trees that
are now standing on the courthouse grounds. I still planted trees until
three or four years ago. There were few farms fenced and what were, were
on the streams. The prairie land was all open. This is what North Ottawa
was, nothing but prairie north of Logan Street, and a few houses between
Logan Street and the river. Ottawa didn't have many business houses.
There was also an oil mill where they bought castor beans, and made
castor oil on the north side of the Marais des Cygnes River one block
west of Main Street. There was one hotel, which was called Leafton House
and it stood on what is now the southwest corner of Main and Second
Streets."

"I knew Peter Kaiser, when I came here, and A.P. Elder was just a boy
then."

"The people lived pretty primitive. We didn't have kerosene. Our only
lights were tallow candles, mostly grease lamps, they were just a pan
with grease in it, and one end of the rag dragging out over the side
which we would light. There were no sewers at that time."

"I had no chance to go to school when a boy, but after I came to Kansas
I was too old to go to school, and I had to work, but I attended night
school, and learned to read and write and figure."

"The farm land was nearly all broke up by ox teams, using about six oxen
on a plow. In Missouri we lived near the Santa Fe trail, and the
settlers traveling on the trail used oxen, and some of them used cows.
The cows seem to stand the road better than the oxen and also gave some
milk. The travelers usually aimed to reach the prairie States in the
spring, so they could have grass for their oxen and horses during the
summer."

"I have lived here ever since I came here. I was married when I was
about thirty years old. I married a slave girl from Georgia. Back in
Missouri, if a slave wanted to marry a woman on another plantation he
had to ask the master, and if both masters agreed they were married. The
man stayed at his owners, and the wife at her owners. He could go to see
her on Saturday night and Sunday. Sometimes only every two weeks. If a
man was a big strong man, neighboring plantation owners would ask him to
come over and see his gals, hoping that he might want to marry one of
them, but if a Negro was a small man he was not cared for as a husband,
as they valued their slaves as only for what they could do, just like
they would horses. When they were married and if they had children they
belonged to the man who owned the woman. Os