EARLY MANHOOD IN THE MIDDLE WEST 121 



more than a day's work. The following summer 

 Moyer and I added two more hands to our build- 

 ing gang; this gave him twenty-one shillings per 

 day $2.62^ and me seventeen shillings 

 $2.12^/2 and our board. Since we always did 

 country carpentering, expenses were almost a neg- 

 ligible quantity : clothing, Sunday board and wash- 

 ing altogether, only slightly reduced my savings. I 

 had learned my lesson long before when taking 

 that joy-ride while I was teaching at Beerytown. 



At the end of three years of alternate teaching 

 and carpentering, on the 3d day of November, 

 1857, I was married to Margaret Jane Marr, 

 daughter of William and Mary (Reader) Marr 

 who had moved about ten years previously from 

 Pennsylvania to a farm near La Porte, Indiana. 

 Mr. Marr was of direct Scotch origin and Mrs. 

 Marr of German and Dutch ancestry. 



My wife and I left immediately for a trip to 

 my old home in New York. The journey was ac- 

 complished with difficulty in those days for the 

 country was flooded with wild-cat paper money 

 which would not pass outside of the state in which 

 it was issued, and gold exchange could not be se- 

 cured at any discount. Although I had sufficient 

 wild-cat money brought from Indiana, I had to 



