dants of one of two brothers. The
other of the original Ansons I am not so proud of, and for this reason:
He retained the family name until the Revolutionary war broke out, when
he sided with the King and became known as a Tory. Then, not wishing to
bear the same name as his, brother, who had espoused the cause of the
Colonists, he changed his name to Austin, and some of his descendants my
father has met on more than one occasion in his travels.

My mother's maiden name was Jeanette Rice, and she, like my father, was
of English descent, so you can see how little Swedish blood there is in
my veins, in spite of the nickname of "the Swede" that was often applied
to me during my ball-playing career, and which was, I fancy, given me
more because of my light hair and ruddy complexion than because of any
Swedish characteristics that I possessed.

Early in life my father emigrated from New York State into the wilds of
Michigan, and later, after he was married, and while he was but nineteen
years of age, and his wife two years his junior, he started out to find
a home in the West, traveling in one of the old-fashioned prairie
schooners drawn by horses and making his first stop of any account on
the banks of the Cedar River in Iowa. This was in the high-water days of
1851, and as the river overflowed its banks and the waters kept rising
higher and higher my father concluded that it was hardly a desirable
place near which to locate a home, and hitching up his team he saddled a
horse and swam the stream, going on to the westward. He finally
homesteaded a tract of land on the site of the present town of
Marshalltown, which he laid out, and to which he gave the name that it
now bears. This, for a time, was known as "Marshall," it being named
after the town of Marshall in Michigan, but when a post-office was
applied for it was discovered that there was already a post-office of
that same name in the State, and so the word "town" was added, and
Marshalltown it became, the names of Anson, Ansontown and Ansonville
having all been thought of and rejected. Had the name of "Ansonia"
occurred at that time to my father's mind, however, I do not think that
either Marshall or Marshalltown would have been its title on the map.

It was not so very long after the completion of my father's log cabin,
which stood on what is now Marshall-town's main street, that I, the
first white child that was born there, came into the world, the exact
date of my