Early Days as Told Me by My Mother

Recollections of Eleanor Creighton Farmer at 86

(With notes by Josephine Farmer Albrecht)

            My forebears came from the British Isles—my grandfather, Samuel CREIGHTON, from Scotland, grandmother from Wales. She had a very sweet singing voice. My maternal great-grandfather came from Ireland.

My mother’s father died when she was six months old and she lost her mother when she was twelve. She was the youngest of four children: William, Sarah, Alexander and Jane [Gray]. William was a farmer and was in the Civil War. He drove a team, being too old for the ranks. Sarah married William DAVISON and they came to Salt Creek Township, Iowa, in 1845. He had a soldier’s suit and a cocked hat with a long white plume on it. My cousin used to open the old haircloth trunk and let me gaze at it. Said it was used for “muster day” in Pennsylvania. [This uncle built an outdoor oven in Iowa like the ones he knew in Pennsylvania.] Their children were: Robert, Elizabeth, Mary Martha, Ann, Eliza Ann, William A., and Amanda. “Billy” is the only one alive and lives in Fairfield.

My grandfather [mother’s father, Samuel GRAY] died young. He came from Ohio to Pennsylvania. My parents were married in Sharpsburg, Dec. 28, 1838. I was born in Alleghany City Feb. 8, 1843 in a snowstorm. My brother (Sam) was two years older than I.

David’s brother Sam did not like school so he worked on the farm when they lived nine miles out of Pittsburgh. John, the eldest son of Samuel Creighton and brother to David, left Pennsylvania and went to Canada. He was careless about writing and was lost track of. James, third son of Samuel, went to Oregon and settled there. John, James and William had a taste for liquor, but Alex, Sam, and David were teetotalers.

At the time I was six months, my parents concluded to go west. My father, being a carpenter and cabinet maker, filled all available space and tool chest with groceries, he having gone to Davis County, Iowa, previously and secured two eighties adjoining [at $1.25 an acre] and begun the erection of a hickory log cabin four logs high. [A man working alone could not raise big logs higher. The cabin had a peaked roof that made a porch in front. JFA]

We went down the Ohio in a flatboat. My mother said an old gentleman came near sitting down on me, I was so small. While waiting to cross over to Keokuk, Iowa, some “Latter Day Saints” were trying to carry off my father’s precious tool chest.

We drove the thirty miles in an ox wagon to find our house was as [unfinished as] my father had left it. As it was warm, we slept outside. Richard RAMSEY, being a kind but slow young neighbor, was quite sorry [he probably had promised to work on the house during David’s absence-JFA], and made haste to “hope” [help] father to make clapboard and cover the cabin. They later built a lean-to with a mud-and-stick chimney to a large fireplace, the door being in the end. [Nellie said they lived in a lean-to at first, but that probably wasn’t the structure she means here. JFA]

They have told me the first New Year’s Day they sat outdoors, the weather was so mild, but not so now. The floor to the lean-to was mother earth, packed down and swept clean. There was two steps up into the main cabin where we slept, and father’s workbench occupied one side where he made windows and doors. He had match(ed) planes to tongue-and-groove and make sash. He built most of the houses as well as the log schoolhouse in the little town of Blackhawk, where the old Indian chief for whom it was named was buried. Some rails marked his grave. The town (Blackhawk) was two miles from our home on the Des Moines River. Father built A. J. Davis’s mill that stored his High wines [high alcohol content or distilled like brandy?] that afterward, taken out to the mines in Montana in which he invested, made him a millionair(e), something he had always longed for.

But for the long hours that constituted a day in those early times, Father could have walked from home as he liked walking. As it was, he came home only on weekends. Working by the river, he acquired malaria. [His diary records repeated severe attacks in 1898. JFA]

One night, hearing a commotion and people moving about in the room, I got out of bed to see what the trouble was. My father caught me in his arms and put me back in bed and in the morning I was shown a little baby sister named Isabell JONES for my father’s mother. There was a girl in the kitchen getting the breakfast. Her name was Melvina DODSON. My brother named Samuel (for two grandfathers and an uncle) and I took a dislike to her for an act of cruelty to our pet kitten. She had placed a pan of bread to rise under the stove with a tablecloth over it. Kitty, seeking a warm place, was found sleeping on top. No harm done, but she, in a bad temper, said she would kill it. So when we could not find our pet we feared the worst. My Mother asked us to go round the pasture fence and find where the geese got out. There, hanging to the stake-and-rider fence was our little gray kitten. We wept bitterly and told mother, who reproved her for such cruelty.

Later in the fall when it began to be chilly nights, my mother went to get the broom behind the door. She found a snake coiled around the handle—a house snake, and harmless. One cold night, fearing the little young calf would freeze, my mother took a woolen quilt and covered it. In the morning we found the corner chewed off.

My father was much from home—having such long hours for a day, he could only come Saturday evening. My father built a log schoolhouse on Uncle Davison’s land. There were sliding windows on two sides, a door in the front side, and a large fireplace occupied the remaining side. He made all the desks and benches. As Sam was six, he was sent to school. The way was long and lonely, being a cowpath through the woods two miles. He would coax me to go for company altho’ I was but four. When I would cry for mother, the teacher, Daniel MILLER, would take me on his knee and promise to give me a “ticket” when I went home, and lay me on the bench to sleep. One evening Father came and carried me home on his shoulder. It had been raining long and hard, and the wet branches struck me. I had on a new indigo-blue apron and my hands and dress were streaked with blue, also my face where I had tried to protect it with my sleeve. They had a good laugh at my expense.

My Father got ague [malaria], working on the river [did not know about mosquitoes]. He had it for two years, then took a trip to see his Mother in Pittsburg(h) Pennsylvania, which cured him. He brought back presents for us: bright dress material and picture books and news from the home folks.

We had a quarter section of good land all paid for, horses, cows, and two houses: a hickory cabin four logs high and a hewed log house one-and-a-half stories high with a stairway. My (Davison) cousins climbed a ladder.

Now it is not clear to me if there was likely to be trouble about our being able to hold the other forty (acres). Father built on it a story-and-a-half house of hued [hewed] logs with staircase. All the other children had to climb a ladder. Father, having found lime and clay suitable, had a limekiln burned, also two kilns of brick, and we had a good brick chimney and shingled roof. The cabin [their first log house] had a roof of clapboards that were split and shaved with a drawknife. Our neighbor Adam ROWE built his family a brick house as they had a large family (Dan, William, Polly, Sally, Burnettie, Delany, Felix, Elisabeth, Catherine). They had lived in a double log cabin [See Weslager: “The Log Cabin in America”—a double log cabin was two separate cabins joined by one roof and a “dog trot.” JFA]

One day after moving to our new house, my brother was allowed to ride Old Sal. She was so gentle that I was allowed to ride behind him. All went well until we got to the old cabin where weeds were grown up around the porch [which was an extension of the roof]. Sam ducked, but I was scraped off down into the weeds that were so large they scratched me. [Evidently the old cabin was no longer in use after they moved to the hewed log house on the other “forty.” JFA] I cried lustily but Sam only laughed. He thought it was a good joke.

Our family had been increased by a little curly-headed baby girl named Sarah-Jane (Sade), called for my Mother Jane and her only sister (Sarah Davison), whose family came out from Pennsylvania in 1845 [two years after the Creightons] and lived two miles from us. We all got (w)hooping cough, and Sade, being only three months old, Mother had to keep near the cradle to keep her from choking. We older ones would lie down across the chairs to keep from falling. Then we had to wear asafedita around our necks to prevent getting other contagious diseases [See tiny embroidered asafoetida bag with string in my collection. JFA]

One day my father found us playing hide-and-seek in the tall wheat almost ready to be cradled, and reproved us. [He was evidently a mild man! JFA] My father was one of the best cradlers in Davis County, Iowa. The sheaves of wheat were taken to a smooth piece of hard ground and beaten with flails (two pieces of wood fastened together by a leather strap). Later, horses were used to tread it out. This was in the late forties. (Some difference from the present day combined harvester that puts it in the sack! ECF) While harvesting was going on, my brother went over to the field around the cabin to see the men work. As he jumped down from the fence a rattlesnake struck him on the great toe. Mr. Rowe picked him up in his arms, and being an old frontiersman, knew what to do: ran down to the little stream that ran nearby, washed and squeezed it to make it bleed, then took tobacco from his pocket and bound it on. My Father came along on horseback from town, took him over home, and went for a doctor. Meanwhile Mr. Rowe went to the little prairie, got button snakeroot and steeped it to give him with whiskey to counteract one poison with another. His leg swelled up to his body and turned spotted but his life was saved by the prompt action. A little girl was bitten while picking blackberries, ran all the way home, which accelerated her circulation. She lost her life.

A large limb from an oak tree in the yard was broken off by the wind. My brother was chopping it into firewood. I went with my basket to get some chips for Mother. He was swinging the axe around as he saw men do, and as I stooped behind him he struck my forehead, and when I came to I was surprised to know how I got in the house. My father said it was well it was not he that was chopping or I would have been killed. I was surprised at the cloth around my head and the smell of camphor and why I was in bed. In a few days I was all right and able to go to school again.

Our new house was quite comfortable. I was seven, brother nine. The gold discovery in California excited my father. California had long been an interesting place to do better than Iowa. The winters were so cold in Iowa while [although] the soil was rich.

The preparation proceeded for my Father’s trip to California. Mr. Rowe and his son William and my Father had one wagon, a yoke of oxen and a yoke of cows. We had a large red cow we called Pink; their cow went dry. They went through to California.

Father “put in” a barrel of flower [flour, for extra provision—JFA]. Corn was our bread, usually baked in a Dutch oven by the fireplace. My Uncle Davison built an outside oven, such as they had in Pennsylvania, for his family. He agreed on providing wood in return for one of our cows. We had two cows. He took the big red one we called “Pink” and left the spotted one for us. We had a log barn behind the house for old Sal [the horse] and her colt, a dapple-gray we called Dandy. Mr. Rowe and his son William took the coffee mill as there was none in cans at that time. The green [coffee] beans we had to brown. [I believe she means that when the father left for California, the Rowes took their coffee mill in return for provisions for the trip or aid to the family remaining behind. Later the Rowes went West in the same wagon train. There is a later reference about having sold the stove which they had brought from Pennsylvania, all in preparation for the planned move. JFA]

There were other men and wagons. Father and Mother took us in the farm wagon with Old Sal and Dandy hitched to it. Mother kept her shawl around her shoulders. I wondered why, as the April morning was warm. (It somewhat concealed her condition as she soon was to become a mother again. ECF) She wept bitterly, not knowing what might happen to him going through the unsettled country where the Indians felt the white man was encroaching on their hunting grounds, shoving them back across the Mississippi River. Aunty Davison gave them a coffee mill as there was no canned goods to be had at that early day. [Must have been their previous mill, which the Creighton family’s mill later replaced.] So the wagons drive out on the road and were soon lost to view. [David drove one ox team. JFA] Brother was 9, I was 7, Bell 5, Sade 2½. We children only knew the want of a mother as our Father worked on the river and came home only on Saturday nights. Mother loaded her brood into the wagon and went home. They had an agreement to quit the use of tobacco, but Mother kept her pipe until he came home a year later.

In California things were very expensive: onions $1.00 a pound. They were in the Mariposa mines and they had to have vegetables to prevent scurvy (this was in 1850. ECF). San Francisco was principally sand dunes with a few shacks along the waterfront. As there was no law in the mines, they were a law unto themselves. The thief found stealing while the miner was away at work was made to run the gauntlet: each man struck him as he ran between the lines, with the admonition never to return to their camp or he was liable to be shot. [David owned a sword-cane for protection in San Francisco which Herbert Farmer had, but lost in his many moves. JFA]

This was a hard year for my mother. In July Martha Elisabeth (Matt) was born. Help was poor but the neighbors were kind as they are in pioneer times and help each other. All had large families that had to help in field and garden to raise sufficient to carry them through the winter. Mother had to get on a horse and go to the Joneses to get their men to shear our sheep as they were losing their wool going through the brush. The baby was entrusted to my care.

There came up a dreadful storm; the wind was so strong we feared the house would blow over. We had one loose plank in the floor, so we shut the door, raised the plank [as close to getting under the house as possible], and all knelt along by it, said our prayers, and waited till the storm abated and Mother came home. We had quite a story to tell. Children like to be reporters of the latest news.

When Mother came in the cabin, Baby Matt had been afraid of her after she had been gone for so long because she was dressed in a pretty pink-and-green “shally” [challis] dress she had brought from Pittsburg(h); Matt cried and thought her a stranger but was so hungry that soon she did not mind the dress.

Naturally Mother also had to relate her experience. The former rains had raised the creek, so she had to tie her horse to a tree and walk across on a fallen tree, she was so anxious about her children alone at home. Coming back, Will Jones helped her across the log as the water was so near it, it made her dizzy. There was her horse, but the saddle was gone! Will suspected Jack RUTHERFORD. They were a drinking, thieving bad lot. He went to the house. Jack denied knowing anything about it. Will being grown and Jack only a boy, Will threatened him and Jack went to the stable and showed Will where he had hidden it. So Will saddled her horse and helped her on, promising to come and shear the sheep.

We ran out of stock feed during severe winter weather while father was gone, so my brother took me on Old Sal behind him and went to the field by the old cabin. We pulled the corn out of the snow-covered shock and filled the sack for the horses and cows. We did not have mittens. Later we ran out of both flour and cornmeal. Brother on Old Sal started for the water mill but found the recent rains had raised the creek so he could not cross, so he came back home. My Mother parched some of the corn, ground it in the coffee mill, and cooked it for our supper. She made mush and milk and we thought we had something new. [This must have been before the Rowes got the coffee mill. JFA]

Our wood gave out but a neighbor came with his ox team and long whip. His overcoat was ragged. He was a drunkard; had a long beard and a big muffler around his throat. Our old dog Tope would not let him come in. He called to Mother and she told him to drop the whip. Then he came in with the wood. The Des Moines River was out of its banks with the spring rains.

My Mother’s two brothers, William and Alexander GRAY, came to see her in 1851 while my Father was in California. I was seven. My brother Sam hitched up Old Sal and Dandy to the farm wagon and put in chairs for Mother and her two city brothers, and they drove to Uncle Davison’s for a visit. Aunt Sarah had a new baby, a boy, Willie, and five other children. They were older, she having lost two in Pennsylvania before coming out to Iowa.

This is my remembrance of Uncle William: he said of himself “a poor man for dogs and children.” Uncle Alexander was very different. Mother loved him. He gave us little books. Mine I read until I could recite it. Had it in my hand reading while I held baby Matt (Martha) on the other arm. She struggled to get down. She crept to the teapot on the hearth, turned it over, and scalded herself. She recovered, while a little neighbor baby who ran into a brush fire died. Matt scalded herself very bad(ly) on her arms and stomach. Mother took the scissors and cut off her clothes. Then there was long weeks caring for her. Neighbors came and kindly helped. Our baby got well, and she is the only sister I at 86 have alive. She is blind but takes great comfort in her religion; she is a Methodist.

I had a gathering in my head. They put everything they could think of on it but nothing seemed to do any good, until it broke. Then for a time I was deaf. During this time Davy T. Davis’ little boy ran into a bonfire the children had made, and he died.

My mother suffered with bad teeth, there being no dentist. [In those days, the saying went that a woman lost a tooth for every child. JAN] To deaden the pain she took laudanum [tincture of opium]. One night we children were gone to bed and she, feeling so drowsy, feared she had taken too much. She made a cup of strong coffee and drank it to counteract the effect of the laudanum or we might have awakened to find we had no mother.

Poor health as she had, she was always there to tell us what and how to do things. Her rheumatism got so bad she couldn’t dress herself, so she gave Cousin Libbie her pretty “shally” [challis] dress for a brown flannel that buttoned up the back. She told me how to make the cornbread and bake it in the dutch oven at the fireplace, as they had sold the small cookstove they brought from Pennsylvania. [No doubt it was too heavy to take West. JFA]

One summer day my mother said I might go to Mr. Rowe’s, about three miles. I walked along quite spry until the road forked and I could not decide which was the right road. In fear of getting lost, I turned back with my mother’s message not delivered.

One day the cows had wandered far and we three oldest were sent to hunt for them. We took our dog Tope with us. We had crossed the creek and were going down the other side, stopping to listen for the bell. Tope ran on ahead and was barking at the end of a hollow log. Sam said he had treed a rabbit, so he placed me at the small end with a stick to tap on the log to scare it down to the open end where, if Tope failed to catch it, he stood ready with a stick to strike it. [Rabbit stew would have been a good meal. JFA]

Well, Tope got it—a skunk! —and he was a sorry dog. He ran down to the creek, rolled in the sand, vomited, washed his mouth, and tried to get rid of the smell. We did not want him near us and that troubled him as we were always kind to him. We had spent so much time that we were late bringing the cows home. We were very tired, but Mother told me if I would hold Mattie while she milked, I might sleep with her. This was a great inducement so I stayed up. Mattie was fretting with her teeth.

Another evening the horses had wandered far. Sister Bell and I went with Sam who heard the bell and told us to stay on the path while he went into the brush and got Old Sal and we would ride home. He came back with the bell and said it was not on our horse. It was quite dark when we got home and Mother was troubled lest the bell was not ours. While we were eating our supper, Old Sal whinneyed at the gate. Sam was glad as she had no bell on and it proved he was right. Of course it was Jack Rutherford, the one bad boy of the neighborhood.

Snow came, and we were barefooted at school, but we ran fast and did not mind the cold.

[After 13 months in the California mines, not having received any of the family’s letters due to Indian attacks on the Pony Express, David returned to Iowa in 1852. Having been becalmed for two weeks in the doldrums along the coast of South America, he landed in New York, going west again to Iowa by stage and river boat. He remained in Iowa with the family until the spring of 1862, when he started again for California, going via Pittsburgh, where he saw his mother for the last time, thence to New York, and across the Isthmus of Panama (the Isthmus railway opened in 1855), and on to San Francisco, then inland to Vacaville, where he worked at his trade by day and planted an orchard by moonlight. He left his carpenter tools in Iowa because of the weight, so he must have bought new ones in California. JFA]

In the fall of 1853 we moved to Troy, Iowa, where my father bought a sawmill, to which he added a grist mill and one for carding wool. The object of this move was to provide better schooling for the children at the Troy Academy.

Herbert P. Creighton, the youngest son of Samuel, Jr., was in the Spanish-American War. His ship was run on the rocks in the Philippines, where Bert lost all his belongings, including his savings.

After David had moved to California, about 1880 Samuel, who had been living in Ohio and was just recovering from a serious illness, was sent by his folks to California. He stopped at Eleanor Creighton (Nellie) Farmer’s house in Elmira near Vallejo, and she drove him to his brother David’s fruit farm just outside of Vacaville. At Samuel’s request, Eleanor stopped at a neighbor’s house (the Allisons) while Samuel went ahead on foot to see if his brother, whom he had not seen in 37 years, would recognize him. He was to play the part of a book agent, for Nellie knew that a book agent was persona non grata with her father, but she did not reveal this to her uncle.

A most remarkable occurrence took place. As Samuel walked down the long lane, which was flanked by a wealth of flowers, he was seen approaching by his sister-in-law, Jane Gray Creighton, and she remarked to her husband: “If Sam Creighton were in this part of the country, I should say that was he by his walk.” Her suggestion “spilled the beans” to David, and Samuel’s joke was spoiled. Samuel did not limp or have any peculiarity of gait that anyone else noticed, but Jane Creighton had a peculiar memory for strides.

David Creighton's Tools

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Nellie Creighton