Experiences

Front matter

CT

£15

LtAlk

Foreword

Her children arise up, and call her blessed; Her husband also, and he praiseth her.

In publishing this little autobiography of our mother words are inadequate to express the love and regard we feel for her. For more than fifty years since the oldest of us was born, her desire has not been alone that we might have pleasure but her burning hope and constant prayer has been for our eternal happiness and righteousness. No tribute of words we could frame would be as fitting as the following song we often sing as a testimony to her :

Years ago when but a boy, Singing songs was mother's joy;

When my father dear would leave us there so lone; I can hear her voice so sweet, As she'd sing "When shall we meet?"

I can ne'er forget my mother and my home.

Chorus.

My dear mother, she was true To her children and her home;

She was patient, tender, kind, and lov'd us all; I praise God for her sweet name, She was ever just the same;

I can ne'er forget my mother and my home.

Father he was good and kind; Oft he told us we would find

Not another who would share our ills and woes; 'Twas her hands that press'd my brow, I can almost feel them now,

I can ne'er forget my mother and my home.

My dear mother we all knew To her God was ever true

And she told us o'er this world to never roam; As in years we older grew, She her blessings would bestow.

I can ne'er forget my mother and my home.

Now I'm here so far away; From that home I've gone astray;

Yet my mother often prays for me alone; Troubles, trials to endure, Yet I'll live a life that's pure,

Then I'll meet my dear, sweet mother in our home.

THE WRITERS CHILDREN.

Preface

I am sending this little book — my experiences — out with the hope that through it I may influence some reader to trust in the Christ I have found so precious ; that it may strengthen others who trust him but need help, and that it may help my children and children's children to live as I have tried to teach them and have prayed for them to live.

I have written facts as well as I can tell them. I may not have all dates exactly correct. May God pardon errors and bless the truth, is my prayer.

Savior ! How wonderful thou hast shown thyself unto me.

CHARLOTTE CLEM.

EXPERIENCES

My father's name was James Martin. My mother's name, before her marriage to father, was Sarah Huff. They were married, while young, near Mammoth Spring, Arkansas, close to the line of Missouri and Arkansas, but I do not know in which state.

Father died about 1880 at Hot Springs, Arkansas. Mother died there in 1910, and both are buried in Hot Springs. I think father was fifty-nine years old at his death, and that mother lived to be ninety-two.

Just before father died he called his family to his bed and said he wanted to pray for them once more before leaving them. He then raised his hands toward heaven and offered a prayer for them all, after which he requested everyone to take his hand as a pledge that they would meet him in heaven. He wanted his children to sing and told them the song to sing. This is the song he wanted sung :

The glorious light of Zion

Is spreading all around, And sinners now are coming

Unto the Gospel sound.

Chorus.

To see the saints in glory

And the angels stand inviting, And the angels stand inviting,

To welcome travels home.

The glory of King Jesus

Triumphant doth arise, And sinners crowd around it

I lived at that time about fifty miles from father. They sent a man for me. When he came my husband was away from home holding a protracted meeting and I had six or eight children, the most of them small, the babies were twins and it was five miles to the railroad. I thought the trip was more than I should undertake, so I was not there when he died.

Father had one son-in-law, named John Lochran, who was very wicked and he especially requested him to come closer where he could hear what was said. He gave father his hand and said he would try to meet him. Father told him heaven was for him if he would accept it. John was deeply affected. He told me father was by his bedside at night for some time after his death. I heard John was converted afterward and joined the church.

I was not with mother when she died. I visited her the year before. When I left her I bade her farewell and told her I had no idea I would see her again until we should meet in the better land, and it would not be long until we should all come.

I was born May 8, 1845, near where my parents were married, in southern Missouri, so mother said.

I was three or four years old, I suppose, when father moved to Rusk county, in southeastern Texas. Father owned a farm there, not far from Martin's creek. This creek, I was told, was so named for one of father's uncles, John Martin, who lived there when the Indians were still in that country.

I have passed uncle's old house many times, and thought then it was haunted. There were some Indian graves not far from it, and on the inside of the house was the print of an Indian's bloody hand. He was robbing the house when he was seen and was wounded. The house was covered with long boards which had turned to rock. Just beyond this old house one of father's brothers lived, and we had to pass it to go to uncle's. Father lived on the other side of the creek.

Mother was crossing this creek bottom on horseback one day and had a child with her. Looking to one side of the road, she said she saw what she judged to be a panther walking along in the high ferns. She was riding sidewise, but as soon as she discovered the panther she turned astride and laid whip to her horse, fearing the panther would leap on her, especially while she was crossing the creek. However, it did not attack her and she reached Uncle Eli Martin's safe.

One day, while living in Rusk county, as I remember, I was with father in a cornfield near a little creek and we heard some dogs running something. Directly they treed a large catamount. It climbed to the top limbs and was up there looking at the dogs. Father told me to stay there while he went to get a gun. When he returned he shot the catamount and it fell in the creek — splash! The dogs leaped into the creek and pulled it out, I think. My two brothers, older than myself, took the dead beast to the road that led to school, which our two cousins traveled, and stood it by a tree to scare them as they were going to school.

I suppose I was no more than six or seven years old when father killed the catamount, but I can remember things better that transpired then than I can things that occurred last year, or last month, or even last week. For this reason children should be taught every good thing while very young ; for if it be good it stays with them, or if it be bad it stays with the child just the same.

From my earliest recollection I believed what my father or mother said was the truth, just as I now believe the Bible. I did not have any doubts about it.

I remember a very sad thing that happened while I was a little child in Rusk county. I think it was one Sabbath morning. The dog had run a rabbit into a hollow tree near the house. My brothers went to the dog and I followed them. It was not long until we heard screaming at the house. We went back and learned that our year-old baby sister had walked into a bed of live coals in the back yard, where some chips and trash had been burnt the day before. There were ashes on top, but live coals underneath. Mother had gone to the barn, I think, and the baby was trying to follow. When she put her hand down to release her feet she burnt it also. Father crossed three fences and was first to reach her. When he lifted her up the coals stuck to her feet. She lay for two or three days and nights with her eyes rolled back as though she had a spasm. She got well, but it was a long time before she could walk. Her toes, all except one, came off at the first or second joints. My father slapped me because I had not been there to look after her.

Near father's place there lived some people named Kerkendall who owned a great many slaves. On Sunday mornings these negroes would pass where we lived going down the creek to gather muscadine grapes. As they returned we children would ask for some muscadines. They would give us some from their old, slick hats and we enjoyed them as much as though they had carried them in new baskets.

It was while living in southeastern Texas that I first went to school. I already knew my letters. When I got to school the teacher wanted to know where my lesson was and I pointed out the A B Cs. She told me to be seated and study my lesson. I sat down, and thought to myself, "There is no use studying my lesson for I already know it."

I remember another thing that occurred in Rusk county. Mother was gathering up the clothes to wash one day and I noticed my oldest sister's dress. I picked it up and put it on. It was a great deal too long for me ; but I felt dressed up so nice I thought I would go to see one of my aunts who then lived about a quarter of a mile from father's. So I started and soon came to a stake and rider fence. I climbed over into an orchard where there were trees full of hanging ripe fruit — peaches I think it was. I do not remember being tempted to pull any fruit. I knew my uncle had a large dog, which I was afraid would bite me. I peeped around to see if I could see anyone and soon my auntie saw me and told me to come in. I went in and she said : "Isn't your dress too large?" She was sewing and said, "Let me tack your dress up so you can walk." Just about that time she said, "Run ; your mother's calling you." I started back through the orchard the way I had gone and soon saw mother standing on the high fence looking at me. She told me to come on ; and just about the time I got one foot over the fence she began whipping me with a switch. I think she gave me a lick each time she got near enough until I reached home. I ran and cried until I had a fever, I think, and vomited that night. I remember father was mad, and took me on his lap and nursed me to sleep. I did not run away again. Father seemed to be partial to the girls and mother to the boys.

Both father and mother were very healthy. He raised at home nearly everything we lived on, while she spun and wove most of the cloth we wore. I remember when we finger-picked the seed out of cotton, and then carded, spun and wove it into cloth. Mother continued to do all this until the Civil War came on between the

SARAH MARTIN My Mother

North and South. My father would make almost anything of wood he needed. He was a good shoemaker, but made shoes only for his own family. He also tanned the leather for our shoes.

Father finally had an attack of typhoid fever while we lived in Rusk county and became dissatisfied. He sold his farm there and moved to Missouri. His brothers, Eli and Daniel Martin, moved west. Grandfather Huff, my mother's father, and his sons had moved to Taney county, Missouri; and there is where we went when we left Texas.

My parents were Baptists in their religious belief, and had joined the church while young. My mother's people were Baptists and, as well as I recollect, were of Dutch and Irish descent. Father's people were French and English. I think they lived in Alabama before they moved to southern Missouri and located near where my parents were married.

I do not know the date of their location in Missouri, but there were no churchhouses nor schools then — or at least they were scarce. People then did not have the advantages of schools for their children which they have nowadays. Mother could not read nor write; father could both read and write. He would read the Bible often with the tears streaming from his eyes. He said he learned to write on flat, white limestone, using a piece of the same for a pencil.

I have heard my mother say that her father's residence was used for a place of worship for (I think) twelve years. She was converted and joined the church while young and before she married. Father was not converted until after he married and was the father of one or more children, is my recollection. He played the violin for the young people to dance to before he married ; but he promised mother he never would bring the violin home after they married and she said he never did.

I think he was one of the sweetest singers I ever heard, and do not remember that I ever heard him sing a song that I did not shed tears. There were eight girls and four boys of us children, and it was almost as natural for all of us to carry a tune as it is for a mockingbird to sing. All my brothers and sisters lived to be grown but one ; he lived to be eleven years old.

I think Grandfather Martin was with the Americans when they fought the Indians. I do not know what year it was. Father said he heard him tell about being in the war. He said the Indians were camped on one side of a lake, while the Americans were camped on the other side. I do not know how far it was across the lake. Father said there was lots of game on the Indians' side of the lake and the Americans would take their guns — one, or two together — and cross over in a boat to the Indians' side to hunt deer, turkeys and squirrels. They would go away below or away above where the Indians were camped. One day grandfather took his gun and went alone in a little boat across the lake. He said he landed his boat so far from where the Indians were he thought they could not hear him shoot. He tied up his boat and started into the timber to see what he could find.

I do not know how long he stayed, but when he got back to his boat the Indians had found it and were awaiting his return. There were five of them, as well as I remember. They were supposed to have been hunting and happened to come across the boat. When they saw him they began hollowing and trying to talk to him, pointing their bows and arrows at him. He said he kept going toward them, expecting them to shoot every minute. However, they did not shoot ; but when he got close enough they rushed up like they were going to take hold of him. He began knocking them down with the butt of his gun; they kept on coming and he kept on knocking them down until finally he reached his boat, untied it and laid down the gun — of which only the barrel was left.

One old Indian recovered enough to run after and take hold of the boat. Grandfather laid down his oars, picked up his gun barrel and hit the Indian on the head and he sank in the water. Grandfather then grabbed up his oars again and pulled for the other side.

He said some of the Indians recovered and picked up their bows and pointed them at him. He thought every minute they would shoot him, but they did not, and he got back all right. He thought the Indians must have been drunk.

I have heard father tell another story about grandfather and another man named Mingo, and three other men. They went several miles from home hunting. They took their dogs and guns and went down into a bottom where the cane grew thick. They found a large tree, several feet through, which had fallen. Close to this tree they built a fire and made their bed between the big log and the fire. They found some limbs on the log that answered for a gunrack. On these they laid their guns and lay them down to sleep.

In the night, while the fire was yet burning bright — as well as I remember, several Indians stole up and fired into where they were lying. They killed one man and wounded another. Grandfather and the old man, Mingo, grabbed their guns and fell behind the big log. The Indians rushed up to the fire, and as they came both men behind the log took good aim by the light of the fire and each killed an Indian. The wounded man, who was the old man's son, got his own gun and killed one, and then grabbed the dead man's gun and killed another ; while one of the big dogs caught still another by the throat and held onto him until he choked him to death; which made five Indians killed. The other Indians then left.

Grandfather and the old man took the wounded man and started home. They had to go up a mountain and when they got partly up the mountain the wounded man begged them to lay him down and let him die. They stayed with him until he died and laid him by a log on the mountain side and left him until the next day, when they returned and got the two dead men.

Mother said where her father used to live there were lots of bears and panthers and he usually kept several dogs which he took with him when he would go hunting. She said he was out hunting one day when the dogs got on track of something. They ran on ahead of him and he heard them barking at whatever it was. When he got up pretty close he saw they had run something into a cave or sink in the ground.

He went up and was peeping under to see what it might be, when the bank gave way and he fell in where there was an old mother bear with her young ones. As soon as he fell in the dogs leaped right onto the old bear, and in trying to get away from them she ran over grandfather and jumped out, with the dogs after her.

Grandfather got out and followed the dogs and met them coming back to him. He thought strange of this as the dogs did not usually turn back until their victim was dead. So he went on a little farther and the dogs trotted on to where the old bear was lying dead, with a knife stuck in her. He had grabbed his knife as the bear ran over him in the cave and stuck it in her and was so excited he did not know it. He looked down in his belt and saw his knife was gone.

It was in 1852 or 1853, 1 think, when father moved to Missouri. I was seven or eight years old. Father bought a farm on a little creek, called Guffy creek, I think. He lived there two or three years and then moved about a mile and a half.

The only schoolhouse I remember ever hearing of in that part of the country was about three and onehalf miles from where we first lived. It was a log house with only one room. There the Baptists and Methodists held their meetings. I think each denomination had a church organization.

We children walked to school. We had to get up early in the morning to get there on time. We would cook our breakfast and fix our lunch and start before daylight, and before the others of the family got up. Part of the time we had to go barefoot and sometimes there was frost on the ground, and our feet would be so cold we would sit down, after the sun rose, to warm in the sunshine. We all sat close together and my brothers would wrap their feet in the skirt of my dress, and we would sit there a little while to warm. The first child to get to school would have the lesson first. We did not complain of the cold, nor the long walk, nor being barefoot. We were well and happy and thought we were having a good time.

After two or three years father sold that place and settled another upland place which was only about two miles from school and church. This place was on a public road that led to Springfield, Missouri, about twenty miles west, I think. There was a postoffice about two miles east of us kept by Grandfather Huff. The mail was carried by our house.

Lots of fruit and nuts grew in that country. There were large summer grapes and winter grapes, black walnuts and white walnuts, hickorynuts and hazelnuts, and papaws. We children used to eat grapes — seeds, hulls and all — almost as long as we could swallow them and if it ever hurt any of us I do not know it. We had never heard of appendicitis then and did not even know we had an appendix.

The snow would fall, sometimes, two or three feet deep and lie on the ground for several weeks. Sometimes father would not get our shoes made before Christmas. We would go out and play in the snow just the same. When our feet got so cold we could not stand it any longer we ran into the house to the fire and melted the snow off our feet. This never seemed to hurt any of us that I remember.

The house we lived in was just one large room with a porch in front. It was built of logs and had a floor of puncheons — that is logs split open and hewed flat on one side. It was not very tight. Sometimes in winter, as well as in summer, we children would sleep on a straw mattress made down on the floor with our feet to the fire. I do not know that we ever slept cold.

We had another log house built about thirty feet from the big house, as we called it, which we called the smokehouse. It had the dirt for a floor. Here mother cooked and ate and had her loom.

Mother wove all the everyday clothes. She would make two bolts of woolen cloth for winter — one for father and the boys and one for herself and the girls. Then in the spring she would make cotton cloth for summer everyday wear. I, myself, learned to card and spin and weave.

On this farm brother Willie, who was near my age, would break land with a yoke of oxen. Sometimes I would go out where he was plowing and he would want me to drive the oxen. I would drive for him until time to go to dinner and then he would get on one ox and I on the other, astride, and ride them to water. This is the way I learned to drive oxen — which seemed to be a providential thing in later years.

At this place my brother Jimmie died — the only one who died before being grown. He stayed in the creek and bathed too long, and took membranous croup and died.

This was the last place my father owned.

I was then getting old enough to think about my soul. I had been taught the fear of God and that there was a heaven and hell, and that all good people went to heaven and all bad people to hell.

A Baptist preacher named Wash Pierce preached at the schoolhouse where we went to school. Father, mother and all we children used to go to hear him preach once a month — usually. We would go in the wagon when the family went, but we children often walked.

I used to sit and look at this preacher and cry, when I think I was not over ten years old. It seemed like he put all his strength and mind into his preaching. He would press his hands on his temples and then to his breast and then to his side like it was straining every nerve in him. I could hardly stand it. I wept nearly all the time he was preaching. It seemed like I dearly loved him. I always loved a good preacher and I never doubted the Bible a minute in my life, that I have any knowledge of — not even before I was converted.

The Baptists and Methodists would both hold protracted meetings close to the schoolhouse in the summer, under a brush arbor. They would have what was called the mourners' bench and would call mourners — those who were seeking the Lord and wanted to be saved and wanted the Christians to pray for them that God would save them.

A man, named Henry Cornelius, if I remember right, would go up to the mourners' bench at the Methodist and Baptist meetings (for we went to both) , for I do not know how long; it was years. He would weep and mourn loud enough to be heard ever so far. He would lie right on the ground in the straw. I do not know whether or not he was converted, but I can not help believing he is now with that God he sought so long.

At one of these protracted meetings in this little schoolhouse is where I trust I was converted. I was about thirteen years old. My older sister and brothers had been going to the meetings, but I think I had not been going to the first of the meetings. One of my brothers came home from church one evening and said they were having a good meeting. He and I went that night. We ran part of the way. Brother told me of different ones who had been converted and remarked : "They will get you tonight, will they not?" I told him they might get him. We got there and the preacher preached and then called for mourners who wanted to be prayed for to come.

I do not know that I had ever thought about myself seeking the Lord ; but that night I saw so many go up for prayer the thought came to me to go too. My two brothers older than I had gone up for prayer and the thought came to me, "I want to go, too ;" so I went and kneeled down at the mourners' bench and commenced trying to pray. I reckon this was the first time I had ever tried to pray in my life. Mother had never taught me a form of prayer — she taught us to ask God for what we needed.

The good people told me to ask God to save me, and to trust in God, and submit to God and give myself to him. It seemed to me like I was trying to do all I could. While others were being converted I was left. I did not know why God would not save me. They would tell me to give myself to the Lord and it seemed to me the Lord would not have me.

I kept trying to come to God and prayed the best I knew for God to take me and save me. Finally it seemed like I got strength to submit to God and trust him, and then I was lifted up and it seemed like I felt lighter. My burden was gone and I praised God.

I had not got out of the house until something said, "Aren't you ashamed of what you have done ? You are too young to get religion." Then I said, "Why? What made me feel like I did ? I know it is God and not me." Then I rejoiced. And then after all that, there would something come to me again and say, "You are too young; you were just excited." Oh! How the wicked one would try to make me doubt.

My father sold out and was intending to move, so I did not join the church then.

My father moved from Taney county to Lawrence county, Missouri, two or three years before the Civil War. He was not settled in Lawrence county. I think he did not live more than a year at one place.