After spending a few weeks recuperating my shattered health, I secured employment with my uncle in his tobacco business, and became a private citizen to all intense and purposes, and commenced a vigorous effort to retrieve my fallen fortune. My wife had kept one of my horses, and a part of my farming tools were still left. Many things had been used, and worn out by my friends. I hired for a year at $500 per year, but in the spring I found that I could not support my family on that wage, and incouraged by the high prices of farm products. I secured a small farm, at an enormous price and went to work. In this venture, I came out about even, but was able to save a little salvage, by my work as a cooperer, of tobacco hogsheads. I made a very good contract with my uncle for the year of 1866, to work one of his farms, and assist him in his business. Unfortunately he was something of a diapated character at times, and in one of these fits he quarraled with me, and insisted that I leave his place, and his employmment. Realizing that I could not get along with him, I concluded to go west with a cusin of my wife and in ten days I was on the road for Iowa. This I consider was the most foolish venture of my life. I was getting in prety good shape again financialy, and I should have staid, and fought it out with my uncle, however unpleasant the situation would have been. I knew nothing of the great west, having never seen a prarie, and I had no idea that the country was so new, and so sparcely inhabited. I had a splendid team, and wagon and I figured that I could surely make a living with them. On the 27th day of March 1866 we bid farewell to the old home, and our people, and for 30 days fought mud, and high water, but with all of these discomforts, we injoyed the trip, and pulled up to a little hamlet called Manti, in Fremont county, Iowa on the 27th day of April. My wife had a cousin living here, which was very incouraging to us. For a week after landing I was never so blue in my life, the country and surroundings was so different to what I had expected that I was frantic. Deforrest and I were luckey enough to secure one of the best farms, and houses that the country afforded, and in a short time we were farming, and my blues disappeared for ever. To the farmer who has been raised in a timber country a prarie farm is most attractive. We succeeded in raising a prety good crop of corn, and managed to take in a little money otherwise. The next year I managed to rent a little farm, in the timber near Sidney Iowa, where I lived for eight years, with verried successes but my health broke down, so much that I had to depend largely upon my boys to cultivate my crops. Feeling that my physical condition was growing worse, I began to look around for something else to do that would give me a living. I had made a great many friends in the county and had become somewhat prominent in the "Grange circles", and all who knew my physical frailties, took a deep interest in my welfare, and through these influences I was induced in the spring of 1874 to run for Clerk of the courts. I had never had any experience in politics, other than to vote, and attend a political meeting once and a while. In National politics I had kept in line, and was well advised along party lines in that direction, but as to local politics, I had paid little attention. I believed that local politics were generally corupt, and that honest men had better keep out entirely. What was intended to be a two candidate campaign, tirminated in three. Gange,Republican, and Democrat. I tried to do my duty as a political candidate, but I realized from the first that I was a dismal failure. To make a long story short I was beaten by a small margin, by the granger candidate. Of course I felt my defeat very sevirely, moreso on account of my wasting physical energies. My family physician had warned me that I could not stand the winter climate, and do farm work, and as I could see nothing for me in the west outside of my chosen avocation, and after mature reflection concluded to return to my old home in Ind where in case of my death my family would be with relatives, who would look after their welfare. Having made up our minds in that direction we lost no time in puting theory into practice. I sent my family on in the fall, and after selling my stock and other things, followed them in january. Looking at this move in the light of expediency, it proved to be very foolish, as a matter of necessity it was iminently proper. In fact there was nothing elce that we could do, we simply bowed to the inevitable. One who has lived in the then great west for nine years, and then go back to southern Ind, could never reconcile himself to the conditions that he had to indure. I rebelled, and all of my family rebelled, but my wife, who of all of us was satisfied. During the first three years I never lay down without feeling deep grief in my heart, and an uncontrolably longing for the conditions that I loved so well in the prarie west. Looking around me at the hundreds of men, who were living upon a mear pittance. I could see no opertunities for a man without abundent means to rise above a common clodhopper condition in life. We finaly puled ourselves to gather, and went to work at whatever our hands found to do, and finaly to farming in the spring, and we made a living and was able to gaine a little. But my health again failed, and I had to look around for something else to do. Wherever I have lived I have always had good warm friends. Friends that were on the watchout for opertunities for me. A justice of the peace having died in our county seat, my friends insisted that I make an effort to secure the place. At the nomination convention I was defeated, but the nominee died before the spring election, and a caucus was called, and I received the nomination and was elected by a small plurality. I had never paid much attention to court procedure, and practicaly knew nothing about it. Up to my fortyth year I had never sat as a juriman in the trial of a cause, and when I assumed the judicial ermine, it was withmuch trepidation, and fear of myself. While naturaly I had the dignity I lacked the practice to enforce it boldly, and being naturaly timid and concientiously defaults. The lawyers of the city set up a job on me, to try the mettal of the "county justice". There was acase of unlawful entry and detainer, coupled with a charge of assault upon a woman who was the tenant, by the landlord who was the meanest man in town. The case had been started before another justice, and taken away on a change of venue to another one and from him to me. Under the Ind law more than one change of may be taken. The intention from the first was to get it to me. to be continued next week. Sandi SCKY Archives: http://archiver.rootsweb.com/th/index?list=south-central-kentucky Barren Co Archives: http://archiver.rootsweb.com/th/index?list=kybarren Sandi's Genealogical Puzzlers: http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~gensoup/gorin/puz.html GGP: http://ggpublishing.tripod.com/