The original hand written document is located at the Western Hennepin Pioneers’ Association Museum in Long Lake, MN in the Stubbs trunk. Words in brackets [] have been added, words with a question mark in parentheses after them are difficult to make out in the original.

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I, Henry Stubbs, was born on the twelfth day of the 4th month, eighteen hundred and six. I had four sisters and four brothers, namely, William, Keziah, Hannah, Joseph, Rebecca, Rachel, Nathan, myself and Elijah, nine in all. My father's name was Nathan Stubbs, my mother Elizabeth. My father had seven brothers and five sisters, my mother had two living brothers and one dead by accident George and William Jones. Uncle William gone while quite young. The owls or some varmints caught some of their fowls and his brother Henry had a crower that he thought much of. One moonlight night he got [up] at hour of midnight and went and caught his chanticleer. His brother William hearing the chickens squall got up, took down their gun thinking an owl had the chicken, [he] shot off the gun in[to] the apple tree where his brother had climbed to get his rooster. The ball struck a limb over his head that turned it into his head and killed him. [This happened] while I was quite young. Mother had two sisters, Sarah and Rachel, and a half sister, Ann. My grandfather Henry Jones was a Low Welshman, perhaps about five feet and five or six inches tall; weighing over three hundred pounds, a low, heavy built man. The most of my uncles and aunts had large families, the Stubbs in particular. I was married to my first companion when I was twenty-two years old, or less, save four weeks. We lived together eight years and had three sons and two daughters. Then Rachel Pray, my first wife died. I lived a widower for eleven months, then I was married to Mary Louise Eccles. We lived together for fourteen years and six months, and had four sons and two daughters. One son died at the age of three years. When I was in my teens I was often exhorted to attend the Quaker church, by my mother, services being held twice a week, on Sabbath and mid-week day, which I frequently did. How well I remember her admonition that we would remember her exhortation when she was gone to be seen of men no more, that
 
 

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we would feel sorry for it if we did not attend to her request, which I mostly did, though somewhat of a wild youth.

My father had two grist mills and one saw mill. The saw mill was run down before I was old enough to do much physical labor though I well remember tending the old grist mill when I was 16 or 17 years of age. A Friend came to mill once that I well remember what he said. He wished me to make him as much flour and as good for that was what he lived for to eat and enjoy life. An old sailor that come to mill said that I must grind his corn finer or they would be scoured out [?] Such as that I thought rather flat. I was quite a modest youth at best. That was a danger [?] on me. I used to have many associates that belonged to our family tend[ing][?] mill for my father.

About the year I was 18 or 20 my father built a new grist mill above the old one, all fed from the same dam. In the summer time the stream was light, the water low so that when there was head gathered, the man in the upper one had a trumpet to blow when he started so that the man operating the lower mill might come in time to save the water, as he lived some 40 rods away from the mill. That gave an opportunity for him to get there in time to save the water before it would waste.

Finally my father made his will and gave me the upper one, with a hundred and six acres of land. My brother Elijah got the lower one, with a hundred and eighteen acres of land. After I came into possession of mine I built a saw mill on the opposite side of the stream and dug a new race and built a large stone mill-dam.
 
 

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In building my saw mill I had to borrow money to carry on the work and paid a high rate of interest. That was a great draw-back, for the interest ran away with the profits, even at ten per cent. I had to carry on my farming for my family was small in size and number, say three or four children.

A part of the time I had two hands to work on the farm, at $100 each per year and then I had three, four different hands to dig the saw mill race. They mostly dug by the rod. The mill wright was Daniel Jones. He did $130 worth of mill wright [work]. The mill did good work for a water mill. I used to cut two thousand feet of lumber in 12 hours, which was thought to be good work for those times.

It cost about one thousand dollars and paid for itself, had not the interest eaten it up so fast that it became necessary to sell, which I did a few years after I built. I sold it and the grist mill to Henry A. Bennet, with 17 acres of land. Then I took some few trips out to Indiana to a place on the Salimany [River], six miles from Lagro, on the Wabash. There I bought 90 acres of land with the intention of starting a mill, but finally the next year after I bought, there was a mill built opposite of where I had proposed to build, so it all fell through, on my part.

Finally after making four trips out there and back, 120 miles, I lost my second companion, so it seemed that my intention was frustrated and broken up, and in due time I sold the land to one John Full. I came to Minnesota and took a homestead where I have lived for 20 years since.

But to go back to the time of my first wife, I will make mention of many incidents and trials through which I passed. Some of these trials and tribulations were mostly caused through the troubles of society matters. About the year 1827 [it was in 1828] there was a divide in the society [of] Friends called Hixite and Orthodox. Well, it fell to my lot to go with the Hixites, and my wife, through her mother's influence, went with the Orthodox. So when there was division in the family, matters were more serious and created hardness that should not have been.
 
 

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Mary Pray was my mother-in-law, she was among the most strict class of Orthodox. She lived with me for many years being a widow and having no home but among her children. Therefore she was often with us. I used occasionally to take the team and take the family to meeting but our meetings were both held in the same house and at different times in the same day. But the Orthodox thought to defeat us, so they provided locks of various kinds and fixed to the doors. They held their meetings in the forenoon on the Sabbath and the mid week meeting on the fourth day. Ours was held on the fifth day so I and my brother, Will went often at an early hour and took a hammer and broke off the padlocks so the house would be opened for the meeting. Finally the Friend Orthodox did not stop us from occupying the house. The Orthodox had a committee appointed to watch the house, my brother-in-law Mordicai Moore was one and Newton Stubbs was another. I have seen Newton’s father [Samuel Stubbs] come there an old man enough to shame the man(?) sneek that travel on two legs. He was between 60 to 70 years of age and just as good a[ll] right as most of them but claimed they were the true friends of the original stamp being Orthodox. Well this condition of things lasted for years. The Orthodox seemed to think they could hold the property as they were the original friends and for that end they put their lock to the door and put their committee to guard it intending to take the law or put in force. But when they consulted Lawyer Wood. He discouraged them and told them it would be considered like children playing when one party would build up pens the other would come along and tear them down. Both would be equally entitled to the property. Then they kept locking the doors. We would go there and open them up with knocking off the padlock or find another key that we could unlock with.
 
 

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It was like children’s play sure enough. I well remember there was once we went there and there was no visible fastening, so we mistrusted there was some new invention. The windows had shutters to them that latched inside. Finally we found one the blinds loose. We came to look they bored a hole through the sash then we found a small cord about twenty feet long that was fastened to a bolt that fastened the door that went into the men’s end of the house. So we entered the house as usual instead of setting out as had been done some chanes(?) times. I am not positive how long this condition of things lasted but [it] was for some years. But, as we were in the minority the thing was compromised. We built a new frame house so the matter settled and finally died out. There were many of our old Hixite Friends died and quite a number moved away so our monthly meeting went down in that place. [Al]so in a number of places up in Mount Pleasant, Ohio where the Hixites were in we the largest party the body of Orthodox applied to the legislature to be an incorporated body. They found that it could not be done like Methodist and Presbyterians for the reason that the Friends Society had a birth right in their society, whereas others had not, so they could not get incorporated so as to hold the meeting house property.

Now I have told some of the troubles that were caused by one part of the head of a family belonging to one society and the other one belonging to another society. Such things ought not to be, so I would caution any two who were match-making to be of one faith and one mind, in body and in spirit, that they might dwell together in love and true harmony, and dwell together in peace and quiet throughout their days, let there be many or few, in this life or the life to come.
 
 

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Now let there be light on any subject, and view it from cause to effect, be sure you are right, then go ahead, and I think you will come out all right, indeed, I am about sure of it for I can speak as the aged of old, "I have never seen the righteous forsaken nor their seed begging bread."

If we can be sure our acts are just and true we will not likely be deceived ourselves, but will have just judgment of others, for, those that do right within themselves are not liable to err, themselves, so we should attend to the still small voice all may be possessed of whilst in true meditation. This advice I give that all that will may look and see for themselves and not have to pass through the fiery furnace of affliction as I believe I have done in my first setting out to rear and raise a family as I have done through much tribulation.

Now this much has passed and since then I have seen better times. In my second marriage I was favored to select as good a companion as most of those that live in my age and generation. Her affliction was considerable. She had a complaint that, was called St. Vitus dance in her second or third year of married life. It was cured at last by taking plenty of the nervine tea. Then some years after that she had the dyspepsia, which grew worse, and in consultation of physicians and others, it was thought best to go back to old North Carolina, where she came from and where she could have plenty of free stone water to drink.

This [was] quite an undertaking to rig up a conveyance to go in, so I learned of Benjamin Wheeler and one William Rail [who were] going there in the spring of the year 1846, so we made our arrangements accordingly. There were two or three men beside Wheeler that were a horse-back, so we all started together and I took
 
 

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my two youngest sons Milton and Charles Rolla.

We traveled through the state of Ohio by the way of Chillicothe, Galliopolis, and up the Kannawha River to where the Gaila River empties into New River, on by a place called the Hawk’s Nest. We saw where a person could stand on a rock and look down perpendicularly 700 or 800 feet to cast a stone into the river. There were few who could do so. [When] a person threw [a stone] it would look like it was going over the river, then it would fall on the same side as the person was standing. There was not one in twenty who could throw into the river from off of the rock even though they were so high.

Above it we traveled past the white sulphur springs and the cold springs and warm springs, through Boonesboro, Fincastle, and through what is called Maggetta Gap. Here I should note that my wife had a spell of trembling(?) and purging I feared would be her last. We stopped one day then she was better. From that [time] on she seemed to mend.

We camped out when our circumstances would admit. We stopped all night [at the home of] a Dunkard, they were very nice folks. We passed some high mountains, one where we could see it raining below where we were on the mountain. It was a sight I had not witnessed before. [After] that we went on through the iron [mining] work, also through a piece of land ten miles square where some rich man held for a hunting ground. They said there were plenty of deer and game there. This was still in the state of Virginia, bordering onto the Sorry-town mountains.

Along a stream called Pig River we saw what was called the Pilot Mountain, about sixty miles distant. We soon came to Dan River in North Carolina were we saw the most slaves in any one place, about thirty in one field in one drove, hoeing tobacco or cotton, I am not sure which.

So we traveled on to Guilford County, on the head stream of Deep River, a small stream called Ready Fork, where our brother and sister-in-law lived. This was my second wife's sister, George Bratten and wife Anne Bratten.

There we staid for three months,
 
 

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traveled round through Guilford County, went to Wright's Borough where some men inquired of our Milton where he came from. He answered that he come from Ohio in Butler County, and the man was so much astonished he applied [turned] to us to know if that five year old boy was correct. We informed him that he was. Well, he could hardly believe his own eyes, to think that such a boy as that could correctly answer such a question. His aunt Lydia Eccles had schooled him to answer such questions as that so you see it was no bother for him to answer correctly.

In that state at that time children were not allowed to be educated for fear they would talk too much to the blacks and cause them to run away from their masters.

I saw a women caught with [in] the tumbling rod of a thrashing machine [and] so badly hurt [that] I think she died afterwards. It was thrashing wheat for Samuel Dwiggins. Her name was Mary Stanly, wife of John Stanly, [who lived] in or on the Ready Fork not far from Dover meeting house of Friends.

We went into the Moravian town in North Carolina which was a new scene to us. They seemed to be very clever, nice prosperous people though quite different in their manners and customs from the Shakers. The fields for many a place turned to the common to run [grown] up with briers and one place had large tamarack that had been thrown out [growing] for over one hundred years. It had tamarack [one] foot to 18 inches and was more [well] known of in that district for within forty or fifty miles. My brother[-in-law] Bratten said the neighbors seem to think a great mystery how ever the germ of tamarack ever could get there. The principle growth was hickory and other kinds in woods around about. There was an old friend by the name of Starbuck. He was up to 70 or 80 years [old]. He had always lived there and could well remember when those little twigs of tamarack were growing.
 
 

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There were old yellow sand banks grown over with blackberry briers in the same old worn out fields around where the tamarack grew. Some had brought the fields into cultivation anew that produced good crops of wheat when it had been run down with raising tobacco by the slaves. It was a long time before it would come to do any good. Now this was the case with many parts of the State of Virginia as well as of North Carolina. So much worn out soil through the states mentioned above [that] the farmers turned their attention altogether to raising the Negro for more southern market, like Louisiana and Alabama.

There they tried their experiment of how long a good rugged Negro would last, by hard driving, before he would wear out. It was ascertained that seven years hard driving was about the time it took to wear out a thousand dollar slave. At one time this was the case, so they learned to know just what they could afford to give the slave driver and the slave driver learned to know just how to treat his drove. It was to feed them well on good fat pork and that would make them shine, to that the buyer could not tell whether they were old or young. So it stood the slave driver in hand to feed well while going two or five hundred miles as many did.

Well in the ninth month we set out for Ohio to return home, with 7 or 8 teams and families together, for my wife had gained health and strength while in North Carolina. We had started [with] four or five new families to come out to Ohio with us. Samuel Boland and wife and James Ballard and wife Prudence, one of the Rails came back with his brother Wheeler, and ourselves, George Bratten and wife and my wife's brother Milton Eccles, and a young woman, I forgot her name (she had an uncle living in old Indiana), a jolly crowd of nearly twenty in all.
 
 

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We started back the same route we came. We got about three days started [and] it commenced raining. We had to stop for some few hours, then we traveled on that night. We camped and pitched our tents. [We] had to fix fence rails for laying on for our bed so as to keep out of the water. It was rolling ground, the water ran down under us, though, [so] we did not get much wet.

Well we had showers occasionally all through our travels, which was about three weeks coming through to our home in Ohio. But I traveled on foot and had my feet wet a considerable part of the time, and by the time we crossed the Ohio at the mouth of the Kanawha River and passed through Galiopolis to a place called Adamsville I was taken down with what the doctor called bilious fever. There my wife and I stopped for two weeks. She was much broken down waiting on me there, after her health had been greatly improved.

Well, the other company had gone on to our home, and there they got my gray horse hitched to my buggy and my brother William and son Joel came to meet us at Big Rock Coon or Adamsville, one hundred and forty miles from home. I had got so I could set up most of the time, so we fixed up and set out for home. In coming to the Kanowan salt works before we crossed the Ohio river, we stopped at the salt works. There we saw a sight that we never knew before where [at] one of the wells the salt water and gas both came out at the same place. There [the gas] was conducted into the furnace so that it was burning, boiling down the salt water into salt. There were a number of furnaces over ten miles up and down the river where they made an abundance of salt. Many a barrel have I bought and used up. So you see, this [is] the way [a] man’s life goes in traveling such long journeys.

This spell of
 
 

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sickness was the second in my life. I had a spell of fever when I was about 22 years old somewhat similar to that one mentioned as we came home from North Carolina. That was just before I was first married. When I was coming home [from North Carolina, it] was in the year ’47. [I] might say [of] the first spell I had, when the fever was broken it turned [into] the chills. [These] continued for three months before I got well. I used to chill every other day quite violent[ly]. I took quinine a number of times. It would return about every two weeks toward the last, but it finally left me at last for good. I found when I would exert myself after I got feeling stout at any hard labor it [was] about sure to fetch my chill right off.

I found that travelling was the most healthful business that could follow. I most[ly] felt well after a travel of 100 miles and back. I took a trip out over(?) to Carrol County of 160 miles to where Jesse Moore lived. He was one of my father’s old millers. He tended the lower grist mill for a great many years. His daughter and myself went over to the Hixite yearly meeting in my first wife’s time. It made some talk but without any great ground of cause. My wife went with the Orthodox that was the reason that made people talk so. Many a hardness was made on that occasion for I was much more zealous then than now since I feel to believe that I have seen into the true nature of Christianity that God’s people should be accountable being each one for himself there is no such thing as one answering for another. Jesus has said that He and His Father were one in spirit and in truth there we read [that] there is one Lord, one faith, one baptism over all through all and in you all.
 
 

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It will be seen by my old account book that I ran my saw mill and did sawing for a large a large number of people. I also butchered eight or ten small beeves [beef] in that time and retired(?) as it was a business that I did not like to follow after. So I quit the business. I hand many hands to deal with in carrying on that business for the years between 1839 and 1845. I also sold a great number of loads of building stone for lime and for building. I had one of the best lime stone quarries within ten miles of that district of the county. [That] made it [the stone] quite valuable. My father came from the state of Georgia and settled down on Elk Creek in the year 1804, two years before I was born. So he had the pick of the country for ten miles around [and] chose that part on Elk Creek for the stone quarry and mill pawn [pond]. The stream had an abundance of fall. The two mills that were about 80 rods apart had two overshot wheels of about fifteen foot which would make about 30 foot in the 80 rods. As I have said before both grist mills were fed by one mill dam of about three and one half feet high and about 70 feet long. Well the upper mill race was 75 feet long and the lower about sixty rods where the dam was built two feet high. That turned the main stream in the head race which would make the whole fall of the stream 135 rods instead of seventy-five or 80 rods. That is to get the thirty feet fall for both grist mills. So in the divide [of my fathers’ estate with my brother Elijah] I got the main stone quarry in [the] uper [upper] mill seat that fell to my part and brother Elijah got the lower which had not much of the stone quarry on it.

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Brother Elijah died quite young. He married and had four children. The oldest son married [and] had one child. It lived to about three years old and it died. Finally all [of] the children died and the widow married again [and] had three more children. And [then] she died and now it is thought by some that [Elijah’s brothers and sisters] could be heir[s to] the property. Well, I live quite a distance away from the old home. It is not likely that the case will be undertaken to establish my claim. My youngest sister Rachel was quite anxious that I should do so. She felt like it was our due that we should get it and hold it, but others think the rest of his brothers and sisters would come in as heirs which would involve a long litigation for there are more than one hundred of the children out of the family of eight brothers and sisters all included. Well, I just mention this to show how our family connection[s] run, Elijah being the youngest of the family. Now there has been near thirty years since Elizabeth [Elijah’s youngest child] married a man [James Law] and lived with him two or three years then died without any heirs. Her mother died a few years after.
 
 

I will draw off some of my favorite pieces of poetry. I find in the ‘Banner of Light’ one piece [it] is a spiritual worship writing for the right time.
 
 

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Spiritual Worship

by J. I. Morse
 
 

Friends of truth you’re welcome here

Join with us in tuneful praise.

Truth has vanquished every fear

Love shall light our passing days.
 
 

Spirits from on high attend

Holy inspiration bring.

To the words your beauty lend

Freeing life from passions sting.
 
 

Love is our religion’s claim

Wisdom’s light the soul’s best friend.

Truthful life our noblest fame

Kindly deeds our hearts best pride.
 
 

God is the eternal cause

Nature bright His oriel fane

Our salvation through her laws

They supreme around us reign.
 
 

Thus we need no priest or book

That we may His precepts know

On every hand on all we look

the light our path where ere we go.
 
 

Waiting

By Mrs C. S. Shacklock
 
 

Shall I gather golden sheaves

or but withered autumn leaves?

Shall I linger till the light

Mingles with the shades of night?

Will early be or late?

Morn or evening I will wait.

Will my night merged in day?

Will my tears be wiped away?

Will my weary heart find rest
 
 

Nevermore by grief oppressed?

Shall I enter at the gate?

I can only watch and wait.

Do the clouds which shade my path

come in mercy or in wrath?

Will He guide my feet right

Out of darkness into light?

Whatsoever shall be my fate

Trustingly I watch and wait
 
 
 
 

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My third marriage was on the 2nd of the 12th month, 1852, at her father's Jacob Grave. Mary S. Grave was near forty when we were married. We moved down to West Elkton and lived there a few months. Then her father wished for us to go back there and tend the farm which we finally did. So we did the farming and some ditching for two years. We stayed on the place. I found my father in law could see enough alike to stay there and farm so I rented Curtis Grave’s place. I sowed it in wheat [and put on] a lot of manure. We could not see enough alike; in drawing up an article of agreement we could not agree. So I bought a forty acre lot of Isaac Martin.

We cleared up a deadning and improved the lot considerably, then sold it to Samuel Mitchell. We made a sale, sold off our movable property, and then fixed up and came to Minnesota, to our son Enos. He had come out in the spring of 1856, and we came in the fall, in October. [We settled on a farm which was on the Watertown Road, 2 1/2 miles west of Long Lake.]

We came on the cars, lost our baggage, so we left our keys with the depot agent at Saint Paul. Our things went to South Bend, Indiana. Our trunks with many notions in them were found, but Mary's album, some towels, and perhaps some other item was missing, these we never recovered.

We had thirty dollars in change of hard money which was in the bottom of the trunk, and which was all right, so at the time we got the trunks, finding our money, we thought everything was there. After coming home and making diligent search we found that those few things were missing.

We were twenty-seven miles west of Saint Paul, and it seemed too far to go with the uncertainty of getting them.
 
 

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Sometime after Mary and myself went to Osseo to chaffe(?) where there was a spiritual medium. His name was Romen Rowl. We had a setting for manifestations. He asked us if we had ever been to South Bend, Indiana. We answered no. He said he saw our name there so we were certain that our trunk and things went there for there was a branch line of [the] railroad [that] took off at Lafayette from the route we came to Chicago. Well I will mention the things we found in [our missing baggage] about a week after they were advertised to be sold. [This was] about two months after they were found. James Maxwell one of our neighbors saw the advertisement in [the] St. Paul paper. He told us of it just in time to go down and get them a few days before they were to be sold. That was lucky for us or we would have met with at least one hundred dollars loss. So that is the way things go sometimes in this world of ups and downs in this life.

Well there was an abundance of rain that fall. We were stopping with Allen Graves till our bed-clothing would come. Allen had two black mares that he had got, being out here one year before us, so we took his team and he and I went down to Saint Paul, got me a new stove and some other things. The roads were new and extremely bad.

I hired another team, owned by a man named Weatherby to come home with us and bring a load. This was quite trying, there being no bridges at the crossings of the little streams. We had to unload one or two places as we come home. I had to pay in advance thirteen dollars for bringing the load, two days travel out and back, and we had to find the team.

The country was new then. We filed on our homestead right away. There had been five others that had filed on it and dropped it because they thought there was too much tamarack on it. My son Enos held it for us.
 
 

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Well that was in the fall of 1856, 10th month, 14th day, we arrived here and took our claim that fall and held it until Buchanan brought the land into market. Then we got a soldier’s land warrant and laid on it, which was the best we could do, at that time. There were some others that could not preempt and that had to pay double entry price, just four hundred instead of two, pretty severe for new settlers that came out empty handed. Shepard Barnes was one of them.

I had to pass through a savage cold snow storm to get to the land office to lay my warrant. It took two days travel. On the evening of the second day the snow storm came on, just as we got into the prairie, across the Big Wood as it is called. I got in company with the two Hall boys, which was a real advantage as they were afoot and I horse-back, they could keep the track or road better than I. There were one or two heard from who got their fingers frozen. It was quite a sudden change to be in November and rather early for it, people being less prepared to receive it was the cause of their fingers getting frozen. This was only three years or so after we had taken our claim, and the law was five years that we were allowed to live on land that was settled on before we had to preempt.

After we had laid the warrant we went back to Indiana, left Joel and family on our claim. While we were there visiting at Mary's father and folks, also went to West Elkton, Ohio, neighborhood to see the old home of my native land, where I had parted with companions, in my earlier life, that had been spent with joy and sorrow until I found my last and third companion and helpmeet or helpmate, that has caused my later life and day to be more happy and joyful than my twenty-four years of my first married life. Now it has been forty-nine years since my first marriage, this 1878.
 
 

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We went to Indiana, in the spring of 1863, lived on the old farm of Mary's father, and raised a crop, and then sold off the stock we had collected there, and the sixty acres we had bought, and sold to Kirk Mendenhall, in five payments, four hundred dollars down, and four hundred a year till paid up with interest from date. We returned in the fall of sixty-four, in November. The old place, or the part we bought, was sixty acres. We paid sixteen hundred and sold for twenty-two hundred dollars, making a little over six hundred dollars. Coming and going cost us nearly two hundred dollars, which curtailed out profits somewhat.

When we got back to Minnesota, we felt like rejoicing to be back home again. Well, we had many a hard tug to Minneapolis, to the mill, for our bread, and other things.

I was postmaster for five years and got the Tamarack postoffice established under Buchanan's administration. After the railroad was built the postoffice was changed, both name and place, to Long Lake. John Coleman had it for a short time before it was changed to Long Lake. It was not a paying business to keep a postoffice in a frontier settlement, where there were but few settlers, and those far apart. Business was tight and the pay was tighter. I was glad when it was removed, for my own mail was the most important and that was too light to pay me to set and watch for hours to come. I had to be at home to take care of the mail.

There are many advantages in pioneering here for we had all the fish we had a mind to catch and all the deer we could get. Once in a while we could kill some pheasants. We caught raccoon, also. We helped to catch a five-hundred pound black bear which had caught a hog of James Bradford's the night before.
 
 

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My Horticultural Experience
 
 

I bought of Peter M. Gideon one hundred fruit trees of the apple kind, in the spring of 1865 that he had got from the East. I think from Wisconsin or Illinois. They mostly grew or least not more than two out of ten died and the mice destroyed enough more to reduce them [to a] one third loss. Quite a number fruited in the last two years. I will name some of them: the Red Belflour and Dutchess Talman, Sweet Transcendant. At the suggestion of P. M. Gideon I sowed timothy on [the] ground and did not tend [to it] for three or four years which I found to be a mistake. The mice had a good harbour [and] caused quite a destruction. Since that time I have tended to the ground in vines, potatoes and beans. They have all grown fine since that cultivation was carried on. I name the most hardy best thrifty growth the Red Belflour and Red Astrican. Early Red, Full Sweet, Limber Twig, Fameuse, St. Lawrence, Talman Sweet, Duchess of Oldenburg. The ground where the above lot is planted slopes to the east and south. East soil ten inches deep clay subsoil. There are quite a number that have not fruited yet that grew fine. The Blue Pairmain, Full Sweet Fameuse has not fruited. They have had blooms on [for] two springs. Now as to the seedling that fruited, they are mostly hardy and some may be termed of a superior quality both for early fall fruit and for winter keeping. The Winter Sweet and Greening [are] good keepers. The Prize is not a keeper longer than mid winter. This statement should have been first but notwithstanding I insert it.

I came to Minnesota in the fall of 1856. In the spring of fifty-seven I had forty-two apple trees sent to me from Indiana. I planted them in a new piece
 
 

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that I had just chopped off. There [were] nine varieties namely: Michael, Honey Pippin, Rhodeisland, Greening, Mendenhall’s Sweet, Trenton, Early Newark, Pepin, Summerpairmain, Orthy Pepin, Wine Apple, Bow Apple - called Sweet Bow. They all grew for two to three years but [the cold weather] would kill down the rapid growth every winter till all died except seven. They have grown up with large bushy tops, branched out at the ground forming top without any special body. The seven have borne and one seems hardy. Two Newark Pepin, two Orthy Pepin, one Mendenhall’s Sweet, one Summerpairmain: the most perfectly hardy of any. The ground where [the trees are] planted was a south slope with clay subsoil about 18 inches deep. The ground had been cultivated in corn for ten years past. Now for the last two years I have started a nursery of some four thousand grafts which grew and did well till that hard winter of seventy-three. That killed most of the orchards all over the State or injured them in the heart so they were of but little use. The year I planted my grafts were most of my own seedling kind and the seed they were grown from came from Indiana.

[On] May 19th, 1878, Sunday in the afternoon it hailed till the ground was literally white with hail and rain. This day was set to hold a social conference at 2 o’clock but few attended so it was to be continued till next Sabbath at 2 o’clock at the Stubbs School House in Medina town. It is [today,] Monday, cloudy and dull with a prospect for rain. The hail on the Sabbath cut off the apple fruit quite bad and strawberries were injured badly but the most of the fruit was so small. There was enough left to answer house use but such [weather] has not been known in this month and in the state since it has been settled for twenty years back. [However], it is not thought to be extensive, but local in small districts.