Page Two
From the "Memoirs of James K Wells, Son of William M. & Hilly Ann Wells" Submitted by Jana Trace
Several of the neighbors had come in the night before, others early in the morning of our departure. They bid us good bye wishing us a happy and prosperous journey. Then we were soon on our way. As we were passing on the road by the old round log school house where brother Hiram and I spent some of our juvenile days attending public school and also Sunday school. The sociability and friendship of the boys and girls of the school reverberated through my mind and I even shed tears of sorrow, when Henry Cassil approached me, and presented to me a pretty little book entitled the history of the Israelites under Moses- for which I thanked him. He then made a very appropriate address to the entire Sunday School, praising them for their great effort in the contest for the reward of merit, by committing the greatest number of verses to memory, “which is awarded to James K. Wells by a majority twenty-eight”. Frank Smith the Sunday School Superintendent spoke of the punctual attendance of the pupils, and words of encouragement, to continue faithful in the work they had so nobly begun, that righteousness might prevail throughout the land. He was a man who met his duties as a citizen of the community as loyally as he attended other obligations of life and I feel greatful in memory of him for his manner of conducting a Sunday School. His mode was to use the Bible and New Testament in the school, and to have the scholars to read the same, and commit verses to memory. He assigned to me Christ’s Sermon at the Mount. I learned the first principals of moral Christianity, and in St. John I learned the Divinity of Christ, which laid the foundation of my faith in Christ, as the only begotten Son of God, and that I further and later on learned the work of the Holy Spirit, through the Word of God, written by Christ’s inspired Apostles.
After our family bid adue to Sunday School and teachers, we moved on our journey to the West. After thirteen days travel we arrived in Jefferson Township, in Owen County, State of Indiana and put up for the night with a citizen by the name of Alexander McKee, who resided in the eastern part of the township where we were welcomed and treated respectable. The next morning we arrived at Old Uncle William Dean’s, who had a few years prior moved from Coshocton County, Ohio to Owen County, Indiana, who welcomed all his old neighbors, of Ohio, and spent much of his time in helping them to locate, and furnishing the new comers with provisions, grain and horse feed, until they could procure for themselves.
Father and his family, being somewhat pleased with the locality in Jefferson Township, decided to purchase land and locate after renting a small farm with some improvements of Samuel Goodwin, an Ohio man, for one year. He then at once, entered land (eighty acres). In the North part of the Township, in Section (8), Town (9) North of Range (5) West. The land was unimproved and covered with a heavy forest of find large timber, oak, poplar, walnut, ash, hickory, sugar maple and beech. The eighty acres cost him $200.00, when the land was paid for at the land office at Washington, Indiana he had $7.50 cts left. The $7.50 he paid on a cow, bought of a man by the name of Bivens, with a promise to pay at the end of one month $3.00 more, which he did by hauling and selling stove wood at Point Commerce a distance of about seven miles, at the rate of 50 cents per load.
During the later part of the fall season of 1849, Father, brother Hiram and I were engaged in gathering corn for Uncle Billy Dean and others, of the neighborhood, for which the three of us received $1.00 per day and were paid in wheat at 50 cents per bushel, corn 15 cents per bushel, and fat hogs at $2.50 per hundred pounds. In this way we soon had a sufficient supply laid by to do until a crop was raised which proved to be a good one, plenty of grain, vegetables and fruit.
In the fall of the year of 1850, a new house was to be constructed of round logs, clab board roof, weighted down with poles, the floor below and above, laid down loose. In fact, the whole houe was built without the sound of nail or hammer; but the ax was frequently used. However, in the course of time, some few months after we had moved in, the floors were nailed down, which was quite a comfort to father and mother, as us boys were not very apt to evade making a noise in passing over the floors on loose plank. Perhaps no period of their lives were spent more joyful and happy than when living in the cabin.