Now and Then – Reminiscence
By Rev. B.F. Lawler
Page 10

Reminiscence
The first preacher I head was a Methodist. I did not learn his name. He preached to less than a dozen people in Coon Creek school house in 1841-2. I remember his nice shoes, but did not then know the scriptures about those who bring glad tiding have “beautiful feet”. His clothing was good but not “clerical”. He preached a long time for a little boy to sit on a bench so big his feet could not reach the floor, but I noticed my mother was very much interested in the sermon.
My next acquaintance was Daniel Murphy of whom I have spoken in these papers. L.R. Ashworth, William Lenter, James T. Wheeler, J.C. Woody, W.R. McClain, Peter Brown, Andrew Brown, and Jas. Cole. Of these, L.R. Ashworth was the most literary and the leading one in oratory. Later I knew Doctor A.P. Williams James Box Morrison, Barclay, Caldwell, Gray, Harris, Rombeant, Hyde, Flood and others, some of them before the war. Morrison and Barclay were “Presbyterians”.
I heard Morrison in a small building near where Mr. Shrewsbury’s office now is. Barclay I heard in Bolivar in the Court House, his text being about Abraham and the rich man, the sermon is with me yet. Williams and Rambeant were eloquent speakers, Rambeant being far superior in scholarship. These all made a fine impression on me; but I must say that several so called preachers not named here made a bad impression on me, but later I learned that there were false prophets in Christ’s time and He said others should arise after His ascension. So people learn that even counterfeit money is no argument against. None of these were perfect men; some were more companionable than others, some far more intellectual, some more cultivated, but I knew of only one who was counted rich or wealthy, James T. Wheeler. As being industrious in their calling and economical in their habits, I think they compare favorably with any other class of men. And I think their wives as a rule excelled in being well dressed on small money and for being good home keepers, in the absence of their husbands bearing privation and hardships with great grace.
Sa for the education of their children they have not all succeeded well but many of them have sons and daughters taking leading places in religious, social and scientific circles.
Ministers of the gospel as a rule are held in esteem fully up to their personal merits and far above in many cases because of the Master they serve. I wish to say now and in this connection that many non-professional business men honor ministers of the gospel for their work’s sake, for many have not the intellect nor personal advantages entitling them to great preferments aside from the Divine messages they bring from the Lord; in fact many of them are not so well equipped for their calling as they might be, and a number do not “Study to show themselves approved of God”, workman who need not be ashamed.
Most ministers are men taken from among men, often from the humbler walks of life, whom God separates unto Himself by means of conscious moral earthquake jarring them loose from affairs of life that hey may give themselves wholly to the divine work unto which the Lord has called them; and the world is not slow to recognize them fully up to the marks of the high calling. B.F. Lawler

Reminiscence
Somebody’s pen ought to sing in praise of the pioneers who came and disputed the claims of wild Indians and wilder animals to the rich lands and beautiful rivers of this, then untamed domain.
No song has yet been dedicated to their memory and the very partial history of St. Clair county says but little of its early promoters. Indeed I am told that if this pen should be silent, many things would never be written which ought to have a place in the life history of the people, and I was too young when I saw the “play” to give a just tribute to the deserving ones, many of whom sleep in unmarked graves unsung, unhonored and almost forgotten. Joel Redman, Captain Rice, Joseph Beaman, Mr. Gooch, Mr. Lunsford, Jacob Coonts, Dr. Home, Robert Williams, John Thompson, Willie Brown, Mr. Talley, Mr. Bell, Thomas Beal, Jacob Roe, William Gash, Sanders Nance and William Culbertson, Senior, are only a few who deserve a place in the history of the county, for making it possible by their self denial and bold adventures for us to enjoy greater advantages in the years which followed.
My father’s two teams and well laden wagons stood in front of William Culbertson’s little cabin one evening, strangers in a strange land were we and I have no means of knowing how another large family found shelter there a few days in that little cabin.
I remember the hens nest under the wood pile and what a temptation to put hands on the beautiful eggs. How came they to have things – corn meal beaten in a mortar or ground on crude mills many miles away. Hog meat or lard was scarcely to be found, while venison and other wild meats were obtained by skilful use of the rifle.
I remember the first two chickens and the first cow we could call our own, the cow so gentle that while she ate corn and was being milked we little fellows were permitted to pull her long ears and pat her “mooley head”, she had no horns although dehorned cattle were not known then.
The pioneers I write about were middle-aged people whose children lightly shared with them in their privations and disadvantages, myself coming in a class still younger.
Where are they now? The shrill horn, the breezy morn, the chase, the quest and the excitement were such as would stir the blood of some of their decendants could they but hear the shout of the hunters and the yelping of the hounds. Even the horse upon which the hunter rode would scent the game and follow the chase without whip or spur.
This story I have at second hand:
A pioneer who had a fine “pack” of hounds, a half dozen or more, had a friend come to see him from a well settled state farther east.
On a bright morning the hounds were startled from their kennels by the near approach of some fox or wolf or some hapless red deer and while their master was not prepared to follow he listened to the well known howling of his hounds in the chase which was a fine blending of dog voices while pursuing the game, not yet brought to “bay” or killed.
And as the pioneer listened he said to his friend: Do you hear that Heavenly music?
No, said his friend.
Not hear it? Listen!
I can’t hear a thing, said his friend, because of the noise of the hounds. Only he placed an ugly adjective next to the word hounds.
See the difference? Music to the one, worse than noise to the other.
In my early student life I had no special praise for the man with a small cornfield and a great many dogs and a long rifle. Now I see the country needs that man. Peace to his ashes. B.F. Lawler

Reminiscence
As early as I can remember we had real coffee for breakfast, yellow and rich with cream to suit the taste, although it must have been a costly beverage then. When or how I learned to drink it I do not know. We often had chills and fevers almost every October and then it was that I told my mother to make the coffee the color of wheat grains when the cream was added.
As early as that the taste of good coffee had taken regular form and demand, or the stomach would rebel against it – thus until sixteen years ago I abandoned it entirely. The tobacco habit was formed early and abandoned at the age of twenty-two. I wonder now that any one who understanding the delicateness of the organs in the body and the tenderness of the tissues of assimilation would for one moment indulge the use of such hurtful stimulants.
These have been brought forward to this day, but why it is not easy to know.
Very few men then did not use tobacco in some form and very few men would then refuse a morning dram which was to be seen on many a “mantle piece” over the fire place.
For children the whiskey was sweetened and given to them in a spoon by the very hand that should have dashed it away. Yes, we sowed the seed of intemperance deep in the life blood of most children at the time, and it is now running hot in the veins of many of their children’s children and no one knows the woe they feel nor how desperate their efforts to get it, under the bane of law. Who is to be blamed? Who can tell?
Over against this very grave defect the early settlers of St. Clair County were hospitable almost to a man, the “latch string always hanging outside the door”.
This saying arose from the fact that many doors were held closed by means of a strong wooden latch inside with a good leather string tied in the latch and put through a small hole in the door above it, so when the door was shut and latched and the string pulled to the inside no one from the outside could open the door without breaking it open.
Until a few years ago sheep and cattle herders in the mountains left their cabin doors easily opened so that any one could go in and help themselves to a meal or a night’s lodging leaving everything except what they had used.
Many a well to do settler in the early days of St. Clair County had but one bed and that in the one room of his house, where his wife also cooked their food and in winter washed their clothes carrying the water from the spring some distance away.
This one bed was double, a straw tick being on the corded bed stead and the feather bed and the one white sheet above this. Bed covers usually increased faster than the beds and one or two guests were often entertained overnight by putting the feather bed on the floor and the straw bed “made up” quite respectable where the mistress of the house and her husband spent the night while the guest occupied the bed on the white puncheon floor. Do you think I write from personal observation? Some of my readers ask me to tell what the people read then and what they thought and I have gone over the intellectual field quite well, but some of the early homes will bear looking into, though there was but one room in them.
The cloth on the table was snowy white and the dishes shone with an appetizing invitation, and the biscuits, ham and red gravy made quite a lordly dish while a well dressed woman poured the coffee and the husband sat and ate with his brogan boots smoking in front of a log fire he had built before he went to feed the cattle in the snow. Do you think a woman could be happy in a home like that? They were the mothers of St. Clair County. B.F. Lawler

Reminiscence
I was next to the youngest settler whom I knew in St. Clair County 75 years ago. I do not know a single man or woman who was left in St. Clair County as early as 1838, if there are such I hope every one of them will write a letter to this paper telling who and where living at that time. I think it time that old settlers of that date could have a reunion. I was away from you forty-four years, more or less, but I certainly feel like one of you. Many – most all who lived here seventy-five years ago are gone.
A generation has gone, and I am standing on the border land between them and the present generation. I salute the past and hail the present.
What shall I say to these? I am far away from them enough to forget their faults and to remember their virtues. I see them in their log cabins, in their homespun cloths. I see their well furnished tables, the snow white table cloths and plain dishes. The hospitality was of the highest type and the home life simple and pure. How those women could give a great dinner cooked over a fire in the same room and furnish places to sleep for visitors can only be imagined by people now, but I saw it done with a cheerful elegance many times.
I can see in the dim distance the school teacher going from place to place to get subscribers for a three months’ school – saw the men building our first school house which also became the church house – saw them add another room to the first one making all into one.
I saw the long ox team “breaking prairie”, hauling rails and going to mill. Later, I saw two hose wagons take the place of the clumsy ox wagon, I saw good houses take the place of log cabins – saw wider farms and more cattle – better schools and better church accommodations.
But in my vision of that time and those people what charms me most is in regard to the “simple life” and their trust in God for their daily wants.
One old man of another county told me as we waited for a train in Kansas City many years ago, long before I thought of writing about it, that his wife cried when they settled in Jackson county saying she was afraid the little children would starve to death. He told her no that the Lord never made a mouth that He did not make something to fill it. The old man wept as he told me this story though he had become wealthy at that time.
Old settlers, I salute you even from the border land of your generation. But this present generation I hail and ask whither bound? What design? What purpose in view? You are in the lime light now and centuries look down upon you.
“One ship goes East, Another goes West but the same winds blow.
It is not the gale, but the set of the sail that tells them where to go.”
The set of the sail did you ever think of that? did you ever see men in their little fishing boats sailing almost directly against the wind? It can be done. They call it “tacking”. Many a poor boy has managed to get wealth when the winds seemed to be against him. Many a boy, many a girl has forced a reluctant world to yield to them a good education and a fine social position. The set of the sail tells the story. Young people, I hail you, St. Clair County I hail you! Adverse winds are against you. One Kansas City paper flings mud at you, “but never you mind”. No fairer suns light the plains of Italy than we have here, And the glowing West is never more radiant than that which we see from the hills and plains overlooking our two majestic rivers the Osage and the Sac. No richer lands on the shores of the Nile than these lands washed by our rivers and creeks. No better people live than we have in St. Clair County, and no county in the state has a greater private library than is possessed and read by its owner whose ample buildings and grounds have a touch of classic estates in the time of Aristotle, yes, as I lift my perspective to the future of St. Clair County I, again hail you and ask, whither bound?
What does it mean for young men and women to board themselves and go to school, some of them wearing the plainest kind of clothing? What does it mean for them to work for their board? What does it mean? What does it mean for fathers and mothers to economise and wear last year’s hats and coats in order to send their children to school? What does it mean for tired hands to prepare children for school – what does it mean that these children are sent to school in rain or shine that they may not miss their grades? Yes, I see all this and am glad to see the “Set of the Sail against the gale”, which I believe will guide St. Clair County into a noble port. Yes I greet you, and as I lift the lens I see in the distance good roads, good buildings, clean streets, ornamental and fruit trees everywhere, well dressed people, happy children and scholars whom Seneca would not blush to see.
Above all, righteousness must be sown thick on all plats of ground where human feet may tread. B.F. Lawler

Reminiscence
The man who, sixty years ago in St. Clair could not fix his mind on any certain thing for a time was called a double minded man by my father, as he quoted the Bible as found in James 1:8. “A double minded man is unstable in all his ways.” Such action of the mind now is called Split Attention.
This condition of the mind kept the man poor in purse and poor in thought because he could not or did not fix his mind on any business or books long enough to accomplish anything. Split attention is somewhat like a split wedge – it cannot penetrate a substance to any depth. Sharp witted people are those who can discern differences in the parts of a system and examine relative facts. A somewhat thoughtful man said he had never heard of “Split infinitive” in grammar and he would not be apt to detect it on the printed page – not to go, or, to not go: which one of these expressions would you choose? Split attention can be detected easily by a close observer by the actions of one who has a divided or double mind.
I saw one young man giving close attention to business – it was in the “forties” and his business was buying, feeding and training oxen to the yoke. He bought them when very young and as it was said then, unbroke.
I saw that man steadily gain in business having an independent living and accumulating money.
Another gave close attention to books and in a few years he put a great distance between himself and his former playmates in attainments of the mind which gave him a wonderful advantage over them.
With pleasure and pain, I now review the early days in St. Clair County.
I see the Cotter in his cot and his plain wife cooking the evening meal by a glowing fire on the hearth. I see also the more pretentious home where the candles are lit in the parlor “when evenings home pleasures are nigh” – all bound for an unknown future, perhaps never dreaming of a desolating war whose muttering thunders were heard by few people.
Some were forging ahead in business, a few in books, and others gaining rapidly in social position and influence. What a fine procession!
Ladies of wealth and culture were more distinguished for their modest intelligence and demeanor than for ordinary publicity.
Fair faced girls soon took on the habits of their seniors, and parasol on Sunday, and sun bonnet through the week, wore a beautiful complexion.
Young men had their rivals in seeking their life companions and the social structure sometimes had a shock when some unlooked for competitor won the hand and heart of the fair one of many suitors.
I said I reviewed those times with pleasure and pain. It is a pleasure to look back upon the joys, the hopes and the progress of that generation, but there is a minor cord in the music, and no man who thinks can escape some of the sad thoughts concerning events which occurred.
There was poor Jake who had seen less than a score of summers went out from this life with delirium from a fevered brain, using some of the bad language he had used when well. Bob went to the war in forty-six and died in the army – not prepared to meet his God.
A young bride whom we all called Lizzie was buried in her bridal clothes when she had been married less than a year, I can see the young husband now, his face buried in his hands with his hopes like withered flowers strewn at his feet – yes, I see all this, too. But God is above all. B.F. Lawler

Reminiscence
Osage River
One of the most historic and picturesque places on the Osage river is the Horse Shoe Bend about eight miles North-east of Osceola.
From the heel of this shoe to the toe is about two miles making the full circuit of the bend six miles. The distance across the heel of this shoe is one-fourth of a mile.
Mr. Luther Sheldon says that forty years ago engineers surveyed this point with a view of putting in milling machinery for a large plant but that they decided the fall in the water was not great enough for extensive operation.
At that time the interior of this bend in the river was a dense forest of great trees in the midst of which was a lake upon the waters of which thousands of ducks were killed every year. Now the forest and the lake are gone and fine farms are there, upon which grain and grass are grown in great abundance.
This bend is surrounded by a fringe of sycamore trees forming a beautiful border while gray cliffs rise above the trees and these are decorated with fine cedars, as Mr. Charles Sheldon well said making a charming picture. On the south side of this part of the river is a valley of one thousand acres or more, divided into great farms.
Hon. S.S. Burdett, a much traveled man viewing all this scenery said he had never seen anything to surpass in beauty.
On the East side of this valley and near the toe of the shoe there is a farm of a half section of land owned by Mr. Leman Gover, on which tract the Gardner Mills did a great business sixty years ago. This mill site is one of the oldest land marks remaining, part of the mill race can be seen.
Senator Sheldon said this mill site had been in cultivation seventy-five years, and Mr. Gover has gathered seventy-five bushels of corn per acre from some of these lands this year.
The beautiful cliffs around the bend of this river face south, although they are on the south side of the river. Looking North across the bend we see the double of the river, so the cliffs on the North side of the bend face south and are still south of the main river, and these fine cliffs being South of the river we are glad to claim them for the Ozarks, although Mr. Gover says the Ozarks do not begin till we reach the foot of the hills at the edge of the valley.
I wish some painter would lose his way on some June day, and find himself on a point overlooking this grand scene and give us a painting which would give him great fame, and give us great pleasure. B.F. Lawler

Submitted by Stacy Kelly

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