"We had it cleared by the first of March—all ready to plow in 1865. My father raised his own sheep and cotton, and from dis my mother made our clothes. Father cleared thirty acres on his place de same year and sowed it all in wheat. De first year we got 817 bushel of wheat and 1500 bushel of corn, it was all new land. Corn really growed in dem days. We hoed it by hand. You don’t see corn like dat now. We worked out every little weed. Every little darkey worked in dem days.
"My grandad, Godfry, owned a place called de old Potter’s place, near Vichy Springs, Vichy, Missouri, not far from where we lived. He bought it from a man who used to make pottery. Grandfather made his own mill to grind grain for bread. In dose days there was no steam operated mills and few water mills. Sometimes we had to go as much as twenty miles to grind corn a bushel of corn. So grandfather made his own burr to grind corn and wheat. It was as big as any burr in de large mills, but it was turned by hand power. It was made of limestone rock, a great big stone about two and a half foot across. De top burr would probably weigh about three or four hundred pounds. Da bottom case would weigh a thousand pounds or more. There was a hole in de top stone, where de grain flowed freely to de bottom and ground out on the big thick stone below. I ground many a bushel of meal on it myself. I don’t know how grandfather got de large stones in place, for it was there as long as I could remember. I just wonder if it isn’t some place there yet. I would love to go and find out and see de old burr again.
"People call these hard times, shucks, they don’t know what hard times is. Those were hard days, when folks had to go on foot twenty miles to mill. I remember in my early days, we used cattle for teams to haul, start at four o’clock in de morning, drive all day, stay over night and grind de next day. Sometimes de crowd ahead of us was so big we had to stay over for three or four days. Sometimes we would be until eleven or twelve at night getting home. Gone at least two days and one night. I had to make trips like dis many times.
"Sometimes we could take a couple of bushel of corn and go horseback, but twice a year, Spring and Fall, we would take eight or ten bushel of wheat, six and eight bushel of corn or according to what we needed and take de cattle and a old wooden axle wagon, walking and driving de cattle all de way there and back. We drove or led dem with only a rope around dem.