entrance, the barn resembling a huge hill. There was not a horse or a vehicle that passed our place for over six months.

I had hired out to work for Mr. Bradshaw at fifteen dollars per month the next summer, and as spring approached my shoes began to show holes in the toes. We did not know what an overshoe was. I had cut grainsacks in two and tied around each foot and that answered the purpose. Having thirty cents to my name, I went to Battle Creek to see if I could get a pair of shoes on time, at George Logan's, but I could not, and yet he was well acquainted with Bradshaw and knew I would get my money as soon as I started working. I then went over to Mr. Claus' (deceased) father of Mr. Paul Nordwig of Norfolk, an old Battle Creek shoemaker, and with the thirty-three cents I bought two wax ends and a piece of leather and mended my own shoes, and saved the price of my shoes for the dainty little garments my wife was to fashion the coming summer.

Time went on. We both were busy and happy, but knew not what happiness meant until the arrival of a little daughter in the late fall. I believe I was the happiest daddy in Nebraska. We called her Frances.

About that time new settlers began coming in, many with families. We began to feel the need of a new school house, as the one my wife had attended was built of logs, covered with dirt and three miles away. So a few of us called a meeting to devise a way and the means with which to build a new one. Mr. Bradshaw donated the land to build on, one-half mile from my place which pleased me. We built and called it Deer Creek, No. 10.

I was elected on the board, and served off and on for thirty-five years. My wife always boarded the teachers, and this made us extra work, for I always had to take them to and fro on bad days, and to Madison when they had to attend teacher's examinations.

Along with all I still worked at my trade and when I was away from home my wife would feed the hogs, milk the cows, picket them out, as we had no fences, and lead them sixty rods to water every day.

At this time I had a team of broncos. I broke a strip around forty acres thinking to plant trees around and later tacking on wire for a pasture, but my few hogs did so well that they made me money, and I not only fenced the forty, but the entire eighty, built a new barn, dug a well, and having the pasture fenced began taking in cattle and horses for other people. It was then that hard work started indeed, to pull water out of a forty foot well every day for so much stock was a job. A Mr. Miller of Tilden happened along one day and agreed to put me up a mill so reasonable I took him up. The windmill did service for thirty-three years, and was the best investment I ever made. I could now rest during noon hour, and it was so much better for the house.

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