Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 24.djvu/71

 Recollections of B. F. Bonney 55 erine M. Rhoades, who was fifteen years old. We were married on February 11, 1864, at Champoeg, by Rev. T. B. Litchenthaer of the United Brethren church. We had nine children, seven of whom are still living. You will know we shifted around a good bit when I tell you that these nine children were born in seven different houses. "My second wife was Louise Coats. We were married at Tygh Valley in Eastern Oregon by Rev. Roland Brown. My third wife was a widow with five children. Her name was Mrs. Emma J. Lamb. We were married at Oregon City by County Judge Grant Dimmick, the son of my former schoolmate. "When I was a young man I worked as a carpenter and bricklayer. Then I got into a sort of peculiar busi- ness. I would take up a squatter's right on a piece of land, build a good house on it, and sell it to someone who wanted to homestead on the land. "In 1861 I went to the Orofino mines in Idaho and had fair success. Some little time after the Civil war I decided to be a preacher. For eleven years I preached on the circuit from Dufur in Eastern Oregon to Golden- dale, Washington. Later I preached in British Columbia, and still later I had a circuit in the Puget Sound country. "When I tell my grandchildren about the old days, about the plains being dark with vast herds of buffalo, about the Indians and the mining camps, they look at me as if they thought I could not be telling the truth. Those old days are gone forever and the present generation can never know the charm and romance of the old West."