Annals of our ancestors; one hundred and fifty years of history in the ...

HOME BUILDING IN MINNESOTA 227
much that was new and interesting. I had never seen prairie
country before; it had been burned over and the blades of green
grass were springing from the black surface, interspersed with
wild flowers, noticeably the little woolly Easter blossoms which
in coming springtimes I often saw showing their delicate color
through a blanket of snow. Gophers and little striped squirrels
were frisking about; the jack oaks were coming into bud. I
could but think of the warm spring day we left Cincinnati —
the little apples forming on the orchard trees and the loaded
bushes of lilac and snowball. It was a pleasure, though, to
see the spring coming a second time that year. At St. Francis
we found but a store and a post office besides lumber and flour
mills. My husband's parents were infirm, especially the
father, he being afflicted with rheumatism. They received
me with expressions of parental kindness. My two younger
sisters-in-law, Elmina and Orlinda, were at home, and the
brother next older than Alvah was the stay of the family, Levi
Frost.
We went to housekeeping in a little deserted claim shanty
which was at least clean and cozy, a good place to camp out
during the warm months. Early in the summer the defeat
of the Union forces at Bull Run made things look quite dark.
About midsummer, on a Sunday, we were taking dinner with
one of our church friends when word came that a man from
Ohio had arrived in St. Francis. We made haste to see who
the Ohio man could be, and as we waded along through the
sand I saw, over the tops of the brush, a tall silk hat. I knew
at once that it was Brother William. What joy! I was glad
we had a bed for him in our little home. How we did visit!
It was sandy about St. Francis, and the soil was thin and
crops uncertain; so hearing through the Vandervorts of a better
place on the west side of the Mississippi in Stearns County,
we determined to move there. It was about sixty miles distant
from St. Francis, and we drove over. A neighbor, Hugh
Wiley, whom Mr. Frost first knew in Ohio, lent us a little white
pony and a buggy, and one bright autumn morning we three
started out with our lunch basket packed, ready for new scenes
and experiences.