She was born with very bad eye sight and was sick most of her first year. A skinny little baby. Then she had ear aches and abscesses in her ears, leaving her hearing bad. For several years she was nearly deaf.
Even though her eyes got better it was difficult for her to get much of an education. But she was a good worker and her family very much depended on her for inside house work, and outside farm work, as there were no boys large enough to work. There were seven girls in the family before the first boy was born.
This girl was the fourth girl and she took a boy's place on the farm. She had to do such things as milking, planting, cultivating, cutting corn, husking corn. Also she would work with her father in the woods using a crosscut saw cutting logs, staves, and heading bolts, as well wood for fuel, since it was the only kind of fuel they had to use then.
Her father and mother had made a move in a covered wagon before she was born. They were on the road for several days going to the northern part of Michigan. They did not like it there. They stayed only six months and started back to the southern part of Ohio. I will call the little town near where they stopped, Mapleville. And that is where this little girl was born.
I will call her Ella Good. When she was quite small, about five years and eight months old, her father got travel lust again and wanted to change his home. So he fixed up a covered wagon and started out on the trip with the five sisters and their mother. It was a spring wagon loaded with chickens and ducks, and a year old colt tied behind.
They started early in the morning of March 24, 1887. They arrived April first and what an April fool's day it was!
Her uncle, her father's brother, had made the trip ahead of them. He had written back to her father about what a nice place it was. When they arrived at her uncle's place, it was covered with water everywhere and had frogs croaking in the lawn. The house was a one-room log cabin built in the corner of a dense woods with hoot owls in the trees close by to keep us awake at night.
Her mother was very much discouraged as they had to live with the uncle's four of them and seven of this little girl's family. This was in a one-room house until they could find another log cabin.
There was no church near by, the children walked two miles to Sunday School, then two miles back over rough roads through the woods. They wore calico dresses and sun bonnets to match--which would be a novelty these days.
The next year the men of the community got together and built a log church nearby which made everyone happy.
That fall Ella started to school, which was quite a new adventure. Also, that fall another sister was born in their family. Then in the winter one of the sisters passed away. A very sad event that left their mother very depressed.
These events made this little girl remember so much about the trip they had made to get to this good-for-nothing country.. Her folks were very poor and all these extra expenses made them very destitute. It was hard to get enough food and clothes for the family.
The next summer one of the little girls took down with typhoid fever. She was very sick and the nearest doctor was five miles away. To get to him they had to travel on horse back, most of it through the woods. She got better but it took a long time before she was well.
That was in Grover Cleveland's administration and there was not much work to be had. If a man got a days work, it was for only fifty cents for a day's work. That was not much to live on.
She had an abscess in her ear and could not go to school. It was one of those days that she told me what she remembered about their covered wagon trip:
She said it had been raining so the river was very high . There were small buildings and barrels floating in the water. A horse was swimming. She remembered this clearly because it was something different, something she had never seen before.
On the second day, the family stopped to cook their dinner, which was cooked on a bonfire by the roadside. It consisted of a vegetable stew cooked in a large kettle hung by a small pole suspended from forked sticks over the bonfire. It rained and everything in the wagon got wet. They had to wait and hang them out to dry on the rail fence along the road.
When they stopped at a farm house to get some water, they found the people to be friends--people that had lived near them the year before. They ate dinner with them and visited for a while. Then they rounded up the children and started on their way.
After they went about a mile they met some children that called them gypsies and threw stones at them. That night they stopped near a farm house to have their supper and stay the night. The farmer came out to talk to them. He found out there were children in the wagon and was surprised to see they were not gypsies. Later he brought a nice pail of milk for the children. He was so nice to them that the children decided to go back and see him some day.
She told me her story while we were setting there on the floor of that log cabin:
When they got to her uncle's place she was scared to go to sleep for the frogs croaked so much and owls hooted. Early in the evening the whippoorwills sang their whippoorwill song to their mates and the crickets were busy chirping . It was a noisy place there in the log cabin in the corner of the woods.
The ducks and chickens ran loose and found their own living. The colt they had brought with them was lots of company the children .They taught him to let them ride him, and he was a real pal to all of them.
While we were still there on the floor, one of the neighbors came in and talked to her father. He wanted some rails cut and he wanted her father to cut them.. He said the children needed milk and he told her father if he would cut fourteen hundred rails, he would give him a good cow. So they made a deal before he left.
I will call him Al Coart. He was an old bachelor. He was a good friend to her father and spent many evenings at their home.
The next morning her father went to get the cow and Al had given him two pigs. He carried them home in a grain bag and led the cow. She had not been milked that morning so Ella's mother got a pail and started out to milk the cow. All the children followed. That was a great event as it meant they would have milk to drink, butter on their bread, also cottage cheese. There was plenty for all, as the cow was a good one, giving five or six gallons a day. Good milk to drink.
Down the road a little ways a neighbor lived there with four grandchildren. The children's mother had passed away when the fourth one was born. Now it was a month old. Ella's mother sent a little pail of milk night and morning for the children which they were glad to get. The old couple was in need of many things.
Well as time went on, it was three years since the covered wagon had brought the Good family to this home. And it was time for the arrival of another baby--if the stork was on time. When it arrived it was another girl, making eight girls in all. They called her Azora, a nice fat baby,
Now times were a little better, but her father had lost his farm horse. while she was in pasture, she had slipped and fell on her back into a seven foot ditch and could not get out. But, now, the colt was old enough to take her place and she had left another year old colt.
Ella's father was farming more ground. And her father and a neighbor Cal Conor, went in partnership on a cane mill to make sorghum molasses. The mill was run on a share proposition.
They now lived on a different farm. The owner, George Traylor, was a funny little man with a big crop of whiskers. His wife was a short, fat woman. Both were very odd, but good neighbors.
Ella went to the same school and had many friends. Among her school mates a favorite of hers was boy I will call Roy Miner. Roy, his sister, Anna, and Ella were all good friends. As time went on the Miners moved to Michigan. And Ella became interested in a neighbor boy, Edd Coal. He was fifteen years old. Ella was fourteen. He lived with his brother. Then they moved to Seline, Ohio and they never saw each other again. After that, She quit school but still had many friends.
She and her sister Sylvia were always together. They went to church every time the bell rang. Ella taught a Sunday school class to boys and girls from twelve to fifteen years. She taught the same class for three years.
During this time, her mother had three more babies and Ella had cared for her. Now one of her sisters was married, but she passed away before she was married a year. Also her baby brother passed away just two weeks after her sister.
Well now, Ella was eighteen years old and had a boyfriend, John Karr. He came to see her where she was working three evenings a week. But when she went to another place to work, they didn't see each other.
One afternoon she went out for a walk with a little girl she was taking care of. They went down by the creek. They sat down to rest and watch the squirrels hunting nuts and running up and down the tree. All of a sudden they heard someone coming. They got up real quick and turned to go. There was a nice young man right in front of them. So he strolled along with them. He was visiting his aunt and would go back to Chicago next week. And she never saw him again.
She kept changing boyfriends for two years. Then a strange young man came to her church. I will call his name, Walter Lake. He walked with Ella as he was going the same way. He was working for a man in the neighborhood They were together much of that summer. When he left there, he wrote to her every week, and came back to see her a few times.
As time went on, as it always does--as time waits for no one--he came back to see her on Decoration Day 1903 and they became engaged. He gave her a gold ring before he left. His father was a United Brethren minister and they lived in Lindsey, Ohio. Then he left for his uncle's place where he was working on the farm. He did not get back to see her until two weeks before they were married.
She retired from the state work at the age of seventy-two years.
