Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 16.djvu/50



42 WILLIAM H. PACKWOOD

the family to see how we were getting along and then if all was well resume her knitting. She was a wonderful manager and you never heard her nag or scold. She was calm, sweet, good-tempered and had just a bit of brogue.

"My youngest daughter went to St. Louis a few years ago. She went out to the old homestead and found that my Aunt Linda was still there. Aunt Naomi had married and moved away. Aunt Linda gave my daughter my mother's Bible and also a daguerrotype of myself taken in 1857.

"In 1846 I quit working for my grandfather and went to Springfield, Illinois, where my father was working at plaster- ing and brick laying. I worked during the summer of '46 on the farm of an English family named Fields. Mr. Fields was a fine old man. He received a pension for his services in the battle of Waterloo. He gave me an idea of military life. In the winter of '47 and '48 I worked in Glenn's grocery store in Springfield. I used to meet Abraham Lincoln almost daily. We used to often meet in the morning as I would be going to the grocery store. Mr. Lincoln would be going in the opposite direction to his law office.

"In 1848 I enlisted in the Mounted Rifles. I belonged to Company 'B/ Captain Noah Newton. The recruits for the rifles were first sent to Jefferson Barracks, Missouri. They were recruited from the western states principally. The men were enlisted in 1848. At Jefferson barracks we were assigned to companies. Several companies left Jefferson barracks in February, 1849, overland, across the state of Missouri, for Fort Leavenworth. Our Company 'B' started early in Febru- ary, 1849, and reached Fort Leavenworth about one month later. Other companies came by steamboat up the Missouri. We suffered much hardship on the trip. At that time Missouri was to a large extent unsettled. It was sometimes 15 miles between houses. The coldest day's travel I have ever experi- enced was the day we reached Dr. Sappington's, one of the noted pill makers of his day. Some of the men were so near frozen as to require lifting from their saddles. We crossed