Told by the Pioneers - Washington Secretary of State

Told by the Pioneers
River. Father took us to a tavern for breakfast. The weather was
becoming uncertain and we commenced to look for a place to winter.
Crossing the DesMoines River we came to a little log cabin town, one
street of one story log cabins, built on a prairie near the DesMoines
River. One store, general merchandise, one hotel, one log cabin saloon.
Adjoining the hotel was a frame addition and this Father rented
of M1'. Nidley, the landlord, for our quarters for the ·winter.
M1'. Lucas would have no city life in his, so he felled trees and built
a cabin about a mile out of Dudley
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by the river.
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There was an abundance of corn. Father "would buy a field as it
stood in the shock and we boys would go out and break off the ears and
fill a wagon bed full and haul it home to feed the oxen.
The boys enjoyed the winter skating on the ice and visiting with
the good natured pioneers. Sometimes they 'would gather in the little
town and get pretty boisterous. I remember once or twice we all
stayed inside the house out of the way. The men folks of our party
being away, nobody got killed, but sometimes one or two of them would
get badly bruised up.
This was a very rich, productive country, though the land was good
everywhere, hills and valleys.
Father fixed up a place to mix up a lot of dough and knead it with
a lever fastened to the wall. He would put a pile of dough into a kind
of trough and would have us boys spend the evening kneading the
dough thoroughly, then roll it out and cut it into cracker shape about
four inches square and then bake them hard and fill them into seamless
grain sacks. There would be no lard or butter used, as there would
be danger of them spoiling (Microbes). This supply of hard bread
was the emigrants' mainstay against starvation. The hard biscuit and
a plentiful supply of bacon. The filling in could be made as circumstan