a fine country it would be in a few years, and, with other comforting
words, said, if we lived, I would take her back in a few years, to visit
her old home.

The next morning father and Mr. Thompson came, and we were soon all
aboard the wagon. When we reached Mr. Pardee's his family seemed very
much pleased to see us. He said: "Now we have 'Old Put' here, we'll
have company."

Putnam county joined the county he came from, and he called father "Old
Put" because he came from Putnam county.

Father immediately commenced cutting logs for a house. In one week he had
them ready, and men came from Dearbornville to help him raise them. He
then cut black ash trees, peeled off the bark to roof his house, and
after having passed two weeks under Mr. Pardee's hospitable roof, we
moved into a house of our own, had a farm of our own and owed no one.

Father brought his axe from York State; it weighed seven pounds; he gave
me a smaller one. He laid the trees right and left until we could see the
sun from ten o'clock in the morning till between one and two in the
afternoon, when it mostly disappeared back of Mr. Pardee's woods.

Father found it was necessary for him to have a team, so he went to
Detroit and bought a yoke of oxen; also, at the same time, a cow. He paid
eighty dollars for the oxen and twenty-five for the cow. These cattle
were driven in from Ohio. The cow proved to be a great help toward the
support of the family for a number of years. The oxen were the first
owned in the south part of the town of Dearborn. They helped to clear the
logs from the piece father had cut over, and we planted late corn,