AKA: Susan Mary Small
           Born: 
     Christened: 
           Died: 
         Buried: 

I, the writer of these lines was born in Venango County, PA, on October 28, 1830, on a farm about one mile from the little village of Utica, about seven miles from Franklin, the county seat, which is located on the Alegheny River at the mouth of French Creek. Utica is on French Creek. This stream was at one time a slack water canal but when I was quite young the dams and locks were torn out. The town is quite an old town. It was the home of my grandparents or rather on a farm joining the town.
My father was one of a family of nine. five boys and four girls. His name was David Gilmore. My mother's name was Joanah Colson. She was of German parent­age but American born.
My mother's parents came to America from Germany. My grandfather was an educated man. He was a Lutheran minister and also a physician. He lived only a short time after coming to this country. You will find his Memoirs attached to these few lines. He died in Meadville, Pa. His family consisted of a wife, three daughters, and one son. The son's name was Augustus Colson for whom I was named.
I know but little of my father's ancestry. What I do know is recorded in our family Bible, also mother's. I have my grandfather Colson's memoirs printed and pasted in the same Bible and can be found there by any one interested in the matter. My father was quite a large man. He measured just six feet in his stock­ing feet and weighed about 180 lbs. He was a very healthy man, never sick until after moving to Indiana after he was fifty years old. He was a hard working man but a poor manager and with a large family and living in a poor country we were naturally very poor. My father was a carpenter and mill-wright and worked away from home a good deal. He got $1.00 a day, so a good deal of the home work fell upon me when I was quite young. I being the oldest boy. So I began working away from home, too, whenever an opportunity offered, so, of course, my education was sadly neglected.
We had a little log school house on my father's farm. I will try to describe it here. It was built of hewed logs. I think about 18 feet square with a door in or near one corner and a large fireplace in one corner built of stone and mud. The large boys at school would chop the wood and keep up the fire. They would roll in big logs 3 feet long and pile on small wood to make a good fire and when we would get too cold, we would stand up with our backs to the fire and warm. The seats were benches made of slabs with holes bored in them and pins put in for legs and it always seemed to me they were made with the hard side up. Then our writing desks were made by boring holes in the wall a little slanting and pins put in and a wide board laid on and for light, a log was left out just above our writing desk and window lights set in. I never saw a blackboard in all my school days.
When we first went to school, we were provided with a paddle with the alphabet printed on it so we could not tear it up. Then began our education. When we learned our letters, we began spelling words of two letters, etc. So when we had advanced far enough to spell pretty well, we were allowed a copybook where our teacher would write copies for us with a pen made of a goose quill. Of course, the teacher would have to make our pens for us, and would have to mend them very frequently. Soon us boys were allowed a slate and pencil and arithmetic. We were first required to commit to memory the rules then work examples. When we got stalled we would carry it up to the teacher and he would work it for us. We always had a man teacher in the winter so he would be able to flog the big boys. In summer, we had lady teachers but the big boys didn't go then. It wasn't considered necessary for the girls to learn to figger. We had three months school in winter and three months in summer.
I was kept out of school in summer quite early to help on the farm and when I was fifteen my father sold his farm and moved to Indiana. There we settled in a new place where it was all woods and swamps. Here it was sickly and we all had the fever and ague for the first time in our lives. So in doctor's bills and living we soon used up what little we had. So we decided to move back to Pennsyl­vania as soon as we could get things in shape. In the meantime my father had rented a little farm about five miles away and here we raised a little crop, and here my father had a terrible sick spell and during this time my oldest sister got acquainted with a man by the name of Joseph A. Burr and concluded to get married which they did in the spring of 1849, they moving to a farm which my brother-in-law owned in Miami County. This changed our plans in regard to going back to Pennsylvania. We followed them to Miami County. We rented there for a year or two, and I worked out part of the time; and in the fall of 1851, I made a trip back to Pa. for the purpose of collecting a little money due my father.
I went by canal boat from Peru, Indiana, to Toledo, Ohio, then by steamboat to Buffalo, N. Y. There I visited with my mother's people for a few days. Then by steamboat to Erie, Pa. My intentions were now to go to our old home, sixty miles, and visit a few days and attend to my business and return to Indiana. So I left my satchel containing my clothes at Erie and made my journey sixty miles walking nearly all the way. In a few days I learned that I could not get the money in time to make the trip home that fall and would have to stay all winter. So I was obliged to make another trip to Erie to get my clothes which I did walking 40 miles a day or making the trip in three days. Now, this sounds strange why I was obliged to walk, but at that time there was no railroads in the country that I have described. There was a turnpike from Erie to Franklin with stage coaches running but fare was high and money was scarce with me so I had to walk.
I was now back to Utica among my old schoolmates and friends where I spent about a month in the gayest possible way attending apple paring bees and parties. But I now found it necessary for me to do something to earn some money, so I started up the Allegheny River country, afoot again, about 45 miles which I walked in one day where I soon found work in the pine timber; worked there until spring, then hired to help run a lumber raft down to Pittsburg, came back up the river on a steamboat, stayed a few days at Utica and then started home to Indiana; walked to Erie, took a boat for Toledo. That night we met a fierce storm on Lake Erie. Passengers all sea-sick. Thought we were going to be wrecked but escaped. At Toledo I found a canal boat on which I took passage for Peru, our home town. I then went to work chopping and clearing land all through the summer. I taught school during the next winter, and in the spring following went back to clearing land.
I went in partnership with a man by the name of Truman Davis. We each bought a horse and rented some land and took jobs of chopping; but during the summer, Davis took a notion to get married and left me with some jobs unfinished and our crop partly tended and some debts to pay, so I lost that year entirely. But that year my mare raised a colt and in the fall I gave the mare to my father and I traded the colt towards a horse. It happened that a neighbor was coming to Iowa and he offered to board and haul me to Iowa if I would let him work my horse and help him on the way.
I accepted the offer, so we started on the 20th day of Sept. 1853 and landed in Page County, Iowa, on Oct. 21 safe and sound. On the next day I hunted up Mr. Inscho, an old Indiana neighbor. I found them living in a little log cabin and nearly all sick with ague. I hitched up his oxen and hauled some wood and chopped it up for them. I hired a man to take care of my horse and then looked around for a job. I soon found one. I hired to work for Mr. Hawley. the founder of the town of Hawleyville. He was building, farming and running a store, so I had plenty of work. On the 25th day of October, we had a big snow nearly a foot deep but it didn't stay long. It had nearly all melted away in a week but on the first day of November, it snowed and thundered nearly all day but it was warm and the snow melted as fast as it fell.
That day we quarried and hauled limestone. We built a great log heap in a hollow in the woods and burnt lime on it to plaster the first house that ever was plastered in Page County. I have the honor or the record of quarrying the lime­stone, burning the lime, lathing and plastering these houses which were in the village of Hawleyville and consisted of one store house and one dwelling for Mr. Hawley and one for his son-in-law. Mr. Curtis. The lath was wide thin boards. We laid them on the ground and checked them all over with an ace, then wedged them open on the wall and nailed them fast. I did not do the plastering but I mixed the mortar and carried it to the plasterer.
In February, I went to Missouri afoot. I went from Hawleyville to Maryville, Mo. and there I hired to some men to help brand a lot of cattle and drive them to St. Joseph. I then hired to the same men to work in the timber. I worked there all summer, came back to Iowa in the fall and husked corn awhile and then worked in the timber through the winter; went back to Mo. and worked on a farm through the summer; came back to Iowa and went in with Taber in a gun shop, and in the fall, that is, the fall of 1855 was married to Narcissa J. Taber. We lived in Hawleyville for one year when we all, that is my wife's people and us, all moved to Nebraska, lived there one year; came back to Franklin Grove, Page County, Iowa. I bought 120 acres of land and began farming on my own account; taught school one term in winter, farmed summers and done well.
I bought and sold land a number of times-but I must go back a little. On the 12th day of August 1856. our first child was born. We called him William Augustus;
and on the second day of December, 1859, our second son was born and we called him Charles Andrew. On February 19, 1867, a daughter was born to us. We called her Lelia Augusta. This was all the family we ever had.
I owned and improved a farm just north of Franklin Grove and in 1862 while the war was in progress some of our neighbors got scared about the war and wanted to get away so I bought the farm of Mr. Levi Hunt and moved on that where we lived until the spring of 1875 when we sold out and bought a general store also an elevator in the town of Essex and went in the business but did not continue long as the wheat crop failed that year and times were getting hard so we traded the business to my partner for his farm at Franklin Grove, moved on to this farm in the fall of 1875, lived there until the spring of 1891 when we sold the old home and bought land near Shenandoah also a home in town and moved to town. Here we bought and sold several times, lived here four years when we sold out everything and bought a farm three miles east of Red Oak, Iowa, moved on to this farm in the spring of 1895, lived there two years. During this time my wife and married daughter both lost their health, so much so that we were obliged to sell out again. We then moved to southern Kansas in search of health but were disappointed.
Our daughter married Charles A. Soward on March 3, 1885, and they and us went into partnership in the farming and stock business and lived together until we sold our farm in 1897 and moved to Kansas. They had a daughter born to them on December 4. 1887, and named her Myrtle L. Soward.
Now as above stated, we moved to Witchita, Kansas, in the spring of 1897, lived there until the 28th day of August, same year, when our daughter died. We brought her back to Iowa and buried
(Unfinished)

Note:
The Bible referred to is now the property of Glennie Gilmore Peters, Red Oak, Iowa.