TENNESSEE

A short sketch or biography of the ancestry and Lives of the Yeager
family for one hundred and fifty years back. The writer of this sketch
is guided mainly by the facts gathered from his Father some 60 or 65
years ago. Although my memory is fairly good, perhaps it may not serve
me in many particulars especially the precise dates of the month and
year so far back as I may refer to:

My Father, Nicholas Yeager was born in the year A.D. 1784 on September
3rd, in Washington County, East Tennessee in 6 miles of the town of
Jonesborough where his Father lived at that time. He was kept in school
from a small boy until 10 or 12 years old and then sent to one of the
higher schools in the town and kept in It until about 19 or 20 years old.
His Father had him graduated for a Presbyterian minister, but my Father
did not take up with the calling his Father allotted him too. He had
conscious to think he should not preach the gospel of Jesus Chris not
being changed from nature to Grace which thing did not pass until he was
in his 60th year. My Grandfather moved to White County. Middle, Tennessee
near the town of Sparata, the county seat about the time my Father
completed his education. His other brothers used to call him the Preacher.
He lived a single man until In his 23rd year and then married my Mother,
whose name was Polly Robinson who was reared in Culpeper County, Virginia,
who was about two years his junior. Shortly after their marriage they
emigrated to Kentucky near Lexington in two miles of the town and there my
oldest brother was born Vincent Yeager. Father only stopped there 2 years
and then emigrated to Ohio and settled in Middletown, Butler County which
was the latter part of the year 1809. There my Father took up the
occupation of a weaver in making all kinds of cloth common in that day
that was worn on the body and also on and around the beds. As above stated,
the oldest of the family was born in Kentucky. Brother Vincent was born
June 8, 1808. The next of the family was born a daughter on the 11th of
December A.D. 1805. who lived to be married and had one child a son, and
then died in the 20th year of her age. The third child was also a daughter.
Her name was Eliza who was born October 8, 1811, who also lived to be
married and raise eight children, six daughters and two sons. The two last
children of my Mother were twins, a son and a daughter, William Henry
Harrison and his twin sister Nancy Harrison. Of the five there are three
living yet, Eliza and the twins who were born February 23, 1814, and in
about 18 months after our birth our dear Mother departed this life.

Now I will refer to my great great great grandfather (Nicholas Yeager)
and my great great grandfather (Adam Yeager): both of whom were of German
descent. My great great great grandfather (Nicholas Yeager) and my great
great grandfather (Adam Yeager) were born in Germany (Adam Yeager was born
in 1707). This father and son (Nicholas and Adam) came to America in 1717.
They came to Culpeper County, Virginia. Adam was ten years old. Adam
Yeager (My great great grandfather) became the father of five sons and one
daughter. One son (Nicholas Yeager, born in Virginia 1735, and my great
grandfather) became the father of Solomon Yeager, who was my grandfather,
and who was born In Virginia in 1759. At an early age, my grandfather
(Solomon Yeager) came to East Tennessee with his father (Nicholas Yeager).
My father (Nicholas Yeager), the son of Solomon Yeager, was born September
3, 1784 (near Jonesboro, Tenn.). My grandfather (Solomon Yeager) raised a
large family, seven sons and four daughters and they also raised large
families. The oldest son was named Daniel who raised 7 or 8 children. The
2nd son whose name was Joel who also raised a good family. The third son
was my father, Nicholas who raised eleven children in all. The fourth son
was Benjamin who only raised four children, two sons and two daughters The
fifth son is James who raised 10 children about half and half. The sixth
son is Solomon and about his family I do not know anything about for I
never saw the man in my life, for he moved to Arkansas about 38 or 40
years ago near Evening Shade. But as for all of my Uncles I have seen all
of them and the most of their families. My Aunts I cannot say so much
about. I have only seen two of them. Aunt Polly who married Reuben
Willhite, when I saw them in the Winter of '56 they were about 93 years
old. They lived in Middle, Tennessee, in White County on Cherry Creek,
seven miles from Sparta, the county seat. My other Aunt I knew was Eliza
who married Wm. Farley and who moved to Fayette County, Arkansas near
Fayetteville in the year '53. I was at their house in the fall of '54 to
see them and also Uncle James (my other Uncle is Elias who lives in the
same neighborhood of Farley and Uncle James. Uncle Farley raised about 12
children, eight boys and four girls. Uncle Elias raised 5 children, 3
boys and 2 girls. But of all the families Uncle Reuben Willhites was the
largest. They raised about 15 or 16 children in all. The children and
Grandchildren and Great Grandchildren numbered about one-hundred and
out of my Grandfather's children all of them but 2 left their native
state. There is one Uncle and Aunt I had almost forgotten Uncle Joel, who
moved to Laclede County, Missouri and also Aunt Susan Briols who married
Thomas Broils in Middle, Tennessee, but moved to Missouri in the Fall of
'51. I also visited them in the Fall of '54. Aunt Susan had about eight
or nine children about 5 boys and 4 girls. My other Aunt, Fathers sister,
I never saw. She married a Farley also, a brother to Wm. Farley. I think.
She had but a small family. They married in White County, Middle,
Tennessee and were both dead when I was in there in '56. Grandfather
after raising all his children and lived to a good old age my Grandmother
died about the year '45. My Grandfather being lonesome concluded to get
another companion, and in the same courted and married a Miss Hamilton
45 years his junior, he being 90 years old and they lived together about
5 years at which time he died being ninety-five years old. He died of
the fatal disease gravel. He lived 9 days without passing any thing from
bladder and at last it mortified and bursted and he expired. I went to
visit my second Grandmother when I was there in '56. 1 never saw my first
Grandmother. The last one was living on the old home stead that was left
her by Grandfather. She appeared to be quite a fine old lady and treated
me with respect. She had her brother stay with her at the time I visited
her who was a help and company to her.

I will now refer back to my Mother. She was of Scotch parentage. She had
3 brothers and 3 sisters. Her oldest brother Samuel Robinson lived near
Louisville, Kentucky and raised a large family and the second, John got
drowned in the Ohio river near Louisville. The third one married and
lived in Middle, Tennessee and raised a family. I stayed all night with
one of his sons, John Robinson, in the Winter of '56 and I was to see two
of my Aunts, one a widow Sims at the time I stayed all night with she
lived on Cumberland Mountain, twelve miles from Sparta East. The other
Aunt lived about the same distance from Sparta Northeast. She had a
nephew and niece living with her when I was to see her. The other Aunt I
never saw and am unable to say whether she had a family or not. After my
Mother's death, my Father shortly afterwards married my stepMother, an
old blacksmith's daughter, in the town of Middletown. His name was Groom
Bright Bailey and on March 15, 1816, he married Henrietta Bailey who was
29 years old who had 2 brothers single and Grandfather Bailey was too old
to work in the shop being in his 85th year. In the Summer of 1817 they
decided to emigrate to the Wabash County, Indiana and commenced to make
two perouges dug out of large poplar trees 40 or 45 feet in length made
like a dug out or canoe to go by water, and after getting all things
ready, some time in September 1817, they got all on board the two
perouges which were built with siding and a roof on them which made it
somewhat comfortable and resembling a boat, they first launched it in the
big Miami river below the last mill dam at Enox Mills. I will have to
refer back about 6 months. On the second day of March there was another
one come to town in the person of John Bailey Yeager who was born March
2, 1817. As above stated the first of my half brothers the family now
instead of one in number namely Grandfather and Grandmother Bailey and
Father and Mother and Nicholas and John Bailey and six children all told
the Bailey men were Mother's brothers. After crowding all the household
and kitchen furniture they could get in the perouges then the family had
to get aboard, and you may imagine we were somewhat crowded, and then
they bid Middletown and the Ohio goodbye and which I never have been
back to see since in about 71 years. We went down the Miami river to its
mouth and then into the Ohio River. We got along with but little
difficulty and with but little hard work until we got to the mouth of
the Wabash River and there the work began for the older one to row up
the current of the river. All went on agreeable up the Wabash River
until we got up to New Harmony and there a fatal incident occured.
Through the all wise Providence of God Grandfather Bailey who was
growing very feeble and infirm, took worse than usual and they had to
tie up in the little town of New Harmoney and stayed there some 6 or 8
days when he expired. He was 85 years old. He was buried on the east bank
of the Wabash river near the town. 1 cannot remember the exact date but
as near as I can recollect, it was some time in October and after the
burial rites of my Grandfather were performed we all started up current
again, and I think about the last of October or first of November we
landed at the town of Terre Haute meeting with no serious accident after
the death of Grandfather.

There were a few log cabins in the place at that time and perhaps one or
two grocery stores. The place looked very hard indeed for a city all
covered with heavy timber and not very much underbrush. At that time no
public buildings erected yet. I still remember the men that cleared off
the public square of its timber for the first courthouse. They boarded
at my Father's while doing the work. It was Hamilton Reed and George
Liston. It was pretty hard to get grub for so many in one family. Most
of all of the provision was brought up from Fort Knox now Vincennes,
either brought up by keel boats or pack horses. Game was quite plenty at
that time. Plenty of Deer and other wild animals of various kinds which
made a good relish at the time for meat and also plenty of wild fowls of
all descriptions of this Northern climate. My Father bought a lot on
second and Poplar streets to build a house on where the brick ware house
of the Ralph Thompson Mills now stands, and built a two story log house
on it. He put up an old fashioned loom and commenced his old trade
weaving, but the time had not quite come in yet for weaving. There was
not enough flax and cotton raised yet and the seed was an object to get.
But in a few years there was plenty of both articles raised which all
the clothing in that day was made for both men and woman for Sunday as
well as a week day. When my Father started from Ohio it was with the
expectation of getting an office in the town of Terre Haute, but he did
not get here in time to gain his residence by law it was the clerkship
of the County. He struggled on in town 2 1/2 years as best he could.
His family being so large it was hard to get support for them all and
there was also another added to the family. James Calvert was born May
30, 1819 and the next Spring of 1820 he concluded to leave the town and
move out in the country and make him a farm. He bought 80 acres of land
in the south part of Vigo County adjoining Sullivan County, 1 1/2 miles
south-east of Middletown, and in the spring of '20 moved down to it
without a horse, cow, or any tools of any kind except an old Kentucky
axe and a hoe. He built a log cabin and then cleared off a garden spot,
and Conrad Frakes plowed it up for him and the family soon put in some
garden seed. Father went to clearing a small field to get in corn and
pumpkins. The country was all heavy timbered and it took a great deal
of hard labor to clear ground but he cleared and made rails to fence
six acres and got it all in truck. He also carried all the rails on
his shoulder to fence the six acres. I can remember he wore through his
coat and jacket and began to wear some on the hide when my Mother had
to make a pad and fasten it on his shoulder to keep the rails from
wearing on to the flesh. But when we began to raise vegetables we felt
much happier.

I still remember a little incident which occured the same spring while
Father was making the rails to fence the first field. I was out with
him late one evening where he was splitting rails and a large Indian man
came to where we were. I was very much frightened to see him being
about the first one I ever saw before. I sprung between his legs for
protection and he said to me, the man would not hurt me. He begged my
Father for bread or something to eat and my Father told him there was
none cooked. He asked him how far it was to his wigwam or camp and he
help up two fingers and a half and he had a gun carrying on his
shoulder. He went off when he found he could get nothing to eat. I saw
the Redskins frequently after that. There were about 200 of them camped
at one time on the bluff two miles east of Prairieton. My Father with
help of the boys kept on clearing some every year so we raised plenty
to do us. As for a surplice it would not be worth a man's time to raise
it for you could not sell it for anything. I remember when they
commenced building flat boats to run their corn to New Orleans. They
only got 6 1/4 cents a bushel for their corn delivered in a boat and pork
$1.25 to $1.50 per hundred pounds. As for wheat there was none raised
until some years after that and when we got to raising it, we had to
cut all we raised with the reap hook or sickle. I well remember when I
was learning to use them cutting grass seed. I cut my hand and I have
the scar on my hand yet where I cut it when about nine or ten years old;
and expect to carry it to my grave. After that when I was in my 20th
year while I was cutting down some wheat up in the Wabash bottom for
Jerry Raymond, I cut a piece as big as a half dollar in the same place
only a good deal deeper. It bled so much I got so weak I had to quit
after dinner and go and plow for Charley Bennight who I had engaged to
work a half month for four dollars. Wheat at one time would only sell
for 31 1/4 cents per bushel. We had to flail it out with a stick three
feet long for the beetle and the handle part six or seven feet long
tied to the beetle with a rawhide string or a string made out of flax
or toe or hemp, the latter was not so plenty as the former of a dry
spell. We sometimes cleaned off a place on the ground and tramped out
our wheat with horses or oxen, those that were so fortunate as to have
any of those kind of brutes. We had to take our corn or wheat about 30
miles to get it made into meal or flour until we got to building horse
mills and the incline wheel, or tread wheel and bolt it by turning a
crank by hand and feeding with the other hand, and going eight miles
to the mill and then wait all day for our turn and hitched on about
dark. My brother and myself had to go once a week with four bushels of
grain to keep up bread stuff for the family being fifteen in number.
You bet we would want our dinner when we got it. I have built two of
those mills in my time, the first a draft wheel and the other an
incline or tread wheel. About this time there was an addition to the
family. On the 27th of August A.D. 1821 my oldest half-sister was born
(Mary) making eight children in all.

About the year '23 my Father concluded to make a visit to see my
Grandfather and started in the fall, perhaps in October, to Middle,
Tennessee and was gone six weeks or two months before returning and
that was the first time he owned a horse. After he settled on his new
farm Grandfather gave him an iron-gray mare. He had walked all the way
there going, but stopping at my Uncle Benjamin Yeager's in Union
County, Kentucky near Highland, but when he returned he had the little
gray mare to ride home on and you might guess the boys were well
tickled when Father came back with the mare. We were quite rich then
for we could make one horse useful for many things and we nursed her
like a child and made a regular pet of her. in five or six years we
had horses enough to get along farming fairly well and in the time we
had a cousin, a crippled man in his back to come to see us by the name
of Joseph Mills, who brought a small sorrel mare with him which helped
to make out our teams. Cousin Joseph had owned a farm in Illinois
twelve miles below the mouth of the Wabash and by exposure in times of
overflow had become a cripple. Being very ambitious as the family still
increased we were still enlarging the farm. On the 7th of October A.D.
1824, I had another sister born, Clarissa Yeager making nine children
besides seven grown persons. The seventh one was another cousin, one of
my Mother's sisters son by the name of Daniel Lucas, Joe Mills also
being one of my Aunt's sons.

I will now turn back to the first of our settling on the place. When
the neighbors began to think about some schools for their children
about the year '21, they all agreed on a site for a school house which
was 3/4 of a mile northeast of Middletown, where they constructed a
rude log house which was very common in those days. The fashion was
very plain and simple leaving the logs all in natures growth chopping
out a door in one end and also a place for to make a fire-place in one
side, and building the back wall and jams by throwing in dirt and
pounding it down with a mall, and cutting a log out of the side from
one end to the other for a window and at the opposite end from the
door. We put up small sticks perpendicular and then pasted paper on
them and greased it to toughen it which answered for the windows, for
there were no glasses or sashes in those days. The door was made of
long boards riven out like clapboards and shaved a little, and the
ceiling was made out of split logs, and the flat side turned down and
filled on top with dirt. The roof was made with old fashion clapboard
4 or 4 1/2 feet long and weighted down with polls and pins to hold
them down. The floor was sometimes made of rude puncheons and sometimes
of mother earth. The school house completed, there was a teacher to
select and they all selected my Father who taught the first school
taught in Prairie Creek township. The same was the first school that I
went to. They soon wanted some officers to keep the peace and they
elected my Father Justice of the Peace and Conrad Frakes, Constable,
and he filled that office until he left the state and moved to
Louisiana in the spring of '36. When Father first bought his land for
his farm. he had to borrow the money to purchase the land at the land
office at Vincennes. He made a loan of old Uncle Tommy Pounds, and he
had not yet been able to replace that money, all these years Uncle
Tommy using much lenity with him. So about the Spring of '26, he
concluded to go down the river on a flat boat to New Orleans to try to
make some of the money which was forty dollars for oarsman at that time.
Thinking when he got down there he could make money faster there than
here, he stayed fifteen months sometimes following his old occupation
as weaver and sometimes carpentering and sometimes picking cotton, but
about the middle of June the second year he got home. I well remember
the day when he got home we were all out in the field plowing and
hoeing the corn and one of my sisters came running to tell us the news
of Father's coming. We all started the nearest way to the house and all
bareheaded and when we got there Father seemed to chide our Mother for
letting us go without any hats, but my Mother was one of these
economical women and did not go in debt for anything. it was not but a
few days until my Father took us all to town and got us all a hat of
John F. Cruft. Mother had increased the stock of cattle to 28 head, and
my Uncles Nicholas and John Bailey had got out house logs with the help
of we boys the fall before to build a hewed log house 20 by 32 feet,
two stories high, and two rooms, and had raised it in the spring before
Father had got home. It took three days to raise it. Some of the logs
faced two feet at but, which made the raising very heavy, but we had
not done anything towards putting on the roof when Father came home,
only hewed out the rafters on account of our crop. But after harvest we
went to work at the house and we also had brick to make for the
chimneys which took a good many, 8000 a piece in each chimney, double
fire-places in each one, up stairs in each room, and also a brick
kitchen 16 by 20 feet and a brick bake oven in the southeast corner,
which in all took some 30,000 or 35,000 bricks. Old Uncle Jerry Tryon
and his boys laid the brick, so we got part of the house so that we
could live in it the next Winter.

I had forgotten to relate a serious accident which occurred to
Grandmother Bailey the winter after we landed at Terre Haute. While
carrying water from the river for house use, she slipped and fell and
put her hip out of place which they never got set right again, and it
made her a cripple the balance of her life. She had to use two crutches
while she lived. She was a very religious woman ever after. I knew her
and she made it a daily practice to read a chapter in the Bible every
day, and when she got unable to read herself, she would get some of we
children to read a chapter for her. in about the spring of '26, she
took down sick and did not last but eight or ten days being in her 85th
year. They soon finished up the new house so we had plenty of room
although our family still number fifteen. About the summer of 1826 on
June 24th, my oldest sister married Joseph Thompson, and they had a son
born the 9th day of May 1827, and she lived just one year and on the 9th
of May 1828 she expired. They called the boy Nicholas.

About the year '27 my Father and Mother both made a visit to see his
Father again in Tennessee. By this time we had plenty of horses and they
each rode there horseback and went again by Uncle Ben Yeager's in
Kentucky, both going and coming. People those days did not mind riding
three or four hundred miles on horseback both women as well as men. In
the Spring of '28, 1 had another brother born on the 26th of April A.D.
1828, Clement B. Yeager. In the same summer in June I think my next
oldest sister Eliza was married to John Thompson on the 12th day of May,
three days after my oldest sister died. Uncle Nicholas Bailey died with
the lingering complaint of the dispepsey or indigestion which was not as
common a disease then as it is now. By this time the boys had grown up
so they could take charge of the farm and run it. Father spent most of
his time in teaching school, having the advantage of most of the
neighbors in education, generally spending Saturday attending to his
office as Esquire. Occasionally the parties concerned would call some
of the lawyers from Terre Haute to plead their cases. They frequently
called Charley Noble down from town to plead for them.

About the year '30 the country had settled up so much we had a very
respectable neighborhood, and in those days the people had more
sociability than is manifested in this day and age. A good deal more
obliging and accommodating in helping in house raising and log rollings,
and dividing the necessaries of life such as dividing a buck or a hog
and other productions of the field, which showed they were not only
trying to live for themselves, but wanted to help others live also
which caused more of an attachment with neighbors. in the summer of '31
we had another addition to the family the last one on June 2nd A.M. 1831,
Solomon Nicholas Yeager was born in the Fall after Father and Mother
were down to Tennessee. There was one of my cousins came up to see us
from White County, Tennessee, whose name was Richard Broils who stayed
all winter and in the spring he went to New Orleans on a flat boat with
Uncle John Bailey with a boat load of corn, and returned and stayed
working at different places until September when he returned home on
horseback.

In the first settling of the country the people used to raise cotton,
but it was quite a troublesome job to get the seeds from the main fiber.
At first they picked them out with their fingers and that being so
tedious, they invented an easier way by turning two rollers the size of
a chair rung and fastening in a small upright post and turning vertically
would take out the seed by feeding the cotton between them. It took two
to run one but it seemed to be easier and faster than picking with
fingers for one pint of anight after supper was the stint. But there
still was an improvement in ginning cotton yet shortly after that, Isaiah
Wilson who lived down on Battle Row sent and got a set of cotton gin saws
and erected a gin house. He ginned the neighbors cotton either for a toll,
or so much a pound which was a great convenience for the neighborhood in
making cotton cloth and shortly after that domestics were brought on and
people got sale for their produce, so they began to be able to buy their
cotton wear and shirting and sheeting. Soon Mr. Wilson's gin had nothing
to do and rundown. When the people began to ship off their corn and pork
to New Orleans, they felt more independent and they could get the
necessities of life much easier, coffee coming down and many other things.
I can remember when coffee was 75 cents a pound and the first calico
dresses my sisters got out of Chancy Rose's store and they cost 50 cents
a yard. I remember an incident which occured in the fall of '33. We had
been clearing up a deadning we had north of the house, and after supper
we heard somebody hollowing up in the clearing where we had five in the
clearing, and we answered the men who was hollowing and after while they
came on to the house. They were men hunting my Father as Justice of the
Peace to get a State's warrent renewed being after some horse thieves.
After they had some supper prepared, they concluded to stay all night and
after they had eaten supper, as near as I can recollect at 10:00 o'clock
P.M. the meteors commenced falling or the stars as some would have it,
and it continued until after midnight near as my memory serves me it was
in the after part of the night before we all went to our beds. It was on
the 13th of November 1833, for the next morning I noted it down on the
ceiling up stairs, and I still have kept it in memory ever since.

In the winter of '30 my oldest brother Vincent Yeager was married to Miss
Sarah Miller and he bought a niece of land near Middletown and built on
it the site where the widow Weir now lives on. In the following December,
his oldest son was born on the 17th of that month Nicholas Yeager.
Middletown had been laid out in the year 1816 and several small stores
started, one by Jonas Lykins and another by Riley Paddock and tavern stand
by James Copeland and afterward kept by Stephen Taylor. In the mean time
John Frakes and David Canady started a pottery on the old state road
southwest of the town and run it a few years until it run down. In the
winter of '33, I hired out to a Mr. Daniel McDaniel to help build two flat
boats for James Johnston and Phillip Frankes, Jr., also hired at the same
time at eight dollars per month. We had a very severe cold winter and
McDaniel did not finish the boats, and Mr. Johnston hired the two Sanders
Bill and Jim to finish them, and they got them completed and loaded with
corn and got them out at the mouth of Greenfield Bayou. On the 23rd of
February they started the two boats for New Orleans and the hands were as
follows: Oscar Gilbert, John McCraney, Joe Stanley, Wm.H.H. Yeager and
Merit Smith, a colored man and Mr. Johnston for the main Steersman
expecting to lash the two boats together after we got out of the Wabash.
Oscar Gilbert was put in for as assistant Steersman, but Oscar loved his
whiskey too well to make a good hand. Without making a good Steersman, he,
McCraney and myself were put on one of the boats to man it out of the
Wabash, and we were running some of nights, and the second night I think
after we had started, Gilbert go so much of the overjoyful in him he was
incapable of managing the boat. There being plenty of the essence of corn
on our boat, the captin had bought a barrel of it and put it on our boat.
McCraney and myself had to manage the boat as best we could and when
running we run over a shag, but it happened to be point downwards and only
rocked the boat a little, not quite enough to capsize it. Captian Johnston
kept in hollowing distance of us and we would signal to each other and
just before day, the Captian landed his boat below us and he and Smith got
in the skiff and came to meet us and we commended pulling to land. But it
being dark we run one of the side oars into the bank and broke it loose
from the rowlock. Smith having hold of it when it fastened in the bank, it
run over him and injured him considerable but we ended the boat just below
the other one, and by this time day was breaking and we got our breakfast
and while we were eating it the lost oar come floating down, and the boys
run out with the skiff and brought it in and we fixed it on again. We were
just above Vincennes and after that we got along well until we got down just
above New Madrid on one evening the wind rose high about 4:00 o'clock P.M.
and we had to take a landing. Two of us was minus a hat after the storm,
myself and Joe Stanley. We lay by that night til 12:00 o'clock and the
Captain mistaking it for daybreak by the roosters crowing, pulled out and
we had not been running an hour until we come in hearing of danger in the
river. The Captain and McCraney were up on deck at the steering oar and
John wanted to know of him what it was that made so much roaring, and
Johnston supposed it to be a snag and John thought he had better pull,
but the captain being loath to pull he being a fearful man on water and
got almost in sight of the snag before he hollared oars. The boys all being
in the cabin but the two and when they got to their oars only give one or
two licks until she struck. It was a large cottonwood tree burried in the
sand on a bar with root partly out of water. One of the boats run outside
and the other cross the log, but it broke two or three of the bough
studding in and the lower plank. Johnston ran and jumped down in the cabin
but the water was running in 18 or 20 inches wide. I remember the first
word the Captain spoke was "Oh God boys she is gone," but he wanted all the
bedclothing brought to stop the hole, but no more than a bunch of straw.
She went right down. We had 1500 pounds of bacon on the boat and all of the
cooking utensils. Joe Stanley got out the bacon by getting a piece between
his feet and stooping down and getting hold of it with his hands, but he
had a bitter pill being in March, the water was very cold, and he got out
most of the cooking utensils. She only sunk down to the roofing. There were
some three or four hundred bushels of dry corn on top in the round of the
roofing. But it was impossible to do anything with it in the darkness of
the night and it foggy also and Johnston cut off the cable and steamline
and rowed off and left it all, though he proposed to give it to three of us
to make what we could out of it but we did not see fit to stay on board of
it. He started with 4000 bushels, 1800 bushels in one and 2200 in the other,
it was the largest boat that sunk. We all got on the smallest boat and run
on until daylight and run down to Blufords landing and landed there, and
waited until evening for a steamboat going north for three of us had to
return back home and it was McCraney, Joe Stanley and myself. The Captain,
Oscar Gilbert and Merit Smith were to go with the other boat. It was on the
point three miles above Madrid where we saw the other boat and the same
srping after that Miner Jones saw the boat as he came up from New Orleans
lodged on Plum Pount bottom upward. In the evening we got on a steamboat
going to Evansville, but Stanley and myself neither of us had a hat to wear,
but shortly after we got on the boat I was lucky enough to get an old beaver
hat from Mr. Arnet for 75 cents. Joe went bareheaded until we got up to
Princeton before he bought one. We walked from EvansviIle home and we got
home about the 10th of March. We only got ten dollars for our trip. We were
to have thirty-five dollars for the trip to New Orleans. We all blistered
our feet walking home. In two or three weeks after I got home, I hired out
to Holum Hutington for three months to put in his crop and tend it for
eight dollars per month, while he run a boat load of corn to New Orleans
for Charles Bentley, Charley Bennight and himself. I worked my time out and
a few days over and then went to work for John Strain helping to frame a
barn, but did not work long until he took the billious fever and was laid
up for four or five weeks. I then worked at home a while until in the fall
I worked some for Charley Bennight making rails.

Written by William H. H. Yager                            Letters written by this family
 
 

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