to work
for him. He gave my mother forty acres of land with a cabin on it and
sold me a forty acres, for twenty dollars, when I could pay him. This
was timbered land and had lots of good trees for lumber, especially
walnut. One tree on this ground was worth one hundred dollars, if I
could only get it cut and marketed, I could pay for my land. My master's
wife had been dead for several years and they had no children. The
nearest relative being a nephew. They wanted my master's land and was
afraid he would give it all away to us slaves, so they killed him, and
would have killed us if we had stayed at home. I took my mother and ran
into the adjoining, Claire County. We settled there and stayed for
sometime, but I wanted to see Kansas, the State I had heard so much
about."

"I couldn't get nobody to go with me, so I started out afoot across the
prairies for Kansas. After I got some distance from home it was all
prairie. I had to walk all day long following buffalo trail. At night I
would go off a little ways from the trail and lay down and sleep. In the
morning I'd wake up and could see nothing but the sun and prairie. Not a
house, not a tree, no living thing, not even could I hear a bird. I had
little to eat, I had a little bread in my pocket. I didn't even have a
pocket knife, no weapon of any kind. I was not afraid, but I wouldn't
start out that way again. The only shade I could find in the daytime was
the rosin weed on the prairie. I would lay down so it would throw the
shade in my face and rest, then get up and go again. It was in the
spring of the year in June. I came to Lawrence, Kansas, where I stayed
two years working on the farm. In 1874 I went to work for a man by the
month at $35 a month and I made more money than the owner did, because
the grasshoppers ate up the crops. I was hired to cut up the corn for
him, but the grasshoppers ate it up first. He could not pay me for
sometime. Grasshoppers were so thick you couldn't step on the ground
without stepping on about a dozen at each step. I got my money and came
to Ottawa in December 1874, about Christmas time."

"My master's name was Simms and I was known as Simms Bill, just like
horses. When I came out here I just changed my name from Simms Bill, to
Bill Simms."

"Ottawa was very small at the time I came here, and there were several
Indians close by that used to come to town. The Indians held their war
dance on what is now the courthouse grounds. I planted the