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The Civil War: Brothers Enlisted and Left Father to Work Farm

Oh, I wonder if it is as plain in
other people’s memories who were living in those days as it is in mine, of the
happy days before the Civil War when my brothers and sisters and I were home on
the mountain farm with our father and mother. My father had a farm of 160
acres, all under good tillage. But then the Civil War broke out and the cry came
for soldiers. My two brothers, who were scarcely young men grown, as were our
three hired farm hands heard the call. The five left home and enlisted. It was
in the midst of haying time, leaving my father without a soul to help him.

Then it was that my dear mother and
1 had to take a hand out of doors. There were no mowing machines at that time
or horse rakes. At that time, Father mowed the grass by hand with a scythe. It
fell my lot to turn the grindstone to grind that scythe. Sometimes 1 thought my
arms would break before the grinding was done. When Father mowed the grass, 1
had to follow with a pitch fork and spread it out to dry. Then after dinner
Father, Mother and I would all fall to and rake it into windrows. Then Father
would get the horses and big wagon, and I made load and Mother raked after.
Then when the load was made, Father would drive on to the barn floor. I on top
of the load would get on the scaffold and mow it away. I was only a weak girl
of 15 years, but Father could not get help for love nor money. In the midst of
this my father was taken sick. He had worked too hard.

We had finished the haying, but it
was clear along in September and the harvesting was to be done with no one but
my mother and myself, beside two small boys, my brothers, who were of very
little use. We had very large fields of potatoes to dig and turnips. I remember
it so well; we had 170 bushels of turnips and such a quantity of potatoes. I
can’t tell how many, but I can remember the number of bushels of turnips
because when I pulled them, I gave the little boys two cents a bushel for
cutting off the tops.

Until that time I had never milked
a cow. Mother knew how, but she had not milked for years. She had to take a
hand at it, and she taught me how, for we had a large dairy of cows, and we
were making a great deal of butter at the time.

Father also had a large hog house full of hogs that had to
be cured and large fields of oats. I had a 10-dollar gold piece, the first one I
ever saw. I gave it to a man for cutting or cradling the oats; I raked and
bound them. We could not get anyone to thrash them, so we fed them out in with
straw. Oh, those were hard times. But we had enough to eat, that which we
raised upon the farm.

By Minna (Fowler) Rounds
Submitted by Paul H. Rounds
Severance, Kansas


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.