be found.

The post Civil War flood of Northern land-hungry emigrants, flowing in with their families, experienced at first the resentment of these old Southern settlers, who maintained their own system, culture and sentiments and grand manner of the old slave-owning aristocratic era. But the Civil War ended most of that—in reality only remnants were left. At any rate, some of the best Southern blood had migrated to this section. They used the river for transportation, for there were no roads and no bridges across many of the streams. Neither cotton nor tobacco could be grown with much advantage, and while they lived in royal plenty, with numerous slaves to provide for their comfort, there was little of money or commerce.

Daniel Boone was reported to have explored this section of the country. He certainly did explore much of Missouri. Booneville was named after him, and many sections hold still traditions of the great hunter and frontiersman.

Our people, when they first came to this section, were considered "Northerners," or "Free-Staters," and were not very hospitably received, but they soon won their way into the friendship of the early settlers. However, had they not been Democrats politically, they would have been much longer getting into a comfortable social and business status. Grandfather Nesbit was a Democrat back in Pennsylvania, and he and his three sons were staunch followers of the political philosophy of Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson before they moved West.

My father, Frank C. Nesbit, and his two brothers, Charles W. Nesbit and Scott Nesbit, each with his young wife, started West in the early fall of 1869. They left the neighborhood of Mt. Jackson, Pennsylvania, my father living in Youngstown, Ohio. They had the "western fever," and in 1868 my Uncle Charles and my father had gone West on a prospecting trip. They had gone by way of Chicago, which was then a comparatively small but hustling place. A real estate man located them at their hotel and tried hard to persuade them to buy a large corner lot for $10,000, which would now be located in the Loop District. They became interested enough in his glowing prophecy of the future of Chicago to go down and look at it, but they decided not to buy.

Talk of luck! Had they bought that lot and then forgotten about it, except to pay the taxes, their families today would be worth many millions. They did not understand the tremendous value of land monopoly or unearned increment in city lots, at that time. They went on with their prospecting tour through Iowa and then on down into Kansas and Missouri.

When Uncle Charles and my father reached Warrensburg, Missouri, they went to a livery stable where Uncle Charles, who knew as much about horses as almost any man anywhere, selected two saddle horses. They must have been honest-looking young men, for they told the liverymen they might be gone three or four weeks, and he let them take the horses without requiring a deposit. They rode over several counties in Missouri and as far as Fort Scott, Kansas. The outdoor life did my father immense and immediate good. It was a wonderful experience for them to come from the hills of Pennsylvania and from old settled communities to the virgin prairies of the West—from a land of rocks and trees to a land without either. They took their time, and

Uncle Scott, who was the youngest and most enthusiastic of the three brothers, was afraid all the land would be sold before they could get back to buy some more. They all had the "western fever" by this time. When they did go West they settled in St. Clair County.

In later years Uncle Scott bought and sold thousands of acres of land. I recall his bidding in a farm at auction in Osceola for a small price. An old farmer came to the bank and said:

"No," said my uncle. "Do you want it?"

"Well, what profit do you want?"

"One hundred dollars, seeing it’s you."

So the old farmer paid him, and the deed was made direct to the old farmer, and he was ever after a warm friend of my uncle’s.

It seems curious that three young men possessed of more than ordinary intelligence should leave the neighborhood of Pittsburgh and Youngstown and go to the prairies of the West seeking their fortunes. The neighborhood they left has probably made as many millionaires and as many wealthy people as any other section of the United States. The farming section of the West has made exceedingly few people any money at all beyond a bare hard living.

But they had another piece of bad luck in that they should have selected St. Clair County. Not that the entire family are not loyal to St. Chair County, and have always been, but what with the reputation of the Younger boys, and later the tremendous burden of the railroad bonds minus the railroad, which hung as a threat over the county for years, St. Clair County remained poorer than most of its neighboring counties.

The migration of the family was prompted, like all important movements of human beings, by mixed motives. The "western fever" doubtless played its part. It was the "land of opportunity." The papers of the East were filled with glowing accounts of the wonders of the great West. But the move was really started by Grandmother Nesbit. In her quiet but forceful way she made always the great family decisions, and she made them with wisdom. The reason which decided her was for the sake of the health of her eldest son, my father. To her way of thinking, health was life’s greatest treasure and blessing.

My father had worked hard studying law, making his own way as he did so, and was run down physically and like all the family, of a highly nervous temperament. The doctor said he was threatened with tuberculosis and should get out of doors. That settled it then and there for Grandmother Nesbit. After some parleys, it was decided that Uncle Charles and my father, Frank, should go West on a prospecting trip anyway.

It was the golden autumn, far and away the loveliest season in the mid-west. The air is dry and invigorating, the frosty nights put a tingle in the blood which the warm sunshine of the day only enriches.

Then day after day on horseback, the new scenes, the open air, the caressing fingers of the wind on brow and face soothing the nerves, the wholesome, hearty. frontier food, in a few weeks made a new man of my father. When they returned to Pennsylvania after six or seven weeks of surveying out the land, the clear eyes, the tanned skin, the added weight of both young men decided Grandmother that that greatest of all treasures, health, was certainly to be found "out West," and the decision was made to join the multitudes who were traveling towards the sunset.

Thus it was that our family decided to go West and where one went all went. Uncle Charles and Uncle Scott were owners and operators of a general store, and when the others started Uncle Scott stayed behind to settle up. Then he had another matter of business to attend to. He was in love with the prettiest girl in all that section and when he finally went West, Annetta Johnson went with him as Mrs. Scott Nesbit. My father and mother had me—I was only 2 years old. Uncle Charles and Aunt Lizzie had their baby, Tressie, about 10 months old. All their belongings had been shipped in a freight car. The railroad line ran to Cincinnati, where they had to change cars and take a bus to the hotel. They remained all night, and the next morning took a train for St. Louis from the other side of the city. There were no through trains to St. Louis even. When they reached East St. Louis the railroad ended. A bus had to be taken again and they were driven down to the river and were ferried across the Mississippi. They stayed that night at Eads Hotel in St. Louis and then took the train for Warrensburg, Missouri, which was the nearest place to where they were to locate. They stayed over Sunday at Warrensburg.

It took two days to drive by wagon from Warrensburg to the northern part of St. Clair County, where they settled. They stopped at the California House the first night from Warrensburg, which was a stopping place for travelers in the northern part of Henry County.

Fortunately, they had started West in September, the fall being much the easiest time to drive across the prairies of that country, the weather being, as a rule, ideal during September and October and the roads or trails being then more hard and serviceable than at any other time. This was nearly a year after the first trip made by the two family scouts.

Before our family moved West, it had been thoroughly demonstrated that the prairie country was better for farming than the timbered section. The rich bottom lands of the Osage and its tributaries are exceeded nowhere for fertility, but they are subject to overflow; access to market was difficult, for the broken, hilly country was almost bare of roads and road-making was very difficult. When my father and his brothers settled on their land in St. Clair County they were over 60 miles from the nearest railroad. After a few years of farm life, my father, who was a lawyer in Youngstown, Ohio, before moving West, decided to go to the county seat, Osceola, and again take up the practice of law, thinking he would do better than at f arming, and as his health seemed fully restored, he rented his f arm and moved to Osceola, where he practiced law for many years. His natural talent was for speaking rather than farming. He was a natural orator. He became a celebrated lawyer in that section of the country and a successful one. He formed a partnership with John C. Ferguson and the firm name was Nesbit & Ferguson. He used to "ride the circuit," as it was called, going around with the Circuit Judge to the different county seats where the Judge held court.

I remember his telling of a case in which Senator George G. Vest, of Missouri, had broken a will. This case was tried before Senator Vest was made Senator from Missouri. Vest’s fame as a lawyer rests on his famous speech about the dog, before a jury, rather than any other speech he ever made. His reputation as an able debater for many years in the United States Senate was second to none. But this story my father told illustrates Vest’s ability as a jury lawyer in that frontier country.

A wealthy man had moved out to the Ozark country, probably in quest of health, some years before. He was a recluse— certainly a solitary man. He had no family, but seemed to have plenty of money. He maintained a small but comfortable establishment. In his will he left practically all his estate to different charities, hospitals and schools back in Massachusetts, his former home, and almost nothing to his relatives. The relatives contested the will, claiming that he was of unsound mind. They retained young Vest, who was then a lawyer with a growing reputation. There had been family differences, but the man was a high-grade, intelligent man, possibly eccentric, but well liked by the few neighbors who knew him.

"That will do."

He said to the jury,: "It certainly is not going to take long to settle this case. Here, gentlemen, is a wealthy man—he had thousands and thousands of dollars. He could have beefsteak for breakfast every morning, or ham and eggs, or fried chicken. He could have anything he wanted for breakfast—but what do we find? We find that this rich man didn’t have any of these things for breakfast—he ate horse feed—he just ate oats, such as you would feed to horses or mules—not now and then, but all the time, he ate horse feed. That is about all he ever ate for breakfast. Now, you men know whether he was crazy or not, and it is of no use for me to argue further."

The jury never left the box; they decided the man was of unsound mind. It took Vest a very little while to break this will.

My father used to entertain one or two family gatherings after each trip around the circuit, which sometimes took him away for several weeks, with stories like this and by relating incidents which had occurred as the Judge and attorneys journeyed from county seat to county seat.

The popular amusements of the people were political debates, debates on religion between clergymen of different denominations, camp meetings, revivals, singing schools and spelling bees. In Osceola spelling bees were held in the county courthouse. There would be two sides, each with a captain or leader. Each captain could select his team. First one captain and then the other would choose a speller, either a man or a woman. They would line up on each side of the court house against the wall. A presiding officer would have the dictionary and would give out the words—a word first to one side and then one to the other. They were immense fun, especially if the presiding officer were a fellow with some native wit or humor, as was usually the case. He would give out words like "concatenation" to a reputed good speller on one side and maybe the word "cake" or "cat" to a notoriously poor speller on the other side. If this favoritism went too far, it frequently called for protests from the leaders of the side who felt they were being discriminated against, and all this added to the enjoyment of the occasion.

An annual social event which we all enjoyed was the "Hunter’s Supper," which was always given by the ladies of the church for the benefit of the church shortly before Thanksgiving.

The hunters were divided into two teams, each with a captain. They would each choose, first one and then the other, so many hunters for their team, until each had an equal number. The hour was set when the men should start from home, generally 4 o’clock in the morning. They were to be back with their game by 6 o’clock in the evening. So many points were allowed for each kind of game, for instance, 100 for a deer, 200 for a bear, 20 for a coon, 10 for a duck, 30 for a wild goose, 40 for a wild turkey, and so on, down to rabbits, which counted 5. It was amazing the quantity of game they would bring in. The whole town would have a feast for two or three days. My father generally bought a deer every fall, a considerable amount of which was dried and which we called venison.

One year a man brought in a fine young deer, and when my father asked him the price, he said: "Well, deer are getting scarce, Frank, and I’ll have to charge you $5.00."

Quail were only 50 cents a dozen. Eggs sold for 10 cents a dozen. I have a letter from my aunt, written to a relative back East, complaining that eggs were high. She said eggs were 25 cents a dozen and "we don’t eat many, for they taste too much like money."

I never knew of anyone being hungry at the time I was growing up. A good chicken was worth 25 cents, but smaller chickens, or young ones, were worth but 15 or 20 cents. Corn was sold for 10 cents a bushel and there were plenty of mills to grind it into corn meal. Sorghum was very cheap and abundant and was generally used. And it made a very fine and cheap molasses.

The furniture was largely homemade. When there was a funeral the coffin was always made by the local carpenter. The grave was dug by the neighbors.

The political campaigns were great events, and so were the 4th of July celebrations. People would come from far and near to hear a great political speaker. The spoken word had far more power in those days, and the orator was more important than today.

The only lights used in the homes were kerosene lamps or candles. One of my tasks as a boy used to be to mold candles.

The soap was homemade. Wood ashes were saved and leached out to make lye, and the soap was always known as "soft soap." It was a semi-liquid.

A great event was when the town of Osceola was visited by a steamboat from St. Louis. The boat could only navigate the Osage River during the high water in the spring. I recall the first time I ever saw a steamboat. A young man came galloping into town, his horse white with foam, and shouting as he came that the "Tom Stevens" was coming. They had heard the steamboat whistle while still far down the river below Tally’s Bend where he lived. The water was very high in the river and the current quite swift, and he was able to ride his horse faster than the steamboat could navigate the river, so it was an hour or so after this momentous announcement before we heard the deep whistle of the "Tom Stevens." The school was let out and business adjourned. Practically the entire population of the town went down to the river to watch the steamboat come in.

The steamer was loaded with wagons, farm machinery, plows, harness, boots and shoes, dry goods and groceries for the stores, which it would unload at the wharf and reload with wheat and corn, skins, hides, beeswax and other country produce. After the boat had unloaded its cargo, it always gave an excursion. Every available foot of space was loaded with people and the boat would steam up the river some miles, and return. This was a great event, talked of long before the boat arrived, and remembered throughout the year.

The roustabouts on the boat, who did the hard work, were all Negroes from the penitentiary. They were dressed in black and white striped prison suits. When the steamer had finally loaded, the entire town would be down to see her off. The old pilot or captain, for they were one and the same person, wore a double-breasted blue coat with long tails and shiny brass buttons and plenty of gold braid, and a pilot’s cap. He was generally a Mississippi River Pilot, a man of great ability and dignity. In Mark Twain’s "Life on the Mississippi" we get a true picture of these characters. Every one I ever saw had a long white beard and seemed to me, as a boy, one of the very greatest of men. These old pilots got a lot of quiet fun out of impressing the natives.

The pilot was always at the wheel. When he got tired the boat would tie up till he had a nap.

And sure enough, the cork was moving out across the river toward the other bank. It soon went under and was followed by the pole, which was jerked overboard and brought the sledge hammer over with it. The line was long and the pole floated. It was soon captured by the boys in "The Edith", and after much excitement and help from willing hands, the catfish was landed. It weighed 24 pounds.

After the excitement of landing the big fish was quieting down old Captain Boots walked down the gangplank and up to Don. His long-tailed dark blue coat and his brass buttons were very impressive. He said: "That’s all very well about the fish, but what about my sledge hammer?"

Well, Don tried diving, but he couldn’t get it. Harry tried, but nothing to it. But Walter, who was older and larger, tried and at last came up with the sledge hammer, and it was taken on to the "Tom Stevens", and duly delivered to old Captain Boots, who stroked his long beard and was greatly amused. He complimented the boys on doing the right thing.

They took the fish up to the butcher’s shop, where it was skinned and cut into steaks. It was the largest catfish ever caught at Osceola of which I ever heard. One weighing almost 60 pounds was caught by Ben, an old Negro who fished for a living, further up the river on a trot line.

In the early days the Osage River was navigable during most of the year. Before the War, Osceola was quite an important trading post. It served a large part of southwest Missouri and northern Arkansas. The steamboats brought merchandise which was hauled by freight or on pack horses and mules for many miles to the South and West.

An old settler told us how, when it became evident that the Civil War would come, the merchants bought all they could, that the wharf was a busy place, the warehouses being filled with goods, and that sometimes a hundred wagons would be waiting to load up and get away to the "back country."

The "Tom Stevens" was the largest steamer to make Osceola and for years was regular. The first steamer from St. Louis to Osceola was the "Flora Jones." "Regulator," "Tom Watson," "Alice Blair," and "Black Diamond," were others.

The effects of erosion of the soil on the streams were already beginning to be felt when we lived in Osceola in 1872, for then only during the spring could the "Tom Stevens" get up and back safely. The cutting of the forests was not so much the cause as ploughing up the prairies, destroying that vast other forest of the grass and the very roots of it. The prairie grass had grown for centuries. Great clumps of roots had fastened the soil solidly together. It was a coarse, tough grass, growing in the summer time taller than a cow’s back. It grew in tufts or clumps which were almost continuous over the whole land. Blue Stem it was called, and though there were many varieties of grass, Blue Stem predominated. The stiff stalks or stems stood upright, but about their base were always small leaves and tender shoots. It was the food of buffalo and deer and made splendid grazing for cattle and good hay. It held the rain in the soil or on it equally as well as forest. The water ran off slowly. The streams were clear when draining the old prairie land. But when this sod was laboriously "broken," as the first ploughing was called, the great grass roots rotted and left the soft black soil, which washed away very easily. Then the streams and rivers began to fill up, and the floods of springtime became almost annual affairs.

The soil was very soft and fine-textured, and the effect of the prairie grass roots on it, knitting it together, was strikingly seen in the first "breaking of the sod." It took three very strong horses, and even four, to pull a plough through it. Oxen were best and were often used. The sod would turn over with seldom a break, and would look like a great three-inch black plank. One after another across a field these long ribbons of sod would turn, the grass going under, so that a field looked as though clapboarded with gigantic black boards. It took a year for the grass and roots to rot. This first year "sod corn" was grown, but it was only fit for fodder or cattle feed. But one crop did well on sod. That was watermelons. The sod ploughed under showed no weeds for one season, but watermelon vines grew at will and luxuriously, and generally produced a big crop.

After the hundred-years-old sod was well rotted or pulverized, the washing away of the soil began.

Monegaw Springs.—A group of strong sulphur water springs in St. Clair County was already a famous resort for the southern pioneers. These springs reminded them of the Greenbrier and the Hot Springs of Virginia, and they were not unlike them in the quality of the waters. The old hotel was surrounded by a tract of one thousand acres and included all the mineral springs within this domain. The water, both black and white sulphur, was supposed to be very beneficial, and there was a large log hotel built in a curious way at Monegaw Springs. It was constructed by building four log houses, with about 12 feet of passageway between each, so this space formed a great cross, and then this entire structure was floored over one story up and carried two stories higher. The second and third floors furnishing sleeping rooms. On the hottest days the covered passageway between these first-floor log houses, or log rooms, was generally cool. The entire place had a porch around it. It was one of the remarkable places connected with my boyhood life. The great fireplace in the big living-room would take a fence rail, and suspended from the ceiling was the largest hornets’ nest I ever saw. The food was good and in generous supply. All the celebrities of the State and all visitors to the section visited Monegaw.

The Monegaw River or creek was navigable for small rowboats up to the Springs in all but the driest seasons. There were many caves about these Osage Hills, and the scenery up and along the Osage was not without charm and had great variety.

The rivers abounded with fish. Catfish as large as 60 pounds in weight, and sturgeon even larger, were caught in the Osage river while we lived in Osceola. After overflows of the river, pools would be left here and there along the bottom lands, and we boys had great fun wading in them, stirring up the mud until the fish would come to the surface for air, when we would hit them with clubs. We often got large numbers of fish in this way. The boy who stepped on the prong or bony horn of a catfish generally got an ugly wound, however. Bull pouts or bull heads they are called in other sections.

Court.—As a boy I seldom heard my father speak to a jury in Osceola. He did not want me to come to the courthouse, but I slipped into the courtroom at the end of the famous Barry and Blackman trial, and heard all my father’s address to the jury. The excitement about the killing of Blackman by Barry was very great. Not only the community but the entire county was divided into two factions. It was one of the most famous trials held in the county. Law suits, especially if for crime, were events of very great interest. They took the place of the theater to the frontiersman.

The courtroom was large, but packed to suffocation. I managed to squeeze in, being always a slender, supple lad. When I finally got where I could see and hear, the Prosecuting Attorney was saying:

"Foul, unnecessary murder, that’s what it was. You recall the fact that at Coombs’ store the Tuesday before Barry picked a quarrel with Mr. Blackman, struck him with his fist and a fight ensued, Blackman defending himself and quitting the fight when Barry ceased his attacks. Barry was angry, morose, morbidly jealous, because Mr. Blackman had danced with Mrs. Barry at a public dance—his wife was not fond of dancing, and at a public dance in the school house Mr. Blackman and Mrs. Barry danced together. Any harm in that? Anything wrong about that? Absolutely not. Yet it made Barry angry. He picked a quarrel with Mr. Blackman in a country store. He shouted out before the customers: ‘You quit paying attentions to my wife!’

"We know that the following Sunday morning Blackman went out alone to try out two spirited horses that he had never driven together as a team previously. Before long the team come dashing back along the road, with their owner’s lifeless form slumped down dead in the buggy. We know definitely he was shot to death by Barry. He and his family were the only eye-witnesses to the murder. Blackman was unarmed. He was killed because Barry had determined to kill him—because he wanted to kill him. There is no suggestion of self-defense here—it was murder, foul, wanton murder!"

The Prosecuting Attorney dealt on the runaway team coming tearing to the little home and Mrs. Blackman rushing out to find her husband tumbled down, dead and bloody, and she all alone. He said: "It was murder, and that was all it was— murder!"

My father arose and began speaking in a very low tone of voice. I began to fear he would certainly lose the case if he didn’t talk louder. My father’s speech, or the gist of it, as I recall it and have been able to reconstruct it from talking years later with men who heard it, especially Uncle Charles Nesbit, was about as follows:

"Your Honor, and Gentlemen of the Jury: Permit me to rest your minds from the barbaric cries for blood and vengeance which the Prosecuting Attorney has been shouting at you. Let us calmly look at the facts in this case; let us lay aside prejudice, feeling, and excitement. The facts are plain and simple and they make so much more eloquent a plea for my client than any words of mine could, that I need only recall them to your minds. You heard the testimony of all the witnesses.

"The event covered in the indictment consumed not over three or four moments of time. Therefore, as St. Paul said when before Agrippa, I need not weary you with much speaking, and I do not need to shout at you as though you were deaf, nor shake my fist in your faces as though you were dumb or uninterested in your duty as jurors in a Court of Justice.

"The cries of vengeance uttered by the Prosecutor, driven into a kind of frenzy by a blood lust which might be understood in cannibal savages of darkest Africa, but which is a shameful thing in a Christian community, cannot have driven from your memories the testimony. As to the truthfulness of the witnesses and as to the facts, you will decide."

By this time the courtroom was so still you could hear a pin drop, as the saying is. But I felt he was too quiet, and he didn’t make gestures enough. Pausing to pour out a glass of water and take a drink, he went on.

"On Sunday morning, May 7 last, the defendant, John Barry, was at home with his family. It was the sacred day of rest. The songs of birds came through the doors and windows of their humble cottage home. The fragrance of flowers and the hum of bees were there, adding their part to the delight of a lovely spring morning. His wife was tidying up the rooms. Mr. Barry was playing the violin. Playing for his wife and children, and all who have heard him play know he is an artist. And what tune was he playing? You recall I asked his little girl of ten that question. He was playing "Home, Sweet Home."

And then my father, who had a wonderfully musical and sympathetic voice, quoted the entire poem. The jury sat as though spellbound, every eye on him.

"Suddenly the sound of horses’ feet was heard, and a man named Blackman, with two fine horses and a new one-seated buggy, drove up and called out. Mr. Barry laid down his violin and went to the open door. ‘Tell Mrs. Barry I have come to take her for a ride,’ he said. Mr. Barry reached over his head, took his gun and gave him a load of buckshot for an answer.

"Those are the facts, and all the facts. My client has been indicted and charged with murder. He is not guilty of the charge. He was defending his home. He was defending the future happiness of his wife and his children. He was defending the American home everywhere against the lust and selfishness of men who forget their duty to their own families, to society, and to God. There was no murderous thought in his mind. Could a man sitting quietly at home, playing the violin, and playing the tune of ‘Home, Sweet Home,’ be meditating murder? You know that is out of the question. On the instant, outraged and flaunted and insulted as he was (for you recall that at a country store the week before, Mr. Barry had warned Mr. Blackman to stop paying attentions to Mrs. Barry), he lost control of himself and fired.

They were not out five minutes and brought in a verdict of "Not Guilty."

I told him they were sweetbreads from a freshly-killed beef and that they were for Mr. Latz. He walked down the street with me and we met some prominent citizens of the town.

A very vivid memory of my boyhood in Osceola was of a visit of a mob to the jail, which was connected with the courthouse.

I awakened suddenly one night about 11 o’clock and called to my mother. I heard her say in a low voice, "Hush, don’t make any noise." It was a bright moonlight night and the house was very light. I saw that she was sitting on the step near the back door, and I went out and sat down beside her. She was crying. I asked her what was the matter and she said that a mob had come to town and the sheriff had come for my father.

Listening in the still moonlight night, we could hear loud and angry voices coming from the direction of the courthouse square. At times they would die down and then grow louder again. Finally, there was quite a shout, following which we heard the heavy blows of a hammer against the iron doors of the jail, breaking down the doors of the prisoners’ cells. Then there were some shots fired and the noise receded, and everything became still in a few moments.

My father came home and he said that they had taken three prisoners out of jail. The sheriff had sent for him when the mob first appeared and asked him to come and speak to the mob and urge them not to commit a crime by breaking into the jail or doing any violence to these men who were in the custody of the law. He said he made quite a talk as to the importance of being law-abiding citizens, and so forth, and that finally the leader of the mob shouted, "Cover him, men." Then he saw in the moonlight the gleam of about 20 gun barrels which were pointed right at him. He said his power of speech suddenly fled.

The sheriff still refused to give up the keys and said that he would not give them up under any circumstances. He stood with his back against the brick wall and had a revolver in his right hand. The mob apparently did not think it wise to attempt to take them from him, so some of them ran to the blacksmith shop and got some sledge hammers, and the pounding we heard was when the men appeared at the jail doors with the sledge hammers. The doors were quickly broken down and the prisoners were taken out of town and hung to one big oak tree about a mile beyond the city limits, where their bodies were found in the morning. All three were riddled with bullets.

The shooting we heard was when the mob was leaving the courthouse with the prisoners and had made a threat that anyone following them would be killed. One of the mob had said, while my father was speaking, "You and Ferguson (he was my father’s law partner) are attorneys for these men and they will never be hung by the law."

They were three desperate and bad characters, and it was said that some of the members of the mob were among the best citizens of the county. However that may be, the mob was sufficiently strong and determined to make any resistance quite impossible or useless.

The most vivid memories of Osceola are connected with certain unsocial but dashing characters. I remember the thrill I felt when I first saw the Younger boys, and all during my boyhood and youth the most exciting events of life were directly or indirectly connected with them.

Forty or fifty years ago, to tell anyone in the United States that you had actually seen the Younger boys would have created interest, if not excitement. But this generation has no knowledge of them. For 16 years the "James Boys" and for 10 years the "Younger Boys" were the creators of more news and more talk than all the gangsters of Chicago today. They were train robbers and bank robbers. In fact, they invented train robbery and bank robbery in the United States, one might almost say. They ranged over many states. The bigger the train or the bank the better it suited them. For 10 years they were never caught, and few people knew what they looked like. They were systematically shy of photographers.

To me, as a boy, the Youngers were the most fascinating figures. 1 saw them in Osceola several times. They always rode spirited horses. They were alert, keen-faced men. My father always said one of the Youngers—I have forgotten whether Cole or Jim—was the finest specimen of a man, physically, he ever saw. He could easily leap into the saddle from the ground beside his horse with only his hand on the horse’s neck. I had heard stories about the Youngers and the Jameses for years, but they were always of events far away.

Aunt Sally Harris, an old colored servant, told us that her sister had lived with the Youngers when the boys were young. She said they used to place hats on each side of the road, on stakes, and then start their horses on the dead run and fire at a hat, first on the right and then on the left, as they raced down the road. She also said they used to go to sleep with two revolvers on top of the bed clothes, and the first one who awoke in the morning would shout to the others and they would rise up and bring both pistols cocked into position, all in one moment, as they sat up out of a sound sleep, this to train themselves against surprises.

The relatives of the Younger boys in St. Clair were reputable and respected people and were, as a rule, among the most prosperous people of the county.

The "James Boys" and the "Younger Brothers," as they were called the most, were not ordinary outlaws or bandits. They were very extraordinary men. They operated together, and certainly with a clearly understood cooperation. So long as they worked together they were never caught. It is a curious fact that for 10 years the Younger brothers engaged in scores of bank robberies and train robberies before being caught and the James boys operated for 16 years without being caught, and in fact never were caught. Jesse James was shot in the back in his own home by a traitor for the big reward which had been offered for his capture, dead or alive; and Frank James, some time later, voluntarily came in and surrendered himself to Governor Crittenden, my father being present, so that neither of the James boys was ever captured, although they operated in many states. They hold as outlaws, in this particular, an unequaled record. They were products of the Civil War. Their subsequent actions of outlawry and robbery were justified by literally thousands of otherwise good citizens on the ground that they were victims of the Civil War.

The Younger brothers had many relatives in St. Clair County. This county was remote from railroads. Osceola, and especially Monegaw Springs, were very difficult of access or travel, and St. Clair County was one of the great rendezvous of these outlaws and one of their most secure retreats. St. Clair County was, therefore, one of the "No Wheres" to which this band at times retreated. It is not impossible that the James boys were often in St. Clair County. I may have seen them but no one knew they were the James boys. Many people saw them who did not know or recognize them.

It is a well-known fact that Jesse James worked in Baltimore, Maryland, almost an entire year as a street car driver after one of his biggest and most successful train robberies. He had escaped those who were pursuing him and got to Baltimore and had secured a position as a street car driver and was a very satisfactory one.

This band had had a severe early training. After Osceola was burned and captured during the Civil War by Jim Lane and the northern soldiers from Kansas, Quantrell, who posed as a Southerner, although he had been born in Ohio, raised a band of men to retaliate by raiding some town in Kansas.

They selected Lawrence, Kansas. Quantrell had with him over 400 men. They rode into Lawrence early one morning.

Quantrell’s orders were to kill every man appearing on the street, and his orders were well carried out, for 183 men and boys were shot down in the streets of Lawrence by this gang. Among those whose pistols did execution that day, in what the Kansas people called the "Massacre of Lawrence," and what the Quantrell Missourians call the "raid on Kansas," were Frank James and Cole Younger. Jesse James was too young to join Quantrell then, but he did fight with him before the Civil War ended.

The government declared Quantrell’s band "guerillas" and "outlaws," and these men were afraid to settle down after the war, or they said they were, for fear they would be captured and hung. So they took to robbing banks and railway trains and they did this with a success never before or since equaled.

The few who resisted their commands passed off life’s stage instantly with scarcely an exception. Their aim was as deadly as that of "Wild Bill Hickok’s"—and of him it was said that after firing at a man he never looked to see if he had hit him— he knew he had.

A story was told of one of the Youngers, who, after a big robbery netting $80,000, went into hiding in Texas. It was Jim, I think. He got a job driving a stage. It was a long, hard drive, ending in San Antone, as San Antonio was called then. Now the western frontier had its social rules, its etiquette, its own standards of manners. One was that a man should not enter a saloon where others were and drink alone. He must treat the barkeeper, if no one else. Well, our Younger boy, in hiding, didn’t hanker after getting acquainted. He, known only as Mr. Smith, the stage driver, after a long, hot, dusty day, walked into a saloon and asked for a drink of whiskey. He held the glass up, holding it by the bottom to look at the liquor, whether to enjoy its color or to be sure no splinters from the barrel were in it, I do not know. It was a custom. As he held it so aloft—Bang! went a 38 pistol, sounding like a cannon in the confined room—and the glass was shattered.

A crowd of cowboys, one of whom had fired to show his resentment at his drinking alone, waited the stranger’s move. It was up to him, as they used to say. He quietly said to the bartender, "Give me another glass." He deliberately poured out a whiskey glass full, set it on the palm of his right hand, and held it out at right angles. It didn’t tremble. He had never looked around. With a cheer and a shout the cowboys bounded forward, saying: "No, Bo; you don’t drink alone and you don’t pay for no drinks, either." It was a display of pure nerve, which the Wild West understood.

They came from "No Where" and then went to "Nowhere," and year after year were never captured or apprehended, although the bankers and railroad companies had the best detective agencies after them, and the sheriffs of hundreds of counties with their deputies were hunting them, not only because they were criminals, but because of the enormous reward offered for their capture.

The Younger brothers never molested anyone in St. Clair County. I recall the great excitement, however, which was caused when one of them was shot in St. Clair. I was coming out of school and saw a great commotion down the street— men hurrying about, and the usual sleepy atmosphere of the county seat being changed to one of excitement and activity. I ran to my father’s office. Someone there was narrating to a group of men the news which had just come in by a rider— that one of the Younger boys had been shot and a Pinkerton detective shot not very far from Osceloa, and that Ed Daniels, deputy sheriff of the county, had been killed by the Youngers in the same fight.

Ed Daniels lived with his mother just across the street from our house; so, of course, this was the most thrilling matter to me. The story as I heard it then was as follows:

The Pinkerton Detective Agency of Chicago, famous from Civil War days, had sent some of their best operatives to Missouri. One man named Wright had been in St. Clair County for some time. A train had been robbed in northern Missouri not long before, and he had acted on the theory that the Youngers might retreat to St. Clair County and had gone there himself. Another detective named Allen had been sent to join Wright. They enlisted the aid of Ed Daniels and agreed to divide the reward with him if he would help them. He knew the country thoroughly—knew every road and bridle path, and practically all the people—and he agreed.

The three of them left Osceola one morning, feeling certain that the Youngers were somewhere near Monegaw Springs, so they rode out first to the home of Theodoric Snuffer, who was, I think, an uncle of the Youngers, certainly some relation of theirs. As they came towards Snuffer’s house, Wright said that the Youngers knew him by sight, and he knew them, and that he had better ride on ahead, for they might be at Snuffer’s. Daniels and Allen went in to make inquiries. They asked the way to the Widow Simms’, a famous character of that neighborhood, who owned a lot of land and was well known. They said they were cattle buyers. Snuffer talked with them and directed them to the Widow Simms’ property. Now, two of the Younger brothers, Jim and John, were in the Snuffer house at that time, but they kept themselves concealed and they heard this conversation. They looked out the window and saw that these men did not take the right road to the Widow Simms’, and this aroused their suspicion. They mounted their horses and took after them. Galloping around a bend in the road they came upon them suddenly. James Younger had a shotgun and he cocked both barrels and ordered them to halt. The other Younger boy had a revolver in his right hand. Wright, who was ahead of the other two, put the spurs to his horse and started down the road. The Younger with the revolver fired at him and knocked his hat off but did not hit him.

One of the Youngers then commanded the other two to throw down their weapons, which they did—Daniels’ two revolvers and the Pinkerton detective' s two revolvers. Jim Younger stood with his shotgun leveled at the two men who were still on horseback. His brother dismounted to pick up the revolvers. As he picked up the two the detective had thrown down, he said: "These ivory handles look like Pinkerton’s to me." His brother Jim looked down towards him and, as he did so, the Pinkerton detective whipped out another revolver he had concealed in his breast and shot Jim and killed him, but before he fell he pulled the trigger of his shotgun and nearly blew Daniels’ head off. The other Younger then opened fire on the detective as he was trying to spur away and shot him several times, and he finally fell from his horse.

The sound of the firing had aroused some of the neighbors who came upon the scene. One of the Youngers lay dead and Daniels was dead, and the only remaining Pinkerton was very badly wounded. He was carried to the Widow Simms’ home and Dr. McNeil, a famous surgeon from Osceola, was called to see him. McNeil had him moved to his own home in Osceola. Daniels was buried in Osceola, and Jim Younger was buried under a tree in the front yard of Theodoric Snuffer’s home. The Pinkerton detective, Wright, escaped and got back to Chicago.

So far, this is the story I heard many times from the people who were on the spot. As written up in the history of these bandits, however, this tale is not quite accurate or complete, for the greatest thrill of my boyhood was connected with the sequel of these incidents. It occurred some weeks after the shooting.

"Well," replied my father, laughing, "doctors often make mistakes, but I didn’t know they made them as bad as that."

Then Dr. McNeil said: "But I am serious about this. It is no laughing matter, Frank."

I did go out of the room, but I was very careful to leave a crack in the door and put my ear to it. The doctor then explained the situation. He continued: "You know that Pinkerton detective who was shot when Jim Younger was killed a few weeks ago? Well, he is going to get well. But the Younger boys and their friends have sworn that he shall never leave the county alive. It is 25 miles to the railroad, and I do not think he will ever get to it if he starts. Now, the Pinkerton Agency at Chicago has sent a detective down here and they want me to say that he is dead, and ship him out in a coffin. It is the only way we will ever get him out; but I don’t know what to do, if this is going to get me into any serious difficulty."

"Well," my father answered, "1 don’t think it will, Doc. Doctors often make mistakes, and if you can stand making a mistake like saying a man is dead when he isn’t, I don’t see that anybody can do anything about it."

The paper the next week stated that the detective was very low and much worse, and that Dr. McNeil didn’t think he would get well. A few days after that a notice appeared that he had died. Some of his family came on from Chicago. He was put in a coffin and carried in a farm wagon to Clinton, Missouri. The casket was put in the baggage car, and after the train started the Pinkerton detective got out and got away to Chicago. He did not die from the wounds, as most of the writers of the lives of the Younger brothers say he did. As one of the Younger gang would have certainly tried to get him for having shot Jim Younger, in cold blood and unnecessarily they thought, it was deemed best not to advertise the fact that he had recovered from his wounds and was still alive. He thought he had enough Younger bullets in his hide.

Osceola.—Osceola was just the kind of a town any normal American boy would like to grow up in—plenty of play, not much work, abundant food, short terms of school, and plenty of excitement.

There was John Cole, the city marshal, with typical western sheriff mustaches and goatee, erect of carriage, a dead shot, and not afraid of anyone, and who really enjoyed a fight. He had more than one notch in his gun, but the men he shot were all bad men or resisted arrest.

There was Bill Emerson, the giant blacksmith. We boys often stopped at his shop—the flaming forge, the ringing hammers and anvils, the flying sparks from the white-hot iron, were always fascinating.

Then, Bill was not so great in intellectual power as many. He liked to impress us boys with his great strength and we all believed him the strongest man on earth. He told us confidentially that he undoubtedly was the strongest man, and to see Bill shoe a wild horse for the first time was to quite convince you.

"Save me, Bill Emerson! Save me"

A few days later, a wag of a lawyer in the town met George and said:

"George, why didn’t you call on the Lord to save you?"

George, who was a direct, earnest lad, and who became a leading lawyer about this same ~courthouse, said:

"I was afraid the Lord couldn’t hear me, the storm was so bad—but Bill Emerson was right there."

Bill shot a fellow-townsman in a row, and the best my father could do for Bill was a sentence of five years in the penitentiary. Almost every boy in the town was down to see Bill start for Jefferson City on the stage. He was handcuffed to the sheriff, who was a small man, and as he led Bill toward the stage we boys held our breath, expecting to see Bill snap the handcuffs and throw the sheriff across the river. But he got into the stage docilely enough, and the driver, with one wooden leg and wearing a faded Confederate Army uniform, swung up to the box and took the reins. The four horses lifted their heads ready for the word to start.

Bill, our hero, waved his handcuffed arms to the crowd who were down to see him off, and said:

"Well, goodbye all! Thank God I ain’t goin’ up for stealing, anyway!"

A few months afterwards a big fire broke out in the penitentiary and Bill distinguished himself so by his bravery and power that the Governor pardoned him, and he came back doubly heroic in our eyes.

There are many other things which I remember distinctly about life in Osceola. I remember a terrible licking I got at school from a very prim old maid giantess, who was the teacher, because I could not spell correctly. Spelling has always been the hardest problem of my life, in a small way. For hours and hours I have studied spelling since I left school. My mother used to give me out words to spell every evening, but I never could learn to spell correctly, and I am still uncertain about many words.

I do not recall much about going to school in Osceola, except that I had the great privilege of becoming acquainted with McGuflie’s Readers. I used to read them through and through; and I still have a few old battered copies of the Fourth and Fifth Readers. These Readers gave me a taste for literature, in my opinion, and I feel greatly indebted for what they did for me. My mother was a woman of education, and it may be that I owe her more than I do the Readers or the school.

We went to Sunday School and church every Sunday.

We boys had wonderful times, swimming in the Osage River all summer, and we used to go up the river and make slides, as we called them, in imitation of the otter. We would throw water up over the mud banks until the slide got very slick and then we would slide down into the water. I remember on one occasion instead of coming down feet first I got turned around on the way with the result that my head rammed into the mud at the bottom of the river, and I went home a rather sorry looking spectacle, for I couldn’t get all the mud out of my ears, eyes or hair.

Railroad.—There was a great excitement in Osceola when I was a boy over the proposed coming of a railroad. It resulted in one of the most unique swindles ever perpetrated in this country, and the history of the St. Clair County bond fight has called for the writing of more than one book. My father was opposed to issuing the bonds and spoke against it, but there was no railroad anywhere near the county, and the proposition to run a railroad right through the middle of the county and through Osceola created wild excitement.

The proposition was that St. Clair County should issue $250,000 worth of 10% bonds and turn them over to the railroad company to help build the road, the county to receive railroad company stock for the bonds. The bonds were issued irregularly and fraudulently, and the railroad was graded down across the prairie section and through several hills and to the river and the railroad cut through a big hill at the lower end of the town for a distance of about a quarter of a mile, possibly, which was as much as 40 feet deep in places. The bonds were delivered and the work stopped at once. No train ever ran on that road during our stay in Missouri. The county was left without a railroad and over a quarter million dollar debt. The people of the county refused to pay this debt.

Osceola was in the very heart of what was known as "the Osage country." The Osage Indian was a superior type. They are classed with the Omaha, Ponca, Kansa, and Quapaw. The name 0sage," is a corruption by French traders, following Marquette, of "Wa-zha-zlze."

Zebulon N. Pike, in 1806, visited this section and spent some time in the Osage villages.

There were in every locality of this section of Missouri a few very good story-tellers or talkers. They handed down traditions and stories about the early times and pioneers, the first frontier days and the heroes and personages long gone. From these we heard much of Daniel Boone, of the great Senator Benton, of Simon Kenton, and others, and the story of Monegaw, the Chief of the Osages.

The Osage River was named for the tribe. The section about Monegaw Springs was a favorite section with them. The springs are near where the Ozark Mountains flatten out into the vast plains or prairies of Missouri, Kansas, and Nebraska.

The outstanding figure of the Osage Indians was Chief Monegaw. In the Indian annals he ranks with Black Hawk and Tecumseh. He was friendly to the palefaces when his warriors wanted to kill the first whites to invade their lands, but Chief Monegaw said: "The land is plenty—there is room for all."

Later, when the whites came faster and took the best land and slaughtered the game, discontent arose. The Indians disregarded him and attacked the whites, killing some settlers. Soldiers were sent down from Fort Osage near the present Kansas City, and in a battle near Monegaw Springs the Indians were defeated and many killed. One story tells of his voluntary resignation of his honors, and runs thus:

"One eventide the rugged bluffs with their scrubby oaks loomed dark against the crimson sky of the sunset. The silvery waters of the Osage below caught the reflection of the brilliant sky and ran like a river of flame. The noble chief stood, tall and straight, silhouetted against the sky. His bearing was proud, but he was sad of mien. With a broad sweep of his arm toward their beloved hills and valleys he told his braves the land of their fathers was being taken from them; that the time had come for them to push on toward the land of the setting sun.

"‘Go,’ he said, ‘the white man inhabits our home along the Osage and the Sac. Your old chief will remain here. That which has been my home shall be my burial place. Farewell!’

"One by one they bade him a silent farewell and departed. When the last one had gone, slowly his proud head sank to his bosom and he entered the cave, a broken-spirited man, there to abide until the ‘Great Father’ should call him to the ‘Happy hunting ground.’ According to tradition, he died there from starvation and a broken heart; was found by some of his white friends and buried, with his trappings, on the banks of the creek which bears his name.

With the Indians gone, the white settlers became more numerous. In 1850 medical experts were sent by Congress to analyze the waters of the various springs, and the report showed them to be very high in mineral properties—chiefly sulphur and iron."—From Tales of the Osage.

When a boy we often saw wandering bands of Indians in Osceola. They greatly interested us. The squaws carried the babies or "papooses" on their backs and they had scraggy little ponies with two long poies fastened to a collar and trailing the ground on either side, and on cross pieces fastened their gear and tents and utensils, letting the pole ends drag along the ground.

The Indian Territory was not far away and they may have been remnants of the Osages coming back to the land of their ancestors, of which they still retained traditions.

One of the interesting events of my boyhood was the preparation for the journey and the trip, and afterwards the many remarkable stories of what they had seen, of my Uncle Scott and Grandfather Nesbit at the World’s Fair, or Centennial, at Philadelphia in 1876. We each got a present of some kind which had come from the Fair.

After we had left our farm for Osceola, the community where we lived had been augmented by so many other families from Ohio, that it became known generally as the "Ohio neighberhood," and when the first schoolhouse was built, it was called the "Ohio schoolhouse"; and later the postoffice was called the "Ohio postoffice," and is so called, as I understand it, to this day. A very few years after my father went to Osceola, Uncle Scott came to the position of Assistant Cashier in the only bank in the county. The President of the bank lived in St. Louis, and the cashier was a friend he had sent out when the bank was started, but my uncle soon was the man who ran it and who knew all about it. He was genial— a "good mixer," as they said out West—and of unbounded energy.

In a few years Uncle Scott was the owner of the finest home in Osceola. Grace, Harrison, and Donald were lively children, and we lived near together.

Uncle Scott purchased a Steinway piano for Grace. It was the first one to come to Osceola after the Civil War. It came by freight to Clinton and by wagon the 25 miles from there. The river was about as high as could permit fording, and the driver got off the route, hit a big stone, tipped his wagon bed up, and overboard went the piano. The news spread uptown and to Uncle Scott’s house. His yard was surrounded by a fancy picket fence, the pickets being of different lengths, making scallops or loops. Grace ran out, all excitement, and one neighbor declared she jumped over the picket fence as she ran, clearing it at the highest point. After a lot of fuss and excitement, the piano, dripping mud and sand and gravel and water, was rescued from the river bed. It was quickly cleaned as well as could be, but the musical part had become completely discouraged. It gave out a doleful twang as though in pain.

Uncle Scott wrote the Steinway people a very humorous letter, relating the story, and ordered a new one, for which he offered to pay the same price. The president of the company answered and told him to ship it back and they would replace the works, and without charge. It came in due time safely, with new and perfect insides, but with the original splendid rosewood case, which had now traveled four times between Boston and St. Clair County, Missouri. It came East again and was to have yet another trip to the home where Steinways are made. After he had come to Washington and had lived in the city and later at Belmont, he thought before going to Alwington the piano should be put in thorough repair, so sent it on, and a letter came back from an old man in the firm who recalled the incident of the "drowning in the Osage." It was shipped to Warrenton, Virginia, direct from the Steinway factory, and now stands in the drawing room at "Alwington" at Warrenton, Virginia, and looks in as perfect shape as when new.

Uncle Charles was on the farm, busy improving his own livestock and encouraging the breeding of better stock throughout the country. He brought into the county thoroughbred stock. He was for Durham or "Short Horn" cattle, Berkshire hogs, and Coltswold sheep; he imported some of these sheep from Canada at a cost of $50 each, and he bought a Durham bull which cost $1,500, and was the show animal of St. Clair County. He was named the "Duke of Monegaw." Thus, within a few years, the three brothers were leading citizens in the county, were active in business and politics, promoting better schools, better livestock and better laws.