He did it : or, The life of a New England boy : written in his adopted state, California

Front matter

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Index

CHAPTEE I. Pa S e

My Boyhood Days 13

CHAPTEE II.

My School Days 21

CHAPTEE III.

I Studied Dentistry 40

CHAPTEE IV.

Engaged in Teaching School 43

CHAPTEE V.

Got Married 49

CHAPTEE VI.

Teaching Continued 51

CHAPTEE VII.

Went Into the Eestaurant Business With My Brother

in Almira, New York, and Other Changes 59

CHAPTEE VIII.

Engaged in the Life Insurance Business 62

CHAPTEE IX.

Engaged in Farming 66

CHAPTEE X.

Canvassing and Ice Cream and Eeal Estate Business. . . 69 CHAPTEE XI.

Built the Edgerly Block 77

CHAPTEE XII.

The Boom Broke 82

CHAPTEE XIII.

Eunning Booming Houses 86

CHAPTEE XIV.

Eooming Houses Continued 92

CHAPTEE XV.

Gave Up Business 95

CHAPTER XVI. Pa 2 e

Built Four Homes on the Two Hundred-Acre Vineyard

North of Town for My Children 99

CHAPTER XVII.

Extracts 103

CHAPTER XVIII.

My Own Architect Ill

CHAPTER XIX.

My Habits of Life 112

CHAPTER XX.

The Church 117

CHAPTER XXI.

Lessons to Poor Young Men 118

CHAPTER XXII.

My Views of Spiritual Life 120

CHAPTER XXIII.

There Is a God 123

CHAPTER XXIV.

Sunday Trading 125

CHAPTER XXV.

Cutting Wood 127

CHAPTER XXVI.

A Word to Young Men and Women About to Marry. . . 129

CHAPTER XXVII.

My Wife 131

CHAPTER XXVIII.

Golden Wedding 133

CHAPTER XXIX.

Go to Oakland 134

CHAPTER XXX.

Cataract 135

CHAPTER XXXI.

Deed All My Property to My Wife and Children . , 137

CHAPTER XXXII.

Looking Forward 139

HE DID IT;

CHAPTEE I.

My Boyhood Days.

Away back in New England where the wild fox digs his hole unscared, and the red squirrel hoards his nuts in the hollow of a tree undisturbed, where the wild turkey builds its nest and rears its young unmolested, and where the country is held in its icy embrace for six months of the year, is where the writer first saw the light on March 15, 1834. Born of the persecuted Puritan descendents of poor but respected parents, I passed my youth on a New England farm, so sterile, that it seldom made proper returns for hard work bestowed. Being the sixth child of the numerous family of twelve children it became necessary for me to look elsewhere for a living.

It was a custom in that country for boys to receive their time from their parents at the age of eighteen, so that I, being desirous of an education, told my father that if he would pay my expenses for six months ' schooling at the Academy, I would work for him on the farm for the other six months of the year. This talk was had on an early Monday morning whilst we were mowing in the field before sun-up, as it was customary for us to begin the day's work during hay-time before the sun rose. He said he would talk it over with my mother and report to me that evening. I included in my proposition that the expenses of my sister, Martha, next younger than me, should also be paid at the Academy for three months of the year. He reported acceptance of my proposition that evening. This was in the month of July, 1852, and school at the Academy was to commence the first of September following. A few days before the first of September my father went to the village where the Academy was, four miles away, and made arrangements there with the merchant of the little town for our board. The condition of the trade with the merchant was that we were to board with him and his familv for five davs of the week for one shilling a day each. On Monday morning of the first day of September he took us to our boarding place. On Friday evening of the same week he came for us and took us home, and thus we paid for five days board per week, at one shilling per day — a shilling is sixteen and twothirds cents.

We attended the Academy during the eleven weeks of the term. The school was taught that term by Rev. Reed, pastor of the Free Baptist Church of the village.

My first interest was aroused in education by a young lady who was my first sweetheart, Christiana Jacobs, who lived one-fourth mile from my home, whom I visited with my sister, Martha, one Sunday evening, when she made the statement, that she was going to school at the Academy in the fall and insisted on Martha's and my going, too. I thought the matter over that night and made the proposition to my father, and it was accepted, that we should go to the Academy in the fall. Although I enjoyed her society during the school term, a neighbor boy succeeded in marrying her later on.

After years had passed on her only son and daughter were graduated at New Hampton Institution, where I had graduated years before, and the son came to me in California where I was then living and I took him in my arms, as it were, and helped him to get a school where he taught for two years and earned money enough to pay his expenses in college. After graduating from college, he came back to California and married a girl whose acquaintance he had formed while teaching school there, and took her back to Cleveland, Ohio, where he became a professor in a college there.

At the beginning of the last term of school, of the agreement with my father I went to Guilford Academy, twelve miles away from my home. Professor Benjamin Stanton was the principal. After passing through the school term, I engaged to teach a school near that town for ten dollars a month and my board, and I boarded all over the neighborhood.

After teaching two months where I had a successful school, I went home, and from there I went to Boston, Mass., to find employment. After walking the" streets of Boston for about three weeks, I found a job in a grocery store for which I agreed to work for one year for seventy-five dollars and board. I worked three months and my health failed me. I left that place and went to my uncle, Daniel Edgerly, who. lived in the city of Boston. After staying there about one month I had sufficiently recruited my health to go to work again.

I started to find another job; I found a job where I could earn ten dollars a month and board in a baker shop. After working there three months my health failed me again and I left there and went to my father's home in Meredith, New Hampshire.

Although my father had a numerous family of twelve children, ten of whom were at home at one time, the two oldest were away at work in the cotton factory, where they earned some money, the bulk of which, after paying their expenses, they brought home to my father and gave it to him as a loan. We had a school for three months in the winter and three months in the summer; in the winter the large and small went to school, in the summer only the smaller children attended the school because the older children had to stay at home and help make a crop, for all of the family old enough to earn anything had to do his share of the work on the farm, because the farm was so sterile that we had to make every thing count to keep us through the hard winter. The land was so poor that the country there was given the name of "Hard Scrabble, " for we had to scrabble through the summer to get enough to keep us through the winter. During the winter term of school father kept an old mare and sleigh for us to go to school with, and there were eight of us children to go, and we would all pile together in the sleigh and my oldest sister, Hannah, would take the lines and whip and drive to the school-house a mile away. After unloading the children she turned the mare's head toward home, tied the lines to the dashboard, then taking the whip give the old mare a few cuts and she would start off and never stop until she arrived home. In the evening father would come with the same old mare and take us home.

In the summer time we would attend the school on foot, carrying our lunch pail. Usually the lunch pail had a respectable dinner for us all, but one day mother was so put to it that she did not have a sufficiently respectable dinner for us, so she put into a large pail milk and into another pail bread, and when the noon hour came we were ashamed to eat our bread and milk before the other scholars, so Hannah, who was the oldest and manager of the group,, took us all off to the woods ; there we sat down and ate our bread and milk picnic fashion, each having his own tin cup and spoon. The numerous family of my father made clothing and provisions for the family a serious problem, but we have always said that we never went to bed hungry and we all had a special suit of clothes for Sunday, because father kept sheep and had the wool carded and the girls spun the wool into thread and my mother wove it into cloth and dyed it, and father had a tailoress come there once a year and made the goods into clothing for the boys, and a dressmaker came to make the goods into dresses for the girls, and father being a cobbler, had a neighbor cobbler to come there and make the leather obtained from the slaughtering of the animals for the meat that was salted down to supply the family, into boots and shoes for the family. Thus my father supported his- family from the proceeds df the old rocky farm. The bleak weather with its snow and ice made it necessary for him to spend a larger portion of the winter in breaking the roads. The way they did it was that after every storm the neighbors would club together with their oxen and sleds and drive through the roads in the district set apart by the officials to keep clear, so that about one-half of the year's time was used in keeping the roads clear. The balance of the time, after breaking the roads, was consumed in cutting and hauling the wood to supply the family. A large pile of wood consisting of several cords was piled up in the door yard of the house. In the spring of the year when the snow was melting /and the roads impassable, it was father's business and the boys to cut and prepare the wood for the stove and haul it into the shed where it was stored for summer use.

CHAPTER II. My School Days

Prof. Benjamin Stanton, who was the professor at the Academy of the school in Guilford Academy where I last went, was elected by the Institute Board of New Hampton as principal of the New Hampton School. It also had a theological department. In this school they educated and graduated young men to enter college, and there is a female department where they educate and graduate young ladies. When I was at the age of nineteen, I told my father that I was not physically strong to be a working man and that I must go to school and fit myself for lighter work than a day laborer. "But how can you do it?" he said. "I don't know how I will do it," I says, "but where there is a will there is a way." And I went to New Hampton to school. The first thing I did was to engage a room where I could cook, eat and study. I boarded myself for three years, kept

Prof. BENJAMIN STANTON bachelors hall, had nothing to eat excepting what I cooked myself and what mother would send me in the shape of pies and cakes. I bought my books with the little money I had saved from my Boston trip, and entered the Sophomore class of the New Hampton Institute. I joined the Social Fraternity, a prominent literary society, and remain a member to this day. This was the fall term of the Sophomore year.

Col. Lewis, a native of Mississippi, came to New Hampton to recover his health long before the forties and settled there. He soon became interested in the New Hampton Institute. Being a man of great wealth, he was a power there. His wealth consisted in owning a large number of negro slaves which he owned with his brother in Mississippi. But his brother remained at home and run the plantation while he lived in New Hampton with his family and spent his money. Fronting on Main Street were fifty acres of rich land, running back quite a distance. He cultivated this land like a garden. He built near the street a green-house in which he cultivated grapes and flowers. He told me one day, while I was visiting his conservatory, that some people thought him

Col. RUFUS G. LEWIS foolish to spend so much money upon fruits and flowers, "but," says he, "I derive more revenue from grapes and flowers than any farmer in the county does from his farm, notwithstanding that I have to keep it heated by day and night for one-half of the year." He had a family of children, three sons and one daughter, on which he doted, as Southern people of wealth will do. Being wealthy, he could send his children to school. They did not have to do a lick of work, while I, being poor, had to put in every moment of my leisure time in working to get money to help pay my expenses. While seeing this, I began to grieve that God had given them so much and had given me nothing, so one day I went to Col. Lewis, whom I found in his conservatory, and asked him for a loan or a gift, I do not remember which. He turned to me and said, "Because I'm able to send my children to school and your father is not able to send you, I must help you, must I not ? J ' " No, ' ' said he, "go on as you are now going and I venture to say that you will come out better in the end than my boys will." I went away much grieved because he had turned me down, but I have watched his sons, and his prophecy has been literally fulfilled, for his sons who have beenjraised in ease and plenty and were never required to work or do anything for themselves, have not made their mark in life, whilst I have succeeded so well in life that my property exceeds theirs by many thousands. Now the tables are turned ; I am rich while they are poor. And I owe it all to the fact that I had to learn to work in my boyhood. Col. Lewis had often been spoken against by Abolitionists in New Hampton, of whom there was a goodly number in the neighborhood, because he owned slaves. It was frequently argued against receiving contributions from his wealth, because it was earned largely by slave-labor, but his great popularity as a man overcame all such scruples.

I took a school in Bristol, New Hampshire, across the Pemeguosic River, opposite New Hamp ton, where I was very successful. The day before the school closed there came a man from Center Harbor, N. H., who wanted a teacher. I intended to go from this school back to New Hampton and resume my studies, but he offered me a good price if I would go and teach his school, for it was difficult to find teachers at that season of the year. After teaching that school Mr. Cany, a prominent o o o citizen, had a son and daughter who were patrons of my school, and he suggested to me that I go to Meredith Village, three miles distant, and open up a private school where he sent his son and daughter. The teaching of these schools carried me through the spring term, but I had kept up with my classes by studying extra times, and went back to my school for the summer term. I worked at haying and canvassing for books to raise money to help me with my expenses. At the close of this term I went to Cape Code to teach school. A member of our class went there for the purpose of engaging schools for the students. So many schools did he engage that when they went down there they were called the drove. "He is one of the drove," they would say.

He located me at the little town called West Sandwich, Barnstable County, Mass. I had in my school seven young ladies of about my age. I remember distinctly the first morning I began school. These young ladies came trooping in and took their seats ; their size and beauty very much abashed me, buf I, following the custom of the school from which I came, opened the school with prayer. The school numbered about forty stu-

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s dents, very few of them of much size. After prayers I enrolled the names of the scholars. There was one young lady in the group who very much interested me, who afterwards became my wife. I boarded around the neighborhood to help out the length of the school which was about three months; my wages was thirty dollars per month and board. The first day at noon when I went to my lunch, I thought to myself that I had earned seventy-five cents that forenoon, the most money in the shortest time that I ever earned. The school district had a social turn, and during the winter there were several social parties where I was invited and accepted. To one of these parties I took two young ladies in the old-fashioned shay. After the party had broken up, the horse being a very spirited one, we drove home very rapidly, four miles. I took each girl to her home and then took the horse to the stable and went to my boarding-house and immediately retired before the other young people had gotten home. I left my plug hat standing on the ante table in the hall. After I had gone to sleep the other members of the household came home and took seats in the parlor waiting for me to come. After they had sat about an hour they began to wonder where I was, thinking I was a long time getting home, but one of them happened to go in the hall and saw my hat on the table ; she reported to the other girls in the parlor that I must be at home as my hat was there. Then they all retired. This was a huge joke on them, #nd the next morning at the breakfast table some one asked where I was the night before, which sat up a big laugh because I had so fooled them, and we had a big time over it.

I always wore a high silk hat those days, for I thought a cap was not dignified enough for a school teacher. I was so popular in that family that we used to gather in the parlor and have social chats with the school girls that would come over. I being a single school teacher, became quite a favorite with the girls. And thus passed the winter in the school and social circle. At the close of the school we gave an exhibition; we needed lamps to light the school-house. Gustavus Swift, who founded the great Swift Packing Company of Chicago, was a boy at that time, called by his chums ' ' Stuttering Dick," because he stuttered; he was janitor of the church. I invited him to bring the lamps of the church and light up my school-house that night. The next morning he took the lamps to the church. I asked him what I should give him for his trouble; he told me I might give him t-t-t-wenty f-f-f-ve c-c-c-nts i-i-i-f I w-w-was a m.-m-mine t-t-to. I paid him the twenty-five cents. This Grustavus Swift started his career in life by butchering sheep for one cent a head for his brother, who was in the meat business. He also went to the Brighton Market, near Boston, where they would buy droves of hogs, drive them down on Cape Cod and peddle them out to the people who each wanted a pig or two. This young man would take the money his brother gave him for his wages and buy a few pigs to drive on down the Cape with his brother and sell them out. After awhile he had accumulated enough to buy a drove for himself.

He made some money then and went into the butcher business down on the Cape in the town of Barnstable. He started a market and sent out four wagons to sell his meat to the country people. There were in the town four men in the same business who nudged each other and said they were sorry for the boy, for he would lose what he had in a few weeks, for he gave overweight. In less than one year he was selling beef to these same men. He would go to Brighton and buy carloads of cattle, ship them down on the Cape, slaughter them and sell the meat to these four men. To get this money to buy these cattle he went to his uncle Paul Crowell, my wife's father, to borrow the money. He got six hundred dollars for thirty days and he paid it back the day before it was due, and he said that was the key to his success in life to pay borrowed money the day before it was due. When he needed more money than Paul Crowell could furnish him, he went to the Barnstable Bank and asked the president if he would loan him six thousand dollars. The old man drummed on the counter with his pencil and opened wide his eyes and looked at the young man and said, " Young man, what are you going to do with six thousand dollars ?" The young man replied, ' ' I am going to Albany, New York, and buy six carloads of cattle.' ' "What security can you give, ' ' the old man asked. ' i Nothing but my note, ' ' he said. The old banker was thunderstruck and thought for a moment. He knew the young man was a thrifty boy. He had done business with him for a couple of years and knew he was a thrifty young man and faithful in paying his loans.

After a moment's thought he said, "You can have it," and made out a note for six thousand dollars which the young man signed. The day before the note became due the young man appeared at the bank window and paid the six thousand dollars and took up his note. He then looked up at the old banker and said, ' i Can I have that six thousand dollars again?" "Yes," the banker said, "you can have it," and it was paid again the day before it was due. This circumstances of prompt payment gave the young man credit for all the money the banks could loan. He then moved to Chicago where he commenced the great establishment, The Swift Packing Company. He borrowed money by the millions, but he always paid it the day before it was due, and this prompt payment was the keynote of his success. He told me this on one occasion when I was visiting him. "I have but one advice to give to any young man when he borrows money, always pay it back the day before it becomes due, and this will establish his confidence with the banks, so that he can borrow all the money he wants." He said, "If I had failed to pay the loan when it fell due, I would have lost their confidence and been crippled for life. By prompt payment I established confidence/'

School on Cape Cod having closed, I went back to the New Hampton school for the spring term. I met numerous school mates and we passed through the summer term, keeping up successfully with my class. While many of the boys were engaged in playing ball on the school ground I was engaged in hoeing corn for a neighbor at ten cents an hour during corn hoeing time. Other times I would be engaged in sawing wood for the neighbors around, and thus passed my time in work while other boys more favorably provided for were playing ball. After the term of school closed I went to work for the farmers, making hay during my vacation, where I earned considerable money to help pay my school expenses. The fall term passed much the same as the previous term, at the close of which I returned to Cape Cod to teach the same school where I had taught the previous winter. I received the same wages, but did not board all around over the neighborhood. I had virtually the same group of young ladies as pupils, and the one I mentioned interested me so much is where I boarded altogether. The close proximity to each other in the family caused us to become well acquainted, and finally ripened into courtship, so that by the time the term closed we had entered into arrangements to be mates for life, which was consumated three years afterwards, after I had left college and gone South to teach. The school having closed I went back to New Hampton to resume my studies there with much the same conditions as in previous years. When the next fall term closed I went back to Cape Cod and took another school at Centerville, about fifteen miles further down on the Cape. I had a successful school and formed the acquaintance of a teacher in an adjoining district to whom I became somewhat attached, because she was. such a help to me. After the school term closed I went to Michigan to Hillsdale College, a Free Baptist school. I there met as president of the colloge Chancelor E. B. Fairfield, a noted educator. I entered the Sophomore class where I remained one term. From President Fairfield I learned they were in need of a teacher of drawing. The lady to whom I had become attached at Centerville was a teacher of drawing. I wrote to her, saying there was an opening there for her to teach drawing. She communicated with. President Fairfield, which resulted in her engagement for the next term, which she successfully filled. At the close of the Sophomore year, because some of the New Hampton students had gone to the Ann Arbor College, Michigan, I went there to visit them, and I was so much taken with the college that I left my Hillsdale College and passed the examination to enter Ann Arbor.

CHAPTER III. I Studied Dentistry

During the vacation I went south to Ohio for the purpose of finding something to do to earn money. I took an agency to canvass for books, but met with very poor success as a canvasser. I met a man who had a patent-right for a fanning mill for cleaning grain. I bought the right for Cuaga County, Ohio. I started out to canvass for the sale of the patent-right. I worked about a month and made but one sale for which I received a gold watch estimated at fifty dollars. I became disgusted with the patent-right business and went into a dentist office in Central Ohio, to see if they wanted a dental student. The man told me that^ he did not want any students, but that he knew of a man who lived at Ravena, Ohio, by the name of Dr. Spellman, who wanted a student. I went there and saw Dr. Spellman and made the arrangement with him to study dentistry for a year. As I had no means to pay him a tuition except the watch, I told him I would give him my watch for the tuition. He said 1 could carry the watch until the end of the year, and then he would take it. He did so. I had no means of living while engaged as a dentist student, so I went to a professor of a private school at Eevana, by the name of Hagueman, and engaged to teach two hours a day for my board and room. I taught three months and then I had an opportunity to go to Shalersville, a town four miles away, where I could get a private school. I went there and had a successful school. During the term of school I met a lady by the name of Mason, who lived with her father in the village, and fell in love with her. She was a widow and fourteen years older than myself. I finished my school and then went back to Ravena to the dentist office where she frequently visited me. I became disgusted with the dentist business. The widow, as a present to help me on my way, gave me ten dollars, and that was the last I ever saw of her, but afterwards learned she got married. At the time I knew her she was the mother of seven children, six of whom were dead. After becoming disgusted with the idea of being a doctor of dentistry, I decided that teaching was my forte, so after giving Dr. Spellman the watch, I left Ravena for the South.