Memoirs of Thomas Council , Robeson Co NC, 1868

I was born in Robeson County, North Carolina on the second day of September, 1810. What knowledge I have of the history of my forefathers is very limited, reaching but little further back than our own family. My grandfather on my father's side lived about three miles from where I was born. Robeson County embraces within its territory a part of the Sand-Hill region which has for its main growth the long strawed pitchpine, and the other portion is made up of brushes and cypress ponds over which is to be seen in various sizes and shapes that peculiar growth they call cypress-knees with swamps, slashes and small streams. This portion of the country in the main is very level and hence retains nearly all the water that falls upon it, as the currents in the swamps are always sluggish and more or less stagnant. It may be truly said of this portion of the country, as well as all this portion of the state, that it is more than half covered with these ponds and swamps. The upland as it may be termed is not much elevated above the beds of the swamps and ponds. The ridges of land are covered with the invariable long strawed pine interspersed with black-jack oak, a few hickory and scrubby oak called post-oak as well as low brushy growth called white oak runners.

My birthplace was near the dividing line between these two regions of country, and just inside and well among these swamps and ponds, and I may say a more dreary uninviting poverty stricken region is scarcely to be found in North America - especially where human beings attempt to live. My grandfather and my father when he was quite young moved from Ash County, which lies up towards the mountains, to this county. What inducent there could have been for such a move from such a sightly and healthy country to this sickly and uninviting region, I was never able to ascertain, unless it was on account of the game, which at that time must have been abundant, and the cheapness of the land. I have known large tracts of it sold for less than a dollar per acre. It is not more valuable now only for its valuable timber as pitch-pine and cypress must be regarded as the most valuable of any timber in the world.

My grandfather was a large man as well as all the Councils with whom I was acquainted, six feet being the average height. My grandfather lived to be eighty years of age and was very corpulent even as far back as I can remember. He was supposed to weigh over three hundred pounds. My grandmother on this side died before my remembrance, but from what I heard my mother say (for father rarely said anything about his family or relations) she must have had a poor constitution as she died of tuberculosis. Of what race of people my father was, I am unable to say. The name would indicate French origin but of this I am not sure. In all my reading of history of the old world and the new I have never found the name mentioned. There was one other family of Councils in the neighborhood who I think claimed a very distant relationship to our family, and I have heard since I grew to manhood that there was a Council living in the upper part of North Carolina. If he was related to us I never knew anything about it. Since I have been in the west, I have heard of a man of our name living in Ohio and one by that name passing through on his way to Iowa heard of me and corresponded with me, but we were unable to connect any relationship. Within the last year I have heard of another Council living in Pennsylvania, but I know of no others with this name and they seem not to have been very numerous.

My grandfather on my mother's side was named Barlow. No doubt he was of English descent. He married a lady by the name of Ikenon whose parents came from the Rhine and probably were of German descent. My grandmother on this side died when they had but two children, my mother being the eldest and quite young. My grandmother died of a form of dysentery. The Barlows were a low heavy-set hardy and industrious people. At least this was the character of my grandfather. Unfortunately he was addicted to drinking too much. He married again not long after my grandmother died and brought a step-mother into the family who tyrannized over my mother to such an extent that I have no doubt it led her to marry my father.

I shall not undertake to give history of my grandfather Barlow as I have never known where he came from, nor have I any clue to his ancestors. He was a man of some property and owned a great deal of land in this section of the country as well as slaves. By his last wife he had six children. He gave my mother a plantation when she married which was fully one-half covered by swamps and ponds. If there had been only one pond or one swamp it would have been more tolerable. This land was most difficult to clear and it was there my parents undertook life seemingly without forethought to rear their children who made their appearance rapidly until they numbered ten. I will here give their names as they were born. Solomon Barlow, Nancy, Cyrus, Thomas, Matthew, Margaret, Elizabeth, Jordan, Mary and John. All are living now with the exception of Cyrus who died about ten or twelve years of age. Jordan died at the age of nineteen with typhoid fever. Cyrus died with inflammatory rheumatism. John died in Alabama in 1863, and Matthew died in Indiana.

My grandfather on my father's side was a land-owner, but how much he owned, I never knew. At my earliest recollection it was an old place. My father's youngest brother with my grandfather, who was then an old man, lived together. My uncle married into a family who managed to squander the estate to some extent. He died after they had three or four children and the land was left to his widow and children. My father did not inherit any of the estate. This is all I can say in general terms about my grandfather and grandmothers.

I will now confine my narrative to our own family and try to give as much of their history as I can from memory for this is all the data I have at my command. My father and mother formed an unhappy union. This unfortunate circumstance of an unhappy marriage and struggle to rear a family in this god-forsaken country that would produce nothing but frogs, snakes and ticks was certainly a poor place to bring forth the children I have named (I was the fourth child and your father [Mathew] was the fifth), to help make a living in these surroundings which would seem to an Indian an utter impossibility.

My father was apparently a stout and rugged man though he complained sometimes about a physical disability. He had in his younger days received some education. I have seen his old copy book, for it was customary then to transcribe every question worked upon a slate to a book kept for that purpose headed with large capital letter the rules laid down in arithmetic, etc. This book showed that he wrote a good hand. He was a good reader for that day and was fond of reading. Our library consisted of a Bible, a Webster's dictionary and slates. My father possessed a kind of philosophical indifference to things in general that was truly remarkable.   On the other hand my mother was a most extraordinary woman, possessing an ambition that new no bounds, a tongue that never faltered, a quickness of action and unbounded endurance that I have never seen excelled.  It makes me sad to reflect at this distant day upon the toil and hardships and constant perseverance that my mother went through to rear her family in a respectable manner under such circumstances. From the earliest dawn to ten o'clock and often into the wee small hours of the night her busy hands and feet were going. So much do I appreciate such efforts on the part of her who struggled through life under such hardship, that I gratefully leave this small memento to her memory, which is the only pleasure I have in thus living my life over again in writing down the incidents of a busy life.

I have said that the land was cut up by swamps and ponds. Between two of these ponds, which was one of the most gloomy places imaginable, my father erected our first house such as was peculiar to the frontier country in which we lived. Here I was born, but as father built a new house on rising ground on the other side of one of these swamps not quite as repulsive as the former location, it was in this new location that my memory of things began. The task of clearing this land was Herculean indeed. To deaden pines only added to their tenacity, and even the oaks where deadened only gave assurance of a large quantity of sprouts around the roots of the main trunks. The stumps of the pines never rotted neither did the roots of the latter of which spread over the entire surface of the ground locked and interlocked.  Hence there was no other way possible to clear land suitable for tillage but to literally dig it up root and branch. A strong man could not often grub more than ten yards square a day even after the ground had been cleared.  Had it been productive, it would have been some compensation for the great amount of labor bestowed upon it. If five bushels to the acre were gathered even in its fresh condition, it was thought good. Three of four crops were sufficient to wear it out entirely, hence a man that expected to live was compelled to be thus clearing new land and turning out the old to a perfect forest of briars, pine bushes and persimmon trees which in a few years would entirely cover it. There was not much wheat produced there and most of the time our bread was made from corn. Another difficulty was after the first year of cultivation the whole face of the ground would be covered with crab grass, the pest of all the lower portion of the Carolinas. This grass is so tenacious that it is impossible to destroy it upon land that is cultivated, and where it grows nothing else can. It required a vast amount of labor to keep it sufficiently under to admit anything else to grow. Another peculiarity of this grass is that as soon as a field is turned out to commons it disappears, else it might have been useful for pasture. It is good in that respect for cattle and horses but it grows where it cannot be gathered or pastured and is of use only as a pest to those who undertake to make a living out of such soil. The old fields when turned out a few years until they are occupied by briers, pines and persimmon trees as before stated produce a luxuriant crop of what is called sedge or broom grass. It is a course grass growing three feet high with a bushy top. Nothing will eat it and it is only useful for brooms which are made by cutting it close to the ground and tying a good sized bunch together making a broom handle and all. This is the only kind of broom I ever saw until I was fifteen years of age. I presume the same kind in the same place is used until this day.

The house in which we lived and were mostly raised was of round logs. The spurs and ends projecting out at the corners in various lengths and shapes. Around the middle space of the floor in the main room of the house was a cellar. It was a few feet deep and produce was stored for the winter. The floor was made of planks. The chimney was made of sticks and clay on the outside. The fireplace was about ten feet wide so we generally cut our wood about eight feet long. Here was a theater in which many comical, tragical scenes were acted that would have put Shakespeare to shame. The furniture of the house consisted of beds with cords and feather mattresses. Upon these beds we were born as uniformly as the tide ebbs and flows. There was always a baby in our house. There was the old fashioned cupboard that contained pewter ware. Sometimes when we were short of plates the deficiency was supplied by making trenches, which were simply a square piece of wood six by eight inches and one inch thick. A most excellent thing to use when you had a dull knife and tough meat as it made a fine fork hold. The chairs consisted of rawhide bottoms and any number of stools. These were simple enough. They were made oblong, square or three square with three legs or four as suited the taste of the mechanic who made them. Large chests of plank help make up the household furniture. We used horses for the farming.

Before proceeding further with this narrative, it will be necessary for me to describe the character and disposition of the members of this family from your father [Mathew] up, as these were the members of the family who at that time had developed enough to describe their personalities. As for the character of father and mother it is not necessary for me to repeat what I have written before.

Beginning with Solomon, the oldest, I shall as far as I am now able give the respective temperaments of the first five children. Solomon was possessed with a fine intellect. He could learn anything that he found in a book almost at sight, and if he had the opportunity, he would have made a very fine scholar. As it was, he managed to acquire a fair knowledge of the common branches of an education. He read well, was an excellent speller and wrote a nice hand. He was never proficient in English grammar, but was a splendid mathematician in most of the branches of that science. He was also a thorough and practical surveyor. He was always slow but sure. I do not mean that he was slow to comprehend and apprehend the sciences mentioned above, but in the performance or mechanical department, he was always slow. As for work, he inherited a cool philosophical indifference to it from father. Hence, what he did in that line was forced out of him with a distressing application. A more selfish man with a degree of education I never knew. He seemed not to have a particle of high-toned sentiment or affection for his species. When he was grown he was six feet high, and when fully developed weighed over two hundred pounds.

Nancy did not acquire as much education. She was evenly balanced in mind and disposition. She was a mechanical genius. Industrious, patient, not excitable and if she had had proper training, I am of the opinion she would have made one of the excellent of the earth.

Cyrus, who died at about the age of ten years, was a heavy set boy and as finely developed physically as any boy of his age. What he would have been I am unable to say but I am inclined to think there would not have been any acute angles about him.

The next on the list, perhaps the most difficult to describe of any of them, was Thomas or Tom as he was called [the author]. He was a pale unhealthy child from the beginning and everyone had some remark to make about him. There were some very discordant elements in him. He inherited the quickness of action and industry of his mother. He was not so highly developed intellectually as some of the other boys. He had a spirit of great determination and persistence. Especially where physical ability was concerned. He was sympathetic to a fault; a notorious coward unless it was a case of desperation, then cowardice forsook him all together. He was as proud as Lucifer and very ambitious.

The next was your father [Mathew] who did not inherit a very robust constitution. He grew to be six feet three inches in height and was finely developed intellectually, although he never liked work. He never would do any work when there was a plausible excuse and often when there was not a plausible excuse. He was a great dunce in the beginning but soon outgrew that and astounded everyone with his power to learn. He had some combativeness about him and if he was ever afraid of anything I never knew it. His whole mind seemed to be set on books with a total indifference to anything else. He died in middle life from two causes. One was his weak constitution, which he could have overcome and the other to his indifference to the care of himself. So these two causes carried him to a premature grave. He had a strong memory and could memorize with the greatest ease any piece of composition. Mathematics seemed to be his favorite study. He excelled in English grammar and had a fine vocabulary and correct pronunciation. He finally attained proficiency in some of the languages mainly by his indomitable perseverance. He had a very small amount of sympathy for others. This is about all I can write at this late day about the character of the family.

It was thus the battle of life began with us. It invariably happened that all the provisions laid up in the fall would be exhausted by the first of March. I have said the land was not very productive and the means of cultivating it difficult. There was the corn, the cotton and potatoes and other crops. The corn was laid off five feet apart with one stalk in a hill, hence there was but one grain put in at planting time. If by any misfortune, as often happened, it did not come up or the crab grass began to grow by the time the corn was large enough to receive the first plowing, there was no conquering this grass except by hoes following the plow. Therefore, it was our business to hoe. It seems that my first recollection of anything was hoeing corn. At the second plowing in the side of the furrows and by the side of the corn there was dropped about eight peas. These peas grow in round pods from six to eight inches long and run out into vines. By fall they covered the entire ground and were gathered by hand. Generally one pod at a grasp were gathered, hence the employment was tedious and tiresome. But as they make a very important item in the diet of the Carolinians they had to be taken care of while green. After they have attained their full size they are shelled from the hull and boiled with bacon, which makes a dish that would tempt a Carolinian to sell his birthright for a mess. I have experienced this sensation many times. The sweet potato which is also more particularly a southern production, and one of the few things Providence seems to have blessed that country with, were raised on high ground and new ground to avoid the inevitable crab grass. I can feel grateful to the sweet potato because I believe it often saved my life and I might say it often preserved the whole nation of Carolinians. The peas after they were dried were boiled and fed to the hogs that we killed for our bacon. The meat was sweet and very lean and hardly produced enough fat to cook it in. There was also the cotton, which was another godsend to that accursed country. My recollection is that there was no other mode of extracting the seeds than by the fingers, and no other way to manufacture it except by hand cards and the old fashion spinning wheel. A pair of wasping bars as they were called, made the outfit of a Carolinian's manufacturing establishment. My mother in this way with her own hands made all the clothing of the family until the girls were large enough to help. Small children were carried on the hip. This was the style of carrying children in those days and they became so adapted to that position they could nearly always stick without being held. This is the reason that nearly all Carolinians are more or less bowlegged.

My mother's sister married a man by the name of Lancaster who was a small bony man. In all my life I never saw so much physical endurance in a single man. He was quick as a cat and could do more work in a given time than any man I ever knew. He was a cooper by trade and from him my father learned to make barrels and cedar ware. As cedar grew in abundance in many of the swamps, it was used for making nearly all the vessels used about the house. It was called juniper and was different from the red cedar of this country. [Indiana].

My aunt was a very different woman from my mother in every way. She was mild in disposition and never excited. She was disposed to take things easily. Mother was the reverse of all this. My father as I have written was slow about everything he did. My uncle would take contracts to make barrels for tar dealers and would get my father to help him. As he could make two barrels to my father's one, he got the lion's share of the profits. This work kept father away from home a great deal and the work fell to the children and the responsibility to my mother. I have worked since I can remember. Mother would patch our clothes so often the original would be lost three generations back. I mean three generations of patches. This patching both of shirts and trousers was done without respect to shape, size or color. You could see all of the colors, not of the rainbow, but of the Carolina dye such as hickory bark, sassafras, maple bark and coppers. The latter predominated if anything could predominate in this medley of colors.

When we were about ten years of age we received a pair of homemade shoes. These would not last long and everybody went barefooted the rest of the time. This is the reason a Carolinian's foot is large and spreads out like a goose. These hardships kept my mother irritable but my father did not seem to be disturbed, and there was a great deal of friction between them. Father would often go down to his father's home to stay a day or two and sometimes he would take some of us boys. We would work for grandfather but I never knew him to receive a cent for this work. Father never crossed my mother, but he would sometimes vent his wrath upon the boys and give us a thrashing. As I was quick and active, although afflicted with a weak stomach, I was compelled to work often when I was not able. Everyone said I was an extra good corn dropper, which required no great skill as only one grain was put in a hill. However, it required a quick motion a requisite I possessed to an unusual degree, so every spring I had to go to my grandfather's farm for this purpose. I had to go again in the fall to help gather fodder and peas. All the blades of corn were stripped from the stalk and tied in bundles and the tops were cut off and carried to a place for stacking. All of this had to be carried on the back. It was usually called "toting" in those days. In fact, all our rails and wood and everything else used on our place were thus carried. We had become accustomed to carry things in this way and it was almost incredible to say how much we could carry. I have seen the time when provisions were exhausted. We hardly ever had a wheat bread. It often happened that there was a shortage of corn in the neighborhood and we had to go to Fayetteville, which was about thirteen miles distant. Down on the Cape Fear River bottom where the rich bottomland produced well we had to depend upon for corn when we had a crop failure. Money was a scarce article in our country and it was impossible to get work on any of the rich bottom plantations because slaves were used exclusively.

My father's youngest sister, after living to be an old maid, married a man by the name of Cliburn. He was a man with an easy and generous disposition. His father was a very rich planter. They owned a great number of slaves and a fine plantation about twenty miles from where we lived. Father would often go down there and buy corn at one dollar and twenty-five cents a bushel. It would take two days to go and return. It was difficult to bring very much on the back of his mare and he would walk and lead the horse. Another day was spent grinding the corn into meal. Of course, the stock had to be fed while we were trying to raise more corn for ourselves. This had to be repeated every week until the peas began to come which was in June and which was used as a substitute for corn. In August the potatoes would come in and the hogs were ready to kill. Sometimes I had to go to work somewhere in order to buy meat when it was short. I have worked many times from sun to sun in order to buy meat for the family. No other member of the family ever went out to work in this way but me. I did it out of an unbounded ambition and at the same time sharing sympathy with my mother in her efforts for our family. It was her desire to see us all in good clothes and to have plenty to eat. It did me a lot of good to relieve her anxieties in a small way, and though I suffered in doing so, I now feel glad that I did it. It was not this way with the other members of the family. When they did anything they always took care of number one. I continued to help my family in this way until the day I left home.

Most of the people in those days were very superstitious. They believed in witches, ghosts and charms. Some members of our family were obsessed to some degree and it is only since I became a man that I have been able to look upon these things in their proper light. There was a preventive against every species of witchcraft. There was always something to wear to keep off the evil eye. When our cows would wander off and bog up in the mire, and getting them out to dry land again was a job that would have driven Hercules to madness, many of these misfortunes would be attributed to witches. Sometimes the stock was so badly damaged they would die and often would die before we could find them. As food for our stock was scarce in the winter the spring would find them very poor. Whenever a cow was sick and failed to give milk it was attributed to witches, and everything else of this character was invariably laid to this curse. There was not much chance to learn better in that country. Whether my father believed in witches I never knew. He would never do anything by way of keeping the witches off. He would not object to others trying it. He seemed to look upon it with a total indifference.

It was customary every spring to burn the woods for the purpose of bringing on an early crop of grass. This was a course kind of grass that grew in the woods, which nothing could eat only when it was fresh and tender. It was called wiregrass and seemed to have had the right name. The burning of the woods was a most frightful sight and often attended with danger of burning everything before it. Pine straws covered the ground and the leaves intermixed with them made a terrible combustion. This together with the turpentine that ran down the bodies of the trees would sometimes wrap the forest in a flame as high as the tops of the trees. It would make a smoke as black as Erabus.

It would sometimes happen that a dry spell would come during the month of March and dry up the ponds and some of the swamps which was ordinarily a barrier to these fires. The fires would then sweep through the ponds and swamps when driven by the fierce March winds. This with the fear of prowling Negroes at night when we were expecting an uprising among them so as to kill the whites kept us in a state of apprehension. So it must be said that we lived in the midst of alarms.

Making butter was a difficult task in that warm climate. Sometimes the cows were too poor to give much milk in the winter and when they got in good condition in the summer the ticks were bad. There were plenty of mosquitoes, which seem to fill the air all the time. It was impossible to drink milk under these circumstances but a hungry Carolinian would try anything.

There is a mystery connected with the human race which I do not believe has ever been accounted for. I mean with respect to the natural inclination and moral disposition of some persons from a religious standpoint. We see some who manifest at an early age a devotional sentiment while others seem never to have been in possession of what we call the finer feelings of our nature. Thus in my family, if my father had a respect or reverence for a supreme being I never saw it manifested, although he had a by-word which he often used which was "Lord help me." Though he often used this word he seemed to do it without respect to reverence or meaning. So it was with my mother. She would often pray in her distress and determination but I do not know if they had any defined notions about Christianity. Mother's idea with respect to salvation was based upon the thought that the more suffering you endured in this world the greater happiness in the hereafter. If that is so I can safely vouch for her happiness. Father never expressed any opinion on the matter whatever. My sister Nancy was on of those who seemed to have a natural instinct with respect to Christianity and was the first of the children to make a public profession of religion. While we older ones remained together there were but two places of worship in all our country. One was about four miles from home and across several swamps where Baptist and Presbyterians were wont to hold forth. So it was that Nancy joined these predestined Baptists and was duly immersed. The Baptist place of worship was called Lumber Bridge.  Presbyterian place was called St. Paul. This place was about six miles away and the Methodist did preaching there.

Solomon left home when he was sixteen or seventeen years old to teach school. The place was about twenty-five miles from home. He stayed with a Scotch family, who were of course Presbyterians and who seemed to have had no higher conception of Christianity than a sacred observance of the Sabbath as they called it. He married one of the girls [Elizabeth Blue] and as a matter of course became a Presbyterian. That is just what the Scotch were with a religion that it was wonderful to respect the Sabbath day. I think that was about all he ever learned of Christianity save only that slavery was a divine and sanctified institution, and was the legitimate result of the curse of Noah upon Canaan. Where or how I obtained an idea about praying to God in a sense of divine supplication or for assistance, I have never been able to know unless it was by instinctive principles.

We were all fond of wild game and every opossum, squirrel or other animal that could be captured or killed was regarded as a rich feast in this life. When I could not have been more than seven years of age my father took me one evening to hunt the cows. He had an old rifle, which was very uncertain. It was of the old flintlock pattern many years before the percussion cap was invented. My father was not a very good marksman with a good gun and the gun he had under favorable circumstances was sure to miss. I can remember how the event when I considered the prospect of fresh meat to eat a climax of human happiness. We wandered about two miles from home, the sun was setting, and there was no house nearer than our own. The heaven looked balmy overhead and all nature seemed to smile under the glow of the setting sun. My eyes sharpened by hunger for fresh meat was always on the alert for something, not only for myself but because I knew my mother would enjoy anything we could bring home. Just as the sun disappeared I spied a fox squirrel running on the ground. I immediately made chase and he ran up a dead pine and did not stop until he had perched upon the highest limb. My father thought it was too dark for him to see how to shoot. I told him he must try. So he placed himself by the side of a tree to use it as a rest for the gun. I went around to the other side of the tree the squirrel was in to scare him over towards where father was stationed. Then, while he was sighting and deliberating about shooting which took an incredible amount of time I offered up as fervent a prayer as ever went up to the throne of grace that the gun might not snap, and that father may be steady in shot so that the squirrel might be killed. The gun fired and the squirrel was killed. I then believed as I now believe that the Almighty heard the cry of a hungry boy. I picked that squirrel up with a light heart. We had not gone far when I happened to spy some leaves in the end of an old hollow log. I told father I believed there was an opossum in it. He said he thought not. I asked him to wait a little and taking up a pole that lay near, I ran it into the hole and the opossum growled. Father took the pole and twisted him out and my joy was complete for the time being.

The people of this region of North Carolina were largely made up of immigrant Scotch. Many of them had sold for a time their services to pay passage across the sea. They lived in the poor sand-hill regions for they did not like the swamps, though many of them settled in swampy regions. They were generally poor, but very industrious, and had it not been that they all loved whiskey and brandy so well they would have got on amazingly well. They could live on very little and dirt did not seem to bother them. In short, they would come as near living on nothing as any people I ever knew. They were all Presbyterians, very superstitious, believed in witches, ghosts and hobgoblins. Their religion could never be observed except on Sunday and that with respect with only the day. There was an eternal hatred existing between them and the native born. They were Tories to a man and that name was rife in those days. They all had some education and seemed to be inclined to support schools. They could not to save them from death pronounce half the English words correctly. They would say for James, Jeems and for John, Johnny. We were indebted to them for all the education we received. There was not a school house nearer than three miles of our home, and well do I remember the first one ever built in our neighborhood. The uniform style was a pen of six panels built in the shape of a one-story building with a door in the center. It was notched with pine logs with the bark without any respect to nicety. The door was in the end opposite the fireplace. The fireplace was fully two-thirds the breadth of the house. There was one log out of the side about four feet from the ground, running from end to end, which constituted the window which had no shutters. A long plank as long as the window was laid upon two pieces and either driven in the cracks below the window, or inserted in auger holes. This plank slanted downward several degrees. This was the working desk where all the school sat in a row to learn how to write - that is, all who were allowed to indulge in this luxury. There was no shutter to this long appellation, which was sufficiently large to let a man crawl through. There was no shutter to the door, and the floor was the native soil, which was loose and sandy. The system was to get our lessons at the highest pitch of voice the lungs were capable of. Hence there was a chorus that could be heard for a distance of one-half mile. This was no doubt the reason a Carolinian had such good use of his tongue. Our schools were always started to last six months, so that before the school closed the whole inside of the house was a bed of dust. I have seen boys and girls, as well as grown young men keeping a sort of time with their feet while spelling down a long column in those old fashion spelling books for the words would reach from the top to the bottom of the page. This timely motion of the foot spread out like a beaver's tail would soon run nearly up to the knees in the loose dirt. It was no common thing to see half a dozen legs thrust into the dusty ground. The master never failed to keep several keen switches sticking in a crack of the building, which were used more or less every day in a remorseless manner. Your father seemed to have inherited this idea and followed it up, I believe, as long as he followed school keeping, thinking perhaps that it was a necessity - an important and integral part of an education. I was permitted to go to two or three of these schools part of the time until I could read fast and very imperfectly. It was impossible for me to do anything slowly. A scholar was not allowed or expected to write over more than one-half quire of fools cap paper in a six months term of school, hence when the master would write a copy at the top of the page it was thought to be sufficient for a week's work for each scholar. It was not so with me. I generally finished my page at a single sitting, and for which I got a scolding from the master. As it was the first thing told when we got home, the scolding was duplicated by the whole household. I managed to get an imperfect knowledge of arithmetic as far as the single rule of three, leaving out all the fractions. This was all the education I received in school. While I am writing about schools, we now have what we call common schools, but the people hardly know what the word common means when applied to education and contrasted with the system of education as taught in those days. There was an old Scotchman who lived six or seven miles from us by the name of McAlpin. He was an old and venerable man over six feet tall and straight as an Indian. He had been a military man in the old country and belonged to the Grenadiers. He was a gruff, surly man, especially to those who manifested what he called being a dunce. To one who was apt to learn he took a great delight in teaching. He was a fine English scholar and taught what we call a high school- that is, he lived in one of those Carolina cabins and would take in one or two young men at a time to board and teach them. He had a set of surveyor's instruments and when he taught that science he would take them out in the woods with a chain compass, Jacob staff and survey and plat every conceivable shaped piece of land. When he was finished with a pupil, for he would allow no one but himself to say that the scholar was or was not proficient in what he had taught him, it was satisfactory that the pupil was not only theoretical but practical as well. Hence Solomon mastered surveying and your father [Mathew] mastered mathematics and English grammar.

When I was eight or ten years old, a circumstance occurred which the family never before had experienced. We called one grandfather "big" and the other grandfather "little". Hence one was called big grandfather and the other little grandfather. Our big grandfather lived about three miles away with two swamps intervening. Some of these swamps where crossed could only be crossed by foot and it was customary to fell trees across them, lapping one upon the stump of the other and so make a footway. One of these swamps had a wagon-way across it. This was made by laying down a cross-waying and then hauling sand to spread over the foundation. At the main run there was a low bridge over it. The one I now speak of had been built many years before, and had become so washed and worn that it could only be crossed with a horse. When the water was up it had to be waded. This place was about a quarter of a mile wide. It was along about the fall of the year when my father, Cyrus and myself went over to Big Grandfather's place to help gather their crop of peas. There had been a great amount of rain and the weather was very cool. When we came to this swamp we found the water about a foot deep upon the crossway and spread from side to side of the swamp. I was so small that my father had to lead me. Cyrus, being a heavy and well-grown boy, managed to get through without assistance. The next day he developed a severe pain in his knee and by night it was so bad he could hardly walk. The next day he was placed on a horse and sent home. He had to ride 10 or 12 miles to a place that could be crossed with a horse. In a day or two father was sent for and I remained at grandfather's place to work. How long I stayed or how I got home I do not remember. When I reached home Cyrus was suffering immensely. The pain soon developed in the other leg and down into his feet and ankles. His legs and feet were very much swollen. His shrieks and moanings are as vivid in my recollection now as then. They penetrated through my own soul, for I loved him better than I did myself. He was my companion and playmate in all our sports and wanderings. The tie that bound David and Jonathan was no stronger than that which bound us together. In our lives we were united and in death we were not divided. We had never had any serious sickness in the family, and I never saw a doctor in our house. In fact, so far as a doctor was concerned, we never dreamed of needing their services because, I suppose, we had no confidence in them. So it was if any of our family got sick we got well or died without benefit of doctors or clergy. It was true that there was more or less doctoring done in the way of old women's vegetable practice with some degenerate son of Alsculapius who could use a lance with about as much skill necessary to know that if you applied force enough the lance would go in. The lance in those days was used in all inflammatory cases by one of these disciples, and there was always one of them in the neighborhood who was generally regarded as an oracle. Of course he was never known to charge anything for his services. After a time one of these oracles was sent for and my brother was duly lanced in several places. It was the first time I ever saw a performance of the kind, and though Cyrus cried with pain, I do not think he felt it any more than I did. There were certain poultices recommended and applied, but the disease grew worse. How long he lay suffering untold tortures I cannot say. The flesh dropped from the bones of his legs. The disease made its way up his hips and thighs until the flesh dropped from them in places as large as a man's hand. I had never seen death in any form among human beings hence I was totally unprepared for it. We were totally unprepared for it. We were all at home. One morning, perhaps about daylight, Solomon came and waked me, and without much apparent concern told me that Cyrus was dead. I dropped my head and covered my face and for a long time I lay in a sort of dreamy stupefied bewilderment. I knew it was something awful, but somehow the thought of his going away where I could not see him again did not fully penetrate my mind. After awhile I got up. Everything about the house was strangely quiet - a quietness that was oppressive. Such a sensation had not been felt in that house before. I went and looked upon that lifeless form, paralyzed in feeling and overwhelmed with a vague sort of sensation. I did not fully realize my lonesomeness and did not feel that my heart was broken until that noble form of my friend and brother, who was my companion in all our sorrows, was hid from my view forever beneath the clods of the valley.

Months rolled away. A kind of calm had settled down upon the household. I was lying one night on my bed looking out at the stars. It seems that the night must have been well advanced. Everything about the house was perfectly still. Whether I was awake or dreaming I cannot say. It always seems to me that I was awake and looking out upon the heavens when I saw a huge black man coming from a remote region, and from an angle of about forty-five degrees. He came directly to me and gathered me up and seemed to fly off in the direction from whence he came. We seemed to pass through the air with swiftness though he had no wings. When he carried me until I could hardly discern the house from whence he took me, I saw another being coming from the same direction as the first one came from. This being was equally as large, was white and of comely aspect. No word had been spoken until they met in the air. This seems now, as well as the first time I ever had any well defined between them when they met. Their names were each announced and I soon knew who they were, as the contest was about me. The first being was the Devil and the second being Jesus Christ. The latter took me from the former rather abruptly with the words, “What are you going to do with him?” The whole transaction was done so quick with so little ceremony that I hardly had time to think about such a strange scene. The Devil disappeared and I saw him no more. I was then taken onward and upward in the same direction from where I had seen these personages come. After going a long distance we came in sight of something precisely like the end of the bridge over White River at Indianapolis, provided the middle stanchions were taken out. Here the Savior set me down. I looked way into the bridge, which seemed to be endless and appeared to grow wider and wider as far as I could see. Beneath the floor there seemed to be a dark and muddy abyss, of which I could only occasionally get a glimpse. I was told I might enter if I wished to do so. I entered and after going some distance I could see no one. The same appearance of things as at the entrance was all I saw save only when I came to where it seemed to branch out either way, so that in every direction I cast my eyes, it appeared to be boundless space except that it was covered overhead at no great height. Just at this point sat a venerable old man. He had a long white beard; his face was an exhibition of perfect health. I approached him and he said his name was God Almighty and asked me if I wished to see my brother. I told him that I did. Then he pointed to what looked like a large goods box. Then I noticed that these boxes were sitting precariously as far as I could see. I went directly to the one pointed out to me and raised the lid. There sat Cyrus, or rather seemed to be reclining against one end. He looked up and gave a gracious smile of recognition. He looked natural, sufficiently so that I would have recognized him, but his flesh seemed so pure and blooming as fair as a lily. He had the longest locks I ever beheld on his head. He told me it was a glorious place to stay, but that I must return home and after a while I could come back again as there was a box for me also. So I returned to the entrance and found the Savior waiting for me. He took me up without saying a word and brought me back the same way as we had come and lay me down on my bed. He then disappeared, and from that night to this I have never dreamed about Cyrus. If it was a dream, time and necessity tear down rapidly whatever may have aroused the deepest feelings of our nature. So it was with us. The stern realities, which surrounded us drove us all back to our common level. Our wants and necessities were the same and our means of supplying those wants were not augmented.

There was one method we had of supplying food, which I have not mentioned. Though it only came once a year, it was an item. All those brush ponds I have mentioned had about the middle an open space that was sunken down somewhat in the shape of a bowl. In the spring when the waters were up, there was a slash from these ponds to the swamps by which a slim fish with red fins made their way from the swamps to the ponds. We called them red fin pike. There was also a kind of mud catfish. When the ponds would dry up except a hole in the center we would resort to them with hoes and wade in and stir up the mud to such a degree the fish would swim to the shore. There we would throw them out with a dash of the hoe as they would rise to the surface of the water. We would catch them with our hands too, and about the holes of water there were about as many snakes as fish. They were of the moccasin and copper-bellied kind, both of which were very poisonous. It was a wonder we were not often bitten by them. Many, many times I have been in the act of catching one of these snakes by the head thinking it a fish, for they would swim in the muddy water with their heads just at the surface. I have often with my bare feet kicked out a snake near the shore thinking it was a fish floundering in the mud. Sometimes they were as large as a man’s arm. I would not do it again if starvation should be the result, but we little know ourselves what we will do under certain circumstances. We did not seem to mind it much then.

As I had lost my companion who had always been the leader I had to take a new one. Your father was the one. As I was the oldest I had to be the leader, a position I never was fully qualified to perform, as I have said I was a great coward unless in cases of desperation. On the other hand, he was never afraid of anything. He would have followed me to the Devil with perfect impunity. I had been to one school and could spell a little. When he and I were started to school again three miles away, the school lasted only five months. He learned nothing and neither did I for I spent more than half my time trying to teach him lees, a,b,c’s as they were called in those days. Our road to the school was nothing more than a common bridle path which led through the woods around the ponds all the way except one old field, which had been deserted and turned out to waste. There was the fragment of an old house remaining on this place surrounded by plum and brier bushes. Of course, in the bloom of witchcraft such places together with all the graveyards would be infested with ghosts, witches who would hold nightly carnivals. A ghost could be seen thereabouts any dark or moon-shiny night. Our paths led very close to this old house and it often happened that the master would not let us out of school until nearly night. So on the second evening as we were returning from school when we were about half way home, we heard two or three hooting-owls that set up a kind of chorus as we were passing. Though owls were plentiful and I had often heard their keen hollow and screech, I never before heard such a medley of hooting. Suddenly my cowardice got the better of me while your father did not seem to manifest the least fright. Meanwhile I was loath to manifest my fright lest he might catch the contagion, for it seemed to do me good to hide my cowardice from him and at the same time to enjoy his bravery. I however, proposed to him to run. He agreed, not from fright but because we would arrive home sooner. So we started out, and I impelled by fear and he by necessity we did not stop until we reached home. The result of this episode was that the next night we ran all the way, and when we found that we could perform this feat, we adopted the rule to run to and from school morning and night. This we did for five months and before school was out, it became so easy it was done in play and could be performed in an incredible short time without drawing a long breath. We got along well in everything except work. While I was hasty and impetuous, anxious to do all that was possible in the way of making a living, he would take things cool and manifest the utmost indifference. He was fully as large as I was but I did double the work he did. It often happened that when I was putting forth all my energies and anxious to accomplish a certain amount of work, he would set up some expedient to annoy me, such as tumbling down on the ground and rolling over. When I was way ahead of him he would call out, “Tom Tom, a flow of wind of laziness has overtaken me”. Then he would lie there until I undertook to chase away his flow of wind, then he would make a sortie upon me with clods of dirt. My persistent and erratic nature would effervesce and boil over like a soda fountain, and not infrequently, a tempest would arise that would bring father to the scene of action. Without inquiring into any of the whys and wherefores, I would suffer the consequences by receiving a terrible thrashing.

Solomon had left home and it seemed that I was the main dependence for several years. I stood up to it as long as I could, but a continual dropping will wear out the hardest stone. About this time a cousin of ours brought an old dictionary to our home. It must have been about the first one produced in the English language. I think it antedated Walker and Johnson. The authors name I have forgotten. It had a few pages of heathen mythology. This was the first dictionary I ever saw and I soon found out how to find words and their definitions, as well as deal largely among the gods. There was not much fun at home unless I produced it, and as I was not slow in picking up a vocabulary of words from the aforesaid dictionary that was adapted to my purpose as anecdotes would stick to me whether I willed or not. I never forgot anything I heard and it was perfectly natural for me to get off little stanzas of poetry. Being the most active boy in our neighborhood, it often happened in my happier moods that I would play the clown or cut up some gymnastics that would amuse the whole household. I was often wont to use my vocabulary of by-words as well as my poetry to the household in such a way that brought either a foot race or a whipping. I sometimes threw out a lecture on economy, industry and frugality that never failed to have a sarcastic point. Then I had a code of high-toned morality, which was, delivered in the same way. Of course some of the words I used were not understood by the family and some of them I did not understand myself. So the family was always picking on me and called me the Lord Mayor of London. I suppose now I was rather hard to govern for the reason I had taken a very high stand on subjects that I considered below my boyhood dignity, which was true. However I should have learned the virtue of patience, but that was not for me. When I was about fifteen years of age my spirit towering like the tallest peaks of the Popocatapel began to sink. I saw no future for me in our surroundings, so I began to cast about for a change. Wherever I cast my eye the Rocky Mountains loomed up before me to the very heavens, and shut out every ray of hope for me to escape. I had heard my father say that the blacksmith’s trade was the only one worth learning so I proposed to him one day that I wanted to learn a trade. He said he would not consent to my doing so unless I learned the blacksmith trade, which according to my physical power was the last one that he should have suggested. It was the hardest trade known to mechanical art. Yet any port in a storm, so I jumped at the suggestion but as there was no place to learn even that trade except in Fayetteville, I was not long in making my way there by myself and seeking a place. I never did understand why my father let me go, but I have often thought that he supposed I would return home after learning the trade and set up a business where the family could derive benefit. The shop I went to work in belonged to two men, one of whom was a merchant and the other one had been, but in the break of fortune he had only saved an old gray headed Negro of Herculean size and strength to work in the shop. They had to hire a white man to superintend the work. All the other hands were Negroes. I was hired and was to get my board and clothes. The work was far too laborious for my strength. It fell to my lot to board with the broken merchant. I worked from morning until night, hence it seemed as if I had jumped out of the frying pan into the fire. It so happened that after I had been there about six months, the shop dissolved partnership and there I was with only one common suit of clothes worth eight or ten dollars for my six months work. The merchant who had a grocery, hardware and liquor store persuaded me that I had better go into the store with him. This I objected to at first because I had started out to learn a trade and had received some insight into the business. I did not like the idea of giving it up, but he persuaded me and without saying what he would give me, or any contract whatever, I went into the store. Here I was without much education trying to adapt myself in my new employment. I went to it with a will. My employer was a perfect gentleman. I mean as much a gentleman as a man could be where slavery existed. I busied myself in my odd hours trying to learn how to cipher correctly and to improve my hand in penmanship. As the merchant was a fine scribe, he often assisted me and seemed to take a great deal of interest in me. He took me to his own table and prepared a cot for me to sleep on upstairs over the store. I remember to this day the first time I entered his home. My first entrance was by myself. He lived in a fine house. There were several ladies in his household and everything was arranged in true southern aristocratic style. I had never been in a fine house like that before and with my uncouth manners, my local vernacular and my natural timidity, I would as soon have faced Wellington at Waterloo. But I did my best and as far as I was able, gave satisfaction. I had not thus enjoyed my new home more than a year when my friend died, and in settling up his estate, it was found he was insolvent. Here I was again without a trade and very much disqualified to learn one. Verily the gods were against me. My employer had given me some good clothes and I had eight or ten dollars, so with a heavy heart, I went home. I thought I would spend my money on education. So, as there was but one school near home and that was kept by an old Scotchman half way between our house and Fayetteville, hither I went and soon made a contract with the master who was a very good scholar. When I tried to get board there was none in the neighborhood who would take me for love or money, giving as the reason that I was from town. They were so infernally ignorant that the idea of a boy coming from town would be a contamination to all their Sunday religion. But the secret was I was country born and they were Scotch – an incompatibility. So I went home and found things quieted down to a wonderful degree. Father stayed home more and there was great harmony between him and your father. They would hunt together which was an occupation they both loved while I despised it. They worked on the old philosophical principle, come day, go day and God send Sunday. But quietness was a feast of good things to me and I thanked God for it. The crops had failed again so I shelled out my last penny and laid in a stock of indispensables.

I had not been home but a month or two when I received a message from a man in town that he wanted to see me. He was a man with whom I was not acquainted. I was not long in reaching him. He was engaged in sending goods to the backcountry in the mountains of North Carolina. He had two four horse wagons with black drivers and he wanted me to see to the loading and weighing and billing of goods to the backcountry merchants. Our place was at the head of navigation on Cape Fear River, hence wagoning in goods from there to the country was quite a business. I remained with the man about a year when I was stricken with a fever that was raging in the town. People were dying fast within forty-eight hours of the first attack. The man I lived with shut up the store and moved to a country seat he owned and left me at the point of death with an old Negro woman to wait on me. The doctor whom he sent for before leaving called instructions to the old Negro woman how to administer the medicine. She either forgot it or did not care whether I lived or not. I lay many days in wild delirium and never saw the face of a white man during the time save the doctor. As for the old Negro woman, she did not pretend to nurse me at all. She was gone most of the time during the day and at nights would lie down on the floor and sleep so soundly that all of the heavens artillery or the vibrations of a dozen consolidated earthquakes could not have awakened her. About all she said to me was “If you are aguine to die, I wish you’d make haste about it.” Notwithstanding all this, I survived it and at last found myself miraculously preserved, weak as a child and as emaciated as a sick man could be. That indomitable spirit that I had seemed to stay with me. So I managed to get a horse after a few days to go home. It was with some difficulty that I mounted him, but I did. So early one morning I started. My people did not know of my sickness and when I got about half way home there was a large creek to cross. I found the bridge washed away and had to go about ten miles to another crossing. At about dusk I rode up to the old home place and the folks were greatly alarmed at my appearance. It took two of them to get me off the horse as I had not moved from the saddle since I got into it. I had not tasted a bite to eat and my whole framework seemed to be dissolving under some hellish device to inflict tortures. The next day I had a hard shake of ague which lasted two hours, and this was repeated every day for nine weeks. Life was all that was left of me. I never afterwards regained my former elasticity, my activity or my wind, for before that I verily believe if I had been put to the test, I could have run ten miles without rest.

So here I was again, Mort de combat but it was not long after this when I heard from the man whom I had worked for. He had quit business but had secured a place for me. It was in a sort of a variety store of a man who was a sort of a degenerate Yankee persuasion of the pinch-back, skinflint type. I was still very weak and very much emaciated, yet as I was wanted immediately, I had once more to call upon my old indomitable spirit which had carried me through so many hardships. However, I found that it had suffered immensely and had gone down far below zero. I summoned all the courage I was master of and started for my new place of business. The wages were three dollars per month with board. The board and lodging were of the meagerest kind. I had to open the store before daylight and close at nine o’clock, p.m. Besides this I had to make myself popular with my employer. The more lying and cheating I could do the better he liked it. I stayed some three or four months with him. One day my friend who secured this place for me came in the store and told me there was a man up on Main Street who wished to see me. But I am getting ahead of my story. I should have stated that the house we occupied had once belonged to an old cotton merchant who, like a great many others of his profession, had broken up some years before. Up in the garret of the house was nearly a wagonload of old ledgers, daybooks, shipping books, etc. On nights after I had closed the store, tired and weak as I was, I busied myself poring over these old books and the transactions of the old cotton merchant. By this means I obtained a very fair knowledge of bookkeeping. Among these books I found a great deal of blank space, hence I would transfer the work I found in a new place. This I did for the purpose of learning to write a legible hand. But as I have stated, I was called on to visit a man with whom I had no acquaintance, so the first opportunity I could get, I hastened to the place not dreaming what such a man could want with me. He had a very respectable bookstore. He was a Yankee and a bachelor. He no doubt had learned all about me from my friend for he asked me no questions about my qualifications, but simply asked me if I would come and live with him. The wages were to be a hundred dollars per year and board. This looked so big and the change so wonderful and unexpected that at first I hesitated, being paralyzed by the thought of not being capable enough for the job. Had it not been that I despised my present employer, despised his business, his manners and his dishonesty, I should have rejected the offer. But on account of these considerations I accepted. I did not however, wish to quit him abruptly as he had not paid me anything, but as an excuse, which suited his cupidity, he never paid me a cent. So I moved to my new quarters. It did not require a dray or any vehicle to move me, for what could be carried in my hands and my own locomotion performed the job in about five minutes. Here I was introduced to a new business and into a new society. In that country, at that time, nobody but the aristocrats and wealthy hardly ever visited a bookstore. Here were books that were wonderful to me. My employer was a good religious Presbyterian, a master of music and led the choir in his church. He bound and made blank books in a back room. He was the owner of a patent medicine, the manufacturing of which was carried on in a back kitchen with the help of a Negro woman who cooked for us. The store was mainly committed to my charge. Here I stayed two years and would have remained, and no doubt would in the end have inherited all my bachelor’s earthly possessions. However, the devil as usual interfered and ruined it all. I went at those books like a hungry wolf but spent a little too much time at first in such books as were not well calculated to improve me much. My employer discovered this and would often select some work on theology, which was then very stale and dry to me and I suppose would be much more so now. I always read them to please him, but that was time thrown away. I soon found other and better books, or those that seemed to suit my fancy. There was a large and handsomely embellished copy of Goldsmith’s Animated Nature in the store. There were five volumes of this. I finally found them and became interested in it and when I left there I think I could have given from memory a description and history of every animal named therein as well as the country to which they belonged. In studying this work I not only learned the history of animals, but I also learned the geography of the world. As I said, the visitors to the store were mostly clergymen, lawyers, doctors, merchants and rich farmers and ladies. As it was my business to wait on these people I determined to qualify myself to give them good service. I said very little to them but endeavored at all times to learn what I could from them by listening to their conversation. When I heard a word that I did not understand, I noted it on a piece of paper, as I kept a pencil and paper for that purpose. When they were gone, I would get the dictionary and look up the meaning. In this way, I improved my vocabulary from the well educated. I also improved my grammar although I knew very little about its rules. I also studied Lord Chesterfield on etiquette and politeness. This was carried out wonderfully well for I think I was as polite as a French dancing master. This proved to be a curse to me and is one of the follies of a sin cursed world, for when I came west I had to labor as hard to unlearn it as I did to learn it in the first place. During my stay in the bookstore, I still contributed somewhat of my means in helping the family at hoe. I carried a great many old books and geographies home which father pored over with a great deal of assiduity.

About this time your father went to our redoubtable McAlpin to finish up his education. I gave him the money to enable him to do so. Our store had two front doors, so we decided to abridge our stock of books by partitioning off a room at one end. We then started a variety shop of all the fine and fancy articles that would sell in the market. I was installed here and could by passing through the partition help my friend when he needed assistance. I kept the books, so I began to think and feel that there was a sun shiny day ahead as I was beginning to get a little something for my hard labor. But the best laid schemes of men and mice are brought to naught. I said the devil ruined me. If it was not him, then it was a vengeance from him who hurls his thunderbolts for man’s destruction when he has sinned away his day of grace and presumes to dare the high heavens. It was on the 29th day of May 1832 and there had been no rain for six weeks. The weather was very warm; the wind was blowing fiercely. Our town was built of pitch pine so far as wooden buildings were concerned, and there were many of them. They were all covered with juniper shingles, which is a very light wood. It was Sunday about one o’clock just as everybody was coming from church. I was just in the act of sitting down to dinner when I heard the fire alarm. I immediately ran to the scene of danger. It was about seventyfive yards from the house in the dense part of the town. On our street there was a large dry goods house owned by a very wealthy family by the name of Kile (curse them). They had been to church and had left a Negro woman at home to prepare dinner and have it in readiness when they returned. On their return, the Negro had failed to perform this service in a satisfactory manner, so the mistress of the house, as was the custom on all occasions to wreak the vengeance upon the degenerate race of Ham, took the broom and laid it on the fire so as to have a nice blaze in which to roast this dark specimen of subjected humanity. The result was the chimney was fired, the fierce wind caught the blaze and sparks and threw them like hail upon the light and inflammable material with which the houses were covered. In less than ten minutes the tops of the houses in every direction were ablaze. It seemed as if the wind circled these flying flakes of fire in the air and dropped them everywhere. I only had time to run back for I saw at a glance that we were in the midst of a powder magazine, and the probabilities were that we could hardly do more than escape with our lives. But as I said, I ran and found my good friend, my employer, at dinner and awaiting my return. I immediately communicated to him all my fears. We went to work to convey out of the store all of our most valuable things to a place of safety, as we supposed. We moved some of them several times and lost all of them in the end. Some of the populace came flocking down to the vicinity of the fire. There were two little fire engines, which were all the town afforded, and they were very defective and were of no use although the town was well supplied with water. Such was the rapidity of the fire that the engines were burned when they were first brought to the scene. I said the populace crowded down in the vicinity of the fire, and here a scene of destruction, theft and drunkenness ensued which beggars description. I worked, as a man of my temperament would be likely to work under such excitement. It was not long before the fire was raging in so many directions and the smoke so black from the pitch pine that the heavens overhead were as black as the blackest thunder clouds I ever saw. The sun could not be seen and no blaze of fire was visible anywhere. There was only one cracking and crashing sound that came in a deafening manner from every direction. We seemed to be shut in and surrounded by a wall as black as Plutarch’s infernal regions. I worked incessantly without regard to danger, as I have said I was a coward only when in a great crisis and then I forgot my cowardice. So it was in this case. I was suddenly aroused by a downward dash of the wind which lifted the smoke sufficiently for me to see the fire; that I was walled in on all sides by a fire that was hotter than a furnace. I discovered that I was in a vacant lot on a back street, which was also back of our store where I had been carrying some of our things with the expectation of saving them in the open space. The lot was used for a cotton yard and there were about one hundred bales piled up in it. When I first noticed this cotton it looked like a great heap of white ashes, but a sudden dash of wind swept this ashy covering away and revealed a solid mass of fire. Here I dashed around wildly and frantically without any apparent way of escape. There was not another soul there but myself and suddenly another dash of wind revealed a very narrow alley only wide enough to admit a wagon. Over the top of this alley the first deluge swept like a raging current and there was but this hole near the ground that would permit a bare possibility of escape. Into this I dashed madly, and at every step my progress was impeded by boxes, kegs, and other things. There were thirty or forty yards to go ere I could gain the street beyond the yard, and that not a very wide one. There was a corporation law compelling merchants to deposit all powder in the magazines and upon which there was a small tax. Owing to this and perhaps owing to the fear of a Negro insurrection, they would have a better chance of getting it out of a magazine than when they concealed it. Anyway, the town was full of powder and it was kept smuggled in cellars and garrets and in every conceivable place. The debris through which I was running was mainly powder kegs that had been thrown out there from a wholesales establishment situated directly along the alley. I cleared the alley desperately scorched and nearly suffocated with smoke, and seemingly ready to dissolve with heat. I had barely passed through the alley when these powder kegs began to explode like a park of artillery. I made my way until I came to a place of apparent safety where I fainted and fell prostrate on the ground. The first thing I remember after this, two men were dragging me by the arms to a place of safety for the fire was rapidly surrounding the place where I lay. They left me on the wind side of the fire under the shade of a tree, which revived me very much though my mouth seemed to be a coal of fire. I started out to see if I could find some water and I had not gone far when I passed a man in great agony, as he was a little drunk and had fallen from the top of a house on a sharp paling and which had run through him between his arm and body making a frightful gash. He was begging for someone to help him and to get a doctor. However much I sympathized with him it was impossible for me to lend him any aid. To find a doctor was equally impossible, so I left him and never heard of him afterwards. I had then been intensely engaged for about four hours in the midst of heat that was intense; I had eaten nothing since breakfast that morning. I found some water and somewhat allayed my thirst. The fire was still raging and the powder kegs were thundering in every direction as they were engaged in blowing up houses on the wind side to stop the fire in that direction. On the other side of the fire there was no hope until the raging elements would exhaust itself for the want of material to prey upon. I leisurely sauntered to the suburbs and finding a secluded place I sat down to muse upon the scene before me. The intensity of the reflection beat upon my brain, as did the sun upon Jonah’s head when the worm destroyed the gourd. Here I was with all my toil, all my prospects and everything but the suit upon my back gone. My spirit sank within me and a kind of despair came over me and I think I cursed the day I was born and wished it blotted from the calendar of time. Here the details of this narrative must come to a close without the half being told, as my limits are too circumscribed to extend them further than in a general way.

I remained in Fayetteville for about a year where I worked in a dry goods store that was established among the ruins from the fire. There I was offered good wages to go to Camden, SC to keep a bar in a hotel. I accepted this place and stayed there one month. It was in the days of Nullification and men fought with clubs, knives, pistols and bare fists through the houses and streets. I found that I was not made for such work in such a place and I quit my job.

I fell in with some stock drovers from Kentucky and made my way with them to Maysville on the Ohio River. I then took a steamboat to Cincinnati where I tried to get a situation in a store but failed. My money gave out and I was forced to hard work again in a blacksmith shop and worked for three dollars a month with board. I worked there for several months and could not get anything for my work. I then went to Madison on the Ohio River where I worked about six months and lost all I made at that place. Cholera broke out in Madison and I walked from there to Indianapolis, Indiana and arrived at that place one morning about nine o’clock without any breakfast and six and one-quarter cents in my pocket. I was so sick I could hardly walk. My only clothes were a very indifferent suit of clothes, which was on my back.

I shod horses all one winter making the nails and shoes out of axe bars of iron and doing most of it myself. The man I worked for cheated me out of half of my earnings, though it was but ten dollars per month.

I met my wife and married her when we only had a bed to sleep in and two dollars in money. As my wife’s uncle was a preacher, I got him to perform the ceremony. Relying more upon my dignity than my prudence, I offered him the two dollars thinking that owning to the circumstances he would refuse to accept it. I was sadly mistaken in depending upon his generosity as I found that he had the magnanimous meanness to take it all. I then moved to the country and took a lease in the wild green woods. Here I built a cabin and shook with ague for ten years in succession. Your father came from North Carolina to Indiana at this time.

Some years after I left Carolina my mother died and was buried upon her father’s place. Solomon moved to Georgia in 1842 and father and the rest of the family moved to middle Tennessee. Since that time I have been a blacksmith, shoemaker, cooper, carpenter, wagon maker, engineer, farmer, politician, merchant, postmaster, preacher and last of all a Squire. I seemed to have been an abstract fragment of the great social compact. The world seemed to claim a divine right to chase me through it with a red-hot ploughshare. But through all these hardships I survived.

All this I respectfully dedicate to Austin.
Thomas W. Council
February 12, 1868