died, leaving an infant son only six days old and four little daughters, the eldest not yet ten years old.

In Aug. following I sold out, at public sale, all I possessed, except the negros and a horse and buggy, at fine prices, as during those perilous times of war and pillage I felt that it was not right to try to keep my little children at home without a mother's care and protection.

The day my wife was buried at Lexington the city was under martial law, and no one was permitted to attend her burial except two fond neighbors, Ben Bosworth and Harvey Worley, who followed the hearse and saw that she was properly buried. While they were at the grave a cannon ball fired from the fort took off a limb from a tree within fifty feet of them. For the next eighteen months I kept my children with their aunt and grandmother, until the war was over and the excitement had subsided, when, in Jan. 1866, I bought a farm of one hundred and forty acres near Newton, in Scott Co., Ky., not very far from my children's relatives.

I paid one hundred dollars per acre for this place, going in debt some twenty-five hundred dollars; it was a good place, well improved, and a pleasant neighborhood. I took home my two eldest children, Katie and Nannie, aged eleven and nine years, and employed a trusted man and wife of my old slaves to live with me. I had a nice schoolroom in the yard, in which was taught a neighborhood school, by a good lady teacher, to whom my girls went.

Sept., 1867, I employed Mrs. Ruth B. Pulsipher of Saxton's River, Vt., a most superior teacher, for the school, brought home Fannie and Maggie, the other two daughters, and their grandmother came also, to live with us and keep house. On May 7, 1868, I married Miss Jennie Barkley, of Jessamine Co., and relieved grandma of the care of housekeeping.

Mar., 1869, I sold the farm for one hundred and five dollars per acre, and boarded my four daughters with the new landlady for eighteen months, in order for them to have the advantage of Mrs. Pulsipher for teacher, who still continued the school. I rented a farm of three hundred acres near, Versailles, in Woodford Co., for which I paid thirteen hundred dollars for one year, and moved to it, taking my little boy home in June, when the

[Continued on page 370]

Thanks to Catherine Bradford for transcribing this page.