signed trustee, will on day of , be- 

 tween the hours of 9 o'clock in the forenoon 

 and 5 o'clock in the afternoon, of said day, at 

 the east door of the court house, in the town 

 of Benton, Scott County, Missouri, sell at pub- 

 lic auction to the highest bidder for cash, the 

 above described real estate to satisfy said debt 

 together with interest and cost of the execu- 

 tion of this trust. Dated this — day ot 



, trustee. 



Inability to meet your payments under either 

 mortgage or trust deed are wholly bad, for the 

 minute you cannot come up with the cash you 

 are under obligations to the other fellow and 

 while my trust deed was never enforced against 

 me, yet I had to put up good, hard cash to 

 keep from it, or in other words, I had to put 

 up more interest than called for in said deed 

 of trust to keep it from being enforced against 

 ine. 



Now, Mr. Moser and I were attempting to 

 work directly with our home people in the 

 North and trying to get them located here as 

 cheaply as possible, and as I have said before, 

 instead of offering some agent back in their 

 home country a dollar an acre or more to get 

 them down here, we told them we would rebate 

 them that dollar an acre on any property we 

 might sell them and so Messrs. W. P. Chipman 

 & Son, who were wanting to buy a certain piece 

 of property on what was known as Big Ridge, 

 came to see us and wanted us to sell it to them 

 and in order to do so, I went to see the owner, 

 Mr. A. J. Matthews, at Sikeston, Missouri, but 

 he could not let me sell them this land as 

 another agent had the control of it and if I did 

 sell it I would have to make arrangements 

 through him, but he offered me the privilege 

 of showing them lands in the East Swamp. 

 Knowing that these lands were subject to over- 

 flow and also that I had refused to even con- 

 sider a farm in this locality when I came to 

 this country, I told Mr. Matthews that I would 

 not offer to sell a man a piece of land that I 

 would not live on myself. These lands I am 

 informed were all under water this last spring 

 — the spring of 1912 — and some under as much 

 as eight feet of water. 



On the 6th of March, 1910, Mr. Moser and I 

 decided to go to Steelville, 111., and see the 

 Messrs. Stahlberg Bros., if they would put a 

 price on the some S30 acres of land they owned 

 about one mile west of my home, as there was 

 a party of several friends of Mr. Moser that 

 wanted"^ to buy it if we could get it for them 

 cheap enough, so we went from Matthews to 

 Sikeston and while changing from one depot 

 to the other met up with ]Mr. J. P. Cox, now of 

 the Hoosier Land & Investment Company of 

 Sikeston, and as he had some clover seed for 

 sale and Mr. Moser and I both wished to sow 

 some that spring, we talked with him about 

 the purchase of it. Now, as I was short of 

 money and- had purchased my land through 

 their real estate agency, I had no hesitancy of 

 asking him to sell me the seed on credit until 

 after wheat harvest and was very much set 

 back when he informed me that I would have 

 to secure him in some way. Of course, friend, 

 that was a safe way to do business and if 

 YOU come to this country and attempt to do 

 any business you will find that most of these 

 people have no fear of asking you for a chat- 

 tel mortgage for anything you may wish to 

 buv of them, but it was quite a surprise to me 

 to meet up with it light at this time and from 

 this man, Mr. J. P. Cox, of whom I had pur- 

 chased the farm, putting their firm in a line 

 to get a commission of $1,075, less what they 

 paid their foreign agents to get me down here 

 and besides the other people that I might taring 

 and who did come from our community and 

 purchased land through their company. Now, 

 they were paid all of the above commission 

 on my land — $1,075 — and the credit I asked for 

 was an amount less than $30. It is needless 

 to say that I never asked Mr. Cox for any fur- 

 ther credit. 



On the 26th of March, 1910, we sowed some 

 oats to make early hay. It does not pay to 

 grow oats as a crop, that is to let them mature 



and thresh them same as you would in the 

 North, because the HOT weather of the sum- 

 mer comes on before they are ripe and blasts 

 them. Of course, should you do as I suggest, 

 that is come down and farm a season before 

 investing in lands, you can find cut the truth 

 of this statement by trying a small acreage. 



Now farming down in these low lands where 

 they are partly cleared and a great many dead 

 trees yet standing, is called farming in the 

 "sticks" and it is something like that I am 

 sure. I mention this to show you that here is 

 quite an opportunity to lose some of your stock 

 for these "sticks" are usually in a clearing and 

 when fire is put out they catch and some of 

 them burn off, or burn off a limb, which in 

 falling are liable to and often do kill an animal. 

 On the 26th of March, 1910, we lost a fine 

 young Herford heifer in this way, and in a 

 financial sense I was glad it was not a mule. 



This country has a very low altitude. Cairo 

 being 332 feet above sea level, and while the 

 country we came from. Bluff ton. Ind., has an 

 elevation of only 775 feet. We blamed the low 

 altitude for Mrs. Studabaker's severe head- 

 aches, yet we were to find out different and 

 that was she was just beginning to feel the 

 effects of the malarial climate.. 



As to giving you this next statement I have 

 debated it with myself a good deal, whether 

 to give it to you or not, but as I am trying to 

 help you in every way possible to avoid the 

 losses I met up with, will trouble you to read 

 it over and while it may appear to you that 

 it was mismanagement on ■ my part, yet you 

 will have the chance to avoid a like mistake. 

 We were needing more power on the farm to 

 care for the crop. We did not have an over- 

 abundance of money to procure animals with, 

 and seeing the advertisements in the St. Louis 

 papers of sales of horses very cheap, decided 

 to try and get a couple of teams of mares from 

 there, so with the assistance of my friend, Mr. 

 Moser, borrowed $300 of Mr. C. b. Matthews 

 and off to St. Louis to get them. Now, I was 

 told that horses would not live in this country, 

 that the summers were too hot for them, but 

 as this came from people who were directly 

 interested in selling mules, I did not believe 

 it, but I found out different. The summers 

 are too hot for horses and it cost me three of 

 the four that I bought the first summer. Still. 

 as I had only a comparatively small amount 

 invested in them, as I would had I bought four 

 mules, yet it was a loss to us, both in money 

 direct and loss of production. Don't make the 

 same mistake; buy mules if you want work 

 animals, for horses cannot stand the heat. 



Wells County, Indiana, people still kept com- 

 ing to see us and the country, and on the 28th 

 of April, 1910, Mr. Herman Wiecking of Bluff- 

 ton, Ind., dropped into Sikeston and the wide- 

 awake real estate agent scenting a possible 

 purchaser of lands, when he asked of them 

 a way to get out to Hugh Studabaker's said 

 they would drive him out and incidentally took 

 him around past some new lands they had for 

 sale. It was a little muddy out in this country 

 at the time and it was amusing to hear INIr. 

 Wiecking tell of their getting stuck in the mud. 

 They were coming east on the Canalou-Mat- 

 thews road and just east of the third ditch' the 

 mules pulled the tongue from the wagon and 

 left them there in the mud, but INIr. Lindley. 

 who was driving, just backed them up to the 

 wagon and wired the tongue in place and on 

 they went. I told Mr. Wiecking that that was 

 nothing and he said, "No. I guess not, for the 

 fellow just gathered up the wire out of the 

 wagon. Seemed like he went prepared for 

 trouble like that." I told Mr. Wiecking that 

 we all did. 



A Mr. Rathert, who is farming with Dr. Dun- 

 away, a new member of the Hoosier Land & 

 Investment Company, had a more amusing ex- 

 perience with the mud than Mr. Wiecking. Mr. 

 Rathert had been located here a few weeks — 

 this was in 1912, however — and one Sunday he 

 determined to drive down in the "SWAMPS" 

 and see some of the country, so arrayed in his 

 Sunday clothes and with the old gray mare 

 hitched to the light, single buggy, he started 



12 



