Our house was built by my dad facing the south about 5 miles N. W. of Willow Springs. There were forty acres of the rockiest land with snakes and other wild creatures. There was a nice creek dividing the farm. On the hill east of the creek Pa and the boys made a fence of rock around a plot and planted a grape vineyard. Pa built a house with a trough that the cold water in the creek ran through. The cold water kept the milk and butter from spoiling.

We had an orchard and garden which Ma tended. Farther back there was a barn and a yard, pig pen and chicken house. There were a lot of wild strawberries, huckleberries, black walnuts, hickory nuts and hazel nuts to be picked . This must have been [the] homestead land which prompted people to move there. I don't know who moved there first.

My mother's father Jackob Bellis and her step mother lived 1-1/4 miles west of us. (Grandpa's first wife and 3 children died in 48 hours with scarlet fever while Grandpa was in the army during the Civil War). Ma's youngest sister and family Jennie Finnicum and Bill and children Fred, Fay, Forest, Claude and Hope lived in town. Another of Ma's sisters Martha Pancost lived in the country. Aunt Martha died and Uncle Bill Pancoste married Lucinda who was very mean to his children. Letha, Jake, Authur, Will, Belle. Authur was a young man so he got on his horse and rode away. The next time he was heard from he was married living on a farm at Sumner, Oklahoma. He became wealthy in land and left his children well off. Fred, Os, Nellie, Walter and I attended his funeral.

My mother had one brother Taylor Bellis who when 17 went to Alaska when the gold rush was on. The next time he was seen was in 1912. He was an old man. Came to Shawnee and visited my mother and Aunt Jennie. He started back to Alaska but got ill in California and they never heard from him again. He never married.

I went to school in a one room school two terms in Missouri about 1-1/2 miles from our home. Oscar could have been the teacher if he had not been too bashful, to give the validictorian speech so a girl named Tenny Ferguson got the job because her dad was on the school board. She would ride a horse to our house every night so Oscar could teach her math so she could teach it to the kids the next day.

When I was about 6 years old my Aunt Jennie and Uncle Bill moved to a farm in Kansas. Oscar and Blanche went to help them at harvest time. When they came home in the fall Blanche had bought material and made her some new clothes. But Os brought his earnings home. I was staying out of school because my shoes were too worn to walk there. So Oscar rolled a silver dollar to me and said have Pa get you some shoes. Well, that dollar looked as big as a wagon wheel to me.

Blanche worked in a boarding house in Willow Springs. The owner Susie Crumble bought an ice cream freezer and let Blanche bring it home and made ice cream. That was my first ice cream.

One Christmas Ma gave Nellie and Fred a dime and sent them on a horse to Sterling to buy sugar to make candy. One of them swallowed the dime. We never knew which one so we had candy made from home made sorgum.

When Lester was about 1-1/2 years old we left Willow Springs in 2 covered wagons and landed in Galina, Kansas. There were zink mines Pa thot he and Oscar, Dode and Fred could work in. We rented a 4-room house for $2 per month which they had to prop up to keep it from falling over. Victor was born there in 1901. Our mother was 45 years old at the time. That was when I first learned about the birds and the bees.

Blanche married Jim Lamb and she had a baby that was older than his Uncle Victor. That baby died at about 7 months and is buried at Meeker, Oklahoma.

Nellie was a very pretty young girl. She finally got a job at a Chili Parlor where she learned to make it. But I didn't like it. It was too hot with pepper and heat.

Blanche, Jim and baby and Nellie went to Shawnee because it was building and Jim got plenty of work. In the spring of 1902 the whole family went to Shawnee in 2 covered wagons, a buggy tied behind one and a cow behind the other one. Fred [had] a pet duck so he put her in the back of the buggy.

We tried to cross the Arkansas River where the railroad is built in Tulsa but the quicksand was bad and the horses got scared and wouldn't pull so Pa and Os hire a man just sitting there and waiting to pull us out. Cost $1.50 which left about $2.00 for us to live on the rest of the way. The back of the buggy got full of water and Fred's duck was the only one who enjoyed that. Lester was cutting teeth and got very sick and some place near Baxter Springs we camped to get a doctor for him. While we were camped a tornado come and blew away our tent and Dode's only pair of pants. So Pa and Os had to get a job so they could pay the doctor and buy Dode some pants. While we were camped some place we went to a baptising at a creek. They sang Shall we gather at the river and (I) got a hymnal some place and learned to sing that and made a pest of myself. I saw my first horned toad just after we got in to Okla. The day we came in to Shawnee there was one of those famous Oklahoma dust storms from the south. The wind was so strong the men took the cover off the wagons and there we were all 11 of us sitting on beds exposed to the eyes of everyone who saw us. I imagine we were laughed at but I was glad we were going some place better so guess it didn't bother me.

Blanche and Jim had lost their first baby. They and Nellie were living in a four room house just south of the cemetery. We stayed there one winter and then moved out. While there Nellie and I had some kind of fever and were ill all winter. Pa gave me some pills to take and bragged how they were helping me and I was putting them in a hole in the wall paper. I missed a whole term of school and another term because Pa wouldn't let us be vaccinated for smallpox. It was about as dangerous as the disease. Many years later most of the family contracted small pox.

My life was not all hardships. We had many happy times as a family. My father's parents left enough money to buy a new house at 116 S. Draper, Shawnee, Oklahoma. I was about 16 and very proud of it. There were 4 rooms downstairs and 2 upstairs. We got our first ready made rug for living room called Art Square. It was green background with large red roses in corners. Quaker lace curtains, Partiers at double door and the piano. Dode had made the money to buy a pump organ and later traded it on the piano. I took my first piano lessons on the organ (paid for by Dode) later my grandpa Jackob Bellis (Ma's father) came to live with us and my lessons ($ .50) were paid from his small pension he received from his Army service in the Civil War.

I was about 16 years old when I finished the 8th grade at Horace Mann School which stands on N. Draper St. Most of my social life was centered at the United Brethren Church at 9th and Center St.s We had many ice cream soojals and trolley rides on the new Street cars between Shawnee and Tecumseh .05 per person round trip. There were 4th of July and Labor Day Celebrations with picnics at Benson Park, which was new.

We had many family gatherings at home on Christmas after most of us were married. All are gone but me, Zella, Lester, and Victor. Pa and Ma left 11 children, 28 grandchildren, 1 adopted, and 40 great grandchildren. I am now 88 years old. Zella 82, Lester 80, Vic 78. I married Walter Thompson June 17, 1911. I now have 7 grandchildren all married but 2, 12 great grandchildren and 2 on the way.