A Little piece of Paradise… College Hill, Ohio - SELFCRAFT

generosity traveled ahead of us and we found the later places we stopped at father did not complain of thecharges being too small.We finally arrived at Albion. Our drivers took us to a Tavern, so called, kept by quite an old ladynamed Woods. She had come with her family from England many years before, I think with the Mr.Flowers formerly mentioned. She had a family of several grown boys, who made their living hauling toand from the rivers, while the old lady saw to running the Tavern. We stayed there until we were able tosecure a house to live in. We finally rented one of the best houses in the town, a brick house of quite anumber of rooms, quite large enough for the needs of all the family. We were lucky as most of the houseswere built of logs, a few were frame. There was a much better Tavern or Hotel kept by Mrs. Bowman,this was the place we should have gone to as it was much superior in every way to the one kept by Mrs.Woods.Sister Sarah was some years after married to Henry Bowman, a son of the proprietress. We foundquite a number of English people of good education and refinement, who took quite an interest in us andgave us advice as to the situation we were in, being new comers and having no experience as farmers.Father found he had made a mistake and had settled at the wrong place, there was nothing to do in the lineof his regular business....The natives were very poor farmers, raising a little corn and a few hogs and sheep, kept mostly forthe wool, which they carded, spun into yearn and then wove it into cloth. They dyed it with the stain frombutternut hulls, and some dyed it blue with indigo. It made a very strong and lasting cloth and was aboutall they could get for the family clothes. The women made their dresses from the same material, as theyseldom could afford to buy anything else, cotton prints cost from twenty to forty cents per yard, it wasmore beyond their means than fine silks or satin would be today.There was another family named Thompson, also a doctor and a well educated man, with a family ofchildren, who became quite intimate with us...also, an old Englishman named Tribe. He had a cardingmill, the motive power was a steer, but it was frequently the milk cow of the family that was substituted.They farmed as well as run the mill...Game at the time we first went to Albion was very plentiful. There were plenty of deer. I have seenthem in herds of a dozen at one time. I have known them to run through the town in day time with thedogs following after them. There were also plenty of Wild Turkeys and pheasants, and quail in largenumbers. Wild Pigeons in the fall when the acorns were ripe were in such numbers as to be incredible ofbelief. I have hundreds of times seen them pass over the town extending in width from North to South asfar as the eye could see, and take a couple of hours to pass, over hundreds of millions must have passed inthat time. They flew at great speed. They have been shot right at Albion with undigested rice in theircrops, and the nearest rice being in South Carolina several hundred miles. At the time of this writing wildpigeons have become extinct, only a few days ago there was five hundred dollars offered for a nest ofthem (1911). They have, like the Buffalo, entirely disappeared.Father soon found out a farmer’s life was not for him and he soon began to look out for some otherplace to locate. After investigating and obtaining all the information he could get, he decided uponCincinnati as the most eligible place he could locate in. So to avoid the tedious wagon trip to the OhioRiver he waited for high water in the Wabash River, and packing all up again we left for Grayville, Ill.situated on the Wabash River, only about ten miles from Albion and could be reached in less than oneday. After waiting a little more than a day we got passage on quite a fine boat and reached Cincinnati, Ithink in three or four days...but our misfortune father became acquainted with a number of English peoplewho were very dissatisfied with America, having made failures of everything they attempted to do, andwanted to return to their own country but had not the means to do so. It was the time the country was in avery bad condition, it had not yet recovered from the general bankruptcy of the year 1837, when the U. S.Bank of Pennsylvania failed and caused the greatest financial distress this country ever experienced.Trade of every description was as bad as it could be, there was but little money in circulation and that wasall paper money. What were called wild cat banks were springing up all over the country and were passedat all kinds of discounts from 5 to 25%, the only ones that were at par were a few of the State Banks, such162