e farmer raised would bring money. We went without many comforts
heretofore deemed indispensable.

A little later this first home was sold and another in a southern county
better adapted to cattle raising was bought and thither we moved. With a
good beginning in horses and cattle and an experience in farming, better
than all else, the future held high hopes and bright promises, but, alas
for human expectations, the Civil War come. Already one call had thinned
the county of the younger and unmarried men. The second call sounded.
The call was urgent,

"Cease to consult, the time of action calls.
War, horrid war, approaches to your walls."

All able-bodied patriots enlisted, my husband among the number, with a
promise from the stay-at-homes to take care of the crops and look out
for the interests of the family.

Then came hardships and troubles to which pioneer life could not be
compared. I was obliged to see crops lost for lack of help to harvest
them; cattle and horses well nigh worthless as there was no sale for
them, neither was there male help sufficient to cultivate the farm,
which went back to former wildness. The government was months behind in
paying the soldiers, who at best received only a beggarly pittance. One
night, alone with my children, I was awakened by a knock on the window
and a call, "Hurry! Leave at once. The Indians are upon us, scalping as
they come." With the little ones I fled across the fields to the nearest
house, a half mile away, later, to find this a false alarm. Another time
the alarm was given and again it proved false, but was no easier borne
for it was believed the truth. All night long we were kept to the
highest pitch of terror expecting every minute to hear the awful
war-whoop. The night dragged on without this culmination.

My husband died just before the war closed. His nurse at the hospital
wrote me of his serious condition and I started at once for the hospital
in Louisville. There were no railroads in the country at that time,
stages and boats were the only means of reaching that point. To show the
contrast between traveling then and now, it took me over two weeks to
reach Louisville and when I arrived at the hospital found that my
husband had been buried a week before my arrival. The nurses and
officials at the hospital, while exceedingly busy, were most kind and
sympathetic in relating to me pleasant recollections of my husband's
last days.

I recall only two pleasa