Reminiscences of Rachel Owsley Barton

Title

Reminiscences of Rachel Owsley Barton

Rights

Rights Information

Type

Still Image

Creator

Rachel Minerva Owsley Barton

Date

1890-1914

Format

PDF

Language

English

extracted text

[The following four paragraphs were absent from what remains of
Rachel’s original writing but were found in a 1982 re-typed version of a 1914
edited version of her writing.]
When we moved from Parke County, Indiana, to Pike County, Illinois, I rode
a pretty white horse all the way across the state, or nearly so. Ballie was his
name. Sister rode a pretty brown horse with a long mane and tail. We both had
side-saddles and the remnants of mine are here yet.

After we had been married more than a year, and while we were living at
Six Mile Creek, your father went to my father’s. While he was there it rained so
that the creek got so high he had to come through the woods on the opposite
side of the creek from our home. He came near enough to call to me to make a
good big fire, as he would swim over. He hid his gun in Uncle Marcus Cook’s
empty house until he could get it the next day. Then he tied his clothes on to his
head and swam across. It was early spring and the water was cold. He could
swim splendidly; once I saw him turn over and over in Dutch Creek when the
creek was full.
He used to tell us about swimming the Cumberland River when he was a
boy. He would swim across, get two sprouts about the same size and length, then
string them full of sweet apples, take the little ends between his teeth, a string on
each side, and swim back; so you see he was ingenious even when he was a small
boy. He wore a flax linen shirt, - not another thing -. He could remember his first
pair of pants, children did not wear shoes then, so he would set his traps and go
to them bare foot in the snow. His mother would let him have her sieve to catch
snow birds with in the yard, by tying a string to the trigger and pulling when the
birds got under.
Your father loved to skate, and used to go on the Rockport mill pond with
Gill Shaw and Jim Rupert and others. I think I never knew anyone who enjoyed
sleigh riding as he did. He would take his sleigh and hitch up and go as far as
Stockland to church at night, and sometimes to New Hartford.