MEMORIES OF THE 



woods where trees and logs had fallen across the trail, where 

 the cart could not go. 



The ax was the principal implement, and it was their best 

 friend and ally. On it, and their ability to wield it, they relied 

 to clear off a small building spot and rear a comfortable dwell- 

 ing, and with it they manufactured almost everything which they 

 had to use — the log house covered with split slabs or bark, 

 floored, if at all, with hewn plank split from the huge basswood 

 logs ; rude house furniture and equipment of all kinds, rough 

 but serviceable; sleds, log boats, drags, troughs for catching and 

 storing maple sap, leaches for making soap, storing troughs for 

 corn or anything else which they had to store. There were no 

 sawmills and no lumber within reach, and these and the many 

 other things absolutely required were all necessarily the product 

 of the ax. In fact, the skilled pioneer with his ax and knife 

 made everything he needed — certainly all that he had. 



Grandfather, or some one else, had been there the fall before 

 and constructed a rude hovel and felled the trees in its imme- 

 diate vicinity, on the north bank of Deer Creek, on what at a 

 later period was the Rev. Enos Bliss farm. This hut was only 

 intended as a temporary shelter, while they looked about for a 

 more permanent location and built themselves a better hab- 

 itation. 



Later on he moved farther down stream, to the south side of 

 the creek, and built a better log house, where he lived until his 

 death, March 6, 1812. This place was always spoken of as the 

 ''old place," and upon the site of the old log house uncle 

 Luther Lyman built a small frame house about 1828, in which 

 he lived a few years, then gave it up. Brother Gilbert later on 

 lived in the same house. 



The home farm was the place first occupied by William 



