Jacob a Boy of the 1800S

Carol Bender

Description

Jacob a Boy of the 1800s is another story about Jacob Pindell Prickett that I am retelling. I retold Jacob’s story of his trip to the California Gold Rush when he joined a wagon train going west in my book In Quest of Gold.
Jacob was my great-grandfather, and his wagon-train experience had been handed down in the family, from his daughter Elsie, my grandmother; to her daughter Grace,
my mother; to my eldest sibling, my brother Kenneth; and to me.
After the story was published, I received this story, “Childhood Days,”
about Jacob’s boyhood days, from a distant cousin who had acquired the story the same way in her branch of the family tree.
When she discovered In Quest of Gold, she contacted me and sent me this story of Jacob’s boyhood. I found it very interesting and thought others would like it as well, especially those living in Northern Indiana, where the story takes place so very long ago.
Jacob was born in 1836, and Indiana had only been a state for twenty years,
having achieved statehood in 1816. It is amazing to read how hard they had to work to survive, and yet they found enjoyment in everyday living. This story truly makes you understand where the saying “Necessity is the mother of invention” came from.

Sujets

• Histoire
• History

Informations

• Publié par: Xlibris US
• Date de parution: 11 juin 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9798369400296
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Jacob a Boy of the 1800s
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Carol Bender and Lorrie Wood

Copyright © 2023 by Carol Bender and Lorrie Wood.
 
Library of Congress Control Number:
2023910867
ISBN:
Hardcover
979-8-3694-0031-9
 
Softcover
979-8-3694-0030-2
 
eBook
979-8-3694-0029-6
 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.
 
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
 
 
 
 
 
 
Rev. date: 06/08/2023
 
 
 
 
 
Xlibris
844-714-8691
www.Xlibris.com
852457
CONTENTS
About the Story
Jacob an Indiana Boy in the 1800s
 
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
 
Afterword
About Jacob Pindell Prickett
Glossary

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
To all the descendants of the Prickett and Ott families.
About the Story
J acob a Boy of the 1800s is another story about Jacob Pindell Prickett that I am retelling. I retold Jacob’s story of his trip to the California Gold Rush when he joined a wagon train going west in my book In Quest of Gold .
Jacob was my great-grandfather, and his wagon-train experience had been handed down in the family, from his daughter Elsie, my grandmother; to her daughter Grace, my mother; to my eldest sibling, my brother Kenneth; and to me.
After the story was published, I received this story, “Childhood Days,” about Jacob’s boyhood days, from a distant cousin who had acquired the story the same way in her branch of the family tree.
When she discovered In Quest of Gold , she contacted me and sent me this story of Jacob’s boyhood. I found it very interesting and thought others would like it as well, especially those living in Northern Indiana, where the story takes place so very long ago.
Jacob was born in 1836, and Indiana had only been a state for twenty years, having achieved statehood in 1816. It is amazing to read how hard they had to work to survive, and yet they found enjoyment in everyday living. This story truly makes you understand where the saying “Necessity is the mother of invention” came from.

Northeast Indiana Townships by County
 
Map produced by the Indiana Business Research Center, IU Kelley School of Business
Jacob an Indiana Boy in the 1800s
J acob an Indiana boy in the 1800s is a story about Jacob Pindell Prickett who was born on May 10, 1836, in Jackson Township, Indiana. The story is told in Jacob’s own words as he recalls the events of his childhood. He was seventy when he wrote “Childhood Days.” He was editor and owner of a newspaper, so he had the story printed on newsprint then took an old book and pasted the story on the pages of the book. I am retelling his story in hopes that young and old will find it as interesting as I did and marvel at how people survived the hardships when this country was first being settled.
So Many Years Ago
So many years ago,
girls wore dresses,
and boys wore pants of wool;
shoes were made of cowhide, and
socks were homespun too, and
children did a half day’s work
before they left for school.
Girls took music lessons
and learned the spinning wheel,
practicing late and early
on spinet, swift, and reel;
boys rode the horse to mill
with many miles to go,
hurrying off before daylight
so many years ago.
People rode to meetings,
in sleds instead of sleighs,
and wagons rode as easy
as buggies in the day.
All oxen drew the wagons,
though going was quite slow;
but people lived not half as fast
so many years ago.
Oh! So many memories
of the way things used to be:
the Wilson’s patent stove,
bought and paid for
by cloth the girls had wove;
and the neighbors all wondered
when we got the thing to go.
“Oh no,” they said, “t’would it burst
and kill us all!”
in those years so long ago.
Yes, everything has changed so much
by the tampering of men who
are always trying to improve upon
and make life easier than before.
For everything keeps changing to see
how much farther we can go.
And what on earth we’re coming to—
does anybody know?
We sit and wonder what will be next,
how much more can the world change,
from those many years ago.
CHAPTER 1
Childhood’s Days
Memory Lifts the Veil of the Passing Years and the Scenes of the Long Ago Come Back Again
W hy is it that the impressions made upon the mind in early childhood remain more vivid during life than those made in more mature years? If it is, as has been claimed, that the mind then is in a plastic state and more susceptible to impressions than it is when, in after years, it becomes hardened, as it were, the query arises: Why is it then, as the years grow apace and age and decrepitude come, the scenes and incidents of childhood’s days that have long since been forgotten arise before our mental vision with all the vividness of first impressions and remain with us to the end of life, while those of the intervening periods of youth and vigorous manhood are almost obliterated from memory’s chambers or recalled, if at all, with difficulty and indistinctness? Why this is so, we are unable to say, but that it is a fact will not be denied by those who are nearing the three score years and ten in the journey of life.
 
My first recollections are of my log cabin home in the great wilderness of Northern Indiana, at a time when Chicago was a mere trading post, as were Michigan City and Fort Wayne, and when the wide stretch of country extending from the Kankakee eastward to Lake Erie was a dense forest peopled by the dusky Indian, except where, here and there, miles apart and connected only by mere trails through the deep woods, were occasional log cabins, surrounded by the inevitable “clearing,” where the scanty supply of corn was raised upon which the settler and his family were to subsist, supplemented by a liberal supply of meat, which the settler’s rifle provided from the wild game of the adjacent forest. Where, then, was the rude log hut, the clearing, and the brush and pole shelter for such stock as the hardy pioneer was fortunate enough to possess, are now palatial farm residences, finely cultivated lands, and costly, well-stocked barns, while hogs, cattle, sheep and poultry supply the meats for the table, which then only the wild game of the forest provided.
Those hardy pioneers have long since passed to that “bourne whence no traveler returns,” while their descendants, enjoying the fruits of their hardships, toil, and privations, scarcely bestow a thought upon what their grandfathers and great-grandfathers endured to make the wilderness “blossom as the rose.”
As I said before, my first recollection is of a home in the wilderness, where the deep, dark forest almost overshadowed the log cabin home. I was the youngest of a family of boys ranging in age from four years, my age, to sixteen, and the surroundings were such as to excite to the most intense degree my childish imagination. “Distance lends enchantment to the view,” the poet has said, but no account of traveler returning from distant lands or almost unexplored regions since then has ever been able to excite the interest I felt in the almost nightly conversation of my brothers about such localities in the immediate vicinity of our home as possessed sufficient interest or importance to be designated by suggestive local appellations.
Saturday, or at least Saturday afternoon, was spent by some of my brothers in the woods with dog and gun to supply the meat for the coming week and the Sunday feast, and from these expeditions, they never returned empty-handed. Sometimes a deer or two were shot and hung up in the woods, while one of the hunters would return and take the horse and sled to bring in the fruits of the chase. At other times they would return loaded down with wild turkeys and squirrels, although the latter were considered too small game to waste valuable ammunition upon, when the shot that killed the squirrel could just as well be made to supply a deer or a wild turkey to the depleted larder. Powder and lead were necessary articles in those days and were carefully husbanded by the prudent and thrifty pioneer.
My childish imagination invested these hunters with the glamor of romance as I nestled at their feet when sitting before the blazing fireplace in our rude log home and listened in childish wonder and amazement to their narratives of the adventures of the day, of how they had sighted the deer in Kyle’s Deadening and had followed the trail to where it entered the Door Prairie and that here they had succeeded in getting sufficiently near to send a bullet with unerring aim into the heart of the fleet-footed animal.
As the stories of the adventures of travelers in the wilds of Central Africa fill with wonder and delight the boy of