Note from webmaster: Although this sketch was presented as a biography of Nicholas Yeager by his son, it becomes a very interesting history of Prairie Creek and the surrounding areas. There are many people from Prairie Creek mentioned, and I urge everyone to take the time to read it in its entirety. For those of you who are interested in the Prairie Creek history, but not the biography, I've divided his narrative into 'sections' and put the surnames in caps, so you may 'skim' the page for familiar names.

Note from the contributor: "The following was given to me (Lisa Evans) by Wilbur A. Yeager, Jr. 214 W. Texas Ave, Suite 200, Midland, TX 79701-4621 in 1994. In an accompanying letter he states: "I don't know where this came from but have no doubt it is an authentic transcription. I don't really understand the latter part. My father died some ten years ago and while rummaging around in his papers recently my sister came upon this writing. I haven't the vaguest how he obtained it because unfortunately we didn't discuss our genealogy when he was still with us. Let that be a lesson to all."

Note from the writer: "The writer of this sketch is guided mainly by the facts gathered from his father some sixty or sixty-five years ago although my memory is tolerably good, perhaps, it may not serve me in many particulars, especially the precise dates of the months and years so far back as I refer to."

"My father Nicholas YEAGER was born in the year A.D. 1784 on September 3rd in Washington County, East Tennessee in six miles of the town of Jonesbrough where his father lived at that time. He was kept in school from a small boy till ten or twelve years old and then sent to one of the higher schools in the town and kept in it until about 19 or 20 years old. His father had him graduated for a Presbyterian Minister but my father did not take up with the calling his father alloted him to. He had a conscience to think he should not preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ not being changed from Nature to Grace which thing did not happen until he was in his sixtieth year.

"My grandfather moved to White County, middle Tennessee, near the town of Sparta, the county seat about the time my father completed his education. His other brothers used to call him the preacher. He lived a single man until his twenty-third year and then married my mother whose name was Polly ROBINSON, who was reared in Culpeper County, Virginia, who was about two years his junior. Shortly after their marriage, they emmigrated to Kentucky near Lexington in two miles of the town. And here my oldest brother was born, Vincent YEAGER; but father only stopped there two years and then emmigrated to Ohio and settled in Middletown, Butler County, which was the latter part of the year 1809. There my father took up the occupation of a weaver in making all kinds of cloth common in that day that was worn on the body, and also around the beds as above stated. The oldest of the family was born in Kentucky, brother Vincent, was born in June, the eighth, 1808. The next of the family was born a daughter on the eleventh of December A.D. 1809, who lived to be married and had one child, a son, and then died the twenthieth year of her age. The third child was also a daughter, her name was Eliza, who was born October 8, 1811, who also lived to be married and raised eight children, six daughters and two sons. The two last children of my mother were twins, a son and a daughter, William Henry Harrison and his twin sister, Nancy Harrison. Of the five, there are three living yet, Eliza and the twins, who was born February the twenty-third, 1814 and in about eighteen months after our birth, our dear mother departed this life.

"Now I will refer to my Grandfather and my Great Grandfather, both of whom were of German descent. My Great grandfather never left the old country. But my Grandfather Solomon YEAGER came to Culpeper County, Virginia in about the year 1750, at about the age of thirty or thirty four years. He did not live in Virginia but a few years until he moved to East Tennessee where my father was born. My grandfather raised a large family, seven sons and four daughters; and they also raised large families. The oldest son was named Daniel, who raised seven or eight children. The second son whose name was Joel who also raised a good family. The third son was my father Nicholas, who raised eleven children in all. The fourth son was Benjamin, who only raised four children, two sons and two daughters. The fifth son is James, who raised ten children, about half and half. The sixth son is Solomon and about his family I do not know anything about for I never saw the man in my life for he moved to Arkansas about thirty eight or fourty years ago, near Evening Shade. But as for all of my uncles, I have saw all of them and the most of their families. My aunts I cannot say so much about. I have only saw two of them. Aunt Polly who married Reuben WILLHITE, when I saw them in the winter of '56, they were about ninety-three years old. They lived in middle Tennessee in White County on Cherry Creek, seven miles from Sparta, the County seat. My other aunt I knew was Eliza who married William FARLEY and who moved to Fayette County, Arkansas, near Fayetteville in the year fifty-three. And I was at their house in the fall of fifty-four to see them and also Uncle James. My other uncle is Elias who lives in the same neighborhood of Farley and Uncle James.

"Uncle Farley raised about twelve children, eight boys and four girls. Uncle Elias raised five children, three boys and two girls. But of all the families, Uncle Reuben WILLHITE'S was the largest. They raised about fifteen or sixteen children. In all, the children and grand children and great grand children numbered about one hundred. And out of my grandfather's children all of them but two left their native state. There is one uncle and aunt I had almost forgotten, Uncle Joel, who moved to Lerclede County, Missouri, and also Aunt Susan BROILS who married Thomas BROILS in middled Tennessee but moved to Missouri in the fall of fifty-one. I also visited them in the fall of fifty-four. Aunt Susan had about eight or nine children, about five boys and four girls. My other aunt, father's sister, I never saw. She married a FARLEY, also a brother to William FARLEY. I think she had but a small family. They married in White County, middle Tennesse and was both dead when I was in there in fifty-six. Grandfather after raising all his children lived to a good old age. My Grandmother died about the year forty-five and my granfather being lonesome concluded to get another companion and in the same courted and married a Miss HAMILTON, 45 years his junior, he being ninety years old and they lived together about five years at which time he died. Being ninety-five years, he died of the fatal disease, gravel, he lived nine days without passing anything from his bladder and at last it mortified, bursted, and he expired. I went to visit my second grandmother when I was there in fifty six. I never saw my first grandmother. The last one was living on the old homestead that was left her by grandfather. She appeared to be quite a fine old lady and treated me with respect. She had her brother staying with her at the time I visited her who was help and companion to her.

"I will now refer back to my mother. She was of Scotch parentage. She had three brothers and three sisters. Her oldest brother, Samuel ROBINSON, lived near Louisville, Kentucky and raised a large family. And the second, John, got drowned in the Ohio River near Louisville. The third one married and lived in middle Tennessee and raised a family. I stayed all night with one of his sons, John ROBINSON, in the winter of fifty six. And I was to see, two on my aunts, one a widow SIMS at the time. I stayed all night with her, she lived on Cumberland mountain, twelve miles from Sparts, east. The other aunt lived about the same distance from Sparta, northeast. She had a nephew and niece living with her when I was to see her. The other aunt I never saw and am unable to say whether she had a family or not. After my mother's death, my father shortly after was married to my step mother, an old blacksmith's daughter, in the town of Middleton, his name was Groom Bright BAILEY and on March the fifteenth, 1816 he married Henrietta BAILEY who was twenty-nine years old, who had two brothers single. And grandfather BAILEY was too old to work in the shop being in his eighty-fifth year.

"And in the summer of 1817, they decided to emigrate to Wabash County, Indiana. They commenced to make two pirouges dug out of large poplar trees, forty or forty-five feet in length, made like a dug out or a canoe to go by water and after getting all things ready sometime in September 1817, they got all on board the two pirouges which was built with siding and a roof on them which made it somewhat comfortable and resembling a boat. They first launched it in the Big Miami River below the last mill dam at Enoxes Mills. I will have to refer back about six months on the second day of March, there was another one came to town in the person of John Bailey YEAGER who was born March the second, 1817 as above stated, the first of my half brothers. The family now consisted of twelve in number, namely Grandfather and Grandmother BAILEY, and Father and mother and Nicholas and John BAILEY and six children all told. The BAILEY men were mother's brothers.

"After crowding all the household and kitchen furniture they could get into the pirouges then the family had to get aboard and you may imagine we were somewhat crowded and then they bid Middletown and the Ohio goodbye and which I have never been back to see since in about seventy-one years. We went down the Miami River to its mouth and there into the Ohio River. We got along with but little difficulty and with but little hard work until we got to the mouth of the Wabash River and there the work began for the older ones to row up the current of the river. All went on agreeable up the Wabash River until we got up to New Harmony and there a fatal incident occured, through the wise Providence of God, Grandfather BAILEY who was growing very feeble and infirm took worse than usual and they had to tie up in the little town of New Harmony and laid there some six or eight days when he expired; he was eighty-five years old. He was buried on the east bank of the Wabash River near the town. I can not remember the exact date but as near as I can recollect it was sometime in October and after the burial rites of my grandfather was performed we all started up currents again and I think the last of October or first of November, we landed at the town of Terre Haute. Meeting with no serious accident after the death of grandfather.

"There was a few log cabins in the place at that time and perhaps one or two grocery stores. The place looked very hard indeed for a city all covered with heavy timber and not very much underbrush at that time. No public building erected yet. I still remember the men that cleared off the public square of its timber for the first Court House. They boarded at my father's while doing the work, it was Hamilton REED and George LISTON. It was pretty hard to get grub for so many in one family most of all the provisions was brought up from Fort Knox now Vincennes. Either brought up by Keel boats or pack horses. Game was quite plenty at that time. Plenty of deer and other wild animals of various kinds which made a good relish at the time for meat and also plenty of wild fowls of all description of this northern climate. My father bought a lot on Second and Poplar Streets to build a house on where the brick warehouse of the Ralph THOMPSON mills now stands. And built a two-story hewed log house on it. He put up an old fashioned loom and commenced his old trade weaving but the time had not quite come in yet for weaving. There was not enough flax and cotton raised yet. And the seed was an object to get but in a few years there was plenty of both articles raised which all the ware in that day was made for both men and women for Sunday as well as week day. When my father started from Ohio it was the expectation of getting an office in the town of Terre Haute but he did not get here in time to gain his residence by law. It was the clerkship of the County he struggled on in town two and one half years as best he could, his family being so large it was hard to get support for them all. And there was another added to the family, James Culvert was born May the thirtieth, 1819 and the next spring of 1820 he concluded to leave town and move out in the country and make him a farm.

"He bought eighty acres of land on the south part of Vigo County adjoining Sullivan County, one and one half miles southeast of Middletown and in the spring of twenty moved to it. Without a horse or cow or any tools of any kind except an old Kentucky ax and hoe, he built a log cabin and then cleared off a garden spot and Conrad FRAKES plowed it up for him. The family soon put in some garden seeds and father went to clearing a small field to get in some corn and pumpkins. The county was all heavy timber and it took a great deal of hard labor to clear the ground but he cleared and made rails to fence six acres and got it all in truck and he also carried all the rails on his shoulder to fence the six acres. I can remember he wore through his coat and jacket and began to wear on the hide when my mother had to make a pad and fasten it on his shoulder to keep the rails from wearing in to the flesh, but when we began to raise vegetables we felt much happier. I still remember a little incident which occured the same spring while father was making the rails to fence the first field. I was out with him late one evening, where he was splitting rails, and a large Indian man came to where he was. I was very frightened to see him, being about the first one I ever saw before and I sprang between his legs for protection and he said to me that the man would not hurt me. He begged my father for bread and something to eat and my father told him that there was none cooked. And he asked him how far it was to his wigwam or company and he held up two fingers and a half. He had a gun carrying it on his shoulder. He went off when he found he could get nothing to eat. I saw the red skins frequently after that. There were about two hundred of them camped at one time on the bluff two miles east of Prairieton. After that my father with the help of the boys kept on clearing some every year, so we raised plenty to do us and as for a surplus, it would not be worth a man's time to raise it for you could not sell it for anything.

"I remember when they commenced building flat boats to run their corn to New Orleans they only got six and one fourth cents a bushel for their corn delivered in a boat and pork one dollar and twenty five cents to one dollar and fifty cents per hundred pounds. As for wheat there was none raised until some years after that. And when we got to raising it we had to cut it all we raised with the reap hook or sickle. I well remember when I was learning to use them cutting grass seed. I cut my hand, I have the scar on my hand yet, where I cut it when I was about nine or ten years old and expect to carry it to my grave. And after that when I was in my twentieth year while I was cutting down some wheat up in Wabash bottom for Jerry RAYMOND, I cut a piece as big as a half dollar in the same place only a good deal deeper and it bled so much I got so weak I had to quit after dinner and go and plow for Charley BENNIGHT who I had engaged to work a half a month for four dollars. Wheat at one time would only sell for thirty one and one fourth cents per bushel. And we had to flail it out with a stick three feet long for the beetle and the handle part six or seven feet long tied to the beetle with a raw hide string or a string made our of flax or toe or hemp. The latter was not so plenty as the former. Of a dry spell we sometimes cleaned off a place on the ground and tramped out our wheat with horses or oxen. Them that was fortunate enough as to have any kind of them brutes. And we had to take out corn or wheat about thirty miles to get it made into meal or flour. Until we got to building horse mills and the encline wheel or tread wheel and bolt it by turning a crank by hand and feeding with the other hand and going eight miles to the mill that then waiting all day for out turn and get hitched on about dark. You bet my brother and myself had to go once a week with four bushel of grain to keep up bread stuff for the family, being fifteen in number. We would want our dinner when we got it. I have built two of those mills in my time. The first a draft wheel and the other an encline or tread wheel. On the twenty-seventh of August A.D. 1821 my oldest half sister was born making eight children in all.

"About the year twenty-three my father concluded to make a visit to see my grandfather and started in the fall, perhaps in October to Middle Tennessee and was gone six weeks or two months before returning. And that was the first time he owned a horse after he settled on his new farm. Grandfather gave him an iron-gray mare. He had walked all the way there going. But stopping at my uncle Benjamin YEAGER's in Union County, Kentucky near Highland, but when he returned he had the little gray mare to ride home on. And you might guess the boys was well tickled when my father came back with the mare. We was quite rich then for we could make one horse useful for many things. And we nursed her like a child and made a regular pet of her. In five or six years we had horses enough to get along farming tolerably well.

"And in the time we had a cousin, a crippled man in his back come to see us, by the name of Joseph MILLS who fetched a small sorrel mare with him which helped to make out our teams. Cousin Joseph had owned a farm in Illinois twelve miles below the mouth of the Wabash river and by exposure in time of over flow had become a cripple. Being very ambitious as the family still increased, we was still enlarging the farm. On the seventh of October A.D. 1824, I had another sister born, Clarissa YEAGER, making nine children besides seven grown persons; the seventh one was another cousin, one of my mother's sister's sons by the name of Daniel Lucas Poe MILLS also being one of my aunts sons.

"I will now turn back to the first of our settling on the place when the neighbors began to think about some schools for their children. About the year twenty-one all agreed on a site for a school house which was three fourths of a mile northeast of Middletown. Here they constructed a rude log house which was very common in those days. The fashion was very plain and simple leaving the logs all in nature's growth chopping out a door in one end and also a place to make a fire place in one side and building the back wall and jams by throwing in dirt and pounding it down with a mall and cutting a log out of the side to from one end to the other for a window and at the opposite end from the door and put up sticks perpendicular and paste paper on them and grease it to toughen it which answered for the windows for there was no glass and sash in them days. The door was made of long boards riven out like clapboards and shaved a little and the ceiling was made out of split logs and the flat side turned down and filled on top with dirt. And the roof made with old fashion clapboards four to four and one half feet long and waited down with poles and pins to hold them down. The floor was sometimes made of rude puncheons and sometimes of Mother earth. The school house completed there was a teacher to select and they all selected my father who taught the first school that I went to. They soon wanted some officer to keep peace and they elected my father Justice of the Peace, and Conrad FRAKES constable. He filled that office until he lift the state and moved to Louisiana in the spring of thirty six.

"When my father first bought his land for his farm he had to borrow the money to purchase the land at the land office at Vincennes and he made a loan of old Uncle Tommy POUND and he had not yet got able to replace that money all these years, Uncle Tommy using much leniency with him. So about the spring of twenty six he concluded to go down the river on a flat boat to New Orleans to try to make some money which was forty dollars for oarsmen at that time and he also went that spring and thinking that when he got down there he could make money faster there than here he stayed fifteen months sometimes picking cotton but about the middle of June the second year he got home. I well remember the day when he got home. We was all out in the field plowing and hoeing the corn. One of my sisters came running to tell us the news of father's coming and we all started the nearest way to the house and all bare headed and when we got there, father seemed to chide our mother for letting us go without any hats but my mother was one of these economical women and did not go in debt for anything. But it was not a few days until my father took us all to town and got us all a hat apiece of John F. CRUFT.

"Mother had increased the stock of cattle to twenty eight head. My Uncle Nicholas and John BAILEY had got out house logs with the help of us boys the fall before to build a hewed log house twenty by thirty two feet, two stories high and two rooms and had raised it in the spring before father had got home. It took three days to raise it. Some of the logs pasted two feet at butt which made the raising very heavy, but we had not done anything towards putting on the roof when father came home only hewn out the rafters on account of our crops but after the harvest we went to work at the house. And we also had brick to make for the chimneys which took a great many - eight thousand apiece for each chimney - a double fire place in each of the upstairs rooms and also a brick kitchen, sixteen by twenty feet and a brick bake oven in the south east corner which in all took some thirty or thirty-five thousand bricks and Old Uncle Jerry TYRON and his boys laid the brick. So we got part of the house so we could live in it the next winter."

This narrative is very long, so I have divided it into two pages - Continue

Contributed by Lisa Evans - Thanks Lisa!
leebaby@gte.net
745 Patricia
Sherman, TX 75090