The following excerpt was submitted by Dan Brown: "I hope everyone enjoys the memoirs of my great aunt, Martha Frances Caudill Brown. To me they are a real treasure since I never knew any of my formerly anonymous paternal Brown ancestors or cousins until 2004. Martha's memoirs were instrumental in me discovering my roots after 60 years.
If anyone finds or knows of any additional or related sources or data pertaining to any person, place or event in the memoirs, please contact me.
Thanks for your interest and thanks in advance for your comments of the memoirs."
Dan Brown
1131 SW Wanetah Way
McMinnville, OR 97128
Ph 503 434-1215
Martha Brown's Memoirs
In November 1908 we left W. VA and moved to Kentucky. We had to live on shell beans and turnips until I thought if we ever got anything else to eat I would never eat any more beans or turnips. So a man, Mr Ball, hired some work done on his farm. He raised tobacco and also corn so he let us have what we needed and let us pay for it in work. I washed for his wife and my husband worked in the tobacco and other farm work. My mother gave us a cow so we got along fairly well.
(pg 84) We left Kentucky (by train) the 16th day of March 1911 and arrived in Morton, Washington March 21st. There was so much difference in the West and the East. We almost felt that we had gone into another world. When we got to the station we was kind of slow to get our bundles of pillows etc as we had not had any berth. We prepared for our children to be as comfortable as we well could. So I had all the family go ahead of me and before we all got off the train was in motion. Our oldest boy jumped off the train. I tried to set down on the step as I had my part of the luggage and could (pg 85) not very well hold on to anything. So I lost my balance and fell off the train. There was nothing to do only lie there until the train had gone as I was near the wheels.
There was some of our friends met us at the station. They had a two seated buckboard drawn by two ponies. We never before had seen such large trees many of them with moss hanging several feet long from the limbs. They took us to their home and we stayed there for a few days. Then we went to the home of an old lady of whom those people had rented her farm for us before we had arrived. It was a few months of torture, her house being small. Her dogs and cats lived, ate and slept together with an innumerable company of fleas.
We was strangers in a strange country, no money, no job. Did not know what to do only take the place that had been rented for us. So we too took up our abode with them. We lived very skimpy. Would be hard to tell just how we did get by until my husband got work. First he got a job of making tiling which (pg 86) lasted only a few days but we was able to get some supplies to keep us from going hungry. Later he got work in a shingle mill and worked for a short while.
We raised quite a bit of garden and other stuff. I put up 132 quarts of Black Cap and Black Raspberries. Then we went into the forest and picked most of them. When the hay crops and other crops was stored away, the old lady became very anxious that we go elsewhere to live which we very much wanted to do. So again those people that had (pg 87) rented her place for us, rented another place . When we got ready to pack our few belongings, the old lady would not let us have only half the stuff we had put up. But we managed to not have trouble with her more than we refused to eat in the dishes the dogs ate in. Invited them to sleep outside in order to be able to get rid of the fleas. Her house was made of cedar boards. The floor was on the ground and the dust came up between them and the fleas could be seen on the floor or in the dust. I took lye and boiling water and got (pg 88) rid of them to the extent that we could have some rest and sleep. In spite of it all we had many pleasant hours. The little shack was built by a lake and there was such nice forest near by. We was away from our friends or near relatives and our family ties seemed all the stronger and dearer to us.
The eleventh day of October, after butchering an old mother hog we had bought from the old lady, we loaded into a wagon and started to our new home. The snow was about six inches deep and the wagon did not ---
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