LIFE SKETCHES OF A JAYHAWKER 67 



of these is my neglected education. My father wanted to put me through 

 college, and I refused it, but it would have been different could I have only 

 seen the benefit of it then as I have seen it a thousand times since. The 

 lesson, though dearly learned, has resulted in good, as my wife and I have 

 raised two children, and seen to it that they had a good education, both 

 having been graduated from the State Normal school, and one of them, the 

 son, a graduate of Cooper's Medical College, and now a practicing physician 

 and surgeon in the city of Seattle, and a very successful one. 



The daughter was married to a Presbyterian minister. Rev. James Ful- 

 com by name, who has a prosperous and growing church in a prosperous 

 town; so we are blest with having both a preacher and a doctor in the fam- 

 ily. Both of them have two children, which the grandparents as well as 

 the parents, are very proud of. 



In summing up, I think anyone that can raise a family that is an honor 

 to themselves and to society, has not spent their lives in vain. I am now in 

 my eighty-ninth year and in jotting down these few items have had to de- 

 pend entirely on memory, as it happened to come to me, having no data to 

 refer to. There is one thing that is very singular, many things that hap- 

 pened in forty-nine I can remember much better than things that happened 

 in recent years. 



In writing the foregoing I have been handicapped for lack of a liberal 

 education in my boyhood days. All boys were taught to work, especially 

 those that were brought up on a farm, as soon as they were in their teens. 

 They were put to plowing, then into the corn field and the harvest field. 

 Could not spare them to go to school in summer time, so all the schooling 

 ever acquired was in winter after the corn had been gathered. About five 

 months of each year was the limit. So all the schooling I ever acquired was 

 gotten within the four walls of a log school house. 



CONCLUSION. 



In conclusion I cannot close this narrative of life's sketches without 

 recording here the list of those of the "Jay Hawkers" who have passed away 

 as well as these who are still living, April 10, 1916. 



LIVING. 



L. Dow Stephens, San Jose, Cal., age 89 years. 

 John B. Colton, Galesburg, 111., age 82 years. 



PASSED AWAY. 



J. W. Brier, Sr., died in Lodi, Cal. 



J. W. Brier, Jr., died in Lodi, Cal., Feb. 26, 1914. 



C. C. Brier, born in Indiana, Sept. 11, 1840; died in Oakland, Cal., Dec. 

 7, 1907. 



K. W. Brier, born May 5, 1845; died in California, Jan. 1883. 



Mrs. Juliet Brier, died in Lodi, Cal., May 26, 1913, at the age of a hun- 

 dred years, lacking four months. 



Luther A. Richards, Beaver City, Neb., died June 15, 1899. 



Chas. B. Mecum, Mt. Vernon, Iowa, died Feb. 20, 1905. 



Thomas Shanon, Los Gates, Cal., died Nov. 15, 1903. 



