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Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler by Pardee Butler
page 4 of 344 (01%)

Their cabins were built of logs, with hewed puncheon floors and doors;
and on the roof, in the place of nailed shingles, were split shakes,
fastened on with poles and wooden pins. But grandfather had brought a
few nails (made by a blacksmith) from New York, and used them in his
house. When a neighbor died they hewed out puncheons to make a coffin,
and finding only eighteen nails in the neighborhood, grandfather, by
torchlight, pulled fourteen more out of his house to finish the coffin.

Their lives were full of hardship and privation. Grandfather was a
famous hunter, and his well aimed rifle sometimes furnished game that
kept the neighborhood from starvation. He was dependent on bartering
furs at some distant trading post, for his supplies of salt, needles,
ammunition and other necessary articles that could not be made at home.

Often, after a hard day's work, he hunted half of the night to obtain
coonskins and other furs. Father said that one night grandfather and
Orin Loomis were out hunting coons with the dogs, having taken their
axes to chop down coon trees, but no guns, when they found a bear, on a
small island, in the middle of a swamp. But I find his bear story so
well told in the "_Wadsworth Memorial_" that I will quote from
that:

"In the fall of 1823, as Butler and Loomis were returning after midnight
from one of their hunts, and had arrived within a mile or two of home it
was noticed that the dogs were missing. Presently a noise was heard, far
back in the rear.

"'Hark! What was that?' said Loomis. They listened awhile, and agreed it
was dogs, sure.
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