Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler | Page 5

Sullivan.
In such times of religious excitement it was not necessary for a man to
have a college education, to become an acceptable preacher. But father
saw the advantages of a good education, and resolved to attend A.
Campbell's school, then known as Buffalo Academy, but which was
soon changed to Bethany College. But the means to acquire an
education must be obtained by his own exertions.
About the year 1839 grandfather sold his place in Wadsworth, and
moved to the Sandusky Plains, a level, marshy prairie, in northwestern
Ohio. Part of the Plains belonged to the Wyandotte Indian Reservation,
and was opened to settlement, a few years afterward, by the removal of
the Indians to Wyandotte, Kansas.
Father and grandfather made sheep-raising their business while there.
Father herded sheep in summer and taught school in winter. And, while
herding sheep, he finished committing the New Testament to memory.
He could repeat it from beginning to end, and even in his later years he
remembered it so well that he could repeat whole chapters at once. I
never saw the time that any one could repeat a verse in the New
Testament to him, but that he could tell the book, and nearly always the
chapter in which it was found.
He and his father's family put their membership into the church at
Letimberville, some miles distant; and there he occasionally preached.
He sometimes went back to Wadsworth, and on the way back and forth
stopped and preached for the little church at Sullivan, Ashland Co.
There he made the acquaintance of Sibjl S. Carleton, the daughter of
Joseph Carleton, one of the leading members of the church. They were
married August 17, 1843; and he never had cause to regret his choice,
for she proved to him a helpmeet indeed.

While living there, at the solicitation of his neighbors, he held a debate
with a Universalist preacher, to the satisfaction of his friends and the
discomfiture of his opponent.
Many parts of the Plains were covered with water, and were musical
with frogs in the spring, but in hot weather they dried up, leaving here
and there a stagnant pond. I have heard father tell how one of his
neighbors tried to break a field by beginning on the outside, and
plowing farther in as the land dried up. But the snakes and frogs grew
thicker and thicker, as he neared the center. At length the grass seemed
almost alive with snakes, and his big ox-team became wild with fright,
and ran away, and he could not get them back there again.
Of course, such a country was unhealthful, and father's family was
much troubled with sickness. His parents both died; my mother was
nearly worn out with the ague; and he not only suffered from poor
general health, but from a sore throat, and had to quit preaching. He
moved to Sullivan, but without any permanent benefit to his health. He
did not at that time attribute his sore throat entirely to the climate, but
thought it a chronic derangement that would utterly unfit him for a
preacher. Many years afterward he wrote of that disappointment as
follows: "For five years I saw myself sitting idly by the wayside,
hopeless and discouraged. I felt somewhat like a traveler, parched with
thirst, on a wide and weary desert, who sees the mirage of green trees
and springs of cool water that has mocked his vision, slowly fade away
out of his sight. So seemed to perish my castles in the air. At that time
making proclamation of the ancient gospel was too vigorous a work,
and too full of hardship and exposure to be undertaken by any except
those possessing stalwart good health. If I had been predestinated to the
life I have actually lived, and if it were necessary that I should be
chastened to bear with patience all its disabilities, then, I suppose, this
discipline I actually got might be considered good and useful. If I have
been able to bear provocation with patience, and to labor cheerfully
without wages, and at every personal sacrifice, this lesson was learned
when I saw all my hope dashed in pieces."
In the spring of 1850 father sold his property and decided to go to Iowa.

Shortly before the time of starting, my little sister and baby brother
took the scarlet fever and, ere long, they were both laid in the old
graveyard. Heart-broken as my parents were, they did not give up the
long, lonely journey. Father bought a farm in Iowa, and built a log
house on it, intending to become a farmer. He and mother united with
the nearest church, at Long Grove, sixteen miles distant. Father did not
tell them at first that he had been a preacher,