The Mankato free press. [volume] (Mankato, Blue Earth County, Minn.) 1879-1924, 1910-07-01

times would substitute milk porridge
for the corn bread We were all orig
inally from the New England states,
| and one of my uncles who had been
very much disguised with the wildness
of the country, on the morning our
food consisted only of milk porridge,
took his leave and returned to his for
mer home, not again joining us until
several years later, this time determined
to spend the remainder of his days with
us. Usually there was never seen a
pie or cake and no fruit was to be
had except the wild plum and grape.
One of our friends, a Doctor Welcome,
had company one day and when they
were seated at mealtime, he said to
his wife please pass the fruit; a
merry laugh rang out around the table
, as the good wife passed the dried apple
sauce for they had all seen the time
when food was more plentiful. An
other neighbOr procured a soup bone
which was rarity in those days, and
after his family had made soup of it.
he said it went the rounds of the neigh
borhood.
Many thousands of people who
came to settle in this beauti-
full, fertile outdoor of Gods in
these early days were frightened
away and no one can estimate the great
loss this state sustained thereby. 1t is
altogether probable that as many as a
thousand lives of men, women and
children were massacred during the fall
of 1862 and many of their bodies lay
scattered over the wild prairies for
weeks before the remaining settlers
dared to venture out to bury them. 1t
is said that the number of fugitives
reached the thirty thousand mark and
many hundreds of these of course
never returned; but few years later
when the United States Government
Unidentified the people for their losses,
in so far as money could do it, gold
en- era was again opened to Southern
Minnesota and people began to come and
found new homes. The grasshopper
plague from 1873 to 1876 interfered
somewhat with the progress for the
time being but in spite of the success
i've calamities to which we people were
subjected, they grew and prospered
and today finds them making as favor
able showing as any settlement in the
Union.
People of these days little realize
what the pioneers of Minnesota had to
endure, and | most assuredly think
sometimes, it would do some of them
good if they had to 60 through few
of the hardships we had to bear. How
delighted we used to be when we oc-
cassionly had new calico dress which
would do us for all affairs-social and
otherwise. We paid fifty cents yard
for the calico so we were very careful
of our gowns as money could not be
picked off the bushes in those days; tea
was two dollars per pound and you may
be sure the same was we'll thinned with
water. The only market we had for
our grain was at our county seat, Man
"kato, twenty miles away. Steamboats,
used to run from there to st. Paul
thus affording method of marketing
grain, but during the Civil war the
water was so low in the Minnesota riv-
er that boats could no longer make
these trips and consequently we re-
ceived only fifty cents per bushel for
our wheat while in Wisconsin at the
same time, wheat was selling for three
dollars per bushel.
AS you can well imagine, we people
of frontier days saw very serious times
financially, but the glory of the warm
greetings that these early pioneers ex-
tended to each other, that hand of
brotherly love and charity-which is
not always extended so freely in
times or distress nowadays-makes one
who has experienced both the early
and modern hospitality, yearn for the
return of those old days of yore when
we were all so willing to share every
blessing with each other.
On May IL, 1908, Minnesota celebra-
ted the fiftieth anniversary of her
statehood; many are the changes not
ed in this half century of time. When
l came here in 1858, this country was
almost wilderness; no railroads in the
state to transport us from point to
point, no telegraph dashes and dots
by which to notify our eastern friends
of our safe arrival, no street cars or
automobiles to carry us from place
to place, no kerosene, gas or electric
lights to brigenten our pathway, but in
stead the tallow dip, no bridges, no
great flour mills, no university, no
public Libraries and no telephones.