"Mr. Swarengen stated that he immediately jumped out of the wagon, helping his wife out. As soon as she reached the ground she said, "Oh, John, my baby!" She at once climbed back into the wagon, got her baby, and returning to the front of the wagon, he tried to assist her to the ground again, but the horses flounced and kicked so, she fell with her baby in between the horses, and in trying to get her out of there, Mr. Swarengen received a kick from one of the horses that laid him out unconscious for a short time, and when he came to, his clothing was nearly burned off and his face, hands and arms were a crisp. He went to the back of the wagon, he stated, and tore off the feed box, thinking he could get the other three children out in that way; but the fire soon drove him back in despair, and he stood there and saw his whole family perish in the fire, unable to do any more to save them.
"After he could do no more and all were dead, he started to find some place where he could tell some human being what had happened. In his wanderings he finally landed at J. E. Hoover's home and farm, about three miles from where his family had perished, and told his story. Men of the neighborhood were notified as soon as a horse could make the rounds, and soon were at the scene of the terrible disaster. They found one horse dead, and the other wandering about the prairie, burned so that he had to be killed, and the dog about fifty feet away also burned all over and dead. All that could be found of the four children and the wife had been picked up and placed in the feed box which Mr. Swarengen had taken off the back part of his wagon, and the box was hardly filled with the bones of those four children and the wife. These bodies were buried in the Sheffield cemetery where Mr. Swarengen was buried also, after having suffered about ten days. "
H. H. Boyes, another earlier settler of southwest Howard Township, tells of the hardship of winter, "I think it was the winter of 1855 that the whole country was covered with a thick sheet of ice so it was impossible for oxen to travel, and at our home the meal sack was about empty, and seven of us youngsters to feed, and there had to be something doing. So father sawed off a block about two feet long from a large oak log and with his carpenter tools hollowed out one end until it would hold about a peck of corn; then he took a hickory pole about six feet long, put iron rings on one end and drove in the iron wedge, and the problem was solved for the time being. It did not take long to pound out enough corn for a big johnnycake in mother's dripping pan.
"The first death in the settlement that I can chronicle was that of old Mrs. Smith, wife of Uncle Jimmy Smith. On this occasion, there being no lumber to make a coffin, my father and Mr. Brown and Mr. Griffith split out of a walnut tree the necessary material, hewed and planed it down and made a very respectable coffin.
"The first public road was the old state road running from Newton to Fort Dodge. This road went wandering around the ponds and over the hills and was marked by a furrow. "
Mrs. Boyes added these comments, "My father settled on the Isaac Blade farm by the timber near Skunk river, which overflowed often in spring time. The building was a cabin, with one room for eight in the family to occupy. I well remember how homesick my mother was to be obliged to get along with so little room, in a log cabin, with 'bunks' one above another for
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