Now and Then – Reminiscence
By Rev. B.F. Lawler
Page 9

Reminiscence
In the “forties” the 10th of April was about as early as cattle could be “turned out to grass” and even then a cold rain brought disaster to some of them. Sheep could crop the grass much closer than the cow and many a swain did not know why!
The deserted stock yards still had cornstalks and old hay upon them and many farmers had not learned how valuable all that could be made.
The tenth of September was the time to wean colts and the breed of horses at that time seemed harder to “break”, as it was called, the colts never being handled until old enough to go in harness or under the saddle, and many a noble young animal was so harshly dealt with before being conquered that they were damaged for life. Later we had a different stock and colts were never “broken” – they were trained.
Men at that time looked into horses’ mouths to determine their ages, and for some reason horses grew old in a very few years. When a horse was 8 years old he was regarded as being at his best and from then on he declined, and few of them reached 15 years. In my later years I drove one pony eighteen years and he was still in fine condition. How is it today? It seems to me more ailments afflicted the horses then than now.
St. Clair county has some good horses but is away behind many localities in their care for the “noble horse”.
Some tell us that even the prehistoric age the horse was man’s companion and noble helper. No animal seems to yield to the gentle touch of man so readily as the horse and few animals are so brutally treated by some of their so called owners. How my own views have changed in a half century as to the intelligence and docility of the horse! Often he is not consulted as to his comfort or distress and few there be to take his part when he is abused. In cities men are arrested and fined for abusing their animals but in country places every man is a law unto himself and some poor horses find no mercy. A righteous man regardeth the life of his beast, but the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel.
In my time, that is, in the early years of my life, cruelty to convicts and sailors “before the mast” on great ships was quite common. A great change has taken place in the treatment of many human beings. God wills it so. B.F. Lawler

Reminiscence
In the earlier days of the settling of St. Clair County, marriages were few and all or most all the neighbors were invited for so few lived near.
Later when more settlers came in it became a perplexing question as to whom the rare privilege should be given of being invited to a wedding dinner.
The second day at the home of the groom was called the “infair” dinner where the same difficulties would arise. It was quite the thing to be able to say that one was at the wedding or “infair” of some leading society people.
Later such discriminations as not to invite some of the neighbors while inviting others was called making a “bridge of the nose”, an expression I have not heard for more than fifty years.
When great numbers of high toned people had been “slighted” as it was called the “charivari” was resorted to on a large scale.
One of these “light horse brigades” a great number, including some rich people’s sons stormed a certain man’s home with all sorts of noise the night his daughter was married, destroying his apiary (bee hives) and other property about the place for which he prosecuted them, costing them forty dollars. Instructing the jury, Judge Waldo P. Johnson said: If a man play a jewsharp in your yard without your consent you can prosecute him for it, although no one ever objected to a little thing like that, nor did I know of another prosecution like the one mentioned, for the intelligence and business of the country outgrew the “charivari”.
I could name many of the parties who prosecuted them and tell where they lived but most of them, maybe all of them are in the great beyond where there is much time for reflection, and I have o desire to speak adversely about them.
In the mountain towns where I was acquainted so long all that is left to the small boys and their victims were usually of their own grade in society, where it has entirely disappeared, something more elevating has taken its place. Literary attainments of a high order usually overcomes all that kind of resort to the satisfaction of the people.
But as marriages in the early days of St. Clair County were so few and so orderly, and where whole neighborhoods of people would meet to celebrate marriage it was for the social enjoyment of the people who had been deprived of so much sociability since coming to make their homes in this new country. B.F. Lawler

Reminiscence
(By B.F. Lawler)
In the “early forties” in St. Clair County wheat harvest was a great annual occasion. Oats came next and then the hay.
At first the sickle was used to reap the grain. The reaper would circle his hand and arm around a great number of stalks of the standing grain draw them toward him while his right hand drew the sickle, clipping the stalks from the ground. This was soon superceded by the scythe and cradle for the grain and the scythe and “sna” for the grass. These three crops required several weeks including the stacking. My father and his sons had four farms all adjoining and it was arranged that one great filed was all in small grain every year into which hogs, cattle and horses were turned to eat the gleanings of the harvest and “crop grass” in great abundance for fall pasture.
In these early days the whiskey bottle was a close companion of the water pail in the harvest field.
Did I see this or did I hear about it?
This reminds me of a witness testifying in court: he began by saying “I head the man say”, and the lawyer stopped him saying, “we have no hear says in this court”. The witness resumed and said “I saw the man say it, etc.” I saw the whiskey bottle close beside the water pail. I was too young to be permitted to touch it and I thought of the difference in little boys and other boys with beards on their faces.
This was common at barn raisings and other places where men can together. I remember well when my father declared against the awful custom and he was told by his neighbors, (some of them) that would not help him in harvest nor to raise his buildings; very well, said father, there will be no whiskey at my harvesting or buiding.
A mantel board over the fire place often contained the well known bottle with its tempting contents and a man was counted inhospitable and stingy if he did not offer a dram to his visitors. Some ministers of the gospel used the intoxicating cup in those early days, but not many.
My pastor Rev. J.T. Wheeler advised church members not to touch whiskey at all, and no one could accuse them of having “touched” it a little while away at the city even if they came home a little jolly.
Where drunkards common? No, but drinkers were numerous all over the country and it is the multiplied crop from that sowing we are threshing out today. Temperance workers, I greet you and the Lord bless you. I did not sew the bitter seed, but I saw it done. I have seen small children sip sweetened whiskey from a spoon in the hand of their own father or mother. I have seen children draining the glasses of a few drops of whiskey and sugar after their elders had been drinking. Little did I think then how stubbornly the whiskey habit would fight and how many, otherwise, excellent people will deceive in order to indulge an awful craving for strong drink. How I pity the man who is tortured out of his integrity and manhood by a fiery thirst that was born in his blood.
Those harvest days were golden because of the yellow grain. My first work was to gather sheaves, we called them bundles, twelve in one piece, for the shockers. Some of those sheaves were as large and tall as I was, I could scarcely carry one of them through the stubble to the shocks.
Even the young men I knew in 1844 are all gone, boys ten years old then are few indeed now, but the taste for strong drink dies slowly, so slowly.

Reminiscence
No one ahs ever written to the papers saying that he or she lived in St. Clair county in 1838. I am told that William Allen, Henry Page and James Frances of Collins lived here then. I think it probable that Moses and George Preston had settled on the Sac river then but whether they have children now living who were born before 1838 I have no means of knowing. Mrs. Mary Barnes known to most people in Osceola is a daughter of George Preston, senior, who was once sheriff of St. Clair county. I mention this again, that it would be of interest for those who were here in 1838 and now living to write a line to this paper, that biographical sketches might be published which would interest many readers. I am sure that anyone who lived here in that early time could say something of the country which would be interesting reading now.
I was asked by Mr. Butcher of this city how the people went from place to place without roads? Indian trails helped, no doubt but more probably the hunter’s instinct guided many a man across the prairie to find a settlement he had heard of in certain direction. I remember well when Grand river prairie between Osceola and Clinton was a good place for a man to be lost if he did not know the country well.
Joel Redman lived in the edge of the timber south-east of where Vista now is and my father lived where Oliver Coffey now lives. An ox team hitched to a great log which they dragged from my father’s house to Mr. Redman’s a distance of three miles to mark the first roadway between the places. The tall grass at times would almost hide the pilot who was on horseback to guide the driver of the team to keep in the right direction and avoid impassable places. Young Redman, a son of Joel Redman and father of John Redman now of this city, was the man who led the way for William B. Lawler, my oldest brother who drove the team. I remember the circumstance well.
There were well known “bridle paths” between some places long before a wagon road was established. It was evident that people were glad to see each other, and Sunday visiting was common in those days, because no churches with many vacant seats were open to them, but how such custom should find favor now it is not easy to know. B.F. Lawler

Reminiscence
A great change has taken place since 1845 in the social or visiting habits of neighboring women. To “spend the day” then meant all day and far into the night, when the husbands could be induced to quit the farm in time to come to supper and stay till “bed time” and then accompany his wife home.
I remember well those all day visits of neighbor women and how I took care of the horse, putting away the ladies’ saddle and riding skirt and bringing them out again at the home going. One of those ladies broke the news that war was declared with Mexico, and how my heart was shocked at the thought of men being shot to death in battle.
The news spread like fire in dry grass and the excitement was great. Companies were raised and preparations were made for crossing the plains. A long column of Calvary passed our home some talking, some laughing, but one was singing a church song beginning: “Come humble sinner in whose heart a thousands thoughts revolve”.
There was a boyish wail in his voice that would make one think he wanted to see his mother again, before leaving for the seat of war, and I have no doubt about the “thousand thoughts” revolving in his heart. Fine horses, saddles and men were to go down together in the fray and many were never to see home again. Henry Kirkpatrick, Paul Haney and Bob Culbertson never returned.
Occasionally through the time of the war all day visits of some of our neighbors would bring out the latest reports of the war and especially at evening, when the men would be at the supper table together.
On a few occasion I was permitted to go with my brother and the most I remember, was the long, long day. Such a day was spent at the home of Major Harris, now the home of Mr. Adamson.
The blacksmith shop was not far from where Mr. Adamson’s new barn is now. I spent most of the day there with “old Jack” the black man, whose wife was an expert in baking ginger cakes and Jack sold them at most all public meetings, always having them inc lean baskets covered with snow white cloths. Yes, I know Jack well and I loved to see the sparks fly from his anvil, but I loved his ginger cakes better. Jack often had persimmons to sell and to some particular friends, I was told, that Jack would furnish something more stimulating than beer. Be that as it may be. I was told that when freedom came to the black man, Jack had many hundreds of dollars of shining money in his pocket as a reward for his honesty and industry.
Many of the best women in a large acquaintance did visiting in that way on occasions, taking some kind of lady’s work accomplishing in a way what is done in embroidery clubs.
Magazines were few and costly, being in the reach of very few people and indeed even Harpers’ weekly did not become known generally for many years after the early forties.
Fashion plates had not arrived, but as I looked at ladies with only a boy’s eyes, I thought they were fine. And having the vantage-ground of greater observation, I place the praise upon them, they so richly deserve.
Most mothers know the children are not apt to rise much above their mothers, hence their efforts to be worthy of their families’ imitation. Then as now, some did not think of this, but when I think of the difficulties they had then and some have now, I wonder at their attainments. Many of them sleep in nameless graves and few were the gentle words of appreciation which fell on their ears and the night birds sing above them, but footfall is heard near their resting place. Yet God lives and forgetteth not, else the sons of men would be consumed. B.F. Lawler

Reminiscence
Part way between Sac river and Lebeck stands a “lone rock” so called from the days when the Indians roamed at will through the tall grass with an occasional white man like Lumsford, Joe Bedman and Coontz shared with the Indians the “happy hunting grounds” of this part of the Lousiana purchase.
A thrilling legend or story was told us and our eager ears caught every word about a certain man who, on his death bed in St. Louis told how he and a friend of his were coming through from Mexico with a great deal of money, all in gold on their persons and how they were chased by Indians intending to rob them, and how when they were sore pressed they stopped long enough to hide their money under a very notable rock West of Sac river describing this lone rock exactly. After his death, so the story said two men left St. Louis, to find the lone rock and get the money and those men never returned nor reported.
After I was a man in passing not far from that lone rock I rode out from the then traveled way to the spot and witnessed that one section of the great stone. It could be shaken upon its foundation, but could not be overthrown, but I did not dig for the gold as so many had done; and I wondered even then how such stories could find so much credulity.
But if the people now could imagine the charm of the wildness of the country with hits great forests and wild fruits, wild animals and wild men they could more easily understand the influence such stories would have upon the people. In fact a good story teller could improve upon his original information and thus lead his youthful listeners into fields of splendid romance.
To this day I remember the charm and the lure it all had for me, and after growing to mature years I stood under that lone rock with feelings I experienced at no other place.
This is an old story and it may be familiar to many people but it gives opportunity to say a word to any one who may have a love for nature in its many beautiful forms and for those who may have love for the legend and the novel.
I remember well the strange joy I felt when first I saw the Mississippi river when I was four years old and how its waters appeared blue and wide as we were crossing in a common ferry boat. A few days later we saw the wilds of the Gasconade and its clear water, its great trees and its swift and dangerous fording place. Of the great company in that caravan of movers I know not one now living.
I was too young to go among the great forests “whose gray old trunks” had withstood the winds of a thousand summers and to splash the waters of the Sac river and the Osage with the paddle of the light canoe, but what I saw always waked within me that love of nature that leads up to Nature’ God.
In later years I saw the stormy Atlantic ocean and almost felt the throb of its mighty power as its tides lash the shore. Still later I saw the great mountains and deep canons of Colorado, while the words seemed to sound in my ears that “God is Great” God is good.
Still later on I stood on the shores of mild Pacific ocean and looked out upon the mighty deep – ten thousand miles of water – water and again “how Great is God” would thrill my heart and fill my eyes with tears. And yet I wish to stand again under that “lone rock” west of Sac river and think what a great world God has given us young people, or old people. Missouri is great, St. Clair county is great. The geologic formations tells of prehistoric times. The great forests no longer tell us about the “Century living crow” which grew old and died among their branches – the great forests are gone, - the ground is still our own, and God above is looking upon us to see how well we do. B.F. Lawler

Submitted by Stacy Kelly

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