REMINISCENCES OF PIONEER LIFE
By Sue Lattea Cox, Branch Captain Coordinator
Bob Hubbell of Branch 3 was kind enough to send me a book to read called "Reminiscences of Pioneer Life" written by his great-great grandfather, Robert R. Latta, called "Freck" because of his freckles. The book was published in 1912 and is out of circulation. However, you can often find a copy being auctioned off on the internet at certain bookstores. I enjoyed reading the book and have written below a short review of Freck's story.
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"On the fifteenth day of June, 1848, a slow-going stern-wheel steamboat, the Red Wing, with much puffing of steam and groaning of her ponderous engines, was pushing her way up against the current of the upper Mississippi River." Freck begins his story by telling of his family's three week trip up the Mississippi River, when he was but 12 years old. The steamboat dropped Freck's family, consisting of the Mother and Father and their seven children, off at Port Huron, Iowa, at the end of the long journey. Having deposited this little group on the shore of the river, the steamboat reversed itself and moved slowly on up the river, leaving the family alone on the western shore of the Mississippi River. Hearing footsteps, they looked around, and "saw a tall, bony man, a true type of the frontiersman, clad in homespun, with his sleeves rolled to the armpits and his shirt open at the throat." The "Father" had a brother living in the region and asked the man for directions. Having gotten the directions, the Father sent Freck, at the age of 12, and his brother, Jim, age 14, to search for Uncle Jimmy and a team. "And Mr. W_____ remarked: "Boys, it is only fifteen miles, and you will find a trail leading from the wood-ricks to the top of the bluffs; there take the left-hand road, and you will soon come out onto the prairie." But the boys knew not the meaning of "prairie," for they were raised in the big woods. How many of us would send two young lads fifteen miles into the unknown wilderness? I have a fifteen year old son of my own, and I know how this mother must have felt watching her two sons leave the group. Because of the excitement of the landing, the boys had eaten no breakfast, and in the afternoon the hand of hunger began to pinch them and the old smooth-bore (a gun their Father had given them to carry with them) increased in heaviness with each mile; the boys carrying it time about, or each grasping an end. Well, the boys found their Uncle's house just as the sun was going down and came back early the next morning with a team for the rest of the family. The family settled in Yellow Spring Mills. The Father and Mother were worthy members of the Seceder Church. "Did you say that you never heard of the Seceder Church? Well, it was not a strong church, and it was a very exclusive church. It was a breach of discipline to attend the services of any other denomination. But as a God-fearing and a God-honoring people, they stood on the very apex. The Seceder Church was born in Scotland, and if you require a higher endorsement, you will have to go to the skies for it. About the year 1730, the Rev. Ebenezer Erskine and a few followers seceded from the Church of Scotland; hence the name." The Father and Mother decided to seek a home among a people of like faith. And this was a characteristic of the early settlers on the western frontier. So the family decided to move to Washington, where there was a congregation of Seceders. The family moved two days down the road and spent the winter in the timber, with the Father cutting trees and Jim and Freck sawing off the rail cuts; and some days the three would earn a dollar. In the spring a farm was rented, and the family settled in.
In the fall of 1852, the Father took a sub-contract from Uncle John Don (in those days all elderly people were called "Uncle" and "Aunt") to carry the United States mail from Washington to Bloomfield. This was a 'cross-country horseback mail; the distance was eighty miles, and the round trip had to be made in four days - a ride of forty miles a day. The compensation was four hundred and eighty dollars a year. The boy who rode a mail route on the frontier was riding on no merry-go-round. It was twelve miles across Dutch Creek Prairie, without a house. Freck rode across this prairie eighty-four times, more than a thousand miles, and met but one horseman and a band of Indians. The Father heard the voice of the West calling and saying, "It is better farther on." So preparations were made to go forth and seek out and build a home on the western frontier. In those days of isolated homes the family tie was strong; for their comradeship was with each other. Now Freck had never been from home and he was sixteen years old. The Father seemed to have no misgivings about going a hundred miles away and entrusting to Freck the carrying out of the terms of the mail contract, and although he would not see him during the life of the contract, the Father seemed to think that Freck knew his duty and would do it. The time drew near for the departure. A little brown mare, named Bett, was bought and turned over to Freck, to be ridden on the mail-route; and Jim harnessed Sam and Jenny to one wagon and the Father strung out the oxen to the other wagon. The Father was not in the habit of multiplying words, and when all were ready to start, he called: "Freck, come here. Now, Freck, should Bett not be able to stand the work, you write me when you will be at the nearest point, and I will send you another horse." And, taking up the whip, he commanded the oxen to go forward. "And Freck, holding Bett by the bit, stood by the gate of the old home and watched the procession pass out of sight over the little hill. Now what will you think of Freck, a boy sixteen years old, when I tell you that a great sob rose and lodged in his throat, and he buried his face in Bett's mane and cried like a sick baby?" With a lonely "lost boy" feeling, he climbed into the saddle and guided Bett into the path that led down into the woods. With a feeling that he had no longer a home to come to, Freck rode away over the lonely mail-route. And the same feeling, many times intensified, like a millstone, is upon his heart to-night. And his heart cries, "I'm alone; I have no longer a home!" Well, Freck finished the mail route that year, and when his work was done, he headed out to find his family's new home. Freck's brother had come to Freck along the trail at one point and traded horses with him to give Bett a rest, and had told him that the family had moved to Bowen's Praire. Upon reaching his family once again, Freck settled into the routine of church and work. "Month by month, a day at a time, the cold and stormy Winter of 1854 passed over the range. Each day in passing handed out a portion of pleasure and gladness, hopes realized, and purpose attained; also a portion of disappointment, sorrow, and heaviness of heart." The adjoining farm was a widow's farm, and the widow had a daughter named Edith. Freck came to love Edith, but she eventually married another man and broke Freck's heart. The family moved several more times, crossing the frontier by wagon and fording every stream except the Skunk River and the Des Moines River, which were crossed by rope ferries. Each night the family slept on the ground or in the wagon. As Freck grew up, he left home at one point with two other young men and started afoot for Nebraska Territory. The US surveyors had just passed along sectionizing, and on the section lines there were little mounds, a mile apart, with little stakes, and the number of the section penciled on the stake. They followed the mounds across the trackless prairie, and when they came to the Nishnabotna River, the two other boys swam across, carrying over the boots; but Freck couldn't swim, so one of the boys returned, grasped him by the collar, and towed him across. The boys finally reached Omaha and there Freck and John caught a steamboat, and were to be hired on as deckhands, at forty dollars a month. They hastened back to the hotel for their little bundles and to tell Tom; but Tom was much the older, and Tom said: "No, boys, you don't go on no steamboat to be taken down South and work side by side with 'nigger' slaves, and die of yellow fever. No, boys, you don't." And John and Freck didn't. They worked floating logs down river and after seeing a boy drown, Freck decided that had it been Freck who drowned, his Mother would never know what happened to him, so he returned home. Meantime, Father had selected a new location to live on the Nodaway River, in the northeast corner of Page County. A cabin was "builded" and a mill was drawn from Saint Joseph, a hundred miles, and soon the buzz of the saw was heard in the Nodaway valley. Late in the fall a prairie schooner was pulled into the settlement by a man named "Press" with his widowed mother and sister Mary. Freck's mother let them move into the Latta home because winter was so close at hand. In the spring of 1857, Press and Freck drove a couple of heavy loads of lumber to Clarinda and sold it and the next morning they crossed the square and walked into the ramshackle court-house, and depositing a dollar each on the counter, inquired: "Mr. Baldhead, will you exchange a couple of licenses to marry for the money in sight?" "Sure," answered Mr. Baldhead. "And you boys are minded to trot in double harness?" So Press married Freck's sister Margaret, and Freck married Press' sister, Mary. Freck worked for his father, running a steam saw-mill for several years. Since space is limited, I will tell you of one other story that I enjoyed in the book. Freck and Mary had sold a farm to an Irish blacksmith living in Council Bluffs, for twenty-five hundred dollars. Mary and Freck drove to Council Bluffs to make the deed and receive the money; for payment was not made by check, and there were no banks in those days on the frontier. It was four o'clock when they were ready to start for home; it was twenty miles, with not a house between, and the first five miles was through the brushy river hills. Soon Freck became oppressed with a fear that a band of refugee bushwhackers would follow, and they would be murdered and robbed; for, mind you, he had the twenty-five hundred dollars in his breast pocket. Freck could not refrain from looking back, but he pretended he was watching some bundles in the wagon; but when they reached the summit, and the road stretched away across the prairie for twelve miles, and the shades of night were creeping closer and closer and the sun was pinning a dark cloud-curtain over the window, Freck turned and took a long, listening, and anxious look behind. When Mary laid her hand on his arm, and with a frightened look in her eyes and a tremble in her voice asked, "Robert, are they following us?" Freck was driving a span of bay mares, and he drove the wagon till the bays were white with foam. Mary and Freck did reach home safely. Over Freck's lifetime, he farmed, mined in the Rocky Mountains, worked in a lumbering-camp in the Rocky Mountains, was taken in by a scam to go south to New Mexico and hire men to dig a ditch in the Toas Valley Canal, became a gold miner at Cripple Creek near Pike's Peak where he lost his youngest son in a mining accident, traveled to California, Washington, Oregon, and the Ozark Mountains. And they bought a farm in the Ozark Mountains, and Freck and Mary lived alone, (for their children had all grown and married) and said to their hearts: "Surely we have found the long-sought place." After three years, Mary died. "And after walking side by side with Mary and sharing the joys and the sorrows of life for fifty-two years, two months, and thirteen days, Freck was left standing alone."
"Abraham Lincoln's name is known to the four corners of the earth, and when he was carried to the grave, thousands attended and went home to weep. Freck has lived a life of toil and seclusion and is wholly unknown, and when he is carried to the grave, a few perhaps will stand by and go home and straightway forget that Freck ever lived, and his name will forever perish from the earth."
"And now, dear reader, we are nearing the parting of the ways. And no doubt you will say: "Well, now, I can write a better book." and perhaps you can; for you would not be mighty much of a write could you not. Freck, in the long ago, blazed many a trail through the thick dark woods, and when the sun was sinking behind the tops of the trees, and the shadows were creeping through the forest, he would shoulder his axe and start for the camp. And as he passed back along the blazed trail he would see many crooked places, but there was no time to make the crooked places straight; the sun was going down and the darkness coming on, and he was going into camp. And as Freck goes back along the blazed trail in this book he sees many crooked places, but there is no time to make them straight; the sun is going down, the shadows are growing longer, and the night is coming on; Freck is seventy-five years old, and he will soon go into camp for the last time. Good-bye."
Robert R. Latta "Freck"
