The Mormon Menace | Page 8

came to her relief. My mother's death left us miserable indeed;

we were (my sister and I) thrown upon the wide world, helpless, and, I
might say, without father or mother. My father when free from the
effects of intoxicating drink was a kind-hearted, generous, noble man,
but from that time forward he was a slave to drink - seldom sober.
My aunt Charlotte was a spit-fire; she was married to a man by the
name of James Conner, a Kentuckian by birth. They lived ten miles
north of us. My sister went to live with her aunt, but the treatment she
received was so brutal that the citizens complained to the county
commissioners, and she was taken away from her aunt and bound out
to Dr. Fisher, with whose family she lived until she became of age.
In the meantime the doctor moved to the city of Vandalia, Illinois. I
remained with my nurse until I was eight years of age, when I was
taken to my aunt Charlotte's to be educated. I had been in a family
which talked French so long that I had nearly lost all knowledge of my
mother tongue. The children at school called me Gumbo, and teased me
so much that I became disgusted with the French language and tried to
forget it - which has been a disadvantage to me since that time.
My aunt was rich in her own right. My uncle Conner was poor; he
drank and gambled and wasted her fortune; she in return give him
blixen all the time. The more she scolded, the worse he acted, until they
would fight like cats and dogs. Between them I was treated worse than
an African slave. I lived in the family eight years, and can safely say I
got a whipping every day I was there.
My aunt was more like a savage than a civilized woman. In her anger
she generally took her revenge upon those around her who were the
least to blame. She would strike with anything she could obtain with
which to work an injury. I have been knocked down and beaten by her
until I was senseless, scores of times, and carry many scars on my
person, the result of harsh usage by her.
When I was sixteen years old I concluded to leave my aunt's house - I
cannot call it home; my friends advised me to do so. I walked one night
to Kaskaskia; went to Robert Morrison and told him my story. He was
a mail contractor. He clothed me comfortably, and sent me over the

Mississippi River into Missouri, to carry the mail from St. Genevieve
to Pinckney, on the north side of the Missouri River, via Potosie, a
distance of one hundred and twenty-seven miles. It was a weekly mail.
I was to receive seven dollars a month for my services. This was in
December, 1828. It was a severe winter; snow unusually deep and
roads bad. I was often until two o'clock at night in reaching my stations.
In the following spring I came near losing my life on several occasions
when swimming the streams, which were then generally over their
banks. The Meramec was the worst stream I had to cross, but I escaped
danger, and gave satisfaction to my employer.
All I know of my father, after I was eight years of age, is that he went
to Texas in the year 1820, and I have never heard of him since. What
his fate was I never knew. When my mother died my uncle and aunt
Conner took all the property - a large tract of land, several slaves,
household and kitchen furniture, and all; and, as I had no guardian, I
never received any portion of the property. The slaves were set free by
an act of the Legislature; the land was sold for taxes, and was hardly
worth redeeming when I came of age; so I sold my interest in all the
land that had belonged to my mother, and made a quit-claim deed of it
to Sidney Breeze, a lawyer of Kaskaskia, in consideration of two
hundred dollars. I was born on the point of land lying between and
above the mouth of the Okaw or Kaskaskia River and the Mississippi
River, in what is known as the Great American Bottom - the particular
point I refer to was then called Zeal-no-waw, the Island of Nuts. It was
nineteen miles from the point of the bluffs to the mouth of the Okaw
River; ten miles wide up at the bluffs and tapering to a point where the
rivers united. Large bands of wild horses - French ponies, called "punt"
horses - were to be found any day feeding on the ever green and
nutritious grasses