Father’s third marriage, Feb 29, 1828, to Pamelia Love Warren of Tennessee, his mother’s first cousin and daughter of Robert Warren, the youngest and fourth son of Barton Follett Warren of Maryland. I well remember his bringing her home. It was on a Sunday morning. I had gone on Saturday evening with one of my aunts to visit her sister Juncy, who lived a mile away. Early Sunday morning one of the Negro men, Jess, was sent post-haste to break the news that Lewis had come with a new wife. I was out in the garden and was called to come and go to see my new step-mother. Of course, boy like, I was excited, and running to see Jess, I called out. “Say, Jess, is she pretty?” I was then six years old, but remember many incidents that occurred at and before four years of age. I remember distinctly some things that happened while my first step-mother was living, and one especially while she lay a corpse in the house. She lay in her coffin, Lindsey and I were taken into the room where she lay in order to take the last look at our step-mother, when Lindsey deliberately slapped her on her face, and when instantly pulled away, he exclaimed “I don’t like her!” At the time we both had on our Sunday attire that I so well remember, Lindsey’s was a black calico slip with a white speck and mine a while one with a small pink speck or flower. I always thought his the prettiest and I was never fully satisfied in our Sunday slip arrangement, although, young as I was, I know that the first choice in everything belonged to the oldest brother, as was religiously taught in every Virginia and Kentucky family. From childhood I have always had a distinct recollection of being carried in the arms of some man from the cemetery to Grandma's, which was near be, but from which funeral I can’t tell -- if from my mothers I was only twenty-three months old, but if the latter, I was two months past four. I was very small and not so healthy and large ar my brothers in early life, but always mirthful, full of fun and play, while they were not. Lindsey always accused me of getting into mischief and then lying out of it, and he and Green would be licked for it.

Pretty soon after this third marriage a great change came to us – we had to work and do chores. For the next or four years we went in the winter to a three months school, and during the balance of the year worked regularly on the farm at all kinds of work. By the time I was ten or twelve years old I could do as much plowing as a man. I was an expert at dropping corn; could always drop as fast as I could walk, or for two or three parties to cover, as that was done with broad hoes, and I did dropping more or less every spring for the neighbors in exchange for other work. This was a heavy timbered country and there was always much chopping, splitting of rails, using the cross cut saw, etc. Lindsey and I excelled at such work, or in fact most all work. He chopped right handed and I with the left. When we were twelve or fourteen years old we chopping together, could fall a tree and chop it up as quick as a man, and were known as the best choppers of our age in the county. Our milling business was a hard and disagreeable work for us. This was done at hourse mill two miles away. Our bread was corn and rye. We raised no wheat. Corn was carried into the kitchen overnight in the ear, and then shelled by the boys two bushels at a time. In the morning at four o’clock we hurried off to mill, the bag of corn always put on my horse, it being the privilege of the oldest brother to shirk. In the summer we used rye mostly. We were always hustled off to mill at an early hour in order to get there before others, so as to get out turn.

The hardest experience of my boyhood was during the winter of 1831 and 1832, when I was twelve years old. Our brother “Doc” (Stephen Bates) was born the 9th of Nov. 1831 when his mother was confined to her bed for six months with milk leg in its most severe form. Her doctor lived in Manchester, twenty miles away. “Doc” was named for him. Our corn was not gathered it from day to day for feed and milling purposes. Two or three log fires to keep running most all of the time, night and day, took a great quantity of wood. We kept a cart and oxen running a good part of the time hauling wood and corn for the stock, etc. In addition to this I had all the errands to run, - frequently sent to town six miles off for medicine and other purposes. Had we been warmly clad we could have stood the hardships better, but we had not been furnished with a stitch of our winter clothing, except our shoes, and those we made ourselves. So we had to struggle as best we could with our summer clothing and they all in rags, and that too an unusually hard winter. The neighbors finally took pity on us in February turned out and helped us gather the balance of the corn. Mother’s severe sickness kept father in the house all of the time, and Green had a youngster in his arms must of the time and was no help at all.

We had to work so hard that we were simply two little runts, but tough and hardy. I was more healthy after nine or ten years old. About that time I weighed not over eighty pounds, for I remember the winter we spent in Illinois I weighed just ninety at fifteen when I wrestled with John Ray just of my age and who weighed 135 pounds, and threw him every fall. I was always very wiry and strong – boys of my weight were no match for me at all.

The last three years of my Kentucky life were much the same as to work and drudgery as before, except the hard winter of ’31 & 32, only that we had during that time a very interesting Sunday School that I took much interest in, and relieved somewhat our hard and monotonous toil, a short account or notice of which see in my No. 2 scrapbook, pages 11 and 12.

The summer of 1834 we had much sickness in our family and lost a little sister Louisa, and “Doc” lay several weeks with typhoid fever and finally his life was despaired of, so I was sent to London for material to make a shroud on Saturday, which was almost ready-made. Sunday morning Uncle Thomas Robinson, a Methodist preacher and
neighbor that father thought much of, came in, and they gave the boy a close examination and found that a spark of life was just discernable. The old man took father out on the porch (I, boylike, was listening and watching” and said to him, “Lewis, if that was my boy I would give him a big dose of calomel,” which was done immediately. About ten o’clock at night he showed some sign of life and began to mend. His recovery was always attributed to the big dose of calomel.

Very much the happiest part of my boy life was spent at Grandma Pittman’s. She had a large family, which brought a good deal of company to her home. On my first recollection six daughters at home, to-wit: Betsey, Polly, Sally, Pamma, Patsey and Parthena, and one son, Lawson, and father part of the time, also a girl, second cousin, six years older than myself, Eliza Pittman – my recollections of her, Grandma, in after life have always been very pleasant—some half dozen negroes, we three kinds, and herself—nineteen in family. Two sons and daughters married and away, but families often visitors. Then there was old uncle Ambrose and his family close by that we much of, and other relatives and friends, Methodist preachers, etc. – Amusements were horseback riding, quiltings and church, but not to such an extent as to interfere with their domestic duties, for the women were all great workers.

Spinning, weaving and making up their clothing for themselves, also for the men and negroes. Plas, hemp and wood, all raised on the farm, and much cotton used but raised further south. All wearing apparel for both sexes was home-made; also all bedding material, from pillow-slip up to the figured while conterpain and fancy woolen coverlids, and raised the geese for the feathers. These aunties all had their black silk dresses, big shell comps, leghorn hats, horses, side-saddles, and were experts in the saddle, and they all kept an eye to the future in reference to future housekeeping. They had some small income from their interest in the hire of the negroes. Cooking was done principally by negro women superintended by Grandma, who had an eye to everything both inside and outside on the plantation. She in fact carried the keys, she had her own horse and saddle, and no one used them but herself. Her saddle in its early day was a very fine one and was made by her husband. He was a saddler in early life. Extra occasions and church she dressed in black silk, which I supposed she had worn during her widowhood, which occurred in 1814. It was thought by many that she had considerable money locked up in her big chest, father said she had not much, but always kept some on hand, as did his father, who made it a point to never let his purse get below $100.00. well remember when leaving Kentucky October 18, 1834, that we had an engagement with relatives and friends for a farewell meeting at a certain point nearby on our way, and of course Grandma was there, and had three lumps of home-made sugar tied up separately with a twenty-five cent piece which she gave to us three boys. I think that that little circumstance was always in after life a festering thorn in my step-mother’s side. Her four children were slighted. Young as I was, I know there was an estrangement between the two families, and that it grew out of step-mothers treatment; and also that she was somewhat hysterical, while the Pittman women were in temperament the very opposite, and generally not sweet up step-mothers, and that the exerted too great an influence over Lewis. She was exceeding affectionate and loving with her husband and he with her. I never heard even a cross word pass between them. This hysterical tendency must have originated from her affectionate nature, for she was in the main a kind-hearted woman. She was not very healthy and was in bed a good deal, but mostly from excessive child-bearing. From 1827, Warren’s birth, until her last, in 1844—seventeen years – she was the mother of eleven children. Two were twins and lived but a short time after birth. When able she was a good active worker at spinning and weaving, was a good cook, but had negro women who did the housework etc. In her relations with the step-children, especially when she had so many of her own (incomplete sentence). Then bickering and trouble and hatred sprung up, and I must confess that both sides were often to blame, but she was the master-spirit. The most of the troubles were when father was absent, and if things did not turn out satisfactory to her, she would report us, and then the rod was used, and that article was always at hand and freely used. She was usually kind to me, but she and Lindsey simply loved to hate each other. He would not obey or do anything for her unless driven with the rod.

I had my troubles with her too, but they were usually at the table, where she always showed so much favoritism, which sometimes I resented and would talk ugly to her. The children were never allowed at the table when there was company, and when that was through there was a scramble for the table, father always retiring with the company. Then we boys had to take just what she gave us, and that was usually cornbread and fat bacon and sour milk. Fat meat I never could eat, while the other boys seemed to love it with the cornbread soaked in grease, or as we called it, gravy. Here was when my most serious troubles occurred with her. At one of these table scrambles Warren once struck me on the cheek with a case knife. His mother was by and say it. I sprang at him and knocked him down and punched him hard. I expected a big family row, but in fact never heard of it again. I was then just sixteen years old. Of course there was no love between us for a long time, but if she reported the affair there was nothing said or done.

Green was in the house for her nurse and drudge boy until he was fifteen years old. He was a good-natured boy, but slow and careless, never in a hurry in his life; he seemed perfectly destitute of ambition or pride. He was shipped and cuffed until he seemed not to care for it. I have heard him say when we boys would be complaining of our troubles and hardships, “Well, a scolding don’t hurt, and a whipping don’t last long.” He did not seem to resent his treatment at all.

Our clothing was always poor and coarse, and often in rags before the new ones appeared. Our hair was seldom cut. Green especially was most always in sad fix. One aunt on one occasion sought an opportunity to do a bit of barbering for us, but I think never repeated it. I remember I was at Grandma’s on an errand, and my hair was pretty long. Aunt Polly called me to her (She was lame) and said, “Your hair is so long and fine I want some for a pin-cushion”, and gave me a nice clipping. But I always had more attention and better treatment than my brothers. In fact, my clothing was always in better condition that Lindsey’s (omission) even spoken of by Hazy, the black woman, who said that his clothes were so hare to wash, especially his shirts, that before the new ones were ready, the old ones were in rags and tatters, occasioned it was said from eating so much fat bacon.

Horseback riding was the universal custom in visiting; a boy either white or black was taken on behind for waiter in opening gates and letting down draw bars and helping with the babe, as it was always taken with the mother if at the breast, and often there were two children on her lap and one behind, and the waiter boy on another horse with one or two more. Now is our family jobs of this kind invariably fell to me and were more highly appreciated than hoeing corn or chopping wood or grubbing, and like hard work.

After we came west it became my duty to help of mornings and evenings in cooking, as it was often impossible to get girl help. I have often been called from the field to help cook when travelers would often call for irregular meals, as our place early became a popular stopping place. My step-mother often said that I was more useful and handy than any help she ever had about the house. I often with the help of Mary and Martha would do the cooking when mother would be in bed sick. Making light bread and biscuits. I never attempted, but at everything else I was handy and could do it quick. Before the sisters were old enough to work the dough for bread, I have seen their mother get up from her sick bed and do this particular work and then go to bed again.

Note: As before stated, page 140, we left Kentucky Saturday October 18, 1834 traveling fifteen miles to Rockcastle River and stopped over a few days with Judge Gresham and Aunt Betsey, father’s oldest sister. He had two yoke of oxen, two horses, two wagons, two milk cows and eleven in family – nine white and negro and her child. Crossed the Ohio River at Louisville. Stopped over a few days in Lawrence County, Indiana, near Bedford, with Uncle Holland Pittman, father’s brother. From there we made directly for Terre Haute, where father had an engagement to meet his brother Lot, who had been in Putnam County, Illinois (now Bureau) He had entered and bought second and quite a large lot of land. Princeton is on a part of this land.

This proposed meeting was to decide whether we should go to Putnam County or to Blackhawk purchase. Uncle had seen the latter and liked it very much, and thought it might be the better place for us with a large family and small means. We failed to meet Uncle Lot, he having passed through this place the week before. It was a great disappointment to us. We went only a few miles further, just over the State line into Edgar County, Illinois; and then wintered with a very clever lot of Presbyterian people who had an unfinished church building near by us, and when very cold would preach in our bit lot house, the preacher, Rev Ewing, a short time afterward was called to West Point, this county, I think in 1837.

We left Edgar the last of February 1835 and reached Paris(?) eleven miles distant and an lovely day. At this point we were detained about one week on account of one of the biggest blizzards, with two feet of snow, the oldest settlers had ever seen, after which we made our way through Illinois via Springfield. It was not the capital of the State at that time, simply a little prairie village almost knee deep in mud. The roads were almost impassable – high water and mud were such that traveling with heavy wagons was almost an impossibility. We finally reached Crooked Creek, Hancock County, and took a rest of some two or three weeks while father and another man made a short tour on the Blackhawk side of the Mississippi.

We crossed the river on the second day of April and camped where the penitentiary now stands, an account of which you will see in my No. 2 scrap book, page 3 – Pioneers of 1834.

During the summer our family suffered very much with chills and fever, except Green and myself. I escaped the chills for the first two years, and it always seemed strange that I did, for I was more exposed to the heavy dews and rains that any of the rest of the family. My work was breaking prairie and teaming with three yoke of oxen. We first stopped and built a log house on a claim one mile west of where West Point now stands. You will see by the scrapbook reference that a change was made. It was now getting late in May, when change was made. As many of the family as could slept in the 10x12 hickory cabin, the balance in the wagons; cooking, etc. done out of doors. We succeeded in getting about thirty acres of prairie broke, the first 18 acres of which we planted to corn. The planting of corn was done by using an axe, one stroke so as to cut through the up-turned sod in which the corn was dropped, then a stamp with the wood to close up the hole. This was not done until in June. For fear of frost we cut this corn in September when in milk, consequently it was badly shrunken. This was our bread for the next twelve months, with a few bushels we had of Uncle Hugh Wilson. The next Spring General Blackhawk and some 200 or 300 of his band were on their return from Oquawka, where they had been for their annuities. The Old General wanted some corn for his horses, some three or four head. We had so little on hand we were not anxious to part with it, but he was quite anxious. When father told me to let him have two bushels, for which he paid me six new half dollars, I made quite an effort to get him to talk some but succeeded in getting only a few grunts. He had an Indian riding with him that could talk some English, and what Indian I knew we could do considerable jabbering.

The largest and finest turnips I ever saw in my life we raised on the sod broken this year. In the fall we took a big wagonload to the garrison at Montrose and sold them out very readily to the soldiers boys. Father and I took dinner with Col. Parrott’s Company. He was orderly Sergeant. We had also about a dozen Pumpkins on top of them, to the disappointment of the other officers. Turnips we sold at 25 per bushel in exchange for pickle pork, coffee, sugar and rice.

This was the first pickle pork I had ever seen. Bacon was altogether used in Kentucky and the South generally. Prairie has was the great staple commodity for wintering stock. For our oxen, cows and horses, some ten head, I cut about twelve tones with a worthless old scythe – all the rest were down with fever and ague. Green’s ague was every other day, so on his well days he helped me stack it in a great long rick. With this and the fodder and soft corn we got the stock through the winter pretty well. Meat we had none, only from the garrison, and occasionally some bacon from the movers. Game there was none to be had. The Indians kept the country bare of game, except prairie chickens, and there were legions of them. In fact, these birds were the bulk of our meat the first fall and winter. Every one of these was shot with a rifle (We had no shot-gun) by myself. Lindsey never shot off a gun in his life, and father would never trust Green with the rifle. When the Indians went further west, game became more plentiful, but never very plenty. We summered in the little hickory log cabin, and before cold winter weather we were able to get into a good hewed log cabin 16 by 16, with puncheon floor and clapboard roof, and lived in a fashion without freezing. Our father had had a very severe spell of the bilious fever. His wife after this always considered that this spell of fever broke his constitution and that he was not able to work. He was at this time forty-one. In fact, I never knew him after this to do a solid day’s work; her influence was such over him that she succeeded in always keeping him about the house.

In 1838 immigration began to come in rapidly and his presence was much of the time required about the home, which became a very popular place for many years. He supervised the garden and orchard. The heavier work, however, she would not let him do. She often told us boys that it was a disgrace to suffer him to do chores or had work when he had big stout boys. He became quite an expert in fruit and flowers. He had a fine orchard with quite a variety of grafted fruit, some trees with several different kinds of apples.

My employment for the first few years was driving oxen, breaking prairie and teaming generally.

The first election ever held in the territory, one precinct was held at the hickory cabin of Lewis Pittman’s and just eleven votes were cast, for delegates to Congress and members for territorial legislature. The delegate candidates for Congress were Chamman (Dem) and Doty (Whig), my father voting for the latter. Des Moines and Dubuque were the only two counties in the new territory.

Here let me give an incident in prairie breaking; Moffatt’s Mills, Flint Hills and the Village of Burlington, see scrapbook no. 1 p 39. In the fall of ‘36 father got word somehow that there was a letter for Lewis Pittman in the P.O. at Commerce, now Nauvoo. I was ordered to take old Sorrel and go for it quick. I made the trip via Fort Madison and returned the same day. This was the first letter since we reached the territory. This was in November, and it was from Uncle W.G. Pittman, who with Uncle James Green left Kentucky in ’35 and both families wintered on one of Uncle Lot’s farms in Hennepin County, Illinois, the following winter. In fact, Uncle William remained on it until the spring of 1837, when he came to this territory. The letter stated that Uncle lot was on his Western tour and had stopper over in Illinois looking after his interests there, when he received imperative news for his immediate presence in Kentucky on account of a great hurricane that had devastated his farm. He changed horses two or three times on his way home. He lived only eleven days after reaching home. He expected to have visited us on his way into Missouri. This letter was to notify us of the fact, and also that he had left money for us that was sent by him from Kentucky. The result was that I was bundled up again put upon old “Sorrel” and hurried off to Hennepin County (Now Bureau County). I got there by traveling a good part of the way without any road at all, was simply directed from point to point across the big prairies. I got a little too far south on my prairie traveling, and turned up at a little grove some 24 or 30 miles west of Peoria – Princes Grove – with only one family, and the same man from whom it took its name. Mr. Prince was a very clever man and treated me very nicely; next morning gave me special directions, and in traveling 45 miles, most all the way prairie, I reached Princeton, a little place but recently laid out. It was now toward the last of November and cold weather. Uncle Billy detained me some two or three weeks until he could gather his corn, etc. and proposed that he would go home with me.

When we reached the Mississippi River we were in the midst of a glorious big snowstorm, and by reaching the ferryboat over a rod of two of shore ice we succeeded in getting across the last trip that was made that winter, this being near the middle of December and a big three foot snow.

The family had for some weeks concluded that I was lost and frozen to death. I never saw my father so completely unnerved and excited in my life as we made our appearance in that great snowstorm. He had become sleepless, and would walk the floor lamenting and abusing himself for sending the boy away to his death in the cold, and that so late in the season. In the latter part of this winter Lindsey and I went to school to George Stephenson’s to study arithmetic, and soon found that he knew less in everything than we did.

For the next five years we worked like beavers and raised much grain and stock, but there was little demand for anything grown upon the farm. We were, however, much better situated than our neighbors; being early settlers and on a very public road, we fed many people and sold grain to the movers and newcomers generally, and our place became the most popular tavern or place between Fort Madison and Keosauqua, and from the city of Burlington westword into Van Buren County. Burlington was at that time the capital of the territory and land office, consequently a great deal of travel between those two points. We know almost every farmer and citizen of Van Buren County from the first settlement for 15 or 20 years, and Fort Madison was the most popular ferry on the Mississippi south of Dubuque. There was no town or place on the line of these roads that fed so many people as the “Travellers’ Rest” for some ten or fifteen years. By this time, or father by 1841, when I was twenty-one, we had what was then the best farm and orchard in the county, with over 400 acres of land belonging to it, and everything in plenty. Bet we all had to work for it all day and more or less of the night. Our Step-mother, when not absolutely sick and in bed, was on her feet and at work. Help was hard to get in the house, so when extra help was needed, and that was often, I had to help out mornings and evenings, and often when there was a rush and help short, I was called from the field to assist in the kitchen. I have often been complimented by her in saying to others that I was more handy and quick than any help she ever could get.

There was no cook-stove those days. All cooking was cone in front of the big log fire, hickory preferable, and so adjusted all the time to keep a good supply of live coals. That with her was one of my strong points. In fact, I could do anything about the house or kitchen as readily as she or anyone could, such as sweeping, making beds, washing dishes, baking waffles, pancakes, or anything and everything that was to be cone, except working dough for biscuits or light bread, but when ready for the over it was given to me, and I could, with my hot over, and live coals, bake the bread to perfection, and she always seemed to fully trust me that particular.

The first two years after I was twenty-one years old I worked on the home farm, the first year on wages of $12.50 per month; the next year, 1842, for one third of the crop. There being no demand for grain, corn was put in rail pens, and then kept for the next two or three years. Oats I almost gave away. – sold to Jacob Thomas of West Point one hundred and two bushels on the threshing floor at ten cents a bushel, and took in pay second-hand books; Rollins’ ancient History $5.00, Josephus $4.00, and Comstock’s Philosophy $1.00.

Some of this corn I sold to the Mormons at Augusta on Skunk River and was to take lumber for it, and finally got nothing. The balance of this corn I shelled with a hand-sheller , hauled to Fort Madison for 18 cents a bushel, and wheat at 50 cents a bushel. This was the first time I ever had at one time over $100.00.

The winters of ’43, ’44, and ’45 I taught school, the first and last in West Point and the other near our old home. The first one a five months school for five and a half days each week and board with the pupils. I never had any more idea of trying to teach school than going to live in China. It resulted in this way: West Point was the County Seat at that time and there had come into the place several young lawyers, and among them one Isaac G. Wickersham, who was talking of starting a school. There were no buildings suitable but the two churches, Methodist and Presbyterian, the latter being already occupied. The story had leaked out that Wickersham had passed himself off somewhere before going to West Point as a Methodist preacher.. Now Col. Wm. Steward, the moneyed man of the town and most influential Methodist, and he and others of the brethren consequently decided that they would defeat the young man’s aspirations. During this state of feeling with Col.Steward and a few that he could influence, he and Dr Knowles – who was a Methodist at this time – caught me in town and simply forced me to take the school, insisting that I was as competent and more so than many who were teaching. They told me to write an article and they would raise the school. In a very few days they had some 60 or 70 scholars, and of course this secured both pupils and church.

The books that the pupils brought were often the same books that their parents had used before them. For arithmetic I think we had nine different kinds, and some that had been used in England and Scotland, with many other antiquated school books and old readers.

This story was written in 1901 by Granville Warren Pittman (1820-1903), the second son of Lewis Pittman.

The story was typed from a copy in 1967 by Richard Warren Pittman, the grandson of Richard Warren Pittman (1827-1903), who was a half brother of Granville. Lewis Pittman had three wives and 14 children. My father had rather poor eyesight and was not a particularly good typist and these were the days before liquid paper and correcting typewriters.

The story was entered as a Word document on 12 Oct. 2000 by Philip Lewis Pittman, the son of Richard Warren Pittman (1908-1973). I did use the spell check mostly to correct my typos but left most of the grammar intact.

Contributed by Phil Pittman