We have been invited to write a letter to the paper of our old hometown in Lawrence County. Having received so many requests I will send a few lines as to our welfare. I will begin with the family. We have three children; Virgil is a man. He was born in Lawrence County, we left when he was about 5 years old. He became rather a restless boy but now is a settled boy of 20, steady and hard-working and can be depended upon. He is saving his money and not wasting it as so many others of his age here are doing. Viola has graduated from school and expects to go to high school or Business College; she has not yet decided which. Johnny is a small lad full of fun and frolic, going to school.
We have a beautiful home in the southwest side of St. Louis, Missouri. William and Virgil built it. I could not do it justice in describing it better than to say it is a typical California bungalow. Then you have to see it to realize its beauty and it is artistic; of William's own design, not another anywhere like it, as he is an architect and builder of his own original designs. He has built a number of houses here, large dwellings, flats, bungalows and small houses for different parties. Also a number for ourselves. Five large bricks on Arlington, six flats on Terry, two frames on Edward and our home here on Blow.
I am a daughter of John Parrott’s and I married William Worstell, also of your city. My father has taken the Sumner paper for a number of years, as long as I can remember.
I will close now, wishing you a prosperous New Year for the home paper, also wishing all my friends and relatives a happy and prosperous New Year.
I will write again to let you know that I am still among the living. Your request to write brings olden times to my memory again. How different indeed, are my surroundings now than in days of yore. When in olden times the prairie grass was taller than a man's head and the deer, wolves and all kinds of wild animals rove the country. Oh, how afraid I used to be when I heard those wolves howl at night and to fear that some hunter might set the tall prairie grass on fire. How awful it was to see one. There was no way in which you could escape one of those fires, only to get around or rush through and get behind it. If one could have presence of mind enough to just set fire where they were and then get in the burned off place, they could keep you from doing any harm to them. The hunters would always burn it off in the fall, and then the pasture would be nice in the spring. How beautiful it was on a bright morning to see the deer grazing.
The Sumner Press is a welcome visitor in my home, as I am always glad to hear from the old friends and hope some of them would be to hear from me.
I wish to write a few lines for your noble paper, the Press. The title of my subject is "Recollections of my Boyhood Days."I came to this country in the month of May, in the year of our Lord, 1849, and when I landed I believe it was the fourth day of May-anyway it was oat sowing time, and I like oats to this day. I hadn't so much as a suit of clothes to my back and was barefooted, besides, could not speak the English language, and was at quite a loss to know just what was best for me to do, but I soon learned to notice things, and hear others talking until I was not very long in learning to jabber and I was not long in making my wants known.
Recollections soon came into use, and I was sent to school; and I never shall forget the little log schoolhouse on the hillside of the woods, not an acre of ground cleared around the schoolhouse.
The schoolhouse was made of logs, trees cut down and scored and scalp on either side and build in a pen probably 16X16 or 18 feet square. The floor was made of puncheons, split out of logs, and smooth down on one side and laid or notched down with an ax. The seats we sat on were black oak saplings cut down with an ax and cut off 8, 10 or 12 feet long and split open with maul and wedge and surfaced on one side with and an ax and each had two holes bored in for pins or legs. The fireplace was cut in one end of the house and probably was six or eight feet wide. The chimney was built of split lath, laid upon each other and danbed with mud and straw. Our writing desk consisted of a white slab of lumber, split out and surfaced down, and two, two-inch holes bored in the wall on one side of the house. We took our dinner to school in a piggon or a handmade split basket and often consisted of cornbread, fried or boiled eggs, milk, butter, and great slices of fat meat. Often five or six boys and girls ate from the same basket.
Our clothes were mostly or all homespun and our mothers cut and made our garments, knit our socks and mittens, made our caps. Our shoes were coarse and home made.
In a community or a school district you could not see from one house to another. Our roads were mostly crooked, over hills and up hollows. Very often our parents would blaze saplings through the woods to the schoolhouse, to guide us along our way. The country was new. Our teachers were mostly men who had obtained an education farther east. Some of the books we used in school were Ray’s 1st, 2nd and 3rd part arithmetic. We use Webster's Blue Back elementary speller and McGuffey’s readers. Later on we used Goodrich High School sixth readers and McNally's Geography.
On our way to school, we often saw droves of wild turkeys and sometimes a deer, coons, otters, mink and opossums were plentiful along the Creeks. Now and then could be seen a prairie wolf. Sometimes they would infest our hogs and carry off the young.
Thanks to our Creator, we lived through it all and are here today and you all who read this sketch may live to see better days and finally meet in a fairer and better clime than this where parting will be no more and we will need no sun to give us light by day, nor moon by night, for God will be our light, and in him is no darkness at all.
Yours truly,
J. M. Gaddey
(J. M. Gaddey)
Biographical Note:
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Annotation:
Webster's Blue-Backed Speller is the popular name, derived from the blue paper covers, of Noah Webster's Elementary Spelling Book, published continuously since 1783 under several titles.
McGuffey Readers were a series of graded primers that were widely used as textbooks in American schools from the mid-19th century to the mid-20th century. It is estimated that at least 120 million copies of McGuffey's Readers were sold between 1836 and 1960, placing its sales in a category with the Bible and Webster's Dictionary.
