Waseca County, Minnesota - Chapter 13, 1905

Chapter 13

PREPARATIONS FOR WINTER - HAULING PROVISIONS FROM IOWA. TRIP MADE TO AUBURN, IOWA, BY THE AUTHOR - DECEMBER 19, 1855 ON THE PRAIRIE ALL NIGHT - ONE MAN FROZEN TO DEATH - A COLD CHRISTMAS.

"While a few of the earliest settlers in 1855 had raised enough vegetables for their winter supply of food, not one of them had produced a supply of wheat, and every family was compelled to haul flour and other supplies from distant points, the nearest Hour mill being over one hundred miles distant. Most of the flour was obtained from Auburn, Iowa, a small town on Turkey river.

Among those who were Avise enough to prepare for winter before winter commenced were the Krassins. Having completed their home preparations for winter, they started with several teams and wagons for Iowa. Justina, afterwards IMrs. Child, accompanied her brothers as cook. They went by way of Owatonna and Austin, and thence southeast to Auburn, where they found an abundant supply of flour and other articles. They returned after an absence of three weeks heavily loaded with provisions. As they made the trip in October - the golden month of the year - when Minnesota is clothed in the beauteous garments of Indian summer, they enjoyed a pleasant and profitable journey. Their return furnished the settlement with valuable information as to the road to take to reach Auburn, the prices to be paid for flour, pork, groceries, etc.

But most of the settlers had stables to build, cabins to finish up and other fall Avork to do, so that it was Avinter before they could get started on the trip to "Egypt for corn."

James E. Child'S Story

A journey of one hundred or one thousand miles to-day, in railroad passenger coaches, is a very easy undertaking, but a journey of one hundred miles or more across a country where the streams are unbridged and the sloughs ungraded, where cabins are few and far between, through storms of rain or sleet or snow-blizzards, camping out on the bleak prairie at night, with nothing to charm either the ear or the eye save the howling blasts of winter or the more demoniac howling of prairie wolves as, coward-like, they reconnoiter your position and conditionsuch a journey may be somewhat romantic to read about, but it is not so very enchanting to those who have made a trial of it. The experiences of all those who made the journey that winter were very similar, no doubt, and the writer gives his own and those of the few others he has been able to get as samples. JAMES E. CHILD'S STORY. During the first days of December, 1855, having engaged two pair of oxen and a wagon of the brothers John and David J. Jenkins, I made preparations for a journey into Iowa. John Jenkins furnished the money (about $150.00) ; I was to put in my labor and skill, get a load of provisions and groceries, bring them into the settlement and sell them ; each of us was to share equally in the profits, if any.

I started from the settlement December 5th, and proceeded to Owatonna, where I remained two days to get the oxen shod. Uncle Jo. Wilson, the rough, kind-hearted blacksmith, of that place, did the job. On the 8th I took the wagon track leading to Austin. There were two or three cabins some five or six miles south of Owatonna, a quarter of a mile from the road, and, after passing them, there were no other habitations to be seen until the Vaughn settlement, near the place now called Lansing, was reached. Before reaching this settlement, night came on, and the darkness, if it could not be felt like that of Egypt in the days of Pharaoh, was near enough to it to prevent a prudent man from trying to travel in a strange country. Camping for the night was the next best thing and I put up in a thicket of red oaks.

I built a rousing big fire, warmed up the baked pork and beans, toasted the frozen bread, thawed out the doughnuts, made a cup of tea, ate a hearty supper and smoked the pipe of peace with all the then visible world. I had oii the wagon about a quarter of a ton of hay (it was necessary in those days to carry along food for both man and beast), so that the cattle had plenty to eat and the driver had plenty to sleep on under the wagon. In such a place, on such a night, under such circumstances, even a young man naturally becomes philosophical and looks upon his own life as one of the greatest mysteries of a mysterious and, as yet, incomprehensible iiniverse, the beginning and ending of which is called God, the Father of all.

Solitary and alone with the patient oxen, I threw myself upon a pile of hay, wrapped in an Indian blanket, and must have gone to sleep early in the evening. In the night I awoke to find that a drizzling rain storm had set in from the northeast. I put some more wood on the fire and again went to sleep. About an hour before daylight, I was aroused by a prairie wolf concert that was being held in the immediate vicinity and probably for my benefit. Appreciating the compliment of the serenade, I stirred the embers of the camp-fire, put on more wood and soon had a cheerful blaze, notwithstanding the dampness. Those wolves, like some people, seemed to prefer darkness to light, for they left at once.

As soon as it was light enough to see the road, travel was again resumed. As the day advanced, the storm increased, and, by three o'clock p. m., rain and sleet were falling fast. I passed through the village of Austin about noon that day, where I took dinner. Austin then boasted one store, one tavern, one blacksmith shop and several pioneer cabins. After leaving Austin it was found very difficult to keep the right track, owing to the numerous wood roads leading in various directions. Unhappily for me, I selected the wrong track, and, about four o'clock in the afternoon, found myself a mile off the road, but at a comfortable log house, where I stayed over night. About the time I reached here, the rain changed to snow. The next morning the ground was covered with three or four inches of snow, and more was still falling.

On the morning of the 10th, I was rather late in starting, as I had only twelve miles to make during the day. I had traveled a mile or so, when a large drove of elks crossed the road some twenty rods ahead of me, in single file. There must have been fifty or sixty of them. They were quite numerous that winter along the two Cedar rivers, but I never heard of any in this scclioti iil'liT thai wintcT. Twi'Ive miles brdiij^lit me to the wi-stcrn c(\'j;i: of a pfairie citihtcoi ijiilt'S across, and without a, resident [jerson iiiioi] it. ( )n tlie wesleni and soiitli western ed^'e of this exti-iisive praii-ie, tiiere was qiiile a setileinejit of Seaiidinavian Amecieans, who had hteated tliere in 1854-5. I stayed over night with a hospitable Xofwej^ian family. They were yoiini;!' people, with one child. The man (;ould sjieak only a few words of English, hut his comely wife could converse quite fluently in that lan- Knaj^e. The man, an.xious to learn English, made a school teacher of me dnrinj^- the ('venini^-, and refused pay the next morning for my enterlainment, except f(H' what corn 1 fed the cattle.

Pearly on the 11th I st;tfted across that beautiful prairie which lies si)re;id out between the two (Jedars on tlie south line of our state. This was a, pjeasarit day, but the soft snow which had fallen made ti-avelint^' slow and tiresome, and it was already dark when I ri'aelicd the Brink house, on the i^ast branch of the Cedar.

< )i] th(! I2th the weathei- became' colder. I passed a tavern and store called I'df-iborje's, and traveled ovcf' a, prairie, some ten. oi- twelve miles across, whei-c there were no setthu-s. That night 1 put up with a Iloosier family that had (-ome from Indiana the sutiimer before, llcri- wei'c several other travelers, among them a man living near the lirink house that had been lost on the prairie most of the ())'evioiis u\'^\ii and had frozen his face, feet, and hands (juite severely. During that ni^ht the weathi_-r moderated and more snow fell.

JJeceinber 13th, about 10 o'clock in the rorenooii, I ai'rived at (Jreen's creek-, a stream then about thirty I'ecit wide, with water three feet deep, which had to be forded. The ice was 7iot strong enou'^h to hold up a team, but yet thick enough to require cutting in pieces bfd'ore th(; ('altle could be driven thi'ou<4li. After much labor in cutting ice and driving the oxen through the stream, [)assed ovei' safely. All .dorig the I'oad that day there Avei-e numerous pionei^i- cabins to be seen, and, in several places, then; were indications of several years of settlement. I spent that nijilit with a )-cgnlar Yankeo. He had lived in Iowa for ten years - tliree years on the farm where 1 passed the night. I was then only seven miles from Aubui'n.

The 15th was so stormy and cold that I delayed a daj-. On the 16th I again started. Everything went well enough until afternoon, when the forward bolster of the wagon broke and I was compelled to put up with a farmer, unload the wagon and make a new bolster. Fortunately I struck the right house - the home of a carpenter. Although the father was not at home, he had some grovsm up boys from whom I obtained the use of tools to make the necessary repairs. It took all the next day to get ready for another start, and most of the day it snowed.

On the 18th I started quite early. The weather was clear but cold, and the road hard to travel. I got as fair as the Brink house that day, and as the snow Mas about a foot deep, and hauling a wagon and breakinji' the roads were laborious, I accepted a fair offer for a portion of the load that night.

It was rather late on the morning of the 19th of December, my twenty-second birthday, when I started from the Brink house to cross that eighteen miles of uninhabited prairie. In climbing the hill on the west side of the Cedar, the wagon slid out of the track and the off hind wheel caught in a small tree, which . had to be cut down. The oxen had become discouraged and I was unable to get them to haul the load to the top of the hill. I was in for a tug. I had to unload and carry ten hundred pounds of that flour about two rods to the top of the hill on my shoulders. It was noon by the time I had reached the top of the hill and had reloaded, and it was eighteen miles to the house of my Norwegian friends on the west side of the prairie. Not a track had been made since the last fall of snow, across the prairie, and it was a question whether to proceed that day or wait till morning. I finally concluded to proceed. The snow was drifted in many places and progress Avas decidedly slow. To add to the discomfort of the situation, a storm of wind and fine, hard snoAv set in from the northwest about the middle of the afternoon; when darkness settled down on the prairie, I was only a little more than half way across it, with little prospect of proceeding much further that night.

So the oxen vs^ere taken from the wagon tongue; one pair hitched to the wagon at the front end ; the other pair to the hind end; both on the leeward side. I was somewhat tired, having tugged the flour up the hill in the morning, and walked beside the cattle all day through the deep snow, and that, too, without dinner or supper, or even a drink of water. Of course, I could eat snow! The cattle had no hay, but there was some corn on the load and this I fed them, reserving and chewing and swallowing some of it myself. There was also some raw, fresh pork aboard, and I cut off a small piece with an ax and managed to eat a mouthful or two, after a fashion.

The wind increased to a gale in the evening and the air was so filled with snow that no object could be seen fifty feet away. I drew off my boots - overshoes I had none - put on a dry pair of socks, and then put on my boots again. Having heard it said that a man might wind himself in a blanket and lie down in the snow and sleep without freezing, I concluded to try the experiment. Accordingly I put my body inside a blanket, and then wound myself with about thirty yards of new cotton cloth, and laid me down to slumber. Morpheus came not to my relief, but the Frost King pierced me at every pore of my body. I stuck to my position, however, until I was completely buried in snow, and yet the cold crept through and made such fierce attacks upon me that I was forced to dig out of the snow and protect myself in some other way as best I might. After gathering up the cotton cloth and putting it back in the wagon I took the ax which I carried along, cleared away the snow on a patch of ground, and went to pounding it with t'le ax the same as though I were chopping wood. In a short time I got comfortably warm by this exercise. I was very much fatigued by my exertions through the day, and began to feel the need of husbanding my strength for the morrow. I leaned againt one of the oxen, the animal heat of which helped to keep me warm. In this position I soon fell into a sleep, when my knees gave out. and I partly fell. That awoke me. I tried it again, and again I slept and fell. Then I began to feel chilly and again resorted to the ax for exercise. Then I leaned, against the patient old ox once more, slept again, and then took a round with the ax. These performances I continued, with a little variation during one of the coldest nights of that cold winter, and until the dark shadows of night passed into the gray light of a eloiidy, stormy morning.

Upon examination in the morning, I found that I had strayed nearly eighty rods from the road. The oxen were soon hitched to the wagon, and the load was finally started with that peculiar screeching noise always made by wagon wheels in snow on a cold morning. About 10 o'clock in the forenoon, I arrived at the house of my Norwegian friends with whom I had stayed on my way down. They comprehended at a glance what had been my experience and proceeded to prepare breakfast. In a short time the good woman placed before me warm biscuits, hot coffee, potatoes, meat, etc., and it seems to me yet that no other person in the world ever furnished a better meal.

I spent the rest of the day there and enjoyed a night of very refreshing sleep. That afternoon, I learned from my hostess of a sad affair of the night before - the night that I camped upon the prairie. She said that two of their neighbors had visited Austin on the 19th, and in coming home that night one of them had perished with cold arid was found dead, while the other had been found with his hands and feet very badly frozen. The body of the dead man was found within forty rods of his ovm door, where a patient, loving wife, with three children, watched all night for his coming. The other, who was so badly frozen, was found about eighty rods from the dead man, iinable either to walk or to talk when first found. Empty whisky bottles were found upon them, and there was no doubt as to the real cause of the death of the one and the maiming of the other. No wonder Shakespeare said, speaking of intoxicating liquors, "Let us call thee Devil."

On the night of the 20th, more snow fell. On the 21st, I reached Austin. The snow had become so deep that I could not well proceed further on wheels, and so I purchased an ox-sled at that place. The 22d was spent in taking the wagon apart, loading it and its contents upon the sleigh and driving as far as Mr. Vaughn's. That was an intensely cold, stormy night. The Frost Fiend was abroad in all his howling majesty, and nmny were the expressions of hope that no one was out on the prairiethat uight to face the merciless blasts that swept the country. The storm abated the nest morning about ten o'clock, and I made about seven miles on the 23d through the snow drifts, stopping with a kind hearted English family, the last residents on the road home between Vaughn's and Owatonna.

The nest morning, I started before sunrise, the weather being clear and very cold. The roads had not been traveled since the snow storm and the going was heavy. Three times that day I had to shovel through drifts of snow and pry up the sled in order to get through. About two o'clock p. m. I met two teams of horses and three or four men going into Iowa for flour. After this, traveling was niuch easier for the oxen. In the afternoon the weather grew colder, and before night I began to think my feet would freeze in spite of my efforts to keep warm. I finally pulled off my frozen boots and traveled with nothing but socks on my feet. At first my feet got very warm, but finally the frost began to work through the socks and I thought I should surely freeze. Suddenly I came upon the remains of a campfire in a thicket of jack oaks, some ten or twelve miles south of Owatonna. I at once piled on some more wood and renewed the blaze. Here I fed the oxen some corn, overhauled my bundle of clothing and found some dry socks and a pair of new boots, which I put on; I also ate some doughnuts which my hostess of the night before had put into my overcoat pockets, and again started the weary oxen tOAvards Owatonna. Five miles south of Owatonna I struck a pretty fair road, several teams having passed over it since the snow storm. The night Avas bitterly cold and it was a difficult matter to keep from freezing. I finally arrived at Sanford's tavern in Owatonna, about two o'cl-ock Christmas morning. I remained in Owatonna over Christmas and sold a portion of my load at good prices. On the 26th I started for "Wilton. Here again the road was unbroken. The cattle were already Aveakened by their long journey, and, just as night came on, in pulling through a deep snow drift, the sled tongue Avas torn out. This made it necessary to leave the load there for the night. This accident happened a little north of what is knoAATi as the Vinton farm. There Avas no help for it; I was compelled to unhitch the teams and take my course homcAvard, guided only by the stars. I had along with me a large, white cat that I had bought in Iowa, and that I carried confined in a grain sack on the load. It would not do to leave him there for he might perish if anything should happen to prevent my return for a day or two ; so I took him out of the sack and called him to follow me. He did so in the most approved manner, keeping close to me all the way. I arrived at the John Jenkins' cabin about 11 o'clock that night, where I found Uncle John sitting by his fireplace eating parched corn. He arose in a half dazed way and wondered how I got there such a night as that without any road. He said he had about given up all hopes of my return and thought I must have frozen to death on the prairie.

Very feM' of the settlers that made trips to Iowa or Wisconsin that winter for supplies fared as well as I. :Many were badly frosted ; some lost their teams ; others were obliged to sell their loads on the road at a sacrifice; all suffered more or less severely.

We realized enouiih out of our load to pay expenses. The experience and fifty cents a day was all that I sot out of the enterprise. But then, I was pretty well satisfied - thankful that I was again at my own bachelor fireside, hale and heartv.