382 MAJOR JOHN F. LACEY 



contaminated with the small-pox. Father, mother, all the 

 children then living, and Uncle Robert took the small-pox, 

 and as a result the Texas colony passed by on a steamer 

 and left them, so that father emigrated to West Virginia 

 instead of Texas. The small-pox left sequences in the 

 lungs of my brother James which undoubtedly produced 

 consumption while he was a soldier in the Third Iowa In- 

 fantry. The course of life of our family was thus 

 changed by the accident of contracting small-pox. 



New Martinsville was laid out, and the new county of 

 Wetzel created out of a part of Tyler County, and father 

 concluded to cast his lot with the new county-seat. He 

 purchased lots immediately opposite the court-house and 

 here was my first recollection. The beautiful Ohio rolled 

 by the town, and those were the days of steamboats, and 

 the sight of those craft was one of the most pleasing 

 things in my life. 



The flood of 1847 came up four feet in our house, and 

 the flood of 1852 came into the second story, driving us 

 into the upper story of the court-house which stood on 

 higher ground. The floods caused father to sell out and 

 remove to Wheeling in 1853 and thence to Iowa. I re- 

 member John Morgan, who lived up Fishing Creek, some 

 four miles from town. He stopped at my father's on his 

 return from Iowa, and his description of the beauty of the 

 state and fertility of the soil captured my father's im- 

 agination. Said he, ' ' The weeds in Iowa all have beauti- 

 ful flowers. The Spanish needle, an ugly weed in Vir- 

 ginia, there was a most beautiful flower." He was espe- 

 cially in favor of the "divide" between Skunk and Des 

 Moines rivers and thought the little town of Oskaloosa 

 was full of future good things. This was the first I ever 

 heard of Oskaloosa and the name pleased my father and 

 in 1855 he started directly for that city by water from 

 Wheeling. 



