rm where St. Louis Park now is. I was watchman for
the old mill in St. Anthony the winter of '53. It was forty degrees for
weeks. I kept fire in Wales bookstore, too, to keep the ink from
freezing.

I made $34.00 an acre on the first flax I sowed. A man had to be a
pretty good worker if he got $15.00 a month and found in '53. Most farm
hands only got $12.00.

I used to run the ferry with Captain Tapper. It was a large rowboat.
Once I had eight men aboard. When I got out in the river, I saw the load
was too heavy and thought we would sink. "Boys", I said, "don't move. If
you do, we'll all go to the bottom." The water was within one inch of
the top of the boat but we got across.

I graded some down town, on Hennepin Avenue when it was only a country
road. There was a big pond on Bridge Square. The ducks used to fly
around there like anything early in the morning.

I cut out the hazelbrush on the first Fair Ground. It was on Harmon
Place about two blocks below Loring Park. We cut a big circle so that we
could have a contest between horses and oxen to see which could draw the
biggest load. The oxen beat. I don't remember anything else they did at
that Fair.

Mr. James M. Gillespie--1853.

I remember that our first crop on our own farm at Camden Place in 1853
was corn and pumpkins. The Indians would go to the field, take a
pumpkin, split it and eat it as we do an apple with grunts of
satisfaction.

There was an eight acre patch of wild strawberries where Indians had
cultivated the land on our new claim about where our house stands today.
They were as large as the small cultivated berries with a most delicious
flavor. Everyone that we knew picked and picked but wagon loads rotted
on the ground.

A good strong, quick stepping ox could plow two acres a day but much
oftener they plowed one and one half acres only. The pigeons flew so low
in '54 that we could kill them with any farm implement we happened to be
using. They seemed to be all tired out. We killed and dried the breasts
for winter.

Miss Nancy Gillespie--1853.

I remember a pear shaped wild plum which grew along the river bank. It
was as large as the blue California plum and of a most wonderful color
and taste. I have never seen anything like it and have not seen this
variety of late years.

Mr. Isaac Layman--1853.

My father came to Minnesota in '52 and bought the land where Layman's
Cemetery now is for $1,000.00 of Mr. Dumar. He returned for us