Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler Part 22

In the spring of 1860 father rented his farm, so that he could devote his whole time to preaching. He built a house in Pardee, that we might live near school and meeting until George should be old enough to do the work on the farm. There was plenty of open prairie to pasture the cows, and George and I tended them, while mother made cheese to help support the family.

Father traveled and preached almost constantly that summer, sometimes alone, sometimes in company with Bro. Hutchinson.

At many of the points at which he organized churches, the old members are now either dead or scattered. But Bro. John A. Campbell, of Big Springs, where he built up a strong church, writes as follows of his work there:

He told me that his first visit to Big Springs was in May, 1858. My first recollection of him was that he preached there on the 4th day of July, of that year, when he organized the church with twenty-eight members, my father (L. R. Campbell) and C. M. Mock being appointed elders.

His subject on that occasion was the "Unity of all Christians," and he spoke with great power. He again preached there on the 29th day of August, 1858, and his subject was "Faith." On that day the first addition to the church was made by baptism. He continued to preach for the church about once each month through 1858-9, and a part of 1860. During that time very many were added, but I have no means of knowing the number. In the fall of 1859 he held a successful protracted meeting, and another in the winter with Bro. G. W. Hutchinson. In 1860, he was at the State meeting at Big Springs, at which the ground plan of our present co-operative plan of missionary work was laid.

There was also raised at that meeting money to buy a large tent, with which Bro. Butler was to travel and preach as State evangelist. Again, in the year 1877 or 1878 he preached once per month at Big Springs and some adjacent points--once on the Waukarusa, oft the subject of the Seventh-day Sabbath, out of which grew a correspondence for a debate, but it was not; held, owing to a failure to get a suitable house.

In the forepart of December past our church held a memorial service for him, and many pleasant things about his relation to dear brethren and sisters were spoken of.

The relation between him and myself was always very pleasant, and I delight to bear testimony to his great ability and grand life and character. I regarded him as my father in the gospel, and he was a source of great help and strength to me.

The tent of which Bro. Campbell speaks was made by the ladies in the Pardee school-house. In size it was forty by sixty feet, the roof being shaped like the roof of a house. The second State meeting, and many district meetings, were held in it; and father used it in his meetings for nearly ten years, when it was finally torn up by a storm.

In the fall of 1860 the Missionary Society wished him to visit Indiana again, to stir up an interest, and collect his salary. I find no report of his work that winter, except this item from one of his letters: "There have been seventeen additions at meetings which I have recently attended--six at Brownsburg, Hendricks county, and eleven at Springville, Lawrence county, Ind."

I have found the note-book which he kept from November, 1860, to November, 1861, in which I find this account: He received #368.50; traveling expenses, $72.55, leaving for his year's work, $295.95. That was the year of the "drouth," and he apprised the brethren where he preached of the dest.i.tution in Kansas. Dr. S. G. Moore and my uncle, Prof. N. Dunshee, of Pardee, had been appointed to receive contributions for dest.i.tute brethren; and they reported the receipt and distribution of $670.96, besides boxes of clothing.

After father's return, in March, 1861, he traveled almost constantly.

I have found, in the note-book mentioned above, the time and place, and either the subject or text of each sermon he preached that year, one hundred and fifty-three in all. Here are some of the subjects named: "The Gospel;" "Christian Union;" "Kings of Israel;" "Noah and the Deluge;" "Types of the Law;" "For What Did Jesus Die?" "Baptism, its Authority and Design;" "From Whence Ami? and Whither Am I Going?"

"The Material Results of Christianity;" and "The Kingdom of Heaven."

Father had spent all of the money that was due him from property sold in Iowa, except a thousand dollars, with which he intended to pay his debts, and finish paying for land in Kansas. While he was in Indiana that spring that amount was forwarded in a draft to mother. The war was just breaking out, and by the time she could write to father and receive his instructions as to its disposal, the bank broke, and he lost a large part of it. He had already been running in debt for necessary expenses, hoping each year that his support would be increased, and the loss in the bank threw him so much in debt that he felt it would be impossible for him to preach much longer.

In September, 1861, he attended the State meeting in Prairie City. On Thursday the meeting was held in an empty store-room, for the poles had not yet been cut to raise the tent. After some preliminary business father made a short speech, telling them that he must soon quit preaching for them. He told them how necessary it was that churches should be planted at once in this new State, and how he had tried in vain to arouse the brethren at the East to their responsibility in the matter, but that he was at last obliged to give up and go to work, like an honest man, and pay his debts. He told them how he had loved the work, and how willingly he had toiled and suffered hards.h.i.+ps, and begged them to hold out faithfully and do what they could; and when his debts were paid, he would return again to the work. When he closed his hearers were nearly all in tears.

Many went long distances to that meeting, the brethren and sisters from Emporia going in a covered wagon, and camping out on the road.

Father continued to preach, however, much of the time that winter.

That part of his farm that was improved was rented for five years, and he had no money to improve the rest. The renter proved an indifferent farmer, and the rent scarcely sufficed to pay the taxes and winter the cattle. So father entered the only paying business, that of freighting, as he relates in Chap x.x.xI. Perhaps some may think from reading that chapter that he only took one trip, but he crossed the plains five times. He first went in the spring of 1862, in Bro.

Butcher's train, taking George, who was only ten years old, along to drive one of his teams, because he could not afford to hire a driver.

It was a hard, monotonous life, driving all day and camping at night through all weather; but the hardest part of it was that men and boys all had to take their turn standing guard over their cattle at night.

After Bro. Butcher was taken sick on that first trip, father acted as his boss, and on all his later trips he went as wagon-boss of some large train owned by Atchison freighters, also taking along two teams of his own.

The wagon-bosses were frequently rough, overbearing men, who not only went armed, but who often treated their drivers tyrannically. They not only cowed the boys with abusive language, but with frequent threats of whipping, or shooting, which they sometimes fulfilled.

Father never carried arms about his person in any of his trips across the plains. But there was something in his quiet, determined manner that enabled him to rule even the most headstrong of the wild young fellows who usually drove the freighting teams. He was once traveling along, for a short time, in company with a train much larger than his own, whose wagon-boss was a big, burly, swaggering fellow, who was drunk much of the time. Each train was driving along behind it such oxen as were unfit for work, and some of the other cattle became accidentally mixed with father's drove. The boss, who was already partially drunk, had ridden on to a ranch to get more whisky. Father called on his own boys, and the boys of the other train--on the plains the drivers were often called boys, even though they were middle aged men--to help separate them. But those of the other train refused to help. They tried in vain to separate them, until they were tired out.

As they neared the ranch father walked up to the well to get a drink, and there sat the drunken boss on his horse. When he saw father, he exclaimed, with a great oath, "---- ---- ----, what you driving my cattle off for?"

"I asked your boys to help separate them," replied father, "but they refused, and I and my boys have worried ourselves out at it. If you will order your boys to help we will try again."

"---- ---- you, go back and get them cattle out, or I'll send you to ---- !"

Father looked him steadily in the face, and said quietly, "I would like to see the irons you would do it with."

"---- ---- go back and get them cattle out, or I'll shoot you as sure as ---- !" shouted the fellow, jerking out a revolver with a great flourish.

The frightened boys stood back, expecting to see him shoot, but father, without moving, coolly replied, "If you want your cattle out, you will get them out yourself; I will do nothing more about it."

The fellow, cowed by father's cool, determined gaze, put his revolver back in his belt, rode off, called his men, and they drove the cattle out themselves.

In October, 1862, father decided to make a winter trip, because he could earn more money than in the summer. The owners of the train intended wintering their cattle on the buffalo gra.s.s in the Colorado valleys, which they found cheaper than wintering them on corn in Kansas. The drivers were mostly Ohio boys, who drove teams because they wanted to reach the Pike's Peak gold mines. The oxen were a lot of wild Texas steers, and it took about half a day to get them yoked up the first time, so that they only traveled about eight miles out from Atchison the first day. George did not go that trip, but father took him to town to help them start--because he said that if George was only ten, he knew more about handling wild oxen than all those green Ohio boys--and sent him home the second day out. It had been a very pleasant fall; but I never saw it turn cold so suddenly as it did that day. I remember that I spent several hours gathering in squashes and covering up potatoes; and when I returned to the house at 3 p. M.

every leaf on the trees and every flower in the garden was frozen stiff, pointing straight out to the southeast. It was the only time I ever saw a frozen flower garden in full bloom. It sleeted nearly all night, and the Texas cattle, frightened and chilled by wind and sleet, were so wild that father and all the boys had to herd them all night to keep them from stampeding. Their clothes were wet and frozen, for they were not very warmly dressed, and George said he never suffered so much with the cold in his life as he did that night.

It was a hard and stormy winter, and the Ohio boys, unused to such a life, suffered badly, many of them freezing their hands and feet. When they reached Denver the cattle were taken to the valleys, and father traded his own cattle for mules. Loading his two wagons with hides, so as to make money both ways, he and the two boys who had driven his teams started for home. I have heard him say that he never saw weather so cold, but that he could keep from freezing by walking. So by dint of much walking he succeeded in reaching home without being frozen.

Their wagons were so full of hides that they had to sleep on the ground, and he said that on waking in the morning he often found himself buried in snow. Wood was scarce, and they sometimes had to haul it quite a distance to build their camp fires at night, and it was sometimes so stormy that they could scarcely cook.

During the journey one wagon-load after another of returning Pike's Peak adventurers had fallen in with them, and kept together for the sake of company and protection against the Indians, until they made quite a train. By common consent--accordin' to the human nature of the thing, as they say on the plains--father came to be considered the boss of the train. There was a ranch near the road, kept by a Frenchman, who had an Indian wife. He had grown rich selling whisky and provisions, and wood and hay. When the half-frozen men, with their hungry teams, came by, he charged them extravagant prices; if they objected he bl.u.s.tered and threatened until he usually scared them into paying what he asked. Father and his train camped there one cold night, and some of the men went up to buy wood and hay; but he asked such high prices for them that they went back and asked father to go up. He was busy, and knowing the Frenchman's reputation, told them to go back and tell him that the boss said he could not pay such exorbitant prices, but to let them have the wood and hay, and he would come after awhile and pay a good round price for them. The men returned, and told what he said, but the Frenchman ordered them to clear out, and threatened to shoot them if they came back again without the money he demanded. He would not even allow them to draw water from the well. Again they begged father to go up, but he said he was too busy, and told them to go right back and take the wood, hay and water, and if the Frenchman said anything, to tell him that Pardee Butler told them to do it, and he would settle the bill. They went back, the one drawing water, the others getting wood and hay. Out ran the Frenchman, very wrathy, leveling his gun at them. "The boss told us to take them, and he'd settle," they said.

"Who's your boss?" he asked in surprise.

"Pardee Butler."

"Pardee Butler! Oh! Oh! Pardee Butler? Take 'em! Take 'em!" he exclaimed, dropping his gun and throwing up his hands. "Oh! Pardee Butler! Take 'em! Take 'em!" he continued, fairly dancing around, white with fright, and gesticulating as only a Frenchman can.

"Why, what's the matter? He wont hurt you," said one of the boys.

"Oh! Pardee Butler! He bad man. Oh! Oh!" he answered, still dancing and gesticulating.

"Oh, no; he is not a bad man; he never hurt anybody in his life."

"Oh, yees, Pardee Butler one veree bad man! He must be one bad man, 'cause they put heem down the river on one raft, down in Kansas.

Pardee Butler must be one veree bad man!"

Father made no more winter trips, but spent his winters at lumbering.

When he first came to Kansas he had bought eighty acres of timber land in the river bottoms, in Missouri, two miles below Atchison. Mills had been erected along the river, and lumber was at last in good demand.

So he found profitable use for his teams, and large freighting wagons, in working that timber into lumber.

He crossed the plains twice more in the springs of 1863 and 1864.

The Indians often visited their camps, begging for bread, or for sugar or tobacco. Father said that on his winter trip it made his heart ache to see the pitiable condition of the women and children, chilling around in the loose wigwams during the winter storms. He often saw the women out in the snow gathering up and carrying great loads of wood on their shoulders. But he said the most pitiable sight he ever saw was little half-starved, half-naked children, too small to walk, creeping around under his mule's heels, eagerly eating the grains of corn that they had dropped.

But the Indians were every year growing more restless, and often attacked the trains, to obtain provisions, and cattle and mules.

Father often saw them peering around the bluffs, or along the river banks, watching his movements. But he was very careful, never allowing the boys or stock to wander off alone, and keeping guards out at night. Knowing that the Indians were growing dangerous, Bro. Butcher had insisted on lending him a rifle for his later trips. One day they were traveling along the Platte River bottoms, the river half a mile to one side, the bluffs a mile or two back on the other. It seemed impossible for anything to hide in the low gra.s.s around them; but father knew that here and there in the gra.s.s were wet-weather gullies, deep enough for an Indian to lie in; and his watchful eye detected the gra.s.s moving occasionally, here and there. He halted, telling the men there were Indians in the gra.s.s. At first they made light of it, saying they knew no Indian could hide in that low gra.s.s. But he told them that he had been watching for some time, and thought the Indians were creeping up on them from the river. He took Bro. Butcher's rifle out of the wagon, saying, "I am going down there to see; who will go with me?" But none of them offered to go, except a boy of sixteen, who, seeing the rest would not go, shouldered another gun, saying, "For shame! I wont see the old man go alone!" The two went down through the gra.s.s, and when they reached the river, they saw a number of Indians running away under shelter of the bank. The Indians seldom attack determined men, who are on their guard--unless they are on the war-path with a large force--and they saw that father was such a man, and gave him no more trouble. It was on his last trip, in 1864, that the Indian raid occurred, which he mentioned in Chapter x.x.xI. On their return they found that armed bands of Indians were still riding about the country. One afternoon, when they were within a little over a day's drive of Fort Kearney, they saw a band of Indians prowling about, first in one direction, then in another. The boys were badly frightened, and wanted to run their teams all night, in order to reach the fort. The weather was hot, and the oxen already tired, and father feared that such a forced drive would kill them. So he ordered the boys to camp for the night. They kept out a strong guard, and were not attacked; but reached the fort in safety the next day.

The District Missionary Society of Northeastern Kansas had held two yearly meetings in the tent at Pardee, in August, 1862, and August, 1863, just after father's return each year from his summer trips across the plains. In August, 1864, soon after his return from his last trip, another district meeting was held at Wolf Creek, Doniphan county, which was the home of Bro. Beeler, and of Brethren Jonathan and Nathan Springer. Father had held a number of good meetings there, and built up quite a church. But when the railroads went through there the town of Severance was built up on one side; and Highland, seven or eight miles on the other side, which was already a Presbyterian stronghold, received a new impetus. So the church at Wolf Creek was broken up, and one was organized at Severance, and one has since been built up at Highland, of which Bro. Beeler is the leading member.

Bro. Jonathan Springer--who has moved to Goffs, where he still maintains his old-time zeal--relates an incident which occurred a year or two before that district meeting. Father was holding a protracted meeting, when there came into the neighborhood a young preaching brother from one of the Southern States, running away from the Union soldiers. Upon learning who he was, father invited him to preach, and they continued preaching together for a week, holding an excellent meeting, and father said not a word to him about the questions dividing North and South. Bro. Springer said, "I always thought that Bro. Butler was a peculiar, a wonderful, and a powerful preacher."

Speaking of his ability to attract and hold the attention of an audience, Bro. Springer said, "I once heard him begin a sermon with the question, 'Are we dogs, or are we men?'" At the district meeting his sermon was on his favorite theme, "Christian Union;" and it was two hours in length, yet he held the close attention of the audience to the end. Although he often preached on that subject, he always had something fresh to say. He could not crowd all that he had to say about it into one sermon. He was constantly reading of the change of sentiment on Christian union among other denominations, and referring to it in his sermons.

A few years ago he preached a series of discourses on that subject at Pardee, closing as follows: "The Protestant denominations will all become one yet, not by other churches coming to any one church, but their differences will almost imperceptibly disappear, and they will all melt into one, and no one will be able to tell how it was done."

In the spring of 1865 he moved back to the farm, and spent much of the summer in preaching. For the next four years his winters were spent in lumbering, and his summers in preaching, and improving his farm. Even while lumbering he preached somewhere nearly every Sunday; sometimes at home, sometimes in the schoolhouse near his timber, and sometimes he landed a raft at Port William on Sat.u.r.day, and went across and preached for the church at Pleasant Ridge, Leavenworth county. And other Sundays he preached at various points easy to reach on Sat.u.r.day evening, and return to his work on Monday morning.

He rafted many of his logs to Port William or Leavenworth, and usually helped to take them down; and there was much joking about where he learned the rafting business. It was dangerous, however, for rafts sometimes struck snags, or became unmanageable in the swift current, and went to pieces.

When the Central Branch Railroad was built, the company took corn of settlers in payment for lands, cribbing it by the road. Instead of s.h.i.+pping off the corn, they s.h.i.+pped Texas cattle to the cribs, to eat it up. They soon came to father in great perplexity. Their cattle broke every fence they could build, and they did not know what to do with them. So he told them how to build a fence the cattle could not break, and he had a quant.i.ty of extra strong lumber sawed for that purpose. When he called at the railroad office to receive pay for his lumber, the clerk paid him in rolls of bills sealed up in paper, with the value marked on the outside. After leaving the office he counted his money, and found that one of the rolls that was marked $100, really contained $1,000. Returning, he told the clerk he had made a mistake. "We correct no mistakes," was the gruff reply. "Young man, you are not doing business for yourself, but for the railroad company; come here and help me count the money." The label had been misplaced.