The axe and plough were kept very busy; cattle, horses,
sheep, and pigs multiplied; barns and corn-cribs were filled up, and
man and beast were well fed; a schoolhouse was built, which was used
also for a church; and in a very short time the new country began to
look like an old one.
Comparatively few of the first settlers suffered from serious
accidents. One of our neighbors had a finger shot off, and on a
bitter, frosty night had to be taken to a surgeon in Portage, in a
sled drawn by slow, plodding oxen, to have the shattered stump
dressed. Another fell from his wagon and was killed by the wheel
passing over his body. An acre of ground was reserved and fenced for
graves, and soon consumption came to fill it. One of the saddest
instances was that of a Scotch family from Edinburgh, consisting of a
father, son, and daughter, who settled on eighty acres of land within
half a mile of our place. The daughter died of consumption the third
year after their arrival, the son one or two years later, and at last
the father followed his two children.
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