goods were concerned. They were married in 1810 —my father at that time being nineteen years of age and my mother sixteen. They could not boast (as most Virginians do) of kinship with either Washington, Jefferson, Marshall or Lee. Without distinguished ancestry and without property of very great value, they had to rely upon their native talents and strong arms for a living. They had an abiding faith in each other and were splendidly equipped with energy, industry, health, and courage for the hard battle that lay before them. They had at the beginning only that superficial knowledge of books that was vouchsafed to the poor. This limited learning was added to during the long winter evenings by diligent study and research in such additional books as could be found in the neighborhood and the light by which they read came mostly from "pine knots" burned in the fireplace of a log house in which they lived. They courageously and hopefully tilled the soil of Henry County for a living where they were renters and not the owners of the land.

This continued until the "call to arms" was sounded for the war of 1812. The husband promptly answered and enlisted in a Virginia regiment. The wife with one young child remained at home to carry on the fight for a living until the husband and father should return after the battles were won and peace declared. Victory and peace came, and the soldier returned; the thread was again taken up and the struggle as before continued. As they were reasonably successful in the acquisition of property, in a few years they were made comfortable and with increased learning and knowledge the husband became

an influential and much respected citizen in the community in which they lived. For twelve consecutive years he was a representative in the legislature (House and Senate) of Henry and adjacent counties. He was a member of the Senate at the date of my birth, February 12, 1838, and my middle name, Patterson, was after a senator by that name who was a colleague of my father.

I was the youngest of twelve children, and when I married, on the 15th of November, 1860, all twelve were living. Today I am the only survivor. There were five brothers and seven sisters, and of these, George, Joseph, Mary, Martha, and John were married before I, the twelfth, was born. I have nieces and nephews older than myself which does not occur very often in a family.

The five eldest children of David and Nancy Dyer left Virginia in 1840 and came to Missouri and settled in the counties of Warren and St. Charles. They were all farmers. In 1841 my father and mother, with the seven remaining children and a few slaves, left the old home in Henry County, Virginia, and after six weeks of hardship on the way, came to Missouri.

The means of transportation used by my father from Virginia to Missouri consisted of two large wagons (made by convicts in the Virginia Penitentiary in Richmond), each of which were drawn by four horses. In these two wagons were placed the household goods that had accumulated in the Virginia home. Everything being ready, the "whip was cracked" and the start was made for Missouri, a thousand miles and more away. For six long weeks

they journeyed before the goal was reached. Over hills and through valleys, over mountains and across rivers, they traveled from Virginia through Tennessee, Kentucky, Indiana and Illinois, until the great Mississippi River was reached and crossed.

The children (except the youngest) and the negroes "footed it" practically all of the way. At nightfall camps were made on the roadside, tents pitched, fires lighted, horses tethered, watered and fed, meals cooked on open fires, beds made in wagons and on the ground, prayers said, and beneath the twinkling stars sleep was eagerly sought by each and every one of the tired party composing that group of hopeful and joyous "movers.” A place was temporarily rented in the southern part of Warren County. This had a brick dwelling on it, the only building of its kind in the county. It was known far and wide as the "Brick House Place."

The master, the leader, who had turned his back on the thin land of Henry County, Virginia, was looking, as most Virginians did, for "bottom land and living water." In this search he passed over the rich and fertile uplands of St. Louis and St. Charles counties and finally came to the bottom lands on Big Creek in Lincoln County. Here he found the place he was seeking. He bought of a man named Chambers, two hundred and sixty acres of bottom and hill land. The bottom land was rich and productive, but the hill land, while splendid with timber, was thin and poor. There were a few acres of cleared land in the bottom that had been cultivated by Chambers and a cabin in which he had lived, that was situated near the clearing and close by a well of "living water."

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Possession was taken and improvements began. In the bottom the growth was large sycamore trees-on the hill big oaks with some hickories. The sycamores were felled, cut in pieces, rolled together and burned and the land made ready for cultivation. On the high land oak trees were felled, cut to the proper length, hewn on two sides and built into houses for a residence and other purposes on a high hill that overlooked the bottoms. The residence was composed of four large rooms and was two stories in height. A stone chimney was built between the four rooms (two below and two above) with a fireplace in each. The roof was made of boards cut and split by hand and the interstices or cracks between the logs were filled by a mortar composed of earth, straw and lime. In addition to this most pretentious dwelling, other buildings were erected in close proximity,-houses for the negroes to live in, smoke house, kitchen, etc., etc. Everything seemed to be moving along happily and well; clearings were made, stables and fences built and improvements of a substantial character were to be seen on all sides; prosperity apparent everywhere. But, alas, after three years of unremitting toil and the endurance of hardships only known to the pioneer, there came the great flood of 1844, a flood of a magnitude hitherto unknown and which has never been equalled since. The creek (Big Creek) was not only big in name but big in fact. Practically all of the improvements made on the bottom lands were swept away, together with the ungathered and ungarnered crops.

This unfortunate disaster left the owner, the courageous master, practically where he began three

years before. In time this could have been righted by hard work, but there was a greater misfortune to follow a misfortune that could not be remedied. The waters of the great flood receded, but over the land that had been deluged there lurked the insidious, treacherous and deadly malaria. This hideous monster got within its coils both the master and the mistress caught the devoted husband, the just and patient father, the considerate master, and the loving wife and mother. After weeks of pain and struggle, the master closed his eyes in death on the 8th of October, 1844. He was buried on the hill near the house he had built, and there for more than three quarters of a century his ashes have reposed. The wife and mother, after a long illness, finally recovered her health. The departure of the husband left the burden of family government, the new and strange home, the care of children, their support and education upon her who had been to him sweetheart and wife. This heavy burden she took and carried during a widowhood of forty-six years, with a courage and loving fidelity that justly entitled her to be crowned a "Spartan mother."

During the years of her widowhood she directed the work of the farm, provided for the comfort and education of her children as best she could with the meagre opportunity that the neighborhood furnished. One by one they married and left the "mother-nest" for homes of their own. Finally in the autumn of 1857, the youngest of her children, the writer of these notes, went to Bowling Green, Pike County, Missouri, to study law in the office of Hon. James Overton Broadhead. She was left on the farm with an