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We, Samuel Smith Hord and family, wife and two children, Viola and Adelaide, left Kentucky in the early fall for the State of Illinois in 1860. It was the year that Abraham Lincoln was elected President of the United States. One of his opponents was John Bell of Tennessee. Their platform, or party was called "Constitutional Union of the Country." Father was for them. I remember father and mother telling of my standing in the front of the wagon and ringing a little bell and saying, "Hurrah for Bell and Everett." I was nearly three years old and would be three the 16th of December of that year.
We settled 18 miles south of Bloomington, on the Illinois Central Railroad, at Wapella, DeWitt County, Illinois. We lived on a farm about two or three miles northeast of town (as near as I can remember). Sister Carrie and Brother Nate were born on this farm. Carrie was born on January 11, 186?. Nathan was born April 1, 1862. Grandma [Hannah Cadwallader] Ellis came and made us a visit from Kentucky at that time so as to be with Ma. She stayed 6 weeks and when she went home, she took Addie and me with her. Then in six more weeks, Ma came to Kentucky to get us. It was during the Civil War, and I remember her saying that she had met a body of soldiers in going from Grandfather Ellis´ home to Grandmother [Nancy Bolling] Hord´s. Now, Grandma Hord had slaves and I used to be afraid of them, for they wanted to hug Addie and me. They were little pickaninnies. I don´t know how many were at home there then. There were Henson and Harriet - they were still there and stayed on with Grandma Hord as long as they lived. They were the ones that had lived with Pa and Ma until we went to Illinois.
We moved from the farm into the town of Wapella in 1865, and during the winter, the time the soldiers were returning from the war, there was a scourge of the old Black Smallpox. Father caught it and had it so bad that it was said that he had the worst of any one person in the town. After weeks of unconsciousness he came through all right. Mother and the four children had the Varioloid, or a light form of smallpox. Father had all the pox marks, we did not have any.
In the spring or summer [of 1866], they decided to move to Missouri. Grandpa [Nathan] Ellis had moved there from Kentucky. Pa now had gained back most of his health, and did teaming. He would haul flour and feed from Clinton, Missouri, six miles away. He had a fine team of horses. He turned them out one day, and they were running and playing. One kicked the other and she had to be shot and killed, just as we were almost ready to start on our trip. Of course he had to buy another horse to match the one left. He paid $160.00 for her.
We now were ready to start our trip. Of course all the traveling was done by team and covered wagon. I don´t know how long we were on the way, but we arrived all right and well, six miles west of Pleasant Hill, Cass County, Missouri, where Grandpa Ellis lived, and were met there by the grasshoppers that were so very bad in 1866, they took every green thing. By the way, the grasshoppers came again in seven years.
Of course we had to find a place to farm and settle. Uncle Frank [Francis Triplett] Hord lived northeast of Independence, Jackson County. They had come down, and I had gone home with them. Horseback, I rode behind first one then the other, Aunt Ada [Adah Elizabeth Adams] and Uncle Frank. In a week or so they (Ma and Pa) came after me and to make a visit up there. When they got to the Old Salem Church, the horse Pa had just bought in Illinois took sick and died. Left again with one horse, and one and one half miles to Uncle Frank´s, he had to buy another horse. Pa said he would just get a cheap one. I don´t know what he paid, but he bought a blind one. He was worth his weight in gold, as the saying goes. He lived and died of old age belonging to us. His name was Old Tobe, and the other one of the team was named Old Nell.
Pa rented a place from William R. Nelson, the owner of the Kansas City Star paper. It was about one mile east of Greenwood, Jackson County, Missouri. That was the year of 1867. Sister Maude (Willie de Maude) was born there on that place August 25, 1867. Then we moved a half mile south of Grandpa Ellis´ old place. He had sold it to Perry Craig. Mr. Craig owned the place adjoining where we moved. It was known as the old Stone House, and had several tall poplar trees which could be seen for miles and miles across the prairie. We lived there three years. Pa put in a wheat crop of seventy-five acres that fall, and came back the next year to harvest and thresh. I remember it so well for Pa plowed the ground and I rode the horses and did the harrowing and Pa cut down a tree, hitched the team to it, and I dragged it all over the field. Pa sowed the wheat broadcast out of a sack swung over his shoulder, scattering it with his hand. (Whoever reads this in years to come will never have seen it done.) I went over the ground three times to get it covered good. Pa went to town - Pleasant Hill - and brought home a new sidesaddle for me. That was what I got for the job. I was sure proud of it. I used Grandma Ellis´ old saddle while at work. I came back in the harvest time and helped one of the neighbors cook for the men and helped during the threshing also.
We had moved on to 40 acres of ground that Pa had bought six miles south east of Harrisonville, Cass County, about 25 miles from where we had lived on what is known as Eight Mile Creek. Now Grandpa Ellis lived three miles and a half north of us. He built their house on the west mound. (There were two mounds only a short distance apart. A Mr. William Fightner owned the other one.) The house, as I said, was back from the road that ran north and south with a half mile of his farm west, and the road was north of that. Then the road went south on the west side of it. From the top of the mound where we went west, it turns north, and about a mile from there is a creek named "Camp Branch." I can´t remember just how far north it was to a road that turned west, and somewhere nearly a mile from there is a church and cemetery. The church was on the south side and the cemetery on the north. That is the place where Grandpa [Nathan Ellis], Grandma [Hannah] Ellis, Cousin Oka Ellis (Uncle Will Ellis´ little boy) and my mother, Cindarella Ellis Hord are buried. We moved to this place on Eight Mile in the fall of 1869. Brother Traviss Leavitt Hord was born March 11, 1870, and Jesse Clay was born December 21, 1873. We lived in a school district that the school house was called the McBride Schoolhouse, it was two miles north and east from home. Later they divided the district and we were then in the Eight Mile School District, where we finished what schooling I ever got by going to school.
When I was sixteen I taught the two years at the McBride School and the next year at Eight Mile. The fall I was 19 in December, I started to Kentucky for a visit. Aunt Lide Tolle and Uncle Jim Tolle were going through with a team of mules and a wagon. They had their three youngest children with them, Ziplha, Jim, and John. When we got as far as Decatur, Illinois, the roads were so muddy and we had such a load that I took the train to Wapella. I spent the winter there with the friends of Ma and Pa. Some of them (Bob Dunbar, a school mate of Pa´s in Kentucky, who had moved out west and now lived in Illinois; and Reverend Carrol, who helped to care for Pa and all of us when we had the Smallpox in 1865.)
Well, I never got to Kentucky. In the spring of 1877 I went to Michigan to visit Aunt Bina Hanna in Coldwater, Michigan (Branch County). She was Ma´s only sister. She had married Andrew Jackson Hanna in Missouri in 1871 I believe. They had gone back to his old home town, and it was there that I met Lafayette Arnold Sabins, and married him July 17, 1881, in Coldwater, Branch County, Michigan. Our daughter, Burza Ethel, was born in Coldwater January 17, 1883, Wednesday, 5:15 p.m. We lived on Cutter Avenue. The doctor´s name was Dr. Whitcomb, an old doctor. Then I went to Winfield, Kansas about the first of May, and Lafayette came the first day of August 1884. We lived there six years. Lyle Arnold, our son, was born in Winfield September 17, 1888, 5:45 p.m., Monday. We left Winfield, Kansas in December 1889, spent Christmas in Kansas City with Sister Adda and family, then went to Michigan.
We were there two years, then went to Harrisburg, Saline County, Illinois, where Lafayette´s brother Alonzo Sabins lived. We had sold the interest in Lafayette´s father´s estate and put it in with Lonnie in paying for a saw mill. We were in that business for about a year. We lost every dollar we put into it. Had to start over. I commenced to do sewing and had all I could do. Lafe worked at his trade as a carpenter. We stayed in Harrisburg eight years. Our children were in school there, but in the summer I sent them to their Grandpa Hord´s. Then they came back and met me at Richards, Missouri in Vernon County. They stayed at their Grandpa Hord´s during the summer of 1897.
We stayed with Uncle Jim and Aunt Lide Tolle and at John Tolle´s during that winter, then rented a house and had our things shipped to Nevada, Vernon County, Missouri. Lafayette came then from Illinois. It was there that Burza met and married Jesse N. Jones of Fort Madison, Iowa on January 20, 1900. We moved to Winfield, Kansas again. Burza and her husband went to Iowa. In 1902 we moved to Kansas City, Missouri and lived there until the World War (I - 1914) when Lyle enlisted in the Army to go to France. Then we came to Iowa to be near Burza, and were there when he came home. He was discharged March 1919. We settled in Lewis, Cass County, Iowa.