Below is only a very small part of this very long chapter. There is so much in this chapter. I loved it. The whole chapter is online at the Iowa History Site. GRANDMOTHER BROWN'S HUNDRED YEARS CHAPTER V AN IOWA FARM And so it was that the Brown family came to Iowa. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ "Denmark was a pretty village, a really charming town in some respects," Said Grandmother Brown. "It had an air of refinement. It had been settled by educated people from the East. They had a fine academy and a good church there. But it was five miles from us, and five miles in days of bad roads was a real barrier. We could not often spare the time or use the horses to drive so far to church. The first Sunday we were at the farm we drove to the poor little church on Lost Creek." ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ "We were too late for the Indians, also. They too had gone before we came. But once, driving home from Fort Madison, Dan'l did overtake two braves. he asked them to ride. When he reached home they sat down under a tree in the yard. I fixed up a big trayful of good things to eat and sent it out to them. There they squatted in paint and feathers, showing their nakedness as they ate. They were the first Indians I ever saw. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ "Naturally our children imbibed our feelings in regard to slavery," Said Grandmother Brown. "That meant trouble for them almost from the first in the country schools of southeastern Iowa. Denmark was an exception with its abolitionists and fugitive slaves. We had a colored cook from Denmark once, Old Tishy, who had been a slave and a runaway. But in Augusta and most of the other places near the Missouri border Southern sympathizers were numerous. It was soon discovered in school that the Brown children were abolitionists." ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ "Oh, that was a dreadful war! Soldiers weren't provided with doughnuts in those days. Often they had nothing but wormy hard-tack and black coffee. The worms would float to the top of the coffee, but the best they could do was to skim them off and swallow the coffee thankfully. They used to beg in their letters for onions, for most of the soldiers got the scurvy for lack of fresh vegetables. Like the Irishman, they might have said: 'I prefer onions to strawberries; they're more expressive.' No one sent then things in packages or cans; we didn't have canned goods in those days. No one knit socks for them. We scraped lint for them; now army surgeons use absorbent cotton. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ "Once Dan'l and a girl named 'Liza, who was working for us, were taken sick the same day. 'Liza wanted the doctor. He came and looked at them both. 'They're in for about three weeks' sick spell,' he said. I didn't give Dan'l the doctor's medicine. Instead, I put him through one of my scrubbings and gave him some grated rhubarb. When the doctor came next day Dan'l was out chopping wood, but 'Liza was in bed. Sick for three weeks and more - sure enough! "One time I came to Eben Foster's house when he was very sick with bloody flux - every low indeed. I went to the drug store and bought some slippery elm and laudanum, grated the slippery elm and beat it to a fine cream, added fifteen drops of laudanum, got my brother to give his son an injection with a baby syringe, put a hot plate on his abdomen. He rested all night. 'Good morning, doctor!' he called to me when daylight came. I just knew that slippery elm was very cool and healing, that laudanum was soothing. And it worked! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~