my great-great grandfather was born in maine but his father brought him out to southwestern illinois when he was four, in a wagon with his two brothers and his mom, 1600 miles across the country. his dad was determined to be a farmer someplace where things grew easily and illinois was much better than maine. some depressions hit but they lived way out in the country and there was usually enough food. his father was really good at building and built a school that lasted many many years.

when he grew up he had the inclination toward english and literary pursuits but the west, illinois and iowa, wasn't interested in english teachers, so he rode a wagon out west looking to settle in the nebraska territory. actually he got up a band of people to go out to pike's peak but that didn't work and they ended up in southeast nebraska, near the missouri river and the border of kansas and missouri.

so there was this wagon train full of people settling southeast nebraska, when many of them intended to get gold out in colorado and just wandered off because it was too hard to sit still in a place like southeast nebraska. but there was a problem - the civil war was just coming up around those parts. there was a trail that ran down into kansas and the jayhawkers and the border ruffians were always fighting over free-state this, slave-state that, bleeding kansas and all that. and nebraska was truly nowhere land - it was just a territory, not a state, so people fought like crazy in that part of the country.

my great-great grandfather eventually had himself a house and slept next to his gun every night. he determined to bring his wife out to nebraska and went back to get her. they brought their first daughter cora out to nebraska as soon as they were able to travel. their little town, salem, was a windswept little place not far from the river or the kansas border, but it was his home.

so two of the ruffians that were hanging around bleeding kansas at that time were john brown and wild bill anderson. john brown was an abolitionist who shot up kansas a little - he was responsible for some killing. but wild bill anderson was even worse and he was on the other side. as a rebel, he robbed anything having to do with the government or the yankees in kansas or anywhere else, kind of like jesse james. just a mean old violent outlaw.

so these were the kind of people that were coming through salem nebraska at that time, about eight years before the civil war. the year after they got there john brown came up through salem with 11 escaped slaves and intended to take them all the way through to ontario, slipping around missouri by taking the lane trail or the road north out of lawrence through salem nebraska. lots of people were after john brown and eventually they got him though not in kansas or even nebraska. he was one of those people that lived by the gun.

my great-great grandfather was eventually to have nine children, but that first one, a baby girl, died out there in salem and they buried her on the prairie. they got tired of all that violence and decided to go back to illinois. but on the way back they got robbed by wild bill anderson himself, who if he couldn't rob a train would just rob some yankee out of general principle. they gave him a couple hundred in cash and some jewels, but they didn't tell him about the sixteen hundred they had hidden and in the end they were proud to get away with something. you get robbed by one of those border ruffians you're lucky to get away with your life.

as i said he went on to have eight more children, born in illinois and wisconsin, and then he lived in south dakota for a while and then kansas and then back to missouri. by the time it was over he was dealing in furniture and all kinds of stuff; he'd been in the lumber business for a while and actually ran the literary part of a newspaper "with some success," he said. He never let go of that literary side of himself even though by the end he was dealing in lumber or furniture or fruit. one time in south dakota the panic came around and there was this big run on the banks and it ruined his business, but fortunately he had friends down there in kansas and the corner of nebraska, and worked down there for a while.

i don't totally know what to think of him. when he came across the country as a four-year-old, he had his five-year-old brother with him, as well as a two-year-old younger brother. the younger brother became a farmer and farmed most of his life. but the older brother died in a cholera epidemic when he was about twenty-four, and i think that made an impression on him. that, and losing his first daughter, out on the prairie, just burying her on the prairie and moving on. when he had to join the war he did, and as part of the illinois cavalry went all down to alabama and mississippi but the war was almost over then - he'd spent the meat of it out sodbusting in southeastern nebraska. and war was nothing compared to what he'd already been through. all of a sudden when there's no money around, and you have to live by your wits, that's when farming skills become good and help you through. he could always rely on farming skills even though maybe the house he built wasn't as good as his dad's school on the plains outside quincy. the mormons were traveling around all through there those days - quincy, nauvoo, iowa city, out to nebraska and beyond - but these guys were farmers, and cared more about the price of corn than anything. that and how you keep feeding nine children when you live out on the windswept plain.

one of those children was my great-grandfather - he may get a book of his own. and his father, hoo boy, i think i'm good for about three books, until i get to my own parents.