for supper.

A large sheet iron stove down stairs was kept red hot in the winter and
a man was employed to prevent people, coming in from the icy
out-of-doors, from rushing too near its heat and thus suddenly thawing
out their frozen ears, cheeks or noses.

When in 1858 or '59 my father sold the hotel, its purchaser mortgaged
it, paying an interest rate of twenty-four per cent a year.

On July Fourth, 1856 the Barron House was formally opened on such a
scale of splendor that the days of the Faribault House were numbered.

The Scott brothers built the first saw mill in Faribault. It was located
on the spot where the new addition to the shoe factory now is. The
machinery was brought in from St. Louis and came up by boat to Hastings
at an enormous cost and it took twelve yoke of oxen to haul the boiler
from that point. They were a long time getting it from Cannon City, as
they had to cut a road through the dense woods. A party whom they met
after dusk, when he saw the huge cylinder, exclaimed, "Well that is the
largest saw log I ever saw."

Mr. J. Warren Richardson--1854.

I came with my father and mother from St. Anthony where we had lived for
a short time, to Faribault and settled in Walcott where we secured a log
house and a claim for $75.00. This was on Mud Creek. While at St.
Anthony my father had made us such furniture as we needed. From the saw
mill he got plank fourteen feet in length, which he cut into strips. He
then bored holes in the corners and inserted pieces of pine, taken out
of the river, for legs, and thus we were provided with stools. For
tables we used our trunks. We slept on ticks full of prairie hay on the
floor. These were piled in the corner daytimes and taken out at night.

Our house on the farm contained one room twenty feet square and as my
father used to say "A log and a half story high." We were ourselves a
family of five besides three boarders and a stray family of three
appearing among us with no home, my mother invited them also to share
our scanty shelter. At night she divided the house into apartments by
hanging up sheets and the two families prepared their meals on the same
cookstove. We made our coffee of potatoes by baking them till there was
nothing left in them but a hole, and then crushing them. It was
excellent. In winter my father cut timber for his fences. He loaded it
onto the bobs which I, a ten year old boy, would then drive back,
stringing the logs along the way where