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4                                                Memories of a Long Life

Chapter Two

 

EARLY MEMORIES

 

            Well, I commenced to write some incidents of my childhood and young life. I can tell of an incident I remember when I was only two years old; it seems as clear as if it had happened but yesterday.  The little log cabin is plain in my mind now.  My mother’s brother (just next to her), from Elwood Indiana, who had been living there for some years, came to North Carolina on a visit to his people and he came to see my mother.  I do not remember how long he had been here.  <Margin note:  “abt. 1845”>  It was warm and I, a child, after dinner got sleepy.  Sister Sallie put me on mother’s bed.  It was a high post, called a teaster bed, with curtains that went to the floor, with a trundle bed under it.  Well, Uncle William and mother were both crying, at it was parting time.  He said, “I must tell the baby goodbye.”  He came and I remember he took me up in his arms, hugged me to his bosom, kissed me two or three times with the tears running down cheeks.  About forty-eight years after, <Margin note:  “abt. 1893”> he came back to North Carolina, Uncle Thomas and wife, one grandson, one niece and one nephew, and spent perhaps five or six weeks.  He agreed before they all left Indiana that he would pay the railroad fare coming and going back, but when he got ready and said go, that all must prepare to return.  It was a sad parting.  I never saw one of them.  Uncle William lived to be 91 or 92.  Uncle Thomas lived to be 82.  His half sister, who went out there, married, had one daughter who lived to be grown and married, and as she was a widow the second time they left Indiana and came to Philadelphia.  She came back to North Carolina once.  I was off teaching, so never saw her again.

 

            When I was about three years old they told me I had a little sister.  The one next older was some seven or more years older.   I thought it was grand to have a little tiny sister, if we were in a log cabin.  <Margin note: “Abt. 1846”>  She was put to sleep in a little cradle, and if she seemed to wake up I was taught to sit on the side, put my right hand on the other side, and rock the cradle and sing “Rock-a-bye baby on the tree-top.”  While I could not say a word that but few could tell at all, yet I did love to rock and try to sing to my little sister.  Of the two oldest living (the one oldest of all died small), one was grown, the other 8 or 10 years, so perhaps some will imagine me a happy child that winter.  My father was preparing to build a house large enough to have several rooms.  My father and biggest brother were trying to get stables or a shelter for the cow and horse, which were saved when my father and family were living in Pittsboro.  My father was jailor when I was a baby.