"About the year twenty-seven, my father and mother both made a trip to see his father again in Tennessee. By this time we had plenty of horses and they each rode horseback and went again by Uncle Ben YEAGERS in Kentucky, both coming and going. People them days did not mind riding three or four hundred miles on horseback, both women as well as men. In the spring of twenty-eight, I had another brother born on the twenty sixth day of April A.D. 1828, Clement B. YEAGER. In the same summer in June, I think, my next oldest sister, Eliza, was married to John THOMPSON. On the twelfth day of May, three days after my oldest sister died, Uncle Nicholas BAILEY died with the lingering complaint of the dispepsia or indigestion which was not a common disease as it is now.

"By this time the boys had grown up so they could take charge of the farm and run it father spent most of his time in teaching school having the advantage of most of the neighbors in education generally; spending Saturdays attending to his office as esquire. Occasionally the parties concerned would call some lawyer down from town to plead for them. About the year thirty, the country had settled up so much we had a very respectable neighborhood and in them days the people had more socialbility than is manifested in this day and age. They were a good deal more obliging and accomodating in helping in house raising and log rollings and dividing the necessities of life such as dividing a buck or a hog and other productions of the field, which showed they were not only trying to live for themselves but wanted to help others to live also which caused more of an attachment with neighbors.

"In the summer of thirty-one we had another addition to the family, the last one on June the second A.D. 1831, Solomon Nicholas YEAGER was born. In the fall after Father and mother was down to Tennessee there was one of my cousins come up to see us from White County, Tennessee whose name was Richard BROILS who stayed all winter and in the spring he went to New Orleans on a flat boat with Uncle John BAILEY, with a boat load of corn. He returned and stayed, working a different places until September when he returned home on horseback.

"In the first settling of the country, people used to raise cotton. But it was quite a troublesome job to get the seeds from the main fibre. At first they picked them out with their fingers. That being so tedious they invented an eaiser way. By turning two rollers the size of a chair rong, and fastening in a small upright post and turning vertically would take the seed by feeding the cotton between them. It took two hands to run one but it seemed to be eaiser than picking with the fingers for one pint of a night after supper was the stint. But there was still an improvement in ginning cotton yet. Shortley after Isaiah WILSON who lived down on Battle Row sent and got a set of cotton gin saws and erected a gin house and ginned the neighbors cotton, either for a toll or so much a pound which was a great convenience for the neighborhood in making cotton cloth and shortley after that domestics were brought on and people got sale for their produce so they began to be able to buy their cotton wear and shirting and sheeting. And soon Mr. WILSON's gin had nothing to do and run down.

"When the people began to ship off their pork and corn to New Orleans they felt more independent and they could get the necessary things of life much eaiser. Coffee came down and many other things. I can remember when coffee was seventy-five cents a pound. And the first calico dress my sister got out of Chancy ROSE's store and they cost fifty cents a yard. I remember an incident which occured in the fall of thirty-three. We had been clearing up a deadning we had north of the house and after supper we heard somebody hollering up in the clearing where we had a fire in the clearing and we answered the men who was hollering and after awhile they came on to the house. They were men hunting my father as Justice of the Peace, to get a state warrant renewed, being after some horse thieves and after they had some supper prepared they concluded to stay all night. After they had eaten supper, as near as I can recollect, at ten o'clock P.M. the meteors commenced falling or the stars as some would have it and continued until after midnight, near as my memory serves, it was in the after part of the night before we all went to our beds. It was on the thirteenth of November, 1833 for the next morning I noted it down on the ceiling upstairs, and I still have kept it in memory ever since.

"In the winter of thirty my oldest brother, Vincent YEAGER, married to Miss Sarah MILLER and he bought a piece of land near Middletown and built on it the site where the widow WEIR now lives on. In the following November his oldest son was born on the seventeenth of that month, Nicholas YEAGER. Middletown had been laid out in the year and several small stores started, one by Jonas LYKINS and another by Riley PADDOCK and a tavern stand by James COPELAND and afterwards kept by Stephen TAYLOR and in the meantime John FRAKES and David CANADY started a pottery on the old state road south west of the town and run it a few years until it run down.

"In the winter of thirty-three I hired out to a Mr. Daniel McDANIEL to help build two flat boats for James JOHNSTON and Philip FRAKES. I also hired at the same time at eight dollars a month. We had a very severe winter and McDANIEL did not finish the boats and Mr. JOHNSTON hired two SANDERS, Bill and Jim to finish them and they got completed and loaded them with corn and got them out at the mouth of Greenfield Bayou.

"On the twenty-third day of February, they started the two boats for New Orleans and the hands were as follows: Oscar GILBERT, John McCRANEY, Joe STANELY, William H.H. YEAGER and Merit SMITH, a colored man and Mr. JOHNSON for the main stearsman, expecting to lash the two boats together after we got out of the Wabash. Oscar GILBERT we put in for an Assistant Stearsman, but Oscar loved his whiskey too well to make a good stearsman. He and McCRANEY and myself was put on one of the boats to man it out of the Wabash and we were running some of the night. And the second night after we had started GILBERT got so much of the joyful in him he was unable to manage the boat; there being plenty of the essence of corn on our boat, the captain had bought a barrel of it and put it on our boat and McCRANEY and myself had to manage the boat as best we could.

"When running we ran over a snag, but it happened to point downwards and only rocked the boat a little not quite enough to capsize it. Captain JOHNSTON kept in hollering distance of us and we would signal each other. Just before day, the captain landed his boat below us and SMITH got in the skiff to meet us and we commenced pulling to land. But it being dark, we run one of the side oars into the bank and broke it loose from the rolock, SMITH having hold of it when it fastened in the bank. It run him over and injured him considerable but we landed the boat just below the other one and by this time day was breaking and we got our breakfast and while we were eating it, the lost oar came floating down and the boys ran out in the skiff and brought it in and we fixed it on again. We were just above Vincennes. After that, the captain lashed the two boats together only at short intervals.

"After that we got along tolerbaly well until we got down just above New Madrid, on one evening the wind rose high about four o'clock p.m. and we had to make a landing. Two of us was minus a hat after the storm, myself and Joe STANLEY. We lay by that night until twelve o'clock, the captain mistaking it for daybreak by the roosters crowing. He pulled out and we had not been running for an hour till we come in hearing of a Sawyer in the river. The captain and McCRANEY was up on deck at the steering oar and John wanted to know of him what it was that made so much roaring and JOHNSTON supposed it was a snag and John thought he had better pull but the captain being loathe to pull, he being a fearful man on water and got almost in sight of the snag before he hollered oars. The boys all being in the cabin but two and when they got to their oars only gave one or two licks till she struck. It was a large cotton wood tree buried in the sand on a bar with root partially out of the water. One of the boats ran outside and the other across the log but it broke two or three of the bough stiddings in and the lower plank. JOHNSTON ran and jumped down in the cabin but the water was running in eighteen or twenty inches wide. I remember the first word the captain spoke was "O, God, boys, she is gone". But he wanted all the bed clothing fetched to stop the hole, but it was no more than a bunch of straw; she went right down. He had fifteen hundred pounds of bacon on the boat and all of the cooking utensils. Joe STANLEY got out the bacon by getting a piece between his feet and stooping down and getting hold of it with his hands, but he had a bitter pill, being in March the water was very cold. He got out most of the cooking utensils. She only sank down to the roofing. There was some three or four hundred bushels of dry corn on top in the round of the roofing but it was impossible to do anything with it in the darkness of the night and it was foggy also. Mr. JOHNSTON cut off the cable and steering line, rowed off and left it, although he preferred to five it to three of us to make what we could out of it, but we did not see fit to stay on board of it. He started with four thousand bushel, eighteen hundred in one and twenty two hundred in the other. It was the largest boat that sank so we all got on the smaller boat and run on till day light and run down to Bluefords landing and landed there and waited until evening for a steamboat going north for three of us to return back home and it was McCRANEY, Joe STANLEY, and myself. The captain, Oscar GILBERT and Merit SMITH was to go on with the other boat.

"It was on the point three miles above Madrid where we saved the other boat, and the same spring after that, Miner JONES saw the boat as he came up from New Orleans lodged on Plumb Point bottom upward. In the evening we got on a steamboat going to Evansville but STANLEY nor myself, neither one of us had a hat to wear but shortly after we got on the boat I was lucky enough to get an old Beaver hat from a Mr. ARNET for seventy-five cents. But Joe went bare headed till we got to Princeton before he bought one. We walked from Evansville home. We got home about the tenth of March. We only got ten dollars out of the trip, we were to have thirty-five dollars for the trip to New Orleans. We blistered out feet walking home.

"In two or three weeks after I got home, I hired out to Holum HUNTINGTON for three months to put in his crop and tend it for eight dollars per month, while he run a boat load of corn to New Orleans for Charles BENTLEY, Charley BENNIGHT and himself. I worked my time out and a few days over and then went to work for John STRAIN helping to frame a barn, but did not work long till I took the billious fever and was laid up for four or five weeks. I then worked at home awhile until the fall, I worked some for Charley BENNIGHT making rails."

There was a genealogy attached to this narrative, which I'm including on a separate page. To view it, click here. There are many Prairie Creek surnames included! Or, click here to return to the previous page.

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