Moses Marion Arnold

notes

Grandfather's Reminiscences

          My mother's name was Elizabeth Ashby; my father's John Arnold. My grandfather's name was Moses Arnold, and my grandmother's name on my mother's side was Sarah Ashby. My grandfather Arnold was raised in the eastern part of Virginia. They were the descendants of the English, Irish, and Dutch.

          My grandfather had 10 children. His wife's name was Sarah Timmons. These are the children's names (counting them on his fingers as he named them): First, Anna, she married Samuel Posterwait; second, Benjamin; third, John; fourth, Thomas; fifth, Joseph; sixth, Millie; seventh, Elizabeth; eighth, Daniel; ninth, Robert; tenth, _____,(his memory failed him here).

         My grandfather Ashby's family were: Anna, Samuel, Benjamin, Elizabeth or Betsy as she was called (she's my mother), Rebecca, Winnifred, Sarah, Martha, William, Jesse, Polly, she married William Wilson. Three Ashbys married three Wilsons. (His list is not entirely correct. See p E.A.G.)

          My brothers and sisters' names were: Sarah, she lived in Missouri; then I came next; Rebecca, William, Winnifred, John, he lived in Wisconsin; Betty, she was a school teacher; and Hannah who died when only 3 or 4 months old.

          Where did I live? I lived at home with my parents in the northern part of Maryland, west of the Alleghenies. At that time they were called the "Backbone of America". Many's the time I have picked cranberries there and carried them to Morefield in Hardy County, Virginia. We used to take a heap of them there.

          Yes, I went to school about five weeks in Maryland, and then after that, I went about six months in Virginia, and that was all I ever went to school. I used to study at night in the light of a pine knot. Then I taught one term of school on a little mountain called Snaggy Mountain in Pennsylvania*. The schoolhouse was a hewed log one. Let's see, I can tell you some of the children's names: Oliver, Childs and Jesse, and Lucinda. 'Twas not very cold weather.

          Clothes? Well, they were made of buckskin and linen. We raised the flax, cut it, and let it rot. What do you mean by letting it rot? Why, the bark rots and leaves just the fibers. Then we took it in bundles and hackled it, then spun it and wove it into cloth and made it into shirts and other things.

          My shoes were moccasins made of deer-skin. They drew a drawer knife over the skin to get the hair off, then dried it and worked it until it was soft.

          They had no salt in those days until they learned to take it from the ground. It was then yellow, but now they make it white by some process.

          I remember the first money I ever had. It was a fourpenny bit (six pence) that a stranger gave to me, and I was so afraid that someone would take it from me that I took it out and hid it on a stump of a tree which my father had cut down near the house, and covered it with a chip - one of the larger ones.

          Yes, I used to go coon hunting often, and once I killed a bear. I had a cousin who was a hunter; he is dead and gone to a Better World, I hope. We went out one afternoon and both of us had guns. We went to some chestnut trees where the bears were so busy they didn't notice us. He shot one and I did too. Then the bears run and we run and finally there were two of them run up a tree and we each shot one; he, a young cub, and I, an old 'she.'

          [Apparently there is a bit missing here? - Lee] I thought it was one that someone else had shot and lost, so I carried it home. After I was gone, the Indian came to the house and said, "White man, rascal, rascal, rascal, take my deer." My wife told the Indian that he might have it, to take it and skin it. He did skin it and then gave her the hindquarters and went away. This was in Virginia.

          "Here Aunt Matilda asked him about the laurel thickets." The laurel thickets were so thick that I couldn't walk through them. They grew like thick hazel brush and were crooked and all woven together. They were green all year 'round, and had blossoms on them. Berries? I don't think so.

          Streams? Yes, lots of them.

          Muddy? Yes, if there was any travel in them. There were some of them pebbly and clear.

          I went down the Ohio to the Mississippi, and down that past Saint Louis to New Orleans, both of which were at the time only log cabins, and the inhabitants were French, some Irish. I sold the boat and coal; got $110.00. Came back on a steamboat.

          I was sick on the way home and had to stop at William Morgan's, my wife's uncle, in Illinois. Had chills and fever. Then I bought a colt and rode home from the southwestern part of Illinois to Virginia. Got home on the twenty-seventh of November. My corn crop that year was good. Others said it was the best of anywhere around.

Here ends the reminiscences of Moses Arnold.

• Leesgenes - Moses Arnold
• Moses Arnold Descendants THE ARNOLD FAMILY ASSOCIATION OF THE SOUTH Fall Quarterly Volume II 1971 -1972 Number 1