History of Green County, Wisconsin. Together with Sketches of its Towns and Villages, Educational, Civil, Military, and Political History; Portraits of Prominent Persons and Biographies of Representative Citizens

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HISTORY OF GREEN COUNTY.
looking around I perceived my aunt and her two children being hurried off on the double- quick by a large burly man who proved to be Uncle Tom Bowen. The next morning we were off early; I was seated on the top of dry goods boxes clinging to the ropes that fastened them to the wagon box to keep myself from being precipitated into the sloughy marshes under the wagon wheels. At the end of nine miles we struck hard ground; the horses were covered with mud and water and they panted severely. We were all of us glad to get off the wagon on to the ground and rest up. The journey the rest of the way was delightful. The prairie schoon¬ ers attracted my attention very much. They were large wagons covered with white canvas, filled with pork, bacon, white beans, and lead from the mines, drawn by oxen, from three to five yoke being hitched to a wagon.
Finally, on the 19th of May, we landed at my uncle's. We shoved the boxes on to the ground and Uncle Tom 'scud' for home. The next Sun¬ day we started on foot for Uncle Tom's (myself and uncle). The first thing that attracted my attention was a carding machine on Richland creek, where subsequently I played Paddy with a wheelbarrow fixing the dam. This carding mill was owned and run by Mr. Rossman and was in sight of Oneco village. Just across from the carding mill and somewhat up stream, lived Grandpa Winchell and family and his son-in- law George West, who was an own brother to my aunt, Armida Estee, with whom I had come up the lakes. As Winchell and West had been here some time they had quite a start for new beginners. On passing up the valley to John K. Brewster's house, we met a tame deer with a large red band about his neck. As this was the first deer I had ever seen I was very much interested. On arriving at Brewster's I found as nice a man and woman as ever broke bread— no wonder they were universally popular. Bisil Belknap and wife and family lived in a house quite convenient to the same spring of water. Mr. Belknap afterwards helped me put up a log
house just into Dane county. Here I was in¬ troduced to Author Smith, who was afterward murdered for his money, just below Monticello in the township of Mount Pleasant. The next house was Uncle Tom Bowen's. I found Aunt Eliza Bowen and family living right up to the handle and in a splendid condition.
The year before Uncle Tom, his two oldest girls, Ann and Avis and Author Smith had raised on the farm 4,000 bushels of grain.
Think of this ye boys and girls of to-day. On going out back I beheld a little village of corn cribs filled to their very summits with corn. At this time corn was but ten cents a bushel. Uncle Tom declared very emphatically that he would not take less than twenty-five cents a bushel for that corn and he would be d—d if he would take any more. I think the ensuing winter was called the "hard winter," and people came from far and near to him for corn, hence his place was called "Egypt." When asked why he did not take a dollar a bushel for his corn, he replied he had given his word and sealed it with an oath, that twenty-five cents was all he would take and that he would not peril his soul's salvation by taking more. I could tell a good many anecdotes of Uncle Tom, but one more must suffice. One day he had snapped his rifle three times at a deer before it run; Tom came to the house in high dudgeon. Sitting down before his fire-place he commenced warming the lock (it was a pill lock) and snap¬ ping it. After a while he sat down in a chair, laying the gun across his lap with the muzzle pointed across the room, and commenced snap¬ ping as before. His oldest girl, Ann, was op¬ posite at a chest of clothes. She had pulled out a pillow case, and, just as she let the lid fall back to its place, the gun went off, the ball pass¬ ing through both legs just above the knees, striking the chest lid in its descent, plunged into one corner of the chest and made a little mouse nest in its gyrations among the frag¬ ments. In an instant Uncle Tom sprang, caught her in his arms, laid her on the bed, straddled a