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

HOME BUILDING IN MINNESOTA 231
family. I think he was ten years old when he came to us, and
he went to a school taught by Mr. Frost. Our good friend
Mr. Stanley had engaged this school near us for Alvah, and he
was paid at the rate of a dollar a day.
The "Shadow" claim was but a short walk from the
Stanleys, and they were ever our good neighbors; had it not
been for them and the Hoyts I should have been most lonely
that first winter in the far North. As it was, many a pleasant
evening did we spend with those neighbors. If the snow was
deep the men would take me on a handsled, bundled up in a
heavy overcoat. It snowed almost every day that winter; the
snow was estimated as four feet deep upon the level, and then
how it drifted in the high winds! We had never seen the like
before. It grew so cold that Amos thought we had better kill
our chickens to save their lives! We did so, and they were
well frozen after death; many people killed their chickens early
in the winter and froze them up in a natural cold storage, which
was almost any place not directly by the stove. I did not like
this way very well.
Brother William bought a yoke of oxen from Mr. Stanley;
one was named Buck and the other, a white ox which had belonged
to a Sioux, still had its Indian name untranslated,
" Wapoose." With this yoke of oxen and an old sled we made
many a trip of four miles to the post office and over to "Aunt"
Eliza Vandervort's on the south side of Lake Carnelian. At
this home we spent some Sundays which would otherwise have
been lonely, and many a long winter evening has been brightened
by the neighborliness of the pioneers. Bear and deer
were then quite plentiful, and I think the Stanleys always had
fresh meat; if deer could not be found Joe and Dave would get
a fine raccoon. Mrs. Stanley sent me the first meat of the
latter which I had ever eaten; it was a fine delicacy. In
Fairhaven, eight miles away, we had some Ohio friends — the
Deans, Abies, and others — whom we sometimes visited.
Brother William liked company and got around among our
church folks; and he would sometimes speak for them on Sunday,
which we all enjoyed. Our brother brought with him into
the wilderness his great natural endowments, enriched by