the unexplored country we were to enter. We
hired a man with a team and a covered farm wagon to drive us across the
prairies to Galena. One week was occupied in this part of the journey.
This same man three months later drove a herd of cattle from his home to
St. Anthony Falls. From Galena we took a steamboat to St. Paul where we
were met by my grandfather, Washington Getchell, who had come west with
his family three years previous. He brought us to St. Anthony Falls with
his ox team. Among our luggage was a red chest. Every family in those
days owned one, and I remember in unloading our things from the boat,
the bottom came out of the chest scattering the contents about. Men,
women and children scrambled to pick up the things but mother always
said one half of them were lost.

On the second of July, 1851 we arrived, receiving a hearty welcome from
our relatives. My grandfather had built the second frame house erected
in the town.

Early in the winter of 1854 at nine at night I was crossing the
unfinished bridge one evening with a schoolmate named Russell Pease. We
had been over to see his father who lived on the west side of the river.
When we had reached the middle, Russell slipped and fell through onto
the ice beneath. I ran back and down the bank to where he was lying, but
he was unconscious and I could not lift him, so I ran back for help,
found some men and they carried him home.

One day, before there was a bridge of any kind across the river, my
father carried two calves over on the ferry, to pasture on the west
shore. Several days later as he stood on the river bank, he noticed
something moving on Spirit Island, the small island below the falls.
Going out in a boat he found the two calves running about seeking a way
to reach the east bank. They had evidently become homesick and started
to swim across above the falls, and in some miraculous manner had been
carried over the falls and landed safely on the island. Father rescued
them, bringing them to shore in a boat.

I remember the greatest excitement each summer was the arrival of the
caravans of carts from the Red River of the North. They would come down
to disperse their loads of furs, go into camp in St. Anthony and remain
three or four weeks while selling their furs and purchasing supplies.
The journey and return required three months.

In the spring of 1853 our family moved from St. Anthony to a farm in
Brooklyn Center, about nine miles out from town.