January
first '53. Snow was two feet on a level and the cold was terrible.

We went with our horses and wagon to Chicago from Peoria. There we
bought a bobsled and put the wagon box on it, adding a strong canvas
top. We put in a stove and made the twenty-one day journey very
comfortably. We came up through Wisconsin. The only spot I remember was
Black River Falls. The woods abounded with game. There were thousands of
deer and partridges. We killed what we could eat only. We saw many bear
tracks. We crossed the Mississippi at St. Anthony and arrived at our
cabin.

Our house was only boarded up but father got out and banked it with snow
to the eaves, pounding it down hard so it would hold. It made it very
comfortable.

In the early days ammunition was very expensive for the farmer boys who
loved to shoot. They found that dried peas were just as good as shot for
prairie chicken, quail and pigeons, so always hunted them with these.
The passenger pigeons were so plentiful that the branches of trees were
broken by their numbers. They flew in such enormous flocks that they
would often fly in at open doors and windows. They obscured the sun in
their flight. Looked at from a distance, they would seem to extend as
far up as the eye could reach. I have brought down thirty at a shot.
They could be knocked off the branches with a stick while roosting and
thousands of them were killed in this way. In these early days, they
brought only 10c or 20c a dozen. The ducks used to congregate in such
large numbers on Rice Lake that their flight sounded louder than a train
of cars.

Mrs. Mary Weeks--1853, Ninety years old.

We came to Minnesota in 1853. My husband went up to our claim and broke
from twenty-five to forty acres and sowed rutabagas. It was on new
breaking and virgin soil and they grew tremendous. We moved there and
bought stock. They seemed never to tire of those turnips and grew very
slick and fat on them. We, too, ate them in every form and I thought I
had never tasted anything so good. They were so sweet and tasty. The
children used to cut them in two and scrape them with a spoon. We said
we had "Minnesota apples" when we took them out to eat. It did seem so
good to have real brooms to use. In Maine, we had always made our brooms
of cedar boughs securely tied to a short pole. They were good and
answered the purpose but a new fangled broom made of broom straw seemed
so dressy. I can well remember the first one of this