When my Aunt Emma was born on a Iowa homestead in 1862, she
weighed 2 1/2 pounds. Without hospitals or doctors to help, her mother created a
warm crib for the little baby. In a wooden tub, which she placed on a table out
of reach of the children, she laid a quilt. She filled brown crockery jars with
hot water and put them in the tub with a second quilt between the jars and the
baby for crib bedding.
The child thrived, although my daddy
described her as “no bigger than a bar of soap after a week’s
washing.”
Her mother, my grandmother, was a
“yarb” or herb doctor and was often called away from home, especially
on cases of childbirth. It was Aunt Emma who kept things going at home. She was
a wonderful person, very precious, and she lived to be 86 years old.
Lula Husband
Bright
North Platte, Nebraska
Back in 1955 a call went out from the editors of the
then Capper’s Weekly asking for readers
to send in articles on true pioneers. Hundreds of letters came pouring in from
early settlers and their children, many now in their 80s and 90s, and from
grandchildren of settlers, all with tales to tell. So many articles were
received that a decision was made to create a book, and in 1956, the first My Folks title –
My Folks Came in a Covered Wagon –
hit the shelves. Nine other books have since been published in the My Folks series, all filled to the brim with true
tales from Capper’s readers, and
we are proud to make those stories available to our growing online community.