e winter of 1855 that an agent, a real live agent,
appeared in our midst to tell us of the remarkable qualities of a new
oil called kerosene. He said if he could be sure of the sale of a
barrel, it would be brought to St. Paul and delivered to any address on
or before Aug. 15. I have the lamp now, in which part of that first
barrel was burned.

Mrs. Edmund Kimball--1855.

My father, Freeman James, left his home in New York state and came to
Hasson, Minn., in 1854. The next year he decided to go after his family
and so wrote my mother to be ready to start in August. My mother got
everything in readiness to start, but for some reason my father was
delayed in getting back home, and my mother, thinking that she had
misunderstood his plans in some way, decided to start anyway, and so she
loaded our belongings on the wagon and we started alone. I was only
eleven years old, and well I remember how great an undertaking it seemed
to me to leave our pleasant home and all my playmates and start without
father on such a long trip. But when we arrived at Dunkirk, where we
took boat to cross Lake Erie, we found father, and so made our journey
without mishap. We arrived by boat in St. Paul in August '55 and started
at once for Hasson, stopping that first night at the home of Mr.
Longfellow, at a place called Long Prairie. We were most cordially
received and found other settlers stopping there for the night too,
which made the house so crowded that they were obliged to make beds on
the sitting room floor for all the children. After we were put in bed,
still another traveler arrived, a man who was expecting his family and
had come part way to meet them. Just for fun the family told him that
his family had arrived and pointed to us children on the floor. He was
overjoyed, and came and turned the covers down to see us. Only for a
moment was he fooled but shook his head and said we were none of his.

I shall never forget the shock I felt at the first view I had of our new
home. It was so different from what we had left behind, that to a child
of my age, it seemed that it was more than I could possibly endure. It
was growing dark and the little log cabin stood in the deep woods, and
the grass was so long in the front yard, it seemed the most lonely place
in the world. And dark as it was, and as long as I knew the way back to
be, I was strongly tempted and half inclined to start right off to my
dear old home. This was all going through m