Eber Bradley - Chapter IV

Chapter IV

Ohio, Missouri, California

Young Eber Bradley, now in his twenties, was bringing French merino sheep into Ohio for the Bingham Brothers, sheep importers and breeders in Vermont, in the early 1850's and perhaps even before. The merino was valuable chiefly for its wool; the mutton was second-rate. The best wool was produced by sheep on light, sandy soils somewhat like the farmland Eber was to buy in Lucas County, Ohio. Hardy, they flocked together in the field without a shepherd. ¹ Marines were beautiful animals with convoluted horns on the males and great folds of hide covered with white wool.

Vermont farmers had gone in for sheep for decades. In 1840 the state had nearly six sheep for each inhabitant. ² Around the half-way mark in the nineteenth century, however, the burgeoning sheep ranches of the American west provided too much competition. The market for wool from the Green Mountain State was deteriorating, high time for Eber to look westward for a future in the business.

He had profited from experience with the Bingham Brothers, Alonzo and Merrill, of Cornwall, Addison County, Vermont. They were big-time operators. Alonzo had a flock of 1200 Spanish merinos in 1846 before he concentrated on the French breed. In an eight-month period in 1853-54, he sold over $43,000 worth of French merinos at an average price of $175 to out-of-state customers in Virginia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Missouri, and Ohio.³

Married on March 17,1854, Eber and Cyntha Pike Farrington moved to Ohio the same year along with his brother Harmon and his wife Sarah. They brought a carload of sheep from Vermont by rail and water to Toledo. From that port, as Eber's son Albert Josiah Bradley told the story in his Early Whitehouse History, Eber and Harmon drove the sheep to four eighty-acre tracts of Openings land two miles north of Whitehouse, Monclova Township.

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Other brothers followed for stays of varying lengths. Charles Sanford, farmer, school teacher, and minister; Hiram, farmer;

and Myron, hotel man, miner, and promoter. Cyntha's brother, Josiah Farrlngton, with his wife, Araadna Goodwin Farrington, moved in from the east to become a farmer, merchant, justice of the peace, and a lieutenant in the Civil War. Some twenty years later, Eber's sister Minnie (or Martha) Mariah and their parents moved to Lucas County for half a dozen years.

According to Early Whitehouse History, several of Eben Bradley's children got to the vicinity at about the same time. "Wesley and Roscious Bradley, cousins, moved up from Tiffin, Ohio and Cornelia Bradley Clark came in from Painesvilley Ohio."

The village of Whitehouse where the families congregated was named after a director of the Wabash Railroad, the arrival of which gave the village a reason for existing. Whitehouse acquired its postoffice in 1858 and was formally incorporated in 1867.

Shortly after Eber and Cyntha settled down in their new home, she had a letter (February 3, 1855) from a cousin, Mary Ann Elliott, twenty-two, in Jericho, Vermont congratulating them on having "so prospered in your journey." Family news shared equally in the letter with quotations from hymns and concerns about her "evil, sinful heart." Both Mary Ann (1832-1870) and her sister Almira F. Elliott (1838-1899), after attending Mount Holyoke College, taught in the Jericho area.

Cyntha's mother, Almira Hall Farrington (1804-1874). had been recently widowed by the death of Cyntha's father, Asahel Farrington, on January 20,1850. Of their eight children, Josiah was the eldest, born in 1827. William H. was born in 1828, Julia Amanda in 1830, Almira H. 1832, Cyntha Pike 1834, Luther H. )836, Lydia A. 1845, and Eliza E. 1847.

After Asahel's death, Almira and four of their children, from two-year-old Eliza to fifteen-year-old Cyntha, lived for a few years with Ezra and Eliza Elliott and their three children, Marv Ann, Lester, and Almira, in Jericho. Mrs. Farrington and several other children moved to Eber and Cyntha's in December 1885.

The sheep-raising brothers, Harmon and Eber, signed a six-page contract on April 1, 1855 describing the land they owned

jointly and listing their ovine possessions as 62 bucks, 129 ewes,

and 191 sucking lambs, all Spanish and French Merinos of pure blood.⁵

Shortly after his brothers left for Ohio, John C. Bradley, twenty-two, married. The announcement was in the Burlington Free Press on July 14,1855 under marriage notices: "Bradley, J. C., Williston-Hodge, Frances B., East Hardwick, married June 24, East Hardwick."

Cyntha's youngest brother, Luther, died in Whitehouse in 1855 at nineteen. Mary Ann Elliott wrote (September 2) expressing her sympathy. She had misgivings about others: "I hope this will suitably affect Hiram and Jason. Write to Hiram. He talks to me as he was a Universalist but I do not believe he will always be left to believe it."

The last six months of 1855, Eber was buying on credit from A. P. Reed, apparently a merchant in the vicinity. Purchases Included saleratus (later replaced by baking soda), molasses, sugar, tea, coffee, a pair of suspenders at $.38, five stove bricks, washboard for Cyntha and Mrs. Farrington at $.31, and two chamber pots at $1.25 each. Along with practical necessities, he also bought a Geography & Atlas for $.94.

From Underbill, Vermont, Eli Judson wrote on February 18, 1856 to "My dear children & friends out west, Eber & Cynthia & Mother & sis Harmon & Sarah & Charles & Hiram." (Charles Sanford was visiting his brothers at this time.) Along with his news of produce prices in Underbill and admonitions to lead a moral life, Eli morosely observed, "We are afraid from all accounts you have chosen a bad location, as bad as you could find in the state."

His misgivings about the farm were not baseless. In 1855, a year of heavy rains, many Lucas County farmers could not work their land. Swan Creek and Ten Mile Creek were clogged with sediment and logs.⁶

Their father included a stern parental warning about books. "Read no light literature so called, Fictitious Trash, it is worse than useless.'' His low opinion of fiction was shared by many. In 1857, Miss Frances Willard, who was to become famous as an educator and reformer, marked her eighteenth birthday by defiantly reading a book of fiction in fromt of her disapproving father, a thing entitled Ivanhoe.

Often, Eber left their farm in charge of Harmon while he toured far away from home in Ohio and Michigan to sell, buy, and trade in sheep or any kind of livestock that looked promising.

On the morning of April 10,1856 he was in Tiffin, Ohio writing to his "Dear Wife," asking her to write soon to Cousin John Wesley Bradley and his wife Mary, sending Mary some kind of pa ttern-or a promise of one. "She has got a new skirt pattern that she is going to draw off & send you in a letter." There was fond advice for his wife and her little sister, eight-year-old Eliza E. Farrington, "Dearest I hope that you will fat up a little while I am away this time & Eliza too."

Two weeks later, April 28, the sheep dealer was in Plymouth, thirty-five miles from Tiffin, his traveling speed being limited by business calls as well as by the walking speed of the flock of sheep. Having had no word from Cyntha in two weeks, he was miserable. He imagined them all ill and debated with himself whether to "send home plenty of beans & corn & stay away & provide for a wet day or leave my business and come home money-less."

He also fretted about the farm. Why hadn't Harmon written? Had Brother Charles gone? Had Harmon got money from Charles? Did Harmon trade horses with Allen? Finally, "As this paper is used up I will move my sheep along-my dear.''

But he could not end his letter home that easily. He wrote another page:

Monday noon yet. I have just moved under another tree. I have traded for a very pretty 5 year old mare. I will fetch her home before I trade her off. Her name is Jenny Lynd Belle Singer formerly Lady Whitefoot. (Jenny Lind, Swedish soprano, immensely popular, had made her American debut six years before.) She is worth $300 to $500. My Hock of sheep attract everybodys attention. The magnifficent bucks...the beautiful large ewes.. .& young, suckling lambs attract the attention of all.. .1 have got a new dress for you in my bags.

Still he could not bring himself to mail his letters without more news. He just sold a buck, taking a note for $35. He had bought it the previous winter for $10, estimated its keep at $.50, and decided the deal gave him close to a $25 profit. He was again suffering from morbid forebodings since Cyntha had not written for so long. Lightning might have struck the house and killed everybody in it. Or could everyone be too busy to write? His

somber mood may have been stemmed from the experiences of a man to whom he had sold sheep that April morning who had "moved into this country 3 years ago with a wife & ten children;

has lost his wife & six of his children—cause milk sickness etc." '

By the sixth of May he was in Huntington, Ohio, waiting for a prospective purchaser of one of his mares. Travel would be easier: "I have a nice Sulkey A Harness & a mare to travel with now . . . Mrs. Prichard has presented you my dear with a new dress. Mrs. Wright has sent thee two small cubes of maple* sugar.'' The best news for Eber was, "Shall leave my business & go home next week.'' That passage was heavily underlined.

A business note went to Harmon the following day with a note to Cyntha ending, "My wife dear, I am homesick as a caged Squirrell."

From Underbill, Charles wrote (June 10, 1856) that their father and mother were going to Jericho (four miles away) that afternoon to hear a cousin preach. John was in Burlington with his wife Frances (sometimes "Francese," nicknamed "Frank"). Albert and Henry, working for their father, and " Sister Marlah" were at home that day. "Beans for dinner and Clara Dixon to aid us in disposing of them." Miss Dixon was to become a sister-in-law when she married Myron several years in the future.

Charles continued that politics was a favorite topic of conversation. For himself, he was "a real Sumner man rather than a follower of Brooks." He was referring to Congressman Preston Brooks (South Carolina) and Senator Charles Sumner (Massachusetts). Brooks, furious over a strong and personal anti-slavery speech by Sumner, assaulted him with a cane in the Senate, invaliding the Senator for three years.

One brother's way of life worried Charles.

We had a line from Myron today that he had been quite sick..-Ah how little does he know when death will sever the heart strings and he be transported to his long home, either prepared or unprepared, to meet the Great Judge. Oh that his eyes might be opened that he might see his real condition.

He had words of advise to Eliza Farrington, "When you get married be sure to get a good smart Yankee who knows his own business and will mind it too.''

Yankees had the respect of many including Josh Billings, the nineteenth century humorist, who wrote, "Live Yankees are

chuck full of karacter and sissing hot with enterprise and curiosity." ⁷ Not so complimentary, another version of a typical Yankee appeared in a Wisconsin newspaper in 1855:

He is self denying, self relying, and into everything prying. He is a lover of piety, propriety, notoriety, and the Temperance Society.. .whose manifest destiny it is to spread civilization to the remotest corners of the earth.

In June, normally a pleasant month in northern Ohio, Cyntha and Eber combined a sheep-selling and relative-visiting trip. Harmon wrote to them on the 25th, "We calculate to get to the plowing for buckwheat next week." Hiram, working on the farm for a time, wrote on the 29th with mild complaints about Harmon giving too many orders, "The boss got sputtesky at me once heh! hen!"

Eber was back on the road, alone, that November. Six months pregnant with their first child, Cyntha wrote that C. M. Smith had sent Eber "twenty dollars in money." She added cautiously, "I have not told H. H. (Harmon) anything about the money and I ain't going to until you get home.''

William (soon to be known as Willie and, later, as Will) Wilson Bradley was born to Cyntha and Eber on February 26, 1857. A bright youngster, his childhood may have been even unhappier than those of his brothers and sisters to follow. Being a child of Eber Bradley's was not an experience of joy and peace.

The year was a continuation of farm and financial problems. Hard times followed the great Panic of 1857 during which a number of banks crashed and over-built railroads went under financially. A cousin wrote from Tiffin in December, "Their is no work to do and no money if we do work ... I have had only one Dollar in the last ten weeks.''

Myron was visiting the Whitehouse Bradleys that month. His host, on the road, got a letter from him dated December 9th: "I shall not tramp over the country until you return. I would like to hunt one day & kill something that wears hair or feathers as I have never hunted a day in my life." He did not think much of one of NW Ohio’s leading communities:

Yesterday Harmon and myself went to Maumee City to mill etc. One of the nastiest places a man ever drew breath in.. .judging from appearances the town is deserted except by the fallen of mankind.

The Miami-Erie and Wabash-Erie canal systems, which joined near Defiance, Ohio, had opened in the mid-1840's. Canals brought with them hordes of' 'Wild Irishmen" for labor, teen-age hoggees (who walked or rode the tpwpaths), crime, groggeries, and violence. Maumee, busy with the canal traffic, was apparently a cultural shock to a native of effete Vermont. However, there were still touches of the bucolic, even in big-city life; the area's metropolis, Toledo, was afflicted with herds of swine and multitudes of geese on principal streets as late as 1865. ⁸

The brothers' favorite, twenty-year-old sister Minnie, alerted Eber by letter on December 13th that she expected to visit them soon, "tor my highest aspirations are to fit myself for a teacher & go there.'' She was teaching a class of twenty-five, had a steady boarding place, and was "carried to & from school." One aspect of teaching amused her: "A comical sight to see me sitting at the desk, school-ma'am like, with big boys head & shoulders above me."

A paragraph in her letter gives us an authentic picture of a typical evening at the Bradley farm a hundred and twenty years ago:

Although so many miles separate us I can almost fancy I see you in your snug little home: you Aunt Almira with "specs" on piecing bed quilts or cutting carpet rags, Eber sitting by the stand reading his paper, Cynthia knitting some little red stockings for the darling "sonny", & you Aunt Eliza rocking Master Willie to sleep. I can almost hear you sing ' 'bye lo baby.'' Now isn't that a true picture?

While primarily a sheep dealer, Eber was dealing in almost anything that moved or could be moved. A customer from West Unity, Ohio, E. V. Richardson, complained (January 20, 1858) about a buck he had bought. Moreover, in Mr. Richardson's opinion, Eber had "got a bargain of me when you got that horse." Almost reluctantly, he admitted that least one purchase was not all bad, "I am very well satisfied with my watch it keeps very good time so far."

The Whitehouse Bradleys still had Myron as a guest in January, a visit that had now extended over a month. Cyntha wrote (January 25) to her husband in Waynesburg, Ohio that Myron had killed two deer and was then doctoring the horse. Willie, at eleven months, was trying to walk and say "Eliza." Less cheerfully, she wrote that not only was "Dr. Hayes getting

wrathey about you settleing with Jewell" but a Mr. Gregory "wants part if not all of that note.''

From Waynesburg on January 27--"What a mud hole this town is!"—Eber was again downcast. He tried to console himself with thoughts of their child. "Think of our Willie-he helps fill our hearth with Gladness--& he will help us & we will help him & we & he & Mother & Eliza will all help each other together.''

Four days later, "At Bogarts, Sunday January 31st 1858," he collected his first money since leaving home, five dollars, and sent a dollar of it home. Their continuing houseguest, apparently wearing out his welcome, was making him grumpy, "I expect that Sarah (Harmon's wife) feels pretty well any way as long as she can stuff Myron."

He was finding a "great deal of a stir about Spiritualism ... I saw spiritualists perform last evening (and) do not believe much

in it." The subject was in vogue in the 1850's and 1860's. Mrs. Abraham Lincoln received a medium in the White House for messages from her dead son Willie and seances enjoyed wide popularity throughout the country.

Charles Sanford Bradley had moved far from his native Vermont to Midway, Missouri, eight miles west of Columbia. He wrote (February 27, 1858) to his "Respected friends of Ohio" that he found teaching school to his liking. A teaching job for six or twelve months tempted him despite there being only a "small summer school."

That summer Eber returned to Vermont, visiting his family and friends and taking care of some business. Although this was to be his last visit for a number of years, he made repeated trips there in later years. His daughter, Grace Isabelle Bradley Lewis, pointedly recalled many years after that he never took Cyntha with him. ⁹

Lending money was a regular practice of his, often with sorry results. An Ohio cousin had sent excuses a few months before for not repaying a loan and a letter (April 11, 1858) from another cousin, in Iowa Falls, Iowa, reported with pride how beautiful his farm was, then adding that money was so hard to come by, however, that he could not repay his loan. Contritely he admitted, “It has been due for a long time and I know you want it bad.''

Cyntha's youngest sister, Eliza, the object of so much family concern and affection, died on April 20, 1858, probably of tuberculosis. A homeopathic physician in Toledo, Dr. F. Bigelow, wrote to Eber four day slater, "lam very sorry to hear of Eliza's death.. .She was too delicate and too far gone."

The high rate of mortality among children and young people is hardly believable today. The year of Eliza's death, Josiah and Araadna Farrington's two-year-old daughter, Emma, as well as another of Araadna's sisters, Julia Amanda, twenty-five, also died. About the same time, an infant child born to Harmon and Sarah Bradley, named Myron P. Bradley, survived for only a short period.

Eber had started dabbling in medicine, ordering homeopathic medications from Dr. Bigelow and getting pointers from him. The Toledoan recommended medicines for little Willie, warning emphatically, "You cannot be too careful about his getting cold feet." Another recommendation, "Slipery Elm tea is always good if it can be relished.''

The theory of homeopathy was that diseases could be cured with minute doses of drugs from plant, animal, and mineral sources which, when given to healthy persons, produced symptoms similar to the disease being treated. Ralph Waldo Emerson and William Cullen Bryant were among the believers. Although a homeopathic college in Cleveland was offering courses in the 1850's and the theory was well received throughout the United States for decades, there is no reason to believe that Eber had any formal medical training. Nevertheless, he was to adopt the designations of "Doctor "and" M.D." within ten years or so.

His father chided him in a letter from Underbill in June 1858. "We hear often from John, Henry, Charles, Myron, Hiram, but not often from you and Harmon." His advice for Harmon was prophetic,' 'We think the West (Ohio) is no place for Harmon.''

Mid-year in 1858, Eber was huckstering his stock in the vicinity of Grand Rapids, Michigan when his long-time houseguest, Myron, wrote from the farm. He and Josiah Farrington had mowed sixteen acres of grass, pitched it all, and ' “ raked some & got in some grain.'' Cyntha and Willie had been "down with the Ague.. .both now feeling quite smart.''

Ague was widespread, the Maumee River valley having a special notoriety for the disease. Although the common view was, "Heain'tsick, he's only got the ager," one victim described it in more horrific terms

You felt as though you had gone through some kind of collission, thrashing-machine or jarring-machine, and come out not killed, but next to it.

Doggerel paid tribute to the Lucas County variety of the ailment. A few lines will serve as a sample: "On Maumee, on Maumee" "Tis Ague in the fall; "The fit will shake them so,-It rocks the house and all."

In his letter with the news of ague in the family, Myron had tried to achieve a palatable combination of good and bad news. Eber, lonesome and distant from his loved ones, could not see it that way at all. "Disasterous & disagreeable" was his description in his letter to his wife two weeks later from Michigan. "All to be sick with the Ague & Clover not cut till the 20th of July" dismayed him. The nascent physician urged them all to "take medicine right along"... "take the Cathartic pills to purify the liver & Cleanse the stomach.''

Traveling with his Ohio friend, Henry Bogart, Eber shared one of their adventures with Cyntha. "Last week my Dear I confess that Bogart Awe stripped naked" to swim in two splendid lakes;

they had also taken swims in Clear Lake, St. Joe River, and Grand River. The previous night he had dreamed about Cyntha only to awaken the next morning to find he was still away from his family "peddling sheep."

In the same mail he sent brief notes to Harmon, complaining about tardiness in cutting the clover; to Myron, wondering why he and Josiah had not started work earlier; and to Hiram, assuring him that Strongs medicine had broken up an attack of ague for Eber without hindering business for a moment.

Out in Midway, Missouri, Charles was prospering at teaching school along with his farming in September of '58. He was also lending out money at ten percent interest which, he made clear, "is legal here," only regretting that he did not have $10,000 more to lend. He had sent money to help his father and Minnie Mariah with a promise of more if they needed it. Minnie was eager to join him in Missouri.

The inevitable parting of their ways had finally come for Harmon and Eber. Charles thought the separation a good idea for both of them. "I admire your action to settle amicably & each go his way. Better it is to work on ones own hook.'' Having been on the scene of the troublesome partnership, he knew what he was writing about.

School teacher and part-time preacher though he was, Charles had come across a sure cure for snake-bite:

I will give you a very sure receipt for a rattlesnake bite "Viz", Drink all the whiskey you can pass down as any quantity will not make you drunk until after the poison has been completely counteracted. It is all that I know of whiskie's being good for. Try it the quicker the better after being bitten. Men have been known to drink 2 qts under the circumstances. There is danger in its use at all times except when snake bit.

Lots of Americans of the time had faith in whiskey as a cure for many disabilities. An advertisement in 1872 for Duffy's Pure Malt Whiskey pronounced it a cure for consumption, malaria, and typhoid fever among other ailments, assuring prospective imbibers that it overcame "General Debility, Exhaustion, Builds Up the System, and Destroys Germs."

While Charles was discovering old Missouri folklore about a snake-bite cure, Eber was selling sheep. In a letter home on September 15,1858, he identified his location with particularity:

Somewhere in Crawford Co. between Decalb & Annapolis at Mr. Harfords that married the widow Quinn whose husband Mr. Quinn fell off a barn & got killed, the son of old Mr. & Mrs. Quinn. Born in this world & came to his end by falling off his own barn frame when raising it-Being subject to troubles & pleasures of this world with us all-My Dearest, My Cyntha my love...

He wished "rapid speed to H Hand family in getting ready and getting off," a wish surely shared by Harmon and Sarah as they returned to Vermont after four frustrating years of the partnership in Ohio. Eber expected to be in Tiffin that week where he would see his Uncle Eben. The trip looked like a success, "Am picking some money, full more than I expected."

When he was at home, Eber's reading habits Included, at least, repeated reading of his Bible, which he interlined and made notations in, and the Toledo Blade newspaper. The Blade started as a weekly in 1835, introduced a tri-weekly edition eleven years later, and went daily in 1848 thanks to local prosperity from booming canal and rail traffic as well as improved telegraphic

services, ¹⁰ Eber subscribed to the Weekly Blade, holding an 1858 receipt for his subscription at one dollar the year. At some time, according to his own notes, he was the Whitehouse correspondent for the paper.

Lydia A. Farrington asked her sister Cyntha, in October, for a copy of the "verses Myron composed on that dear dear Sister of our that now lies cold in the grave." Lydia, thirteen and attending the academy in Williston, was growing up: ' 'I am so tall and wear long dresses."

Occasionally, Eber hired a husky farm hand from Waynesburg--"a mud hole," if Eber's description earlier that year was accurate—in Crawford County, James L. Clark, eighteen years old, who explained in a letter (November 19, 1858) that he had been too ill to travel to Whitehouse. "I had a good shake of the ague.'' Agreeing with his prospective employer's high opinion of the efficacy of a particular patent medicine, he was wishing for "a box of Strongs pills." He wanted to buy a good horse "worth about one hundred dollars." Or he would trade his sheep, his watch, and work out the rest.

Uncle Eben from Tiffin visited his Whitehouse family and friends the latter part of 1858. After his visit, back home in Tiffin, Eben wrote to "Eber Bradleys Family" (January 18, 1859), expecting to see Eber before long. Eben offered an attraction for a traveler to Tiffin, "You can have a Plank road within 3 miles of Nevada.''

Travelers appreciated plank roads, vast improvements over the mud and dirt roads which were ruined by winter snows and spring rains. Eight-foot planks laid crosswise on joists of heavy timbers provided a firm surface, although the other half of the road was dirt, in all kinds of weather. They were welcomed throughout the north for about a dozen years until macadam surfaces and railroads became common.

A Bradley relative wrote to Eber on another subject of high interest of those decades, inventions and patents. He was looking into a patent offered by a Mr.Zeiglar for a "Fly Brush which will keep off all flies from the Table or Cradle or beds of sickness for twenty-four hours by winding up once. Lifewise Musqultoes. Rich men have offered their money freely to Mr. Z. He says they cannot come in as he has lost thousands by their rascality in his Pattent Brake business and Chooses now a poor man but a Brother Oddfellow."

Perhaps Mr. Z. was a conscientious Inventor and patent salesman. Patent-right swindlers, however, sometimes took advantage of unsophisticated investors. One ingenious inventor from Put-in-Bay, Ohio announced that he had perfected a shoe which enabled him to walk on water. A popular song had fun at the

expense of such impractical patent-holders:

While some other fellows who haven't a cent Are on a most wonderful patent intent;

And perpetual motion they'd like to invent:

But they can't do it, you know.; ¹¹

John C. Bradley and his wife Frances had been looking forward to their first trip to Ohio to visit brothers, cousins, and in-laws. Her unexpected death, as he wrote on January 20, 1859, obliterated that plan and "that is past.''

Although he was in Whitehouse, Myron elected to write an unusual letter (January 28) to Eber and Cyntha, all about his nephew and their only child, Willle, not quite two years old.

Willie is an uncommon smart boy and if properly trained will reach a high position...I fear you allow him to study to much. Five minutes at once is ample. When he asks you to play do not get his book and commence drilling him in that because he loves it, but play with him or learn him to play by himself...You notice when a little excited how he trembles & when asked where the letter 0 is after having perused the book for some time his little finger trembles with a sort of fear that be cannot find it as soon as he wishes.

The advice may have been admirable, even his uncle's heartfelt duty; that Eber appreciated it is highly unlikely.

Perhaps Myron was emboldened to counsel his older brother and his wife on how to Improve the training of their son because he was going all the way in the family's westward migration-to California.

He had a letter (February 28, 1859) from James Kllgore, Jackson County, "Mountain home one mile north of Jacksonville," in Oregon, which that year was to become the thirty-third State. The letter was full of how-to information on "the best mode of crossing the plains as I have crossed once with a family." Kilgore, from Pennsylvania and Stark County, Ohio, had made the journey from Ohio, starting on April 11, 1854, getting to Oregon on October 1. He and his wife Mary made the trip the hard way, with six children ranging in age from two to fourteen. ¹²

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The Oregonian had plenty of solid advice. Admitting that mule teams were speedier, he still recommended oxen as cheaper and safer. Either mules or oxen were preferable to horses. The driver, Kilgore warned, "must walk the whole time and give his undivided attention to his team." Wearing apparel should be woolen because they would "see frost and even ice in August" in the mountains.

He thought little of one traveling nicety, "This thing of having spring wagons for families is all in my eye." In his long letter he underlined only one passage for special emphasis, "every man and woman minding their own business."

If Myron's head was in the clouds over his move to the far west, Eber was having mundane problems with money and notes, too little of the former and too many of the latter. James W. Day wrote from Brooklyn, Michigan in February, "It is now about 16 months since you gave me your Note for money that ought of been paid at the time the Note was given and no money yet you complain of hard times."

A sheep supplier of Eber's in Northfield, Vermont, John Gregory, asked him in March if he would be interested in buying Morgan horses, that elite breed of which Vermont was justly proud and the only mounts used by the state's famous Civil War cavalry. There is no evidence that he accepted the invitation to get into the Morgan horse business.

As she and Charles had planned for months, Minnie Mariah had joined him in Missouri. And with them when she wrote to "Dear Brothers and Sisters" on April 21, 1859 was California-bound Myron. Being with two of her brothers, "I am happy as a young clam or a runway tinker." The stereotyped expression was that clams were especially happy at high tide. Minnie preferred variations on the cliche.

She and Myron had ridden from Jamestown, where she was boarding, to California City, about twelve miles away, "on horse back, of course."

Although Minnie (or "Kittle" as Myron and some Missouri friends were calling her) admitted that the three of them had been "enjoying a general jollification all about two Counties," she would be happier "when I hear the still better news that Eber and

Harmon are friends and brothers once more.''

With Minnie's letter was one from Myron praising her rising reputation as a teacher. Socially, "She is the queen of the south and all who are so fortunate as to make her acquaintance acknowledge her superiority of mind, ease in company, fluency in speech. Grace of manners and brilliancy in polite circles... The darkies all love her and jump to do for her all she wishes.'' Even allowing for the bias of a loving brother, there are many evidences that Minnie was indeed fluent, keen witted, and independent, with flashes of refreshing tartness now and again.

Myron planned to start for California the first week in May, the journey to take three or four months. "Charly is to buy my watch and I guess I will have plenty of money to get through without borrowing."

Eber was head over heels in financial manipulations so complicated as to defy understanding 120 years later. He tried to make everything perfectly clear in a letter (April 25, 1859) to "Mrs. Hakes (and to all Whom it may concern)." Mr. Hakes had bought land from a Mr. Morse, giving three notes for the balance. How Eber got himself involved in the transaction in unclear, but a few highlights of his clarifying statement will give the flavor of the fiscal soup he was in:

There is a note In Fulton County given to one Clark of $110 for the oxen that I have taken of said Hakes on said land with both of our names attached to it that Mr. Hakes is to pay. Also one of 20$ for the cow that I have taken of Mr. Hakes on said land payable to one Cowles in Fulton County that said Hakes is to pay both of our names on it. There is a note of about 50$ that we both signed at Hanny's sale for a wagon that I am to pay. There is a note of Seventy three dollars agst A. Shepler & Wife, Judgement note that although signed over to said Hakes by me still the avails are coming to me.

Notes payable must have been flying in great flocks around northwestern Ohio and southern Michigan wherever he transacted his varities of businesses.

In June 1859, even irascible Eber may have had a few pleasant contemplations. Harmon was back in Vermont, Myron was headed for far-off California, and Cyntha was pregnant with their second child.

Myron was certainly on his way. On the third of June he was at Manhattan, Kansas Territory, "about ten miles below Ft. Riley on the Kansas River." His party members were ferrying their stock and goods, a ten- to sixteen-hour job. The route ahead would be north by way of the Big Blue River, through Seward County,

Nebraska (where Charles, Albert, and John would settle" a quarter of a century later) to Fort Kearney, Nebraska, thence by the Platte and North Platte rivers to Fort Laramie, Wyoming, and Idaho. A few miles west of Soda Springs in Idaho was the Big Bend of the Bear River where many California-bound wagon trains left the Oregon Trail to head southwest to the Humboldt River and west across the Sierra Nevadas. "

Such caravans normally traveled fifteen or more miles a day, taking .sixteen to eighteen weeks for the trip. Shiftless one, loitering and losing time, might take six months. As we have seen, the one Myron was with planned to get there in three or four months.

He had seen the remains of six Pawnees a few days before he wrote, "their clothes all torn to rags (and) their bodies burned," victims of another tribe from which the Pawnees had tried to steal ponies. Every day they met parties of travelers returning from Pike's Peak which he described as "the great Humbug or Hum without the Bug.''

His skepticism about the Pike's Peak rush was borne out by the facts. Gold and silver strikes had been reported in the mountains near the Peak that year, 1859. "Pike's Peak or Bust" was the popular slogan among the 100,00 "Fifty-Niners" in Pike's Peak country by the end of June. This gold rush was a fiasco, but thirty years later Myron was to be active in the Cripple Creek, Colorado gold boom which was the real thing.

His parents had received a bitter letter from Eber containing harsh accusations against his absent brothers, Harmon and Myron. His father destroyed it, assuring his eldest son (June 13) that Harmon and Sarah, back in Vermont, had not uttered a word to injure his charater. They had complained only of hard work in Ohio, hard weather, hard seasons, and hard times. About the debts that were pressing Eber, his father sympathised, "I have been through the mill, ground up, and still live with better prospects." He once again urged his son to "leave the sterile soil you now occupy" in favor of hiring out "for a thousand dollars a year in some business."

Eli himself was traveling away from home all week long, selling stoves, getting back Saturday nights to attend church

services on Sunday. He closed his letter affectionately, "A snow ball and a rose to Cynthia."

Eber's some-time farm laborer, James Clark, shared local news from Waynesburg in a June 19th letter. "The folks around here is braggain up your sheep at a grate rate.'' Also, * 'We have a little kitten that has onley three legs," closing with a happy thought, "I suppose Willie is big enough to choke a cat now.''

Minnie Mariah wrote (July 5, 1859) from Jamestown that Vermont did not seem too far away. "I hear the boat bells at Sandy Hook pier (on the steamboat-loaded Missouri River) one mile from here, and I think—how quickly if I should choose, I could take boat to St. Louis and from there Vt-ward!" Travel was becoming an "absorbing passion . . .Maybe I'll go to Oregon before I go home to Vt.''

She had heard from Myron. "He dedicates his Journal to me." Minnie was "almost sorry I did not go too. So much of novelty might have been experienced and new sights have gladdened my wondering eyes." Here was no squeamish Victorian schoolmarm:

His last speaks of several hundred Indians of the Rapahoes, who had just returned from war with the Pawnees. I would have enjoyed it so much.

At the sheep farm, Eber and Cyntha's second child was born on October I&7' 1859, named Albert Josiah after one of Eber's brothers with whom he was not quarreling at the time and Cyntha's brother. The baby inherited his mother's red hair which trait continues here and there into the following generations.

The year of Albert Josiah's .birth was a year of .ferment and excitement. The Age of Petroleum was born when Edwin L. Drake brought in America's first oil well in Pennsylvania;

Darwin's Origin of Species was published; John Brown and his band of believers captured the U. S. Arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia on October 16th for which he was hanged before the year was out; Abraham Lincoln made several speeches in Ohio supporting the Republican candidate for governor, "tall, dark-visaged, angular, awkward, with character written in his face," the Cincinnati Enquirer reported.

Early in December, Ell Judson wrote that their Thanksgiving supper had been small, only two of their nine children present They had heard from one of the missing, Myron, the previous week, safely arrived in California. Timothy Meigs wanted to pay Eber twenty dollars of the money owed. "Who," Eh asked his son, "shall I pay it to of your creditors?"

Text Box:

Albert E. Bradley (1838-1907), Mary and three of their children.