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---Chapter 4: We Move to Missouri---
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During the early spring father went into Missouri and located a land claim on what is now the site of St. Joseph, Mo. He returned about the time our school year closed and soon we were on our way West. How different it all was from our former journeys. The hired men and teams kept in advance of us and in less than a months time we were settled in the new home at St. Joseph. A Franklin stove that we had brought from Ohio supplied all the heat for our home and was also used for cooking the meals.
Our house stood on high ground at the head of the main street. There was one brick building in the town. It contained four large rooms. One was used for school, Mr. J. B. Richardson being the teacher. Mr. Farley kept a jewelry and silversmith's store in the corner room and the two families occupied the upper rooms and the two remaining down stairs. On our arrival in June there was only one dry goods store, owned by Mr. Joseph Rubidoux, but as soon as father could get a brick kiln burned two others were built. One was owned by a Mr. Richardson and one by a Mr. E. Perry.
School opened in October. I attended the first school, the first church and the first Sunday school, also the first temperance lecture ever given in that town, and for two consecutive years did not miss a day of school, Sunday school, nor a sermon. Mr. Helm was the minister part of the time but many other preachers and ministers came also.
Squire Price also came out to preempt land. At that time marauding bands of Sioux Indians would cross the river on the ice and alarm timid people. A camp of these were not far out of town and a woman of the tribe came to our door before daybreak with a two bushel sack full of bowie knives, tomahawks and spear heads, all very dangerous weapons in the hands of a drunken Indian. She asked us to keep them until she called again. The next evening she took them after dusk to* a clump of trees near by. Early on the morning following her husband came to demand them and said his wife was somewhere in the house. We were frightened as father could not talk to him in the jargon. Just as he was getting boisterous Squire Price came in and said in plain English, "Go or,I'll break this chair over your head." The Indian said, "How many pieces you break?" At that Mr. Price lifted him by the collar of bis shirt and his breech clout and flung him clear over the yard gate. He arose none the worse hurt and went to the camp. Here he told the other Indians that a powerful man was in that house.
The Indians soon packed up and were ready to go, but two spry young squaws caught a fine young hog by the hind legs and skated across the river dragging the animal along. And no farmer had the courage to go over and demand the porker as the defiant yells of the crowd of Indians on the opposite bank intimidated them and the audacity was something to admire.
I must mention the fact that we had not been settled in St. Joseph more than a few-weeks when one Sunday evening as I sat reading a buggy containing three men halted and asked for work on the brick yard. Father hired them. One was a school teacher who had just closed a school near Chllicothee and had taught two years in Indiana. His name was Benjamin Walden.
When Mr. Richardson's school opened in that first year Mr. Walden took up his studies in the school and attended the two winters with myself. The studies were mathematics, language or grammar, history, civics, geography, defining or dictionary, spelling, reading and writing.
In February, 1845, father, brother Lemuel and myself were attacked with lung fever. A messenger was sent 30 miles to summon Dr. Vellmon, an old German or Hollander, but a scholarly physician. Dr. Vellmon would send no medicine but called to "Kitty Ann" to make coffe in haste while he prepared for the long ride, saying, "I shall see Mr. Lemmon's before another day dawns." And sure enough he was with us before daylight, and brought the three of us through the serious attack of ill-ness. But before he left the house he said, "Don't you stay here another winter Lemmons you can't brave it Your lungs and the boys and the girls are not for such weather as this. Go to Oregon where are Pine and Fir trees and grouse. Mind ye, if you stay here I'll not be able to pull yon through."
Then we sold the little home to Mr. Padee, from New York state, and while we made the necessary preparations for our journey to Oregon Mr. Padee went on with the work on the brick yard.
I was sixteen years and six months old, then by a Methodist minister, Elder Helm, I was by the lawful ties of matrimony united to Benjamin Walden, the sixteenth day of April in the year 1845. The fourth day of May the same year my father, John Lemmon and family, my husband and self, left our home bound for the far West