F 466 
 .S93 
 Copy 1 
 
 SX^lJL<xJ(/rt>*l<.x/w V*WV^ 
 
 What They 
 "Showed Me" 
 
 in 
 
 Southea^ 
 Missouri 
 
 COPYRIGHTED |W3 BY HUGH. D. STUOA'^-^E^ 
 
CONTEXTS. 
 
 Preface • • 3 
 
 Earthquake Shock of 1909 -3 
 
 Kennett "Had a Chill" 4 
 
 •■Quake" of January 29, 1913 4 
 
 New Madrid Earthquake, Bulletin 494.. 4 
 
 "Sunk Lands" 5 
 
 Comparison of San Francisco "Quake," 
 "Sand Blows" with Those of New 
 
 Madrid "Quake" 5 
 
 < cntennial of New '^ladrid "Quake".... 5 
 
 I'rof. McGee's Prediction 6 
 
 Residents' Account of 1898 "Quake"... 6 
 
 Have All Contracts Written Ones 7 
 
 "Jiggers" and Snakes 7 
 
 Farm Purchase and Commission 8 
 
 Trouble Keeping Potatoes 9 
 
 Fireworks at Christmas 10 
 
 Taxes 10 
 
 Trust Deed and Notice of Sale 11 
 
 Oats 12 
 
 Country Too Hot for Horses 12 
 
 "Mired Up" 12 
 
 Home of the Ciiattel Mortgage 13 
 
 Drinking Water 13 
 
 Spy System 13 
 
 Cockle Burrs 13 
 
 ■'Chopping Out" 14 
 
 Down in the ■■Sticks" 14 
 
 Fleas 14 
 
 Heat Kills the Hogs 14 
 
 Flies and Mosquitoes 14 
 
 Watermelon Crop 14 
 
 Typhoid Fever 15 
 
 ■Risings" lb 
 
 The People Pay the Freight 17 
 
 Hot Weather in This Country 18 
 
 Hogs Dying with Cholera 18 
 
 What You Take for "Chills" 18 
 
 Pneumonia 19 
 
 Cold Weather 20 
 
 Rock Road 21 
 
 Schools 21 
 
 High Water of 1912 22 
 
 Heavy Rains 22 
 
 Potato Bugs and ■'Bull Nats" 22 
 
 A. J. Matthews' ■'Dog Story" 23 
 
 Roasting Fleas as a Pastime 25 
 
 ■■Swamp-East"' (Poetry) 25 
 
 Mrs. Studabaker's ■'Chill Experience".. 26 
 
 List ■ of Chill Tonics 26 
 
 Dredge Ditches in ''Quicksands" 27 
 
 "lulling" Chattel Mortgages 2P> 
 
 My Visit with Mr. .Amos 28 
 
 l^'inancial Exhibit 31 
 
 Appendix 31 
 
 ©CI.A3464G1 
 
Preface 
 
 A Little Book dedicated to tliose wlio, like 
 myself, are trying to better their condition — 
 trying to make a starting point for those of 
 their family that come after them, so that their 
 journey through life might be made just a little 
 easier, so that some of the rough places might 
 be smoothed over and there would be a little 
 more pleasure for them, while for those that 
 go before it is all pioneer life with its attendant 
 hardships. It is to save YOU from the pitfalls 
 that are ever spread before the newc'cmer, that 
 I am writing this booklet, and is a truthful 
 account of my near four years' experience trying 
 to make some money in the SWAMP country of 
 southeast Missouri, the home of the New Atadrid 
 Earthquake of 1811-12. Read it through carefully 
 — heed what I tell you — and I assure you it will 
 be worth $$$$$ to you, while its cost, if anything, 
 is a mere trifle: yet it cost me a-plenty — near 
 four years of the best part of my life and ot 
 my children's school life. 
 
 Compelled to be a philanthropist for near 
 four years, helping to redeem some of this 
 swamp land, I am now willing to continue to be 
 a philanthropist if by so doing I can save some 
 other person from a like fate. Rea'd carefully 
 — read thoroughly. 
 
 Near Four Years in the Swamps of Missouri, 
 
 Which Were :Made by the New IMadrid 
 
 Earthquake of 1811-12. 
 
 American people have the "Hurry" idea; they 
 
 hurry to do this and hurry to do that, and 
 
 oftentimes they hurry into something that a 
 
 little of the "Stop — Look and Listen" principle 
 
 rightfully applied would have saved them years 
 
 of worry and money loss. 1 am taking this 
 
 lesson home to myself and giving it to you, that 
 
 if you want to and will \ou can save yourself 
 
 a like experience. 
 
 In the spring of 1909, having heard of the 
 wonders of southeast Missouri, through our lo- 
 cal real estate agents, Messrs. Hale & Markley, 
 of Bluffton, Indiana, I came here on a pros- 
 pecting trip and spent one day, April 19th, 
 riding out into the country with Mr. J. F, Cox 
 
 of the then C. M. Smith Bros. & Co. real estate 
 agency of Sikeston, Mo. It rained and hailed 
 that day, but 1 saw the country, went back 
 home, told the family what I had seen, read 
 over their profusely illustrated folder of the 
 country and its immense possibilities, and we 
 decided to try it. Right here I should have 
 stopped and studied the country at greater 
 length. A personal friend of mine tried to head 
 me off. Cautioned m.e against collusion among 
 real estate agents to try and skin the unwary; 
 Ijut hadn't I been down here and met the 
 people and knew more about it than he did? 
 
 Although I was a high school graduate, I did 
 not know of the New Madrid Earthquake and 
 its great extent and I did not stop to investi- 
 gate. Here let me call your attention to the 
 fact that our Government does all in its power 
 to keep its people informed, and were you 
 thinking of trying a new country, if you would 
 take up the location with the Geological Depart- 
 ment of the Government I am most sure you 
 would get information to your advantage. It 
 took me quite a while to learn this, and it came 
 about in this way: After being in this country 
 a while naturally I met up with and talked 
 conditions with the people, some of whom had 
 lived most all of their lives here, and the sub- 
 ject of the formation of the land being up. ] 
 asked as to how all these piles of sand occurred 
 and they told me they were sand blows. Then 
 there being some deeper depressions on the 
 farm, I was informed that they were sink holes. 
 Well, these matters rather aroused my interest 
 and a further interest was awakened by the 
 fact that on the 23rd of October, 1909, there 
 was a real earthquake shoik. which was felt 
 generally all over the countrx- that was affected 
 by the earthquake of 1811-12. I give you here 
 what the Post-Dispatch of St. Louis said about 
 this shock, as they gathered their news gen- 
 erally all over the district affected, and what 
 I might say as to personal experience would 
 only be local. 
 
"EARTHQUAKE DISTURBS SLUMBER 
 
 "About 1 o'clock Saturday Morning — Felt All 
 
 Along Mississippi. 
 
 "Half the population in Alton was aroused 
 soon after 1 a. m. Saturtlay, October 23, 1909, 
 bv an earthquake shock said to have been more 
 severe than that which startled St. Louis and 
 its vicinity several weeks ago. The earthquake 
 was not local, reports saying- that it was felt 
 as far south as Paragould, Ark., and was par- 
 ticularly severe at Cape Girardeau, Mo., where 
 it was "the heaviest shock felt for many years. 
 Heavy rumbling accompanied the quake. The 
 quake was felt in Cape Girardeau at 1:15 a. m., 
 lasting about a minute. The vibration came 
 from the west. The ground seemed to undulate 
 and buildings rocked. Paragould reports a 
 shock lasting 10 seconds; at the same time 
 Memphis, Tenn., also felt a slight shock. At 
 St. Peters, Mo., in St. Charles county, the 
 earthquake was felt plainly by several. Alton 
 appears to have borne the brunt of the dis- 
 turbance in the vicinity of St. Louis. Many 
 persons declare the walls of their houses quiv- 
 ered perceptibly and the ground heaved. W. T. 
 Norton, former postmaster of Alton, said he 
 felt three shocks, the first of which awakened 
 liim. The shocks were several seconds apart, 
 Mr. Norton said, and all of a brief duration. 
 They seemed to pass from west to east, but 
 Norton described them as being mostly up and 
 down. 
 
 "An alarm clock which Emil Mook, an Alton 
 printer, had on a table beside his bed was 
 shaken" to the floor by the disturbance. 
 
 "Towns in southeast Missouri other than 
 Cape Girardeau where the shock was felt dis- 
 tinctly are Sikeston and Charleston. The 
 report from Sikeston says all the inhabitants 
 were aroused by the severity of the tremor, 
 while in Charleston many persons were 
 awakened. Charleston reports that the earth- 
 quake lasted one minute. 
 
 "Cairo, 111, felt the shock at 1:08 a. m. for 
 about 15 seconds. Many persons were awakened 
 by the shaking of their houses and the rumbling 
 sound. 
 
 "Cairo, Memphis, Cape Girardeau, Charleston, 
 Sikeston, and Paragould are in the area chiefly 
 affected bv the great New Madrid Earthquake 
 of 1811, which caused a large territory in south- 
 east Missouri and northeast Arkansas and 
 across the Mississippi to become Swamp Lands." 
 
 Again I clipped from our paper, The Sikeston 
 Standard, the following item. 
 
 KENNETT HAD A CHILL. 
 
 Several in this city felt a distinct earthquake 
 shock Monday at 11 o'clock that lasted a quar- 
 ter of a minute. It was especially noticeable In 
 the brick buildings. One lady said that the 
 pereformance was repeated Monday night, taut 
 few of Kennett's people stay awake late at 
 night. — Kennett Democrat. 
 
 Since writing this near four years' experience 
 of mine in "Swampeast" Missouri, the home of 
 the New Madrid E'earthquake of 1811-12, and 
 before the publication of it there has been 
 another quite severe earthquake shock and I 
 herewith give the newspaper account of it as 
 published by the Southeast Missourian, a paper 
 at Portageville, Mo. : 
 
 DID YOU FEEL IT? 
 
 At just 5:15 o'clock Wednesday morning one 
 of the hardest earthquakes in a number of 
 years was felt bv quite a number of Portage- 
 ville citizens. The editor can't say truthfully 
 that he did not feel it because it tossed him 
 about in his bed, rattled the windows and mum- 
 bled louder than any big freight train. In Mr. 
 Christian's house, we are told, it stopped his 
 clock. It was of a few seconds duration, but a 
 mighty hard spasm old mother earth had at 
 Portageville." 
 
 The date above referred to was January 29th, 
 1913. 
 
 These happenings so stirred my desire for 
 more Information that I began to correspond 
 with leading colleges as to where I could get 
 full information as to the New Madrid Earth- 
 quake of 1811-12 and was referred to the Jour- 
 
 nal of Geology, published by the University at 
 Chicago Press, and in their January-February 
 number, 1905, I found a very complete article 
 by Edward M. Shephard, Springfield, Mo. ; also, 
 in the American Geologist, published at Minne- 
 apolis, Minn., I found an article by &. C. Broad- 
 head. Then at last I wrote the United States 
 Geological Survey of our Department of the 
 Interior, and they mailed to me BULLETIN No. 
 491: THE NEW MADRID EARTHQUAKE, by 
 M>ron L. Fuller. This is a book of some 120 
 pages and replete with valuable information 
 for anyone thinking of making a home in this 
 "Earthquake Zone" or of acquiring property 
 therein. 
 
 You owe it to yourself and your family to 
 know the country, as far as it is given us power 
 to know, the dangers that exist in that country 
 from forest fires, tornadoes, floods, volcanoes 
 and earthquakes, wherein you would take them 
 to live, for where you live you wish to feel as 
 safe and secure from these dangers as It is 
 possible to be — that breeds contentment and a 
 desire to live and build for the future. But 
 where dangers of floods exist — where tornadoes 
 and cyclones prevail to a greater extent — where 
 you are told by leading geologists that you are 
 living on one of the "Earth's Weak Spots," a 
 different feeling exists, and where these state- 
 mehts are backed up by frequent "shakes," as 
 the papers have quoted and I have copied 
 herein, you would do well to "Stop — Look and 
 Listen" before getting tied up there. I do not 
 wish to burden this booklet with copying much 
 of detailed reports therein, like this Bulletin 
 494. issued by the U. S. Geological Survey, for 
 you can get one and study it for yourself, the 
 same as I have, but I will call your especial 
 attention to a few of the different parts of it, 
 by pages, so that you can readily refer to what 
 I think important for one to know that is figur- 
 ing on either buying property here or coming 
 to handle the plow over these "sand blows," 
 "sink-holes," filled in "fissures" and other 
 markings of the greatest earthquake upheaval 
 and depression known to civilized man. Page 7 
 gives a location of the earthquake, which is 
 very important, in that it locates for you where 
 the' earthquake did the most damage. Page 9 
 carries with it a map of the district and sets 
 out for you where the sand blows were the 
 most pronounced, where the greatest sinking 
 of the land took place and where the domes 
 were formed. I think this plate or map a very 
 valuable one for a person to have that is con- 
 templating settling in this country or of pur- 
 chasing property here. Pages 10 and 11 give a 
 graphic account of the disaster and is very in- 
 teresting reading. I often thought that I would 
 be most willing to be present at a repetition 
 of the disaster, were it possible to do so. until 
 I read these accounts and thought how it would 
 lie to be routed out about the middle of Decem- 
 ber, 2 a, m.. and stand shivering in the cold 
 the rest of the night with the fear of being 
 swallowed up by the earth at any moment. 
 Page 12 gives Indian tradition of previous dis- 
 turbances of this country by earthquakes and 
 also corroborative evidence that they did occur. 
 Pages 14 and 15 give the location of the center 
 of the disturbance and locates it about 16 miles 
 to the west of the Mississippi River. Page 16 
 is a very important one in that it gives the 
 area of "the disturbance, which of the most 
 marked disturbance, such as domes, sunk lands, 
 fissures, sinks, sand blows, landslides, etc., 
 comprised from 30,000 to 50,000 square miles 
 and extended from a point west of Cairo on 
 the north to the latitude of Memphis on the 
 south, a distance of about 100 miles, and from 
 Crowlev's ridge on the west to Chickasaw Bluffs 
 on the" east, a distance of over 50 miles, then 
 the area of sleight earth disturbances and also 
 the area of tremors. Page 17 records the "Gen- 
 eral Destructiveness of the Shocks" and reads 
 something like a modern day write-up of a 
 powder mill explosion without the attendant 
 fatalities. On page 21 you will find what the 
 earthquake did to the roads of the country. 
 Pages 31 and 32 give accounts of the nature of 
 the vibrations and make very interesting read- 
 ing. On page 34 is given the number of re- 
 
corded shocks as 1,874. Page 45 gives account 
 of odors and vapors that impregnated the air, 
 caused by the earthquake. Pages 47 to 52 take 
 up the Assuring caused by the earthquake; 
 and the fact that people are said to have felled 
 large trees to sit on wlien the earth waves 
 rolled under them and would burst, is serious 
 enough to make a person want to save a few 
 tall cypress or gum trees on their land, if for 
 no other reason. Pages 54 and 55 give interest- 
 ing data as to certain peculiar incidents caused 
 by the Assuring, one of which is amusing to 
 read, but no doubt serious enough to e.xpe- 
 rience. It is related by LeSieur: It seems that 
 a Mr. Culberson lived on a V-shaped point in 
 a bend of Pemiscot River, embracing about an 
 acre of ground, on which his well and smoke- 
 house were situated, l>ing between the house 
 and the river. On the morning of the earth- 
 (luake Mrs. Culberson started to go to the 
 smokehouse for meat, only to And the path 
 crossed by the wide stream, the smolcehouse 
 and well "being seen across the river, on the 
 opposite side from where they were the night 
 before. Page 62 speaks of where writers of the 
 great quake call attention to the turning back 
 of the Mississiupi River and of the closing of 
 an entrance to Little River from the Mississippi 
 River some three miles below New Madrid. 
 Pages 64 to 75 deal with the "Sunken Lands" 
 of this earthquake country and it is sure in- 
 teresting reading to anyone, and especially so 
 to anyone who has lived near four years in 
 this country and had an opportunity to study it 
 at close hand. Now page 77 gives a picture of 
 sand blows taken in California, which sand 
 blows were formed in the recent San Francisco 
 earthquake, and they surely look like those in 
 this country, of which there seems to be no 
 end. Pages 79 to 83 give interesting descrip- 
 tions of these sand blows and how in some 
 localities they are so thick that the edges of 
 one touch the other and give the country a 
 very sandy appearance. Pages 83 to 85 speak 
 on sand sloughs, pronounced "sloos." "Sinks" 
 are very fully described on pages 87 and 88, and 
 as you plow through some of these "sink holes" 
 in dry times you wonder how they looked and 
 how it was around here when they were formed. 
 Pages 89 to 94 give different accounts of the 
 action of the earthquake on the waters of the 
 Mississippi River and furnish very interesting 
 reading to one living not right in this "Earth- 
 quake Zone." Pages 95 to 99 take up the effect 
 the earthquake had on the forests, and from 
 the descriptions and the damage done you 
 wonder that there is as much timber in this 
 country as there is. Pages 99 and 100 treat of 
 the effect of the "quake" on artiAcial structures. 
 and from the long continuance of this par- 
 ticular earthquake period it is no wonder that 
 there was few frame buildings left standing. 
 Page 101 treats of tne noises accompanying the 
 earthquake, and that there is I can testify to 
 the truth of it. for the quake of Oct. 23rd, 1909, 
 was accompanied by a noise like an explosion 
 to the west of our home. Pages 102 to 104 take 
 up Popular Beliefs of the Origin and Cause and 
 Evidence of Origin of this Earthquake, and are 
 very interesting. The "Ultimate Cause" of this 
 earthquake as written up on page 105 is well 
 worth reading to anyone, either living in this 
 affected country or contemplating living there. 
 Page 109 gives Contemporaneous Disturbances 
 and it seems that there was a-plenty doing in 
 the earthquake line at that time. Page 110 is 
 very interesting reading in that it speaks of 
 the probabilities of a recurrence of this earth- 
 quake and when, judging it by other earth- 
 quakes, records of which have been kept over 
 periods of several hundred years, and they show 
 that they axe to be expected about every 100 
 years. This page also gives names of localities 
 that would be the most affected were it to 
 occur again. 
 
 This constitutes the whole of the book that 
 is devoted to the general description of this 
 great earthquake and is very Ane reading and 
 very instructive to anyone, and especially to 
 parties thinking of locating in this locality for 
 a home or investment. 
 
 It seems that while I was hunting for news 
 
 relating to this greatest of earthquakes, that 
 everything most that pertained to it came 
 under my observation, and being the century 
 anniversary of it, and the only paper that had 
 published an account of it 100 years ago, the 
 St. Louis Republic, gave quite a write-up of 
 the catastrophe, and I here copy their account 
 of it: 
 
 "CENTENNIAL OF MISSOURI'S EARTH- 
 QUAKE." 
 (St. Louis Repul)lic of Sunday, Nov. 12th, 1911.) 
 "One hundred years ago this month the trap- 
 pers, squatters, traders and settlers down the 
 valley from St. Louis were listening now and 
 again to certain strange and portentious noises 
 that seemed to come from beneath the earth. 
 There were some timorous souls among them 
 who claimed to have felt the earth tremble 
 beneath their feet. .lust as always, the doubt- 
 ers laughed and mocked and continued to 
 doubt. 
 
 "It was late in December that the mightiest 
 earthquake that ever rocked North America 
 struck the New Madrid country. There were 
 more lives lost in San Francisco, that time the 
 earth there shook loose from its moorings, but 
 the PaciAc quake did not utterly change the 
 face of the country like this valley tremor that 
 lasted for days and weeks. 
 
 "It was then that the Mississippi River ran 
 uphill for hours. The great mass of water 
 hurrying toward the Gulf paused and turned 
 back" upon itself. All the valley was a-quiver. 
 Great geysers opened in the good black earth 
 of the valley. Some of these sink-holes fumed 
 and murmured for years afterwards. It was in 
 December, 1811, that the valley found itself 
 being shaken as a terrier shakes a rat. The 
 premonitory rumblings and grumblings among 
 the rocks" no longer frightened the valley 
 dwellers. They had grown used to them. 
 
 "St. Louis went to bed on Sunday night, De- 
 cember 15, without any apprehension. The 
 tremors and grumblings had not been bothering 
 the valley this far north. Very early in the 
 morning of the 16th the earth began to wabble 
 like a drunken man. St. Louis promptly for- 
 r.ook his bed and ran out into the streets. All 
 the rest of the night and till noon of Monday 
 the rocking, roaring and trembling was kept up 
 at short intervals. 
 
 "Missouri was all a-quiver. Thousands of 
 acres of land to the west of the river sank and 
 the waters of the Mississippi invaded the newly 
 made low grounds. Missouri taxpayers are still 
 paving for the damage caused during the last 
 days "of December. 1811, and the early months 
 of" 1812. Big Government dredges are now 
 rooting their way through these swamps, drain- 
 ing and opening them up to the belated plow. 
 Had it not been for this tremendous earthquake 
 the swamp lands of Missouri would have been 
 small in area. 
 
 "That earthquake has cost Missouri millions 
 in deferred population, lost production and the 
 actual cost of draining the quake-sunken lands. 
 The Arst newspaper account of the tremor, 
 afterwards known as the New Madrid earth- 
 quake, was published in The Missouri Gazette, 
 now The St. Louis Republic. This was pub- 
 lished on Saturday. December 21, 1811. and the 
 extent of the disaster was by no means known 
 at the time. In fact, tue greater part of the 
 sinking took place some time later. 
 
 " 'On Monday morning last.' says the editor, 
 'about a quarter past 2, St. Louis was visited 
 by one of the most violent shocks of earth- 
 quake that has been recorded since the discov- 
 erv of our country. As we were all wrapt in 
 sleep, each tells his story in his. own way. I 
 will also relate my simple tale. 
 
 " .T.t the period above mentioned I was roused 
 from sleep by the clamor of windows, doors and 
 furniture in tremendous motion, with a distant, 
 rumbling noise resembling a number of car- 
 riages passing over the pavement. In a few 
 seconds the motion and subterraneous thunder 
 increased more and more. Believing the noise 
 to proceed from the north or northwest, and 
 expecting the earth to be relieved by a vol- 
 
canic eruption, I ran out of doors and looketl 
 for the dreadful phenomena. 
 
 " 'The ag-itation had now reached its utmost 
 violence. I entered the house to march my 
 family from its expected ruins, but before I 
 could put my designs into execution the shock 
 had ceased, having- lasted about one and three- 
 quarter minutes. 
 
 " 'The sky was obscured by a thick, hazy 
 fog-, without a breath of air; a Fahrenheit ther- 
 mometer might have stood at this time about 
 :J.5 or 40 degrees. At forty-seven minutes past 
 2 another shock was felt, without tlie rumbling 
 noises and much less violent than the first. It 
 lasted over two minutes.' 
 
 "The account continues with a description of 
 still other shocks that kept the harassed St. 
 Louisans on the move till daybreak and after. 
 
 " 'The morning was very drizzly and uncom- 
 monb- warm,' according to the writer; 'tlie roofs 
 and fences appeared covered with a white frost, 
 but on examination it was found to be vapor- 
 ous, not possessing the chilly cold of frost. 
 Indeed the morn was enshrouded in awful 
 gloom.' 
 
 "This was on Saturday, but nothing seems to 
 have been known at that time of the effects of 
 shocks down the valley All St. Louis was try- 
 ing to arrive at some explanation for the mani- 
 festation. In the account of the earthquake it 
 is suggested that it must have been of volcanic 
 origin, as there was said to be a volcano, ex- 
 tinct hut three years, where the river of the 
 Osage Indians joined the Missouri. 
 
 "Geologists would not be at all surprised if 
 there w'as a recurrence of these earthquake 
 shocks up and down the valley. The country 
 south of St. Louis and down near New Bladrid 
 is known as a 'weak-spot.' It is one of three 
 that are known to exist in the earth's crust on 
 American soil. San Francisco and vicinity has 
 one and the Atlantic Coast in the neighborhood 
 of New Jersey has the other. Seismologists 
 claim that sooner or later there will be a shift- 
 ing and a settling- of the earth in these 
 localities. 
 
 "Never a year passes that there is not one 
 or more little quakes in the sunken lands of 
 Missouri and over in Kentucky and southern 
 Illinois. These no more than rattle the dishes 
 in the cupboards or set the chandeliers to 
 swinging, but they are Indications that all is 
 not yet serene in the subterraneon depths in the 
 lower valley. 
 
 "Seismologists never tire of studying the 
 great quake of New Madrid. Its effects are 
 almost as plain today as they were 100 years 
 ago. The sink-holes and lakes, the submerg-ed 
 forests and the great cracks in the earth make 
 plenty of material for the student. The only 
 reason for the sligui loss of life was that there 
 were but few inhabitants in that section at the 
 time. 
 
 "The earthquake was the cause, one cause at 
 least, of the little corner of Missouri sticking 
 down into what might have been Arkansas. 
 After the first great shakings the people fled 
 from the quivering neighborhood. With one ex- 
 ception. "There was one strong-minded citizen 
 who refused to go, and maintained that he 
 wished to be considered and was in fact a 
 citizen of Missouri. This was at the time when 
 the boundary line was being fixed. He had his 
 way, even the compromisers w^to fixed the line 
 realizing that he was not a man with whom it 
 was possible to compromise." 
 
 Again in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch of Sun- 
 day, July 14th, 1912, Dr. W. J. Mc&ee, who 
 foretold the San Francisco quake and warned 
 Alaska EIGHT years ago of the now ACTIVE 
 KATMAI VOLCANO, savs the GREAT NEW 
 MADRID QUAKE WILL RECUR. He gives 
 near a full page on the matter and if you care 
 to you can look it up. I do not wish to re- 
 print it all here. I only call attention to it on 
 account of the prominence of the author. Prof. 
 McGee having made a report for the Govern- 
 ment on the Charleston, S. C, earthquake of 
 1886. 
 
 Reading all these accounts — descriptions of 
 the great quake of 1811-12, predictions of the 
 recurrence of it by such prominent men as 
 
 Shaler and McGee, records of other great 
 quakes which show activities about every cen- 
 tury, and the real demonstrations that have oc- 
 curred since we have been in the country, 
 make you feel as though you were living 
 on the edge of a gravel bank where they were 
 caving off the bank to get at the gravel and 
 some giant hand was picking away to throw the 
 cave — small particles always fall off at first, 
 which would correspond to the tremors and 
 light shakes we have here every once in a 
 while — but when he has enough dug out, you 
 know, down goes the cave. In 1898, I am told 
 by several people, they had a very severe shock. 
 Monroe Dinkins and Samuel Marl, of Matthews, 
 Mo., gave me an account of their experience 
 with it. How it started the pumps to flowing 
 and the ditches running, although it was in a 
 very dry time. Mr. Marl told me of how he 
 was standing on one of these sand blows in the 
 east swamp, along a cypress slough, and when 
 the large cypress trees began to thresh around 
 he just did not know what to expect. Mr. 
 Dinkins told me of how they tried driving a 
 team of mules about nine miles and how it 
 took them all day to do it, for every time the 
 earth would tremble the mules would stop. 
 Now these are reliable people and I would sug- 
 gest that did you come down to this country on 
 a prospecting tour that you take time to visit 
 with some of these older citizens that are not 
 interested in selling or showing lands. 
 
 Now, dear friends, it is not only -earthquakes 
 and the history of this one that I wish to place 
 before you, but my experience in this country 
 and with its people, and as I kept a daily 
 record, I feel that I am in a very good position 
 to give it to you. All the way through you 
 will see that I am not trying to keep you out of 
 this country, but trying to impress on you the 
 advantage it will be to you if when you do 
 come that you either rent and farm for a year 
 or work for somebody a season. 
 
 After seeing this country for the one day — 
 April 19th, 1909—1 returned home, to Bluffton, 
 Indiana, reported to the family how good the 
 country looked to me and began to figure how 
 to get into something down here. Mr. Gabriel 
 T. Markley of the firm of Hale & iNIarkley, real 
 estate agents of our town, then representatives 
 for the Smith Bros. & Co. Land Company, of 
 Sikeston, Mo., made me a very good verbal 
 offer, that was this: if I would locate down 
 here and assist in getting other people to buy 
 here, that they would give me one-half the 
 commission they received on all sales they 
 made down here. That looked pretty good to 
 me, so I visited with some of the people that 
 I thought could be interested in lands down 
 here and on the 7th of June, 1909. I landed in 
 Sikeston and stayed nere till the afternoon of 
 June 8th, when !• went down to Lilbourn, twenty 
 miles south of Sikeston, where the real new 
 country is. Lilbourn at that time was the 
 Mecca of all newcomers, for it was and is the 
 geographical center of New Madrid county, and 
 was strongly talked of for the county seat, and 
 people coming in from the older northern coun- 
 tries know what it means to get located in the 
 prospective county seat. Well. I stayed here 
 until June 12th and visited with the people — 
 took walks into the country along the railroads 
 — too wet to get into the woods — rode up and 
 down Little River with a Mr. Welshans. pro- 
 prietor of the hotel of the town, and told him 
 of how I was down there looking for something 
 to do — would like to get on a farm, at which 
 he laughed and told me if I wanted to farm 
 that I wanted to get out of there, that it never 
 became dry enough in that locality to grow a 
 cro)i, and I rather believed him, and when I 
 told Mr. Cox, of the Smith Bros. & Co. Land 
 Company, that Mr. Welshans was rather knock- 
 ing on the country as a farming country, he 
 said that I ought not to pay any attention to 
 the hunters and fishermen, as they did not 
 want to see people clear up the lands around 
 there, for it would spoil their sport. Well that 
 looked reasonable to me, but I did not stay 
 here long. On the 12th I went back to Sikes- 
 ton and spent Sunday with two brothers from 
 our country, Messrs. Ben and Fred Moser, on 
 
their farm about six miles southwest from 
 Sikeston on Pharris Ridge — places are located 
 in this country by ridges and ditches; there is 
 Sikeston Ridge, Big Ridge, T^anders Ridge, 
 Couters Ridge, Round Ridge, Hurricane Ridge, 
 etc. etc.; and ditches either go by their num- 
 bers either east or west of the Sikeston Ridge 
 or the particular slough that tlicy were dug to 
 drain, as Ash slough, Otter slough, etc. Had a 
 pleasant Sunday with the boys talking over the 
 farming possiliilities of the country, etc.; then 
 the following morning across the country to 
 Matthews and through some very wild and new 
 country — up the Frisco railroad to Sikeston — 
 and wrote home of the fact that I had not as 
 yet found an occupation and my views of what 
 I thought would be profitable to work at In 
 connection with prospective showing of lands 
 as outlined with i\Ir. Markley; and as one of 
 them was keeping a hotel, and knowing that 
 Mrs. Welshans would sell her hotel at Lilbourn. 
 I decided to ro back there and visit a few day§ 
 more. So on the 17th of .June, 1909, I went back 
 to Lilbourn and wrote Mrs. Studataaker what it 
 would cost us to buy this hotel did we decide 
 to do so. I was much pleased when I received 
 a letter from her telling that we could get the 
 money to buy it, and as it figures largely in 
 our experience in Missouri — the fact that we 
 were operating on borrowed capital — I will just 
 explain here that Mrs. Studabaker's brother, 
 H. D. Cook, secured for us what money we 
 needed. I insisted that Mrs. Studabaker pay 
 the country a visit and see the country — look 
 over our prospective occupation — so on the 23rd 
 of June, 1909, she came to Lilbourn and we 
 stayed here till afternoon of June 24th, when 
 we went to Sikeston to look over the farming 
 country in that locality, as Mr. Cook had ex- 
 pressed himself as though he would feel we 
 were making a safer investment if we were to 
 buy a farm; and although the amount of ready 
 money we had — $2,800 — was small to think of 
 buying and operating a farm, yet he assured 
 Mrs. Studabaker that he would see us through 
 if we went to farming and needed more. At Sikes- 
 ton I arranged with the C. M. Smith Bros. & 
 Co. Land Company to take us out and show us 
 some of their land they had for sale; so on the 
 morning of June 25th Mr. J. P. Cox, of the then 
 C. M. Smith Bros. & Co. Land Company, but 
 now of the Hoosier Land and Investment Com- 
 pany, of Sikeston, Missouri, with a carriage 
 and two mules started out to show us the 
 country and the lands they had for sale. We 
 drove out to Pharris Ridge, then south along 
 Ash slough ditch to a point about one and a 
 half miles south of Matthews, then we came up 
 out of the wilderness onto Couters Ridge, and 
 here he showed us the farm of 215 acres that 
 we afterwards contracted for. It was such a 
 joy to come up out of the uncleared land to 
 this almost cleared farm, with a new 6-room 
 PAINTED house and a great deal of growing 
 corn that we sure thought we had found the 
 spot, and when we learned that we could buy 
 this with a payment of $2,000 down and ten 
 annual payments on the balance, and that if 
 we would purchase it before July 1st — this was 
 June 25th — that we would get this year's rent 
 (Mr. Cox said there was 200 acres of it in corn 
 and rented at $4 per acre), we were interested 
 at once and did not look any further. Mr. Cox 
 wanted to show us some lands in the EAST 
 .swamp not so far out from Sikeston, but we 
 had heard that the east swamp overflowed 
 every time the Mississippi river came up and 
 we would not go and look at them; so we 
 drove back to Sikeston without looking any 
 further. To the hotel, and the next day Mrs. 
 Studabaker started back for Indiana to send 
 me the money to close the deal, and I went to 
 our friends, Mosers, and Sunday afternoon 
 Mr. Ben Moser and I drove over to the farm 
 and took another look at it. We found that at 
 least half of the farm was the much sought for 
 black land and the other was higher land with 
 some sand and between 10 and 20 ^cres of 
 white oak ridge clay. About 160 acres of it 
 was in corn; the rest was not put in, the rent- 
 ers said, because they just could not get to it 
 to do it. I took it that they meant they had 
 
 too much work, but I afterwards learned that 
 it was on account of it being too wet. Well, I 
 still had the idea of buying the farm, for here 
 \\as a farm witliin a mile of an elevator — 
 adjoining the railroad right-of-way on the east 
 — half black land and half ridge — a new house — 
 rented, so I was informed, for $4 per acre cash 
 rent — could buy it on ten years' time with 
 small payment of $2,000 down and, as the real 
 estate men held out, it was soon to go to $100 
 per acre — and who would want for anything 
 better. To Sikeston, June 2Sth, and on the 
 29th I received draft from home for $2,800, so 
 on June 30th, 1909. I signed up contract for the 
 200 acres land at $75 per acre^$2,000 down and 
 the balance in 10 annual payments at 6 per cent 
 interest, making an annual payment of about 
 $1,300 and interest. Looked like a person ought 
 to make it, but as we go along will show you 
 how far short I fell. Now to show you how 
 important it is to look after all the little things, 
 will right here make mention of the fact that 
 on or near the southeast corner of this land 
 there was a cemetery — I say on or near at this 
 time, for land was to be surveyed and I was to 
 pay for just what it measured, and I made 
 mention to the land company that I did not 
 want to pay for this cemetery if it fell within 
 the lands when surveyed. I did not have it 
 written in the contract and there was where I 
 fell down, as will be shown later on, although 
 I had it understood — verabally — with them. 
 Now I had the land bought — an abstract was 
 to be given — the lands were rented and I bought 
 subject to the rental leases, none of which ex- 
 pired until the first of the following January, 
 1910, and it was up to me to get possession. 
 
 For the next several days I was busy writing 
 home folks and sending them circulars prepared 
 by the land men; also wrote the home papers. 
 Glad to say from reading these articles over 
 that I confined myself to things I had seen, 
 such as the raising of two crops and the long 
 time for planting corn. I learned more of the 
 country, as a farming country, from being here 
 and trying to make crops; also of the people 
 from dealing with them and seeing them deal 
 with other people. Down to the farm and saw 
 the renter and talked buying him out, so as to 
 get possession. In this country there seems to 
 be a rule if you want to get man off of a place 
 you must buy what junk, mules, etc., that he 
 has to get him to move, and sometimes it is 
 pretty expensive. Again on the Sth of July I 
 went down to the farm, saw the renter, Mr. 
 Dover, and wife; visited and talked buying 
 them out, but nothing doing this time; he 
 hadn't found a place to go to yet and he wanted 
 to know where he was going before he would 
 talk sell. 
 
 On the 11th of July Mr. Moser, some of his 
 folks and I went blackberrying, and here was 
 where I became acquainted with one of the 
 worst insect pests, as. far as humanity is con- 
 cerned, known to this or any other country, 
 and that is the chigre; most people call them "jig- 
 gers," and they sure are. They are a little red 
 Insect and they bury into the flesh and start 
 an irritation that is hard to stop. I sure caught 
 my share of them that day, for I was most 
 laid up from the swollen and irritated condi- 
 tion of my limbs around my ankles. Should 
 you go to this country on a prospecting trip in 
 the spring, summer or fall of the year, you will 
 do well to be careful and take all precautions, 
 especially if you are easily poisoned. 
 
 .July 12th, 1909, we measured the land — 
 215.04 acres — and it was HOT enough for me to 
 ever remember it, if for no other reason; but 
 there was one other, and this leads me up to 
 the snake question of this country — one not to 
 be laughed at, for you know swamps breed 
 snakes, and for a truth these swamps sure do 
 their share. I do not expect that I would have 
 paid so much attention to the reptile question, 
 for you know I was born and reared in Indiana, 
 said to be one of the greatest snake countries 
 other than India, had it not been for the sur- 
 veyors, but they being "Swamp-East Mis- 
 sourians" — "Wampus Cats" — as all natives are 
 sometimes called, and side stepping the snake 
 homes like they did, rather bred a feeling, not 
 
of contempt for the snakes, but of respect for 
 them. We were surveying along the north line 
 of the land, on one of the traveled "lanes" — 
 I'oads in the North — when we came to a patch 
 of Jimson weeds, about waist high and cross- 
 ing the road either into this patch of weeds 
 or from it, was a snake track, which looked 
 like the maker of it might have been a snake 
 of goodly size, so as the Jine would have led 
 riglit through this weed patch, the surveyors 
 did not do a thing but measure over a couple 
 of rods, pass the obstruction and measure back 
 onto the line. Of course, I was interested in 
 the measurement of the land and I asked why 
 they did the side-stepping and then they told 
 me that they did not take any chances with 
 the snakes and advised me not to either. Wall, 
 this was a new idea to me and with my pre- 
 vious "jigger'' experience, which at this time 
 was causing me a great deal of trouble in get- 
 ting around, I rather thought that probably I 
 had better l^e a little careful of Mr. Snake. I 
 inquired as to the kinds of snakes I was liable 
 to meet up with and was told of the Cotton 
 mouth, a very poisonous reptile, whose mouth 
 looks like a ball of cotton, from whence it de- 
 rived its name; the Water Moccasin, also very 
 poisonous and an inhabitant of these or any 
 other swamps; the Spreading Adder, also poi- 
 sonous and lives mostly on uplands. We have 
 killed as high as six in one day in our wheat 
 fields; in fact, they were so thick in our up- 
 lands that we could not get our women folks 
 to cross the wheat fields until after the wheat 
 was cut. Tlien there are house snakes, chicken 
 snakes, garter snakes and many more too 
 numerous to mention. The boys and I became 
 so used to them that we killed and skinned 
 a great many and once when we had some 
 20 or 25 tacked up on one of the outbuildings, 
 Mrs. Studebaker and I were looking them over 
 and reinarked how, had we known the place 
 was as thick with snakes as it was, we never 
 would have owned it, it would either yet be 
 Mr. C. D. Matthews' or some other fellow's. 
 Now while our experience with the snakes was 
 more amusing than serious, yet tliat was not 
 true in all cases, for I know of some cases 
 where children were bitten that came near 
 causing death. 
 
 I re-print herewith a couple of clippings from 
 newspapers of this community in regards to 
 some other people's experiences with snakes. • 
 (From the Sikeston Standard of May 31st, 1912) 
 
 FARMER BITTEN IN HAND BY BIG SNAKE. 
 A. J. Davis Was Pulling Up Stump When Rep- 
 tile Jumped At Him and Held On. 
 
 A. J. Davis, who farms three miles below 
 Sikeston on the New Madrid road, was bitten 
 in the right hand by a monster black snake 
 last Wednesday and for several days was un- 
 able to go about his work with usual alacrity. 
 The reptile held on to his hand as if he were 
 going to get a week's board at the time and 
 Davis had some difficulty in shaking him loose. 
 
 The snake was lodged vinder a stump. Davis 
 was out in the field plowing and when he came 
 to the stump, which was old and rotten, he 
 thought to rid the field of the obstruction to 
 straight plowing and laid a hand to the task. 
 When he pulled the stump up slightly, the 
 snake darted out and made one lunge, grabbing 
 Davis's hand. 
 
 Knowing that a black snake is not seriously 
 poisonous, Davis treated his hand with perox- 
 ide of hydrogen. His hand and arm swelled 
 somewhat and some pain followed the next day. 
 For its pains the snake was killed. 
 
 A few days before Davis said he was driving 
 down the road with a team of mules when a 
 rattle snake over six feet long and as big around 
 as a fence post crawled across the road and 
 frightened his team until the mules ran away. 
 When he got them pulled down and hitched 
 and went back to look for the snake, it had 
 disappeared in the rye field of A. A. Ebert. 
 
 Another little clipping from the Campbell 
 Citizen. 
 
 "Will Kendall is our authority for this snake 
 story, sworn to by Bert Knotts and declared 
 true by several other witnesses. One morning 
 
 last week Bert stepped out into his back yard 
 and immediately was attacked by rattle snakes. 
 
 "He grabbed a hoe and chopped snakes for 
 nearly a half hour. When the battle was over 
 he counted 95 dead snakes. 
 
 "Mr. Knotts lives in Bray addition to Camp- 
 bell, but is trying to get moved right away." 
 
 We finished the surveying and for the next 
 two weeks I was busy trying to buy out the 
 renter and get possession of the farm and 
 naturally while in Sikeston, and not very well 
 acquainted, I staj'ed around the Land Com- 
 pany's office. On Wednesday, the 21st of July, 
 1909, Mr. Dover came in and we concluded a 
 deal for his corn and most of his farming im- 
 plements and stock and I was to have posses- 
 sion on the 15th of August. That evening Mr. 
 .Johns, the stenographer for the Land Company, 
 and I drove out into the East Swamp, about 
 5 miles east of Sikeston to see the water from 
 the Mississippi River, rushing like a mill race 
 down one of the dredge ditches and the people, 
 not only of that locality but of Sikeston as 
 well, who owned lands bordering on this ditch, 
 or, in fact, in this swamp, piling sand bags 
 on the banks of the ditch and in the low 
 places trying to confine the water to the ditch 
 and thereby save their growing corn. This 
 was a case where the levee at Price's Landing 
 gave way and it sure cost the farmers in the 
 low lands a plenty in the loss of their crops. 
 At this time I was told the water also overflowed 
 the rock levee at Cape Girardeau and came down 
 through Little River in the west swamp and 
 did considerable damage along Little River. 
 Sandy land, or rather sand land, plenty of water 
 and a good HOT sun' is what it takes to grow 
 watermelons and as this country has all of 
 these requirements, there is lots of melons 
 shipped from this country. Not being able to 
 start my farm work for near a month, Mr. J. 
 F. Cox and I purchased a car of melons for 
 $110 and I started for Indiana to peddle them 
 out and try and make a little of my expenses 
 while waiting to get possession of the farm 
 bought and make Mr. Cox a little money for 
 his investment. Took them to Frankfort, Ko- 
 komo, and Marion and finally closed out at my 
 home town of Bluffton, but made no money 
 as Georgia melons were ahead and besides I 
 found out that Missouri melons had a bad rep- 
 utation for being pulled too green. Visited at 
 home and helped start the packing for the trip 
 to Missouri, till August 8th, 1909, then off for 
 Missouri, and landed in Sikeston, August 9th, 
 1909, and on the way from Bird's Point, through 
 Charleston to Sikeston,- had a good opportunity 
 to see the crops that were destroyed by the 
 recent overflow of the Mississippi River and 
 the scalded corn fields was sure a sorry sight. 
 Then the next day, August the 10th, 1909, Mr. 
 James Smith, Sr.. of the Land Company, sug- 
 gested that we close up our real estate deal 
 and as I had paid down the required $2,000 
 when I signed the contract, I had no reason 
 to do otherwise, so in company with Mr. Smith, 
 We went to see Mr. C. D. Matthews, Sr., of 
 whom I purchased the land, and after intro- 
 ducing me to him, the land agents left me to 
 fight it out witli the old gentleman alone as 
 to deal. Now here coines in the one point that 
 I made mention of in the first of my write-up 
 and that was the necessity of having every- 
 thing down in writing and no verbal under- 
 standings, as I had about my not taking the 
 cemetery in as a part of the land. I told Mr. 
 Matthews that I did not want to take in the 
 cemetery as a part of tlie farm, that I could 
 not farm that, and, furthermore, it was under- 
 stood with the Land Company that it was to 
 be measured out. He told me that it would 
 have to go in as lands here always did trade 
 that way and that would have to go in. Now 
 had I have had it in the contract — written in 
 — I could have recovered for the cemetery, but 
 as it was I could not and, furthermore. I could 
 not afford to throw up the deal for the sake 
 of a half acre of land as I had bought out ^the 
 renter and the folks were packing up prep'ar- 
 atory to moving down and so I had to take 
 in the half acre of cemetery in the farm. Now 
 that cemetery was always there and afterwards 
 
when trying to re-sell the farm, it always 
 showed up very prominently as it was in a 
 verj' prominent place and while I do not know 
 positively that it spoiled any deals, I know 
 how I felt about it when I had to take it as 
 a part of the farm and I judge that numbers 
 of the people that the land companies showed 
 tliis farm to looked at it in about the same 
 way. On the 15th of August I took possession 
 of the farm and as the corn would not do to 
 work in for two or three weeks and as it was 
 so fearfully HOT I had my folks wait until 
 tlie 1st of iSeptember before starting, so I spent 
 the time for the next two weeks "batciiing" 
 it down on the farm and looking after the 
 stock. Done this so the folks would miss as 
 much of the HOT weather yet this fall as pos- 
 sible. On the 4th of September, 1909, though 
 they landed at Knoxall, our nearest station 
 stop, and tlie first thing they learned from a 
 family that they rode up the "lane" aways 
 with was about the awful number of snakes 
 there was in this country and when I arrived 
 at the home on the farm that evening they 
 were most seared to death over what they had 
 told them. Although the next day was Sun- 
 day, we unloaded enough of our goods to have 
 something to cook and eat on and a place to 
 sleep and the next day we finished the unload- 
 ing and it was well that we did for on Tues- 
 day the folks were initiated right to a Missouri 
 rain and it was lucky for us that we were 
 under cover for when it rains in JMissouri, it 
 sure rains. Went to our farm work, as we 
 wanted to put out some wheat and began 
 plowing in a meadow and topping some corn 
 and on the ISth of September, 1909, went to 
 Sikeston to finish up the land deal and to see 
 Air. C. D. Matthews, Sr., to sign up the notes. 
 Now, we had contracted for 215.04 acres of 
 land at $75 per acre, which amounted to $16,128, 
 on which we had paid $2,000, the rest to be 
 divided into ten equal, annual payments. Here 
 is where I first realized what an enormous 
 commission the land men ^vere getting for 
 selling me this farm. The notes were made 
 out in eleven notes — one of $500, one of $912.80 
 and the other nine of $1,412.80 each. The one 
 of $500 going to the land men to complete their 
 commission of $1,075, the cash payment being 
 only for $2,000. Mr. Matthews would not allow 
 them to have all their commission in cash, so 
 you see I paid, or contracted to pay, and did 
 pay, along witli a whole lot of interest, a 
 goodly sum to be allowed to buy a farm in 
 this "Earthquake Zone." Now, as I had a 
 contract with Mr. Markley of the firm of Hale 
 & Markley, real estate agents of Bluff ton. Ind., 
 that I was to receive one-half of their com- 
 missions on all lands sold in this country, they 
 did pay to me. on my deal and the Archie 
 Cook deal, wherein he purchased 240 acres of 
 land $300. So this will give you some idea, 
 dear friend, what the real estate agent or 
 agents are to be paid for leading you down 
 here and locating you, if he does, of course. 
 There is many a slip in selling real estate and 
 us fellows that locate through these real estate 
 agencies pay many another man's sight-seeing 
 expenses. Now this is one of the things that 
 I wish to impress upon you — how you can miss 
 this enormous commission and will take this 
 matter up at greater length when the home 
 man — down here — bought a farm and comes 
 into this write-up. 
 
 We worked on at our farm work, gathering 
 of the corn that I had purchased of the renter 
 to get possession of the land, plowed and 
 sowed wheat and as the fall days came, the 
 evening growing colder, it brought inore 
 strongly to mind the necessity of laying in 
 winter supplies of vegetables, and as our fam- 
 ily is a potato eating family, naturally when 
 one of the men on the farm offered me 14 bush- 
 els of nice looking potatoes for 75 cents per 
 bushel. I bought them and stored them away 
 for the winter. I did not know potatoes raised 
 in this country would not keep, but I found it 
 out — paid for more experience. Well, sir, I 
 sorted those potatoes over several times and I 
 know that I threw away two-thirds of them. 
 I only tell you this that should you come down 
 
 here to locate that you need not make the 
 same mistake. Potatoes grow well in this coun- 
 try but they are not meal.v like the potatoes 
 grown in liie North. It seems there is too 
 much moisture in the ground and they are 
 more like what we called at home the "Muck" 
 potatoes, that was potatoes that were grown 
 in low, swampy places. People as a rule that 
 do raise a surplus of potatoes in this country 
 sell them at tlie stores just as soon as tliey 
 \\i\\ do to dig and then when in need of pota- 
 toes buy shipped-in potatoes. 
 
 Kept on with our farm work, shucking corn 
 and planting wheat and finished the planting 
 of the wheat — 65 acres — some time in Novem- 
 ber. Then on the 7th of December had a new 
 experience. Mr. C. D. Matthews, Sr., the gen- 
 tleman of whom I bought this land, sent his 
 farm overseer or "rider" as they are called 
 in this counti-y, out to see me and made me 
 a proposition to sell real estate. It seemed, 
 so I was informed, that the land agencies of 
 Sikeston were not making what Mr. Matthews 
 thought the right effort to dispose of his lands. 
 You see. as I have shown you before, by the 
 commission they made off of the land that they 
 sold me these land agents were so to speak 
 "on the make," and as Mr. Matthews was a 
 large land holder and rich, he was in a posi- 
 tion to and did and does dictate the terms that 
 his lands MUST BE sold on and what the real 
 estate agent can have for his commission. Now 
 these land agents had lands that they could 
 sell and get more commission on — more than 
 the $5 per acre that they charged me and 
 they did not show his $5 per acre commission 
 lands, so I was informed, except when they 
 could not sell something else, and so Mr. C. 
 D. Matthews, Sr., was looking for someone to 
 get buyers for his lands. Now, I had only been 
 in Missouri five months and that through the 
 harvest time of a fairly good crop year — had 
 not had time to experience the losses and dis- 
 couragements that come from the loss of some 
 of your mules — hogs all dying with cholera — 
 water flooding your lands and drowning out 
 your crops — dry weather stunting your corn — 
 smut in your wheat, etc. etc., and naturally 
 I was very optomistic of the outlook to sell 
 some lands and. thus make some "easy money," 
 and so I wrote numbers of my friends in the 
 North, inviting them down to see us and to 
 move and live down here and what I thought 
 they could do by buying some of this land. 
 I did get ciuite a number of people from our 
 country down, showed them the land told them 
 what it would be bought for and of the $5 per 
 acre commission that we were allowed for sell- 
 ing it to them, we would refund them $1 per 
 acre as they were buying it direct through us 
 and there would be no home land agent to pay 
 for getting them down here. Had quite a 
 number of home folks down but did not suc- 
 ceed in selling them a piece of ground and 
 now that I have lived the near four years liere 
 and learned by experience how hard it is to 
 get loose from a piece of this land after you 
 are tied up in it, how little it advances in 
 price, even when you clear out the stumps and 
 build it up with peas, etc., as we did this farm. 
 We received $10 per acre more for our farm 
 than we paid for it. I am truly glad that I 
 was not instrumental in locating any one. for it 
 is bad enough to lose what we have to without 
 leading any one else into the same trap. Now 
 right here I am in a position to show you why 
 it is better to have lived here a while and then 
 buy, rather than to come down and purchase 
 direct through some of the land agencies. Mr. 
 Moser, a Wells County man, and who lives on 
 Pharris Ridge, near here, was interested with 
 me in trying to get buyers for lands here, and 
 he had a neighbor. Mr. Joseph Weedman, who 
 was talking of buying a farm and was over to 
 look at the farm north of mine. As we were 
 authorized to sell land by Mr. Matthews, and 
 as Mr. Moser and Mr. Weedman had often 
 talked the subject of buying a farm, Mr. Mo- 
 ser had no hesitancy in talking trade with 
 Mr. Weedman on the 207 acres adjoining me 
 at $75 per acre, and as it was not much effort 
 to us and would have been a little "easy 
 
money" "picked up," Mr. Moser offered to re- 
 bate Mr. Weedman $250 of our commission if 
 he would let us sell him the farm. We did 
 not sell it to him, but he bought it through 
 another local firm of agents and we were in- 
 formed that he only paid a net price of $72 
 per acre for it, so you see he saved about $600 
 by being on the ground and acquainted and 1 
 learned further that he only had to pay the 
 intei-est on deferred payments and taxes and 
 did not have to make a payment on the prin- 
 cipal until the payment due in 1913. which gave 
 him the use of the farm for two years by only 
 paying interest and ta.xes. Now to thoroughly 
 impress this upon you the advantage it would 
 be to live here a season before buying, if you 
 would only do as well as Mr. Weedman,~ I will 
 here set out what his farYn cost him and what 
 mine cost me and you can figure it out for 
 yourself: 
 
 I bought 215.04 acres at $73 per acre, a total, 
 of $16,128. 
 
 He bought 207 acres at $72 per acre, a total 
 of $14,<i04. 
 
 He saved $3 per acre on 207 acres, a total 
 of $621 dollars, besides he did not have to meet 
 any payments on the principal for two years. 
 Then there is various other reasons why it is 
 better to have lived here for a season at least 
 before getting tied up — you can study the dif- 
 ferent locations and see for yourself where 
 people are raising enough to have a hope of 
 paying out some day — you can better select a 
 good neighborhood and that is easily worth $10 
 per acre on a piece of land as to who you are 
 located up against. In some localities people 
 take advantage of the stock law and let their 
 mules, hogs, cattle, farm implements, in fact, 
 everything run out on the road and down oui' 
 lane." If you wanted to drive after night it 
 was necessary for one to go ahead and carry 
 a lantern to keep from running over a piece 
 of farm machinery or a mule or a bunch oJ 
 cattle or hogs. Worse than just letting them 
 run out, some of them don't feed their stock, 
 expecting them to get their living off the range, 
 which in settled communities like ours, means 
 the highways or "lanes," as they say. Now, 
 you know and so do I that when you do not 
 feed a hog or cow brute that it is not hard 
 work for them to become breechy and I expect 
 we would, most any of us, climb through the 
 fifth wire in a barb wire fence if we thought 
 we could get something to eat. on the other 
 side. 
 
 I hardly know how to make it strong enough 
 to thoroughly impress it upon you the AD- 
 VANTAGE to be gained, by you, in either 
 farming here a season on a rental proposition 
 or of working for some one before investing 
 your money in land, but as we branched out 
 in the neighborhood and met other people and 
 listened to their experiences "in these here 
 swamps," as they would say, it began to dawn 
 more and more on us that we were either up 
 against a hard proposition or else there was 
 some of the awfulest liars down here that ever 
 lived, and now looking back upon OUR expe- 
 rience of near four years, my sympathies are 
 entirely with those that are tied here and 
 can't get away and it is for that reason I am 
 trying to make this statement to you so that 
 you will Stop, Look and Listen before it is 
 too late. On the evening of December 23d, 
 1909, Mrs. Studabal<er went with me to a neigh- 
 bors — Mr. Dubois — to see about getting a corn 
 Bheller. to shell our corn and only natural that 
 we would stop and visit awhile, and Mr. Du- 
 bois began to tell of now he had been farming 
 in this section of the country for a number 
 of years and how Mr. C. D. Matthews had been 
 at "him to buy the farm that we had bought 
 and how that he was afraid to do it because 
 <'rops were not sure in these swamps — might 
 look ever so nice today and within ten days 
 would be drowned out and then Mr. Matthews 
 would have your little roll, whatever you had 
 paid down and there you was. Told me of 
 liow Mr. Dover, the renter that I had bought 
 out, had never made the rent off of any of the 
 black land that I had bought — had drowned out 
 every year. Well, my wife and I had plent5 
 
 of food for thought on our way home. Mrs, 
 Dubois had told her of how when she came 
 down into these swamps she was a well woman 
 and had rosy cheeks just like our daughters, 
 but look at me now, this malaria and chills 
 has about killed me, and sure enough she 
 looked the part. But we were in for it, as 
 they say down here, "we'd done bought" and 
 all we could do was to fi.x up the land, try 
 to make it pay and trust to the real estate 
 men to .get as big if not a bigger sucker than 
 we were — as to how well they succeeded, read 
 on. 
 
 As you go into a new country or a location 
 v.'here the custonis are much different from 
 where you were living, they seem very odd to 
 you and what impressed us as one of the 
 strangest things was the shooting of fireworks 
 at Christimas time. The merchants lay in 
 their stock of fireworks for Christmas just as 
 our northern merchants would Ijuy for the 4th 
 of .luly. 
 
 Taxes in this country, as I suppose it is all 
 over Missouri, are paid but once a year and 
 any time up till the first of the new year, so 
 on the 31st of December, 1909, I went to New 
 .Madrid to pay the taxes as it was agreed when 
 I bought the land as I received the rental for 
 the year I was to pay the 1909 ta.xes. When 1 
 asked the tax collector, Mr. Henry E. Brough- 
 ton, who is serving, as I am told, his twenty- 
 second year as ta.x collector, what my taxes 
 were, he told me $159. I was surprised at the 
 amount and asked him what made them so 
 much as I was told that the ditch tax on my 
 land would only be 50 cents an acre and at 
 that amount it would be over 70 cents. He 
 asked me who told me they would not be over 
 50 cents and when I told him the real estate 
 agents through whom I had purchased the 
 land, he smiled and replied, "Oh, they are liable 
 to tell you anything." Now taxes do not seem 
 to me to l3e distributed rightfully in this coun- 
 try. I will give you the idea I have gained of 
 them and it might help you to decide, should 
 ^•ou come to this country to make your home 
 or purchase a piece of property as an invest- 
 ment. Property on the Sikeston Ridge, as I 
 understand it, ijays no ditch tax, but the water 
 that falls on this land either runs off direetly 
 into the swamp lands on either side of the 
 ridge, where tlie owners of these swamp lands 
 have to care for it. or it sinks down into the 
 earth and seeps out in these swamp land^ 
 where the owners of the swamp lands must ditch 
 it off. With me at this time to pay taxes, De- 
 cember 31st, 1909, was a Mr. Tuxhorn, of near 
 Springfield, 111., who owns something like 440 
 acres of Sikeston Ridge land lying in Sec. 29. 
 Twp. 25, R. 14, I believe, and he paid his taxes 
 at the same time I did mine and his entire 
 tax on something like 440 acres was about $72, 
 while my tax on 215 acres — less than half the 
 amount of his land — was $159, which as you 
 see was more than twice the amount of his 
 taxes, making my total taxes at the rate of 
 $4 as to his one. Now it is a fact that this 
 land in these swamps would not be worth any- 
 thing, you could not even try to farm it were 
 it not ditched. Notice I say try to farm it, 
 but where the man owning the low lands has 
 to care for all the water that falls or. the just 
 or unjust, it does not seem right. I always 
 thought that the tax proposition was one rea- 
 son that the large land holders on the Sikeston 
 Ridge did not care to sell their farms. 
 
 Through the months of .Tanuary and Febru- 
 ary of 1910, was busy with Mr. Moser, show- 
 ing lands in our immediate vicinity and made 
 some near deals, but did not sell any and 
 although it hurt at that time, yet now I am 
 twice glad that none of our prospectiv^e cus- 
 tomers bought. One party, a Mr. Glenn Gourley. 
 would have purchased but he was told that you 
 could not raise potatoes in this country and 
 that if you did raise any you could not keep 
 them, so he backed out. Two young men, 
 Messrs. Roy Wilborn and William Crosbie, con- 
 tracted for 80 acres but when tliey learned 
 they would have to give a TRUST deed to 
 secure the deferred payments they would not 
 take the land and here I wish to explain the 
 
 10 
 
Trust deed matter so that you may understand 
 it. I will start by copying the tiust deed 1 
 gave for Uio lands I lioui^ht, whicli is as follows, 
 to-wit : 
 
 DEED OF TRUST. 
 
 This Deed made and entered into this 3Uth 
 day of June, Nineteen Hundred and Nine, by 
 and between Hugh D. Studabaker and Mary R. 
 Studabaker, his wife, of the County of New 
 Madrid, State of Missouri, imrties of the 
 first part, L.. C. Phillips of the Coun- 
 ty of New Madrid, State of Missouri, party 
 of the second part, and Chai-les D. Matthews 
 of the County of Scoft, State of Missouri, party 
 of the third part: 
 
 Witnesseth tliat the said parties of the first 
 part, in consideration of the debt and trust 
 hereinafter mentioned and created, and the 
 sum of one dollar to them paid by the said 
 party of the second part, the reieipt of whicli 
 is hereby acknowledged, do by these presents, 
 .s^rant, bargain and sell, convey and confirm 
 unto the said party of the second part the fol- 
 lowing- described real estate, situate, lying and 
 lieing in tlie County of New Madrid and State 
 of Missouri, to-wit: 
 
 "All of that part of section seven, township 
 twentj'-four, range fourteen, as is lying west 
 of the right of way of the St. Louis & San 
 Francisco Railroad, and containing two hun- 
 dred and fifteen and four-one hundredths acres 
 measured. This Deed of Trust given to secure 
 the balance of purchase money for lands here- 
 in described." 
 
 To have and to hold the same, with the 
 appurtenances to the party of the second pan 
 and to his successor or successors in this Trust, 
 and to him and his grantees and assigns for- 
 ever. IN TRUST, HOWEVER for the follow- 
 ing purposes: 
 
 Wliereas, Hugh D. Studabaker and Mary Stu- 
 dabaker, the said parties of the first part, have 
 this day made, executed and delivered to the 
 said party of the third part, their eleven prom- 
 issory notes of even date herewith, by which 
 they promise to pay to the said Chas. D. Mat- 
 thews, or order, for value received, fourteen 
 thousand, one hundred twenty-eight dollars. 
 Agreeable to eleven notes, as follows: One note 
 for $500 due one year after date; one note for 
 .$912.80 due one year after date: one n.ote for 
 i?!, '11 2.80, due two j'ears after date; one note for 
 $1,412.80, due three years after date; one note 
 for $1,412,80, due four years after date; one 
 note for $1,412.80, due Ave years after date; 
 one note for $1,412.80, due six years after date; 
 , one note for $1,412.80, due seven years after 
 date; one note for $1,412.80, due eight years 
 after date: one note for $1,412.80, due nine years 
 after date; one note for $1,412.80, due ten years 
 after date. All above notes bearing 6 per cent 
 interest per annum from date. All the interest 
 to be due and payable annually and if not so 
 paid to become as principal and bear same 
 rate of interest. Parties of first part reserve 
 the privilege of paying part or all of the notes, 
 not due, at any interest paying time, which 
 privilege is granted by third party. 
 
 Now, therefore, if the said parties of the first 
 part, or any one for them, shall well and truly 
 pay off and discharge the debt and interest 
 expressed in the said notes and every part 
 thereof when the same becomes due and pay- 
 able, according to the true tenor, date and 
 effect of said notes, THEN THIS DEED shall 
 be void, and the property hereinbefore conveyed 
 shall be released at the cost of the said parties 
 in the first part, but should the said first parties 
 fail or refuse to pay the said debt, or the said 
 interest, or any part thereof, when the same 
 or any part thereof shall become due and pay- 
 able, according to the true tenor, date and 
 effect of said notes, then the wliole shall be- 
 come due and payable, and this DEED shall 
 remain in force, and the said party of the sec- 
 ond part, or in case of his absence, death, re- 
 fusal to act, or disability in any wise, the 
 (then) acting sheriff of New Madrid County, 
 Missouri, at the request of the legal holder of 
 said notes may proceed to sell the property 
 hereinbefore described or any part thereof at 
 
 puhlic vendue, to the highest bidder, at tlie 
 Court House door in the city of New Madrid, 
 New Madrid County, Missouri, for cash, first 
 gi\ iiig 25 days' public notice of the time, terms 
 and place of sale, and the property to be sold, 
 1).\' advertisement in some newspaper printed 
 and published in the county of New Madrid 
 and upon such sale shall execute -and deliver 
 a DEED in FEE SIMPLE of the property sold, 
 to the purchaser or purchasers thereof, and re- 
 ceive the proceeds of said sale; and any state- 
 ment of facts or recital by the said trustee in 
 relation to the non-payment of the money se- 
 cured to be paid, the advertisement, sale, re- 
 ceipt of the money, and the execution of the 
 deed to the purchaser, shall be received as 
 PRIMA FACIE evidence of such fact; and such 
 trustee shall out of the proceeds of said sale, 
 pay, first, the cost and expenses of executing 
 this trust, including legal compensation to the 
 trustee for his services; and next he shall ap- 
 ply the proceeds remaining over to the pay- 
 ment of said debt and interest, or so much 
 thereof as remains unpaid; and the remainder, 
 if any, shall be jiaid to the said parties of tlie 
 lirst part, or their legal representatives. 
 
 And the said party of the second part cove- 
 nant faithfully to perform and fulfill the trust 
 herein created, not being liable or responsible 
 for any mischance occasioned by others. 
 
 In witness whereof, the said parties here- 
 unto set their hands and seals the day and year 
 first above written. 
 
 Hugh D. Studabaker. 
 Mary R. Studabaker. 
 
 State of Missouri, ■ County of Scott: SS: On 
 this iSth day of September, 1909, before me 
 personally appeared Hugh D. Studabaker, Mary 
 R. Studabaker, his wife, to me known to be 
 the persons described in and who executed the 
 foregoing instrument, and acknowledged that 
 they executed the same as their free act and 
 deed. 
 
 IN TESTIMONY WHEREOF, I have hereunto 
 set my hand and affixed my official seal, at 
 my olTice in Sikeston, Mo., the day and year 
 first above written. 
 
 A. J. Moore, Notary Public. 
 
 State of Missouri, County of New Madrid: 
 SS: In the recorder's office, I, , re- 
 corder of said county, do hereby certify that 
 the within instrument of writing, was, on the 
 20th day of September, A. D. 1909, at 9 o'clock 
 
 and minute A. M. duly filed for record in 
 
 this office, and is recorded in the records of 
 this office in book S at page 542. 
 
 IN ^VITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto 
 set my hand and affixed my official seal this 
 day of , , J. W. Jackson, re- 
 corder. 
 
 Now this is a very radical change from what 
 the rule is in securing deferred payments where 
 these young men and I came from in Indiana. 
 There you secure deferred payments by mort- 
 .gage on the property sold and in the event of 
 a foreclosure, you have a year's time in which 
 to redeem, in fact you have a little chance for 
 your life, so to speak, but under a trust deed, 
 as you will notice from careful reading — a few 
 notices — a sale and it is all over. I herewith 
 copy an advertisement for a sale under a trust 
 deed which will show at a glance what an in- 
 ability to meet an obligation brought to the 
 people giving it. 
 
 TRUSTEE'S SALE. 
 
 Whereas, and , his wife, by 
 
 their certain deed of trust dated on the 
 
 day of May, 1911, and duly acknowledged and 
 recorded in the recorder's office in Scott Coun- 
 ty, Missouri, in book , page , the same 
 
 being one of the land records of said county, 
 conveyed to the undersigned trustee the follow- 
 ing described real estate, to-wit: (Here follows 
 a copy of the description of the real estate.) 
 
 When said conveyance was made to secure 
 the payment of promissory notes spe- 
 cially described in said deed of trust and which 
 notes are past due and unpaid. 
 
 Now, therefore, at the request of the legal 
 holder of said notes and in conformity with the 
 provisions of said deed of trust, I, the under- 
 
 11 
 
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 
 
out and had just left the foot of the hill on 
 the road leading down into the .swanijis west 
 from Knoxall, when lie drove into a mud hole 
 of large proportions and as his animal was 
 hitched to the vehicle with breast harness and 
 they were not stout enough for these Swamp- 
 east Missouri roads, the old gray mare just 
 went on and left Mr. Rathert sitting there 30 
 feet at least from either solid or dry land — 
 there he was, there was the oUl. gra>' mai'e, 
 he had on his best bib and tucker and there 
 was only one thing to do, off came the iiants 
 and he waded around there in the mud on that 
 bright Sunday morning and coupled the power 
 to the vehicle and came out. The best way 
 to go sight-seeing in a muddy time down here 
 is astride a good mule. 
 
 I would not speak of giving chattel mort- 
 gages to secure accounts for supplies as I don't 
 think it more than right that a man protect 
 himself when he can, but as it figures out in 
 the general summary of my experience with 
 the people down here, I only think it right to 
 mention the fact here as I go along, that on 
 the 29th of April, 1910. I was called in by Mr. 
 C. D. Matthews to secure him for my grocery 
 account and did so by giving him a chattel 
 mortgage on my wheat crop. 
 
 On the 24th of May, 1910, lost a mule, dropped 
 dead, but that is the way it goes; quite a loss 
 to us but we had to stand it. Now in digging 
 the grave to bury her learned something of 
 the nature of the black lands. After about 
 one spade down we ran into what seemed to 
 be a species of iron ore and it really is. It Is 
 this material that gives the water of these low 
 lands such a sulphur taste, in fact, there is 
 a scum raises on most all the water of this 
 country if you let it stand for a little while, 
 so it looks to you as though you were drink- 
 ing oil. It is this scum on the water in the 
 ditches and sloughs that fools people into 
 thinking this an oil country and this some of 
 the oil that has seeped through and come to 
 the top. At least there has been no oil found 
 yet in the several attempts to locate it. 
 
 This sulphate of iron in the water might not 
 hurt you but it gets most of the people and I 
 know of several cases where people that left 
 the country claimed that their worst objection 
 was their inability to drink the water. 
 
 I give you herewith a clipping from the Sikes- 
 ton Standard of December 12th, 1912, that bears 
 right on the above point. 
 
 KEWANEE FARMERS LEAVING, TAKING 
 
 WATER. 
 
 Take Precautions Against Fever to Get Back 
 
 to the Swamps. 
 
 Jim Followell and John Hale loaded their 
 household goods, live stock and chickens this 
 week and with their families move to Keys- 
 ville, Crawford County, where they will build 
 homes for themselves. They owned no land 
 here. They filled their water kegs with good 
 swamp water and placed them safely in the 
 car so as to have some of the life-giving H20 
 to take at times when they feel the ties that 
 bind to the swamps tightening upon them. It 
 is said that once a person drinks of this swamp 
 water and get their feet wet they are sure to 
 come back. So these fellows are taking pre- 
 cautions. 
 
 Now, friend, there are numerous cures of- 
 fered for home-sickness, but these fellows cer- 
 tainly took the remedy with them to kill all 
 of those kind of microbes that might awake 
 in their system. 
 
 To come into this country from some distance 
 like we did naturally you are a stranger to 
 the people and the country, its ways and its 
 people's ways, but if you will start in to farm- 
 ing and are trying to get along on small cap- 
 ital you will soon meet up with a very dis- 
 gusting practice that seems to be capitalized 
 to the fullness of its possibilities and that is 
 — I have no better name to call it by — the spy 
 system. Everybody around you keeps tab on 
 you and if you meet up with some misfor- 
 tune, such as the loss of a. horse or a pig, they 
 have business in town the next day, if not the 
 
 same, to inform any one and every one that 
 might have an interest in your success or fail- 
 ure of the fact. Wliile to the west of us lived 
 tenants on W. A. VVliite's farm, who is now 
 president of the Hoosiei' Land & Investment 
 Company, to the north of us a Mr. Joe Weed- 
 mand, yet to the east of us lived Mr. Jimmy 
 Smith, a boyhood friend of Mr. C. D. Matthews, 
 and it was no unsual sight to see Mi-. Smith 
 walking around and across our farm the day 
 before his town days and of course we felt that 
 Mr. Matthews would be informed as to how 
 we were progressing whether' we went to town 
 or not. As to whether these people were paid 
 anything for this service or not I never learned, 
 tiut all the large landlords of this country have 
 regularly paid riders to keep a tab on the rent- 
 ers and their progress either forward or back- 
 ward. 
 
 No doubt where you live there are cockle 
 Ijurrs; I never heard of a country where they 
 did not grow, but down here I learned of a 
 new use for them. You know a cockle burr 
 when it sprouts carries the burr up with it and 
 thus tops out, so to speak, the little green plant, 
 stock coming along and especially little pigs, 
 gathering everything that is green, eat plant 
 and burr. The burr being too hard a fibre for 
 the little pig to digest and equipped with the 
 hard projections that they are, set up an irri- 
 tation that kills lots of pigs. We lost several 
 in the month of June and in trying to account 
 for it were informed by the natives of the 
 cause. Now when you come to this country to 
 farm and grow pigs, that is a good thing for 
 you to look out for. 
 
 In the North when a person stuck in the 
 mud they usually spoke of it as mireing down, 
 but here when you, your animal, wagon, corn 
 plow, binder or anything sinks down, they 
 speak of it as "mireing up," just why they 
 use the expression I never learned, but that 
 you do "mire up" there is no getting away 
 from the fact. On our farm we had all the 
 neces.sary kinds of -land or soil for all the dif- 
 ferent kinds of mireing up, such as in the 
 sloughs, in the quicksand deposits, in the sand 
 blows, and sink holes. In the "sloughs" you 
 could mire up most any time, in fact, it had 
 to be an awfully dry time when a team or 
 wagon could not find a place to sink down a 
 ways. On ovir farm there is about 15 or 20 
 acres of land that look like plate "B," page 
 SI of the New Madrid Earthquake Bulletin, 
 issued by the U. S. Geological Survey, little 
 basins that hold water with an impervious 
 soil between so that the water usually has to 
 evaporate to get away. Now, around some of 
 them there is an outcropping of the quicksand 
 and when it is the least bit wet in this field it 
 is no trouble at all to get a team "mired up," 
 in fact, in plowing we would find patches of 
 one-eighth of an acre in extent that we could 
 neither get the teams to plow through or would 
 we try after finding out they were too soft. 
 But mireing up cutting wheat was the hardest 
 thing for me to understand when people told 
 me they had seen Dover work for a half day 
 to get his binder going again after mireing up. 
 The only idea I had of mireing up was from 
 wet weather and like the Yankee I would not 
 show my ignorance by asking questions, but I 
 found out all right when we went to cutting 
 wheat. The sand blows, being composed of 
 almost pure sand, offers no foundation to pull 
 a machine on and run the machinery, and the 
 team simply drags the machine down into the 
 sand. You can throw it out of gear and yet 
 the weight of it will in some sand blows sink 
 it down until it is hard to get through one of 
 them of an acre in extent. Now right here I 
 want to call your attention to the fact that 
 this is one of the worst drawbacks to steam 
 plowing in this country and were you expect- 
 ing to bring a gang outfit with you, as I have 
 heard some prospectors talk, it would be well 
 for you to farm here a season before investing 
 in either gang plow or land. Still I have seen 
 it wet enough in cutting wheat to "mire up" 
 not only in the "sand blows," but in the low 
 spots in the wheat field. We had such an ex- 
 perience cutting wheat in 1912 and when we 
 
 13 
 
were done cutting the dry and high spots out 
 of 100 acres we had to bacli over and cut out 
 better than 15 acres of low spots where we for 
 sure "mired up" in the straight cutting. 
 
 To make a crop — "crap tliey call it here — a 
 person will, if he has the least bit of energy 
 left, put forth all kinds of efforts and when 
 the ground is too wet to plow your corn, the 
 next best thing is the hoe and this is sure the 
 country of the hoe. "Chopping out" is usually 
 the way it is spoken of and is one of the 
 dreaded jobs on the farm, for it cannot be done 
 with a team or a riding corn cultivator, but . 
 must be done with the strong arm and down 
 in these bottom or "swamp" lands where the 
 cockleburrs grow apace, the sprouts do like- 
 wise and if you do not want to clear the land 
 next year, if you want to try and raise some 
 corn "this year, vou must chop it out. Then 
 it is a better way to get close to the stumps 
 pnd cut out the weeds, and with the thermome- 
 ter around the 100 mark it is for sure a HOT 
 job. Try it a season before you get tied up so 
 that you have to stay with it until you are 
 able to sell out. 
 
 I mentioned about the "sticks" a few pages 
 back and there is one thing that these "sticl-s" 
 effectually do and that is to hide the view for 
 any distance and I was much amused at the 
 father-in-law of Mr. Arch Cooks, Mr. Charles 
 C Sixbey. He had been down for a week vis- 
 iting the folks, hoed a few rows of corn and 
 sweat like all of the natives do and when he 
 started for home I was joking him about leav- 
 ing so soon. He said he was going where he 
 could see something more than the clouds go 
 by and when you are back in the "swamps" 
 that is really about all you do see. 
 
 I have called your attention to a number of 
 insects but I do not believe that I have out- 
 lined the pestiferous flea to you in all the glory 
 that they get out of their life and yours down 
 here. One thing that brings them to my mind 
 at this particular stage of my history is that 
 I recorded in my daily record the loss of sleep 
 that we were experiencing from their following 
 their avocation so assiduously. They sure are 
 the busy insects — work in relays and never lose 
 a minute. The country of the full grown flea. 
 Here they grow large enough that you do not 
 have to take a microscope to see them. The 
 seasons of the year are long and so is the work- 
 ing period of the flea. Some people try shak- 
 ing insect powder in the beds to drive them 
 out. Few people keep anything on the floors 
 in which they can hide, but I think you will 
 agree with me, if you follow my instruction, 
 to try it a season down here before investing 
 in any property that the best way to get rid 
 of them is to move out of the country. See if 
 I'm not right. 
 
 July 20th, 1910, one of my mares died; also 
 threshing wheat this day and when in town 
 the next dav one of the Land Company people 
 asked me about the loss of the animal. Some- 
 bodv had reported it all right. 
 
 July 25th, 1910, we lost a fine sow from the 
 heat; a neighbor, Mr. James Midget, lost some- 
 thing like ten head. Pretty hot when hogs die 
 right out in the open. Thermometer registered 
 95 m the shade at noon and 103 in the sun. 
 These are the kind of days that "boil you out," 
 so to speak, and when the following wintry 
 weather comes you sure feel the cold. 
 
 Now, I was led to believe that flies were not 
 bothersome in this country, that they did not 
 trouble the stock like in the North and after I 
 had been down here a season, found out that 
 it was not the case. One of the reasons I 
 think that people do not consider the flies so 
 bad is that there is so many other pestiferous 
 insects that are worse that it rather detracts 
 from the glory of the f^y. You come down here 
 and live a season and see for yourself if this 
 is not about the case. Locate along one of 
 these "lanes" that lead from the "swamps" up 
 on the higher ground, where the poor, dumb 
 brutes that have to hunt through the wild lands 
 for their food come to spend the nights away 
 from the "swamp" insects as far as they can 
 get and see from the myriads of flies that they 
 
 leave at \iiur homes as they pass if this is 
 not true. 1 know it to be so and have no 
 hesitancy in "putting you next," so to speak, 
 and if you do not believe it just come down 
 and see. Another thing right here as to the 
 insects in the swamps, especially the mosqui- 
 toes. You can go to these swamp lands and find 
 a tight barn and its use is to house the mules 
 in, in the summer time, to keep the mosquitoes 
 from eating them up at nights. 
 
 August loth, 1910, helped my friend, Moser, 
 thresh his wheat and such a lot of smutty 
 wheat as there was in this country this sea.son 
 and as smut, you know, injures the berry for 
 flour purposes, the milling companies were com- 
 pelled to and did cut the prices on this dam- 
 aged wheat from five to fifteen cents per 
 bushel. Then treating the seed wheat that fall' 
 for smut was tried by numerous farmers, which 
 was followed up by most everybody in the fall 
 of 1911 and as the wheat crop of 1912 was not 
 over a half crop, there was a great deal of 
 comment as to whether the treatment hurt or 
 (lid not. 
 
 Had five acres of watermelons out this year 
 and as we could not eat them all, tried selling 
 some of them. Hard to sell but at last did con- 
 tract with a Mr. Stubbs of the Sikeston Mer- 
 cantile Company to load him a car of Monte 
 Ciistoes at Matthews, for which I was to re- 
 ceive $70. I had to load them four tiers deep 
 and I put 1,670 melons in the car. Notified 
 Mr. Stubbs that the car was loaded and in 
 about five days I received a remittance from 
 the Humphreys Produce Company of St. Louis 
 for $33.75 This is all I received off of my five 
 acres of melons, other than the few we had to 
 eat. Try it and see if you can figure any profit 
 out of it at those figures. I never saw and 
 talked to Mr. Stubbs about it as I supposed he 
 knew what he was doing and although 1 could 
 have used the difference between $70 and $33.75. 
 yet I did not think it would make Mr. Stubbs 
 rich. I never raised any more melons, and if 
 I were you and went down into this country 
 to farm I would go easy on the melons. 
 
 August 18th. 1910. lost another one of my 
 mares. Them that has must lose you know. 
 
 August 20th, 1910. Along about this time 
 there was a dissolution in the Messrs. Smith 
 Bros. & Co. Land Company, the Messrs. Smith 
 Bros, continuing on by themselves and Messrs. 
 W. A. White, 'W. P. Lindley. .1. F. Cox and 
 E. J. Keith retiring and organizing a company 
 by themselves and under the name of the 
 Hoosier Land & Investment Company. I men- 
 . tion this at this time, for up to this time I 
 was only tied up with one company and from 
 now on until I succeeded in getting out of 
 Missouri I was being looked after by two com- 
 panies and they sure did it. 
 
 Sickness, how next to death it is the great- 
 est source of anxiety and worry that comes to 
 the human family. So far our family, fresh 
 from the North had had not much cause to 
 even consider it in our daily life, though we 
 were ever mindful of our eating good food, 
 sanitary surroundings and everything that we 
 thought of to ward against disease, but we were 
 not to escape. Though it is represented to 
 you or was to us that there is seldom if ever 
 a case of typhoid fever in this country, yet 
 on the 24th of August, 1910, our daughter, Mil- 
 dred, began to have a fever and as it was yet 
 in a seeming mild stage, and wanting to know 
 what to do for her and save tlie expense of a 
 visit of a doctor from Sikeston — they charged 
 $12 a trip to our house — on the 25th of August, 
 Mrs. Studabaker took her to Sikeston and Di'. 
 Otis Miller pronounced it bordering on typhoid 
 fever. Gave her medicine and instructions how- 
 to possibly evade it and for the next four days 
 we cared' for her and gave her the treatment 
 prescribed, but on the 29th of August we had 
 him call and so we were in for a siege of it 
 and for the next month we were running a 
 miniature hospital with her mamma and I tak- 
 ing turns at nursing, and when they tell you 
 that typhoid fever seldom if ever occurs in this 
 country owing to the good water supply, that 
 is if they do tell you as they did us, just re- 
 member our case and the picture of clippings 
 
 14 
 
that I have cut from the home papers here 
 and had this plate made from. 
 
 I am more than pleased to record here that 
 the daughter was allowed to get well, but be- 
 fore she was able to be up we were destmed 
 to meet up with a loss by death that had more 
 to do with our financial outcome in .Missouri 
 than at first glance it would seem possitjle for 
 it to. That was on the 21st of September, 1910, 
 a telegram was received telling of the death ol 
 Mr. H. I). Cook in the interurban wreck at 
 Kingsland. Ind.. whc.e some other forty persons 
 
 fields, rotted the down corn in the fields and 
 in many ways added to the farmer's loss ac- 
 count. The corn in our low land fields was in 
 water up to the ears and that we did not lose 
 more than we did was a wonder. This sure 
 gave numbers of the newcomers the blues and 
 a Mr. Waite who had been holding out for $88 
 per acre for his land, dropped to $80 very 
 quickly. 
 
 Had to record the loss of another of my 
 horses this day. 
 
 October 5th, 1010. To the southwest c.f our 
 
 Mr. and Mrs. Ma 
 Switch have a little girl live ye»i^s old 
 who IS seriously ill ' 
 mouth while convales 
 
 ith noma of the 
 ■ing from typhoid. 
 
 F f 1 Jim Lee who was threatened with ty- 
 " phoid fever has recovered and is again 
 rthis ga(,|, at his restaurant 
 
 I tc 
 
 ik^'Sioii, his bee 
 . with ivph.'ihl fcvtr. His 
 nf th.-ir six ohi'Jren hav 
 I1..1I the last i 
 
 i-i liv.air n 
 r sometime 
 /ife and five 
 been ill in 
 one of the 
 
 , h IJr.'ii h iviiii; typhoid also. Two 
 decs di>iled the duty of attending 
 the si ve;:il patients. 
 
 |lVAKELLEli,l2, DIEO 
 
 OF TYPHOID TUESDAY! 
 
 Protect .voiirsclf bom typhoid 
 by drinkinrr Lmiciifle ;il THE 
 
 |Reni;iliis Taken To Washington, 
 hid , !^orBuriai--Short Illness. 
 
 ^Hce I'weddle, who is now recovermg 
 Ifrom a seige of typl.oid fever, will re- 
 "me l,is work with Chesley Cemant | 
 ICorslruclion company. This compar 
 Luil.ling up the lurn out whit 
 , ,0 mfield snffered a year ago. 
 
 I i Mrs. Oella Caudry of Gillispie. 111. 
 larrived home last week to visit hei 
 Isister, Miss Maud Wilson, who is re 
 Icuperating from 
 
 The daughter of Mr. and Mrs. .James 
 Cutrell. who live south of Sikeston. is 
 recovering from a live weeks' seige of 
 typhoid. T 
 
 la Keller, the twelve-year-old daugb- 
 ItiT of J. M. Keller, the well known 
 farmer living west of Sikeston four 
 ■ 's,.died Tuesday night at 10 o'clock. 
 Typhoid fever was the cause of death. 
 She had been ill only a few days when 
 end lame to the great sorrow of 
 the parents and u host of friends who 
 knew the little girl well. 
 
 Mr. Keller and his family moved to 
 
 this country some few years ago from 
 
 I Indiana and have established them- 
 
 ScoLI*^'"^? as among . the most reliable and 
 
 .. conscientious farmers who have come 
 
 lOr t from the older states to make the new 
 
 soil of this country produce its bounte- 
 
 ful crops. Mr. Keller is most favorably 
 
 known in the community and his most 
 
 ■nt loss by death of a member of 
 
 his family is suffered by many otVierg 
 
 than his immediate family. 
 
 .Mi-s Mjud Wilson is again experi- 
 ming fever, after having all but re- 
 overed from her sie ge of typhoid. 
 
 Frank Lcmlcy 15. died Sunday noon | 
 of typhoid fever and was buried Monday, ■' 
 
 .^esse Greer who has be 
 II of typhoid fever is still conhii 
 bed. 
 
 The little son of H. G. Kaiser whol 
 has typhoid is getting along very nicely, [ 
 
 Joe Twiddle of Bebe. Ark., 
 taken down with typhoid fever whileil 
 visiting the fair, is improving now and J 
 will soon return home. He has been 
 at Mrs. Scott's. .< .- - ''■■'■' " /'' 
 
 lIPiiHiMPHH 
 
 George Greathouse hns been contin 
 to his bed the last week with typhoid' 
 fever. 
 
 i"j The 18-months old boy of Mr. ami 
 r^ 'Mrs. John Crosno died Wednesday 
 
 I and will be hurled today Typhoid |, J 
 *" I fever was the cause of death. 
 
 t Master Claud Billings has recov 
 'red from a siege of typhoid fever* 
 and will attend si hool next 
 
 JimXee, proprietor of the Southside [ 
 Cafe, is ill at home threatened 
 typhoid fever. 
 
 U J. A. Feetinbiirgher Is sick thh 
 Iwoek with typlioi.l fever. 
 
 J. W. Snively, who farmed five miles i 
 I ,p°"'" °' Sikeston, died of typhoid fever 
 I luesday and his remains were sent to 
 I t_o.umbus, Ind., for burial Wednesday. I 
 I Heleaves a wife and two children lie 
 I had been here four years and wast 
 I limable gentleman He was 37 vears ' 
 luf age. ' * 
 
 Miss Ida Holley who has been v«?ry I 
 ill with typhoid fever for the laot | 
 two weeks is much better at this v 
 
 Mrs Leo Dumsy, living about four i 
 miles west of town, and two daughters 
 are in critical condition from a serious 
 attack of typhpid fever. There is some 
 doubt of their complete recovery at 
 this time. 
 
 Several Are HI. 
 Miss Pauline Dumey, who has been | 
 I waiting on the sick ather brother Leo's, 
 I ever since the death of his w^fe, is now | 
 I io bed at her mother's, Mrs, Magda- 
 I lens Dumey, here in town, with a 
 I severe attack of typhoid fever. 
 
 iilza BilU i» improving from iyphoid. 
 
 |, j.<r Tweldle has recovered from 
 
 I typhoid far enough to permit of his 
 
 I returning to Bloomfield the latter part 
 
 of this week ^ ' 
 
 Some Typhoid Fever Clippings. 
 
 lost their lives, and, as he was the brother of 
 Mrs. Studabaker, she left at once to attend the 
 funeral. As 1 mentioned in the beginning of 
 this history, that Mr. H. D. Cook had made it 
 possible for us to purchase this land, naturally 
 his taking aw^ay put us in the position of it 
 being necessary for us to close up our venture, 
 as it was, virtually, a partnership affair. How 
 we succeeded and the help we had will appear 
 as we go along. 
 
 October 3d, 1910, we had one of those rains 
 that the old timers like to remember and talk 
 about and real estate agents and land men like 
 to forget. Records from Cape Girardeau give 
 it as nine inches — local people gave it as six 
 and eight inches. Anyhow, it was lots of water 
 and it put most everything afloat. It sure 
 spoiled all the pea hay that was curing in -the 
 
 home there was a cypress slough and the big 
 rain sure filled it to overflowing and awakened 
 all the frog population. Hearing such a noise 
 on the morning of this date in that direction 
 we could not make out what it was and I went 
 to investigate, with the results that I found it 
 was made by the thousands of frogs in the 
 slough. 
 
 A gentleman who was working for us in the 
 fall of 1912 and who had been at work on one 
 of the dredge boats. Mr. J. T. Scott, tells a 
 frog storv that has a good deal of bearing on 
 this country. We were speaking of the malaria 
 and chill conditions living on one of these 
 dredge boats and naturally being in the swamps 
 all the time and he said, "Yes, there was lots 
 of malaria and chills down there, for three frogs 
 
 15 
 
could not live a year there, unless two of them 
 were doctors." 
 
 On the 27th of October, 1910, the Smith Bros. 
 Land Company of Sikeston had a prospective 
 buyer liere for the farm and they asked him 
 SllO per acre for it. (Note the price asked.) 
 
 On the 30th of October, 1910, the Smith Bros. 
 L.and Company liad a prospective buyer here in 
 the person of a Mr. Emerick of Casey, 111., and 
 Mr. Eniericlv stopped at Matthews and besides 
 looking over the lands in this community, he 
 worked on several of the farms around in this 
 neighborhood, learned what they were making 
 in the way of crops, what the owners were to 
 get for their lands and what the real estate 
 agents were to get for them. To the best of 
 my knowledge, Mr. Emerick, or his father, who 
 visited the country some time in the following 
 year, never bought any southeast Missouri 
 lands. Don't forget what I have been teUing 
 you all along, before 5'ou buy in this country 
 either farm a year on a rental proposition or 
 worlt for someone a season. 
 
 December 4th, 1910, Mr. W. A. White of the 
 Hoosier Land & Improvement Company brought 
 a Mr. Bond, said to be from near Memphis, to 
 see the farm and Mr. White was afi*aid before 
 they started out to look at it that Mr. Bond 
 would not buy as there was so much SAND 
 on the farm and Mr. Bond was afraid of sand 
 land. Mr. Bond did not buy. 
 
 December 20th, 1910, sold corn for 40 cents 
 per bushel and not very much of a crop at 
 that. Will give complete gross receipts in gen- 
 eral summary at end of booklet. 
 
 December 31st, 1910. Boy home from helping 
 a neighbor haul off corn laid vip with boils, 
 "risings" they call them in this country, and 
 I guess the name fits all right. While I have 
 not had the chills myself in this country, I 
 have shed enough poison by the "rising" way 
 to suit most anybody. You see you cannot help 
 breathing tliis malarial poison in the air and 
 drinking it in the water and you must get it 
 out of your system sonae way, if not by taking 
 its antidotes such as ciuinine, strychnine and 
 arsenic or their combinations as put up in the 
 many different brands of chill tonics that are 
 sold in this country you get rid of it by boils 
 or as they say "risings" and many do the 
 people have. One Indiana person. Ben Prouty, 
 told me in the fall of 1912 he had had 56. 
 
 January 7th, 1911. A wet time. Our boys 
 with the Narx boys, who were working for us, 
 went to town and laid in a supply of gum 
 boots. Twenty-three dollars' worth. 
 
 January 12th, 1911. Smallpox in the com- 
 munity. Our nearest neighbors, Samuel Green- 
 lee and family, had the smallpox and sucli a 
 thing as health officer, quarantine, etc., is not 
 known down here in the country districts. We 
 quarantined ourselves and glad to say we 
 passed through the epidemic and have no marks 
 to show for it. 
 
 Now, a railroad stock that does not pay a 
 dividend, a business that cannot meet its run- 
 ning expenses and show a little interest on the 
 investment and a farm that will not pay its 
 taxes, the living of the man that works it and 
 at least a fair portion of the interest on the 
 mortgage, or I should say in this country, the 
 trust deed that is held against it, is a bad thing 
 to be tied up to, well, we were tied up to the 
 latter and trying to get loose, but while trying 
 to get loose the above enumerated expenses 
 had to be met and right along about now, 
 February, 1911, the man that held the TRUST 
 deed, Mr. C. D. Matthews, was getting rather 
 Insistent about that interest. He knew that 
 our backer, Mr. H. D. Cook, had been taken 
 away by that Kingsland Interurban horror, 
 that we were working overtime with the real 
 estate agents to try and dispose of the property 
 for us and let us out with a little something, 
 but get the interest and finally we did suc- 
 ceed in getting the folks back home to put 
 up $5.50 more for us and so we were given a 
 little longer lease of life, and with the $111.42 
 that I had left from the proceeds of the farm 
 from the crop year of 1910, after paying the 
 taxes and running expenses, making a total 
 payment at this time, February 7th, 1911, on 
 
 interest of $661.42. 1 will give a summary by 
 years in the back of the booklet of the gross 
 receipts, taxes, running expenses, etc. 
 
 Now, don't forget as you read along that if 
 you follow my suggestion you will either rent 
 for a season down here or work for somebody 
 Ijefore you invest your "little roll" or big one, 
 for that matter. Should you fall in love with 
 the country, there will be yet time to pick one 
 of the :nany bargains in land and should your 
 experience be somewhat like mine, you will be 
 yet untied and ready to travel. 
 
 On the 5th of March, Messrs. Smith Bros, 
 had a party of land men to see the farm and 
 they talked and acted as though they were well 
 pleased with the land and might buy. So, when 
 Messrs. Smith Bros, sent out for Mrs. Studa- 
 baker and I to come in the following evening 
 and sign up a contract, to say that we were 
 happy hardly expresses it. We went in with 
 one of their firm ready to sign the contract but 
 we found it was an option that they wanted 
 signed. They just wanted us to put them in a 
 position so tliat they could close up the deal 
 in case these parties did buy. I will here in- 
 corporate the contract and you can read it 
 as well as I. 
 
 "Sikeston, Missouri, March 6th, 1911. This 
 is to certify that we the undersigned, Hugh D. 
 Studabaker and Mary R. Studabaker, his wife, 
 of their own free will and accord do this day 
 option to C. M. Smith Bros. & Co., of Sikeston, 
 Scott County, Missouri, all of our following de- 
 scribed real estate lying, being and situated in 
 New Madrid County, Missouri, upon the follow- 
 ing conditions, to- wit: That said C. M. Smith 
 Bros. & Co. push the sale of our land so as 
 to net us Eighty-five ($85) Dollars per acre, 
 and it is further agreed that said C. M. Smith 
 Bros. & Co. pay all their own expenses while 
 pushing the sale of our lands, free of charge 
 to us. We also further agree and do hereby 
 bind ourselves to make warranty deed and fur- 
 nish perfect abstracts for whatever amount the 
 said C. M. Smith Bros. & Co. sells our lands for 
 over the Eighty-five ($85) Dollars per acre net 
 to us. We also agree to accept one-half iVz) 
 cash, balance on terms to suit the purchaser 
 with six per cent interest from date of the 
 deferred payments as set out in the deed of 
 trust. Said land is described as follows: All 
 that part of the south half of Section 7, Town- 
 ship 24, Range 14, as is lying west of the right 
 of way of the St. Louis & San Francisco Rail- 
 road, and containing Two Hundred and Fifteen 
 and Four One-Hundredths measured acres. 
 And it is further agreed that C. M. Smith Bros. 
 & Co. have- their purchasers to pay all taxes, 
 ditch taxes and special assessments falling due 
 against all of the above described land for the 
 year of 1911 and thereafter. And it is further 
 agreed and understood that we the undersigned, 
 Hugh D. Studabaker and Mary R. Studabaker, 
 his wife, are to pay Six ($6) Dollars per acre 
 cash rental for the year of 1911 on the entire 
 above tract of 215.04 acres for the use and rent 
 of same for year of 1911. Should C. M. Smith 
 Bros. & Co. sell this land during the life of 
 this contract, which is ninetv (90) days from 
 this date, or until June 6th, 1911, at 7:30 p. m. 
 of that day said $1,290.24 cash rental is to be 
 discounted at six per cent interest for the un- 
 earned rent to January 1st, 1912, and is to be 
 deducted from the above $1,290.24 and the bal- 
 ance applied on the purchase price of said land 
 herein described. 
 
 We also agree to pay all ditch taxes and all 
 special assessments against all of the above 
 land for the year 1910 and all prior years there- 
 to. "We also agree to give C. M. Smith Bros. & 
 Co. ALL over the E'ighty-five ($85) Dollars per 
 acre net to us which they sell our land for. 
 Witness our hands: 
 
 Hugh D. Studabaker. 
 Mary R. Studabaker. 
 C. M. Smith Bros. & Co. 
 By J. E. Smith, Sr. Manager. 
 
 Now, you have no doubt read the contract 
 and you will wonder why we would offer to 
 take $85 per acre and then be dissatisfied with 
 our deal. To fully appreciate our position, of 
 course, you would have to have experienced it. 
 
 16 
 
We did not want to take less than $90 net to 
 us when called upon to sign the above option 
 but it was held out to us by this land company 
 that tliey could not get more for us, but if 
 they had it at that price without a doubt they 
 could close at once with their customer that 
 they had just had out there and WE wanted 
 to close up the matter and get out and so we 
 signed at the $85, and as to what good it done 
 us signing up will develop as we go along. 
 
 On the 8th of March I received a letter from 
 the Farmers' Supply Company to come in and 
 secure them for my store account, and on the 
 next day I went in; you see, Mr. C. D. 
 Matthews takes no chances on a loss, for, as 
 he says, "You might die, you know," and if 
 he has your realty safely tied up with a TRUST 
 deed and a CHATTEL. MORTGAGE on ALL 
 your personal property there is not mucli chance 
 that should you die that your family will get 
 away with anything. Well, as I said, I went in, 
 and about the first question asked was, "How's 
 your wheat?" and then, as I had no objections 
 to protecting him fully — not meaning to TRY 
 to beat anyone — I gave him chattel mortgage 
 on wheat crop, what mules that were not al- 
 ready under mortgage and the corn crop that 
 we hoped to grow this season, and all to pro- 
 tect his store for what supplies I might need. 
 
 Now in this country there is a fashion to 
 have the private offices of the bank out in the 
 front lobby, and as Mr. Matthews is rather 
 hard of hearing it is necessary to talk rather 
 loud to him In making a deal, and everyone 
 that comes in HAS to hear your business, 
 whether you want them to or not. and it is 
 rich food for the curious ones; and I remember 
 that on this particular occasion I was very 
 
 "Mired Up." 
 
 much put out that I had to talk my affairs 
 before some very curious people that were not 
 slow in talking it over the country. I was 
 not ashamed that I had to borrow money, but 
 you know that as a rule you do not care to put 
 your financial affairs in the daily papers. 
 
 As I have shown you, I purchased this farm 
 of Mr. C. D. Matthews, Sr., and I bought my 
 supplies at the Farmers' Supply Company, 
 which was his store. I sold my grain to the 
 Scott County Milling Company, in which I was 
 informed he owned the controlling interest, and 
 as he said to me at one time we were in part- 
 nership on that deal down there — meaning the 
 farm — and now as I needed some more mules 
 on the farm he handed me over to his nephew, 
 Mr. A. J. Matthews, to supply that need, as 
 Mr. A. J. Matthews was a mule dealer. Then 
 on the 1st of April, 1911, I purchased of Mr. 
 
 A. J. Matthews a team of mules for $450, giving 
 as surety them and another team worth as 
 much. From all this you will see that in a 
 business sense I was in with the Matthews. 
 
 When you first come into tliis country from 
 a northern country it is usually a season before 
 the malaria begins to affect you, and when it 
 does begin on you it is usually with a dull head- 
 ache, which was particularly true in Mrs. 
 Studabaker's case, and from a headache once 
 in a while they soon multiplied until if she es- 
 caped a week without a severe headache she 
 thought she was fortunate. 
 
 April 15. 1911. — Along about this time the 
 roads were particularlv bad, and while the 
 picture of our being "mired up" on the 18th of 
 July with a small load of groceries explains in 
 a way the BAD condition of the roads, yet 
 there are other things t.^at concern the roads 
 that I mention here. Tlie roads or "lanes" of 
 this country are what you might call a kind of 
 "catchall." Uusally if there are any stumps in 
 the field that you don't have the time to make 
 into a heap and burn, or if you are not dis- 
 posed to burn them, haul them to the fence and 
 throw them over into the road. If there is 
 a wet spot in the field and it is at all possi- 
 ble to drain it into the road, do it. 
 
 Should the waters in the road show a tend- 
 ency to run into your field, levee them out. 
 Turn your stock into the roads — leave your 
 farm implements set out in the road, but in no 
 way ever improve them. The last year I was 
 in this country — 1912 — I took it upon myself 
 to look into the road improvement work of the 
 country. There were some very bad mud- 
 holes in our vicinity and my boys and I re- 
 paired them, did what would have cost about 
 $17.00 to fill them up, and, not wanting to look 
 small, I did not at once file any bill for the 
 work until I was informed that I would be 
 taxed for road improvement, so when I paid 
 my land tax I asked the Tax Collector if I 
 was assessed a road tax, and he informed me 
 that I had to pay about $15.50 road tax. I paid 
 it and then filed my bill with the Road District 
 Commissioners for my labor, but as yet have 
 not received it. There is a wonderful oppor- 
 tunity for road improvement in this country, 
 and if you go down there either for a season 
 or to locate permanently you can be of a great 
 service to the whole people by repairing and 
 building and draining roads. 
 
 No better practical illustration of the fact 
 that "The People Pay the Freight" could be 
 set before you than this showing and selling 
 of real estate as carried out in this "New 
 Madrid Earthquake Zone of 1811-'12." Drop 
 off in any of these towns down here — drop a 
 word about buying land, and you are whirled 
 out to see several pieces of it. 
 
 Some of these parties are sincere — some of 
 them are out for a rest at other people's ex- 
 pense, and some of them, so it appeared to 
 us, were out on their honeymoon trip. Of 
 course they would be brouglit to the home on 
 the land that was being shown you and you 
 would be allowed — or rather expected — to tell 
 your little story of the country and how well 
 you liked it, etc., but — (then why you wanted 
 to sell). Now if you go to this country and 
 take a part in this sightseeing and buy through 
 any of these agencies, you can rest assured 
 that you are not only paying for your ride, but 
 your proportionate share of all the other fel- 
 lows, and if you take my advice and either rent 
 in this country for a season or work for some 
 one before dealing for land you will have the 
 opportunity of seeing that what I outline to 
 you is true. 
 
 The upkeep of automobiles is immense, and 
 in this country, owing to road conditions, both 
 kinds of conveyances have to be kept, which 
 practically doubles the expense, and — "The Peo- 
 ple Pay It." Try and dodge it. 
 
 May 14, 1911.— Along about this time OUR 
 financial condition was seemingly the talk of 
 the country. We wanted to sell out and save 
 our little "roll." if possible. The real estate 
 agencies wanted to sell it and make their $10 
 to $20 per acre commission; they were showing 
 up the farm quite often. This naturally had 
 
 17 
 
the subject in our immediate neighborlidod at 
 fever heat, and as Mr. White, President of the 
 Hoosier Land and Investment Company of 
 Sikeston, controlled the farm to the west of us, 
 when he called to see about the progress of the 
 work here he talked our conditions over with 
 his tenants there, and they had the nerve to 
 take exceptions to our ways of doing, even to 
 telling us wliy we did not succeed, as JNIr. White 
 said "We would never be able to pay out on 
 the faini if we had lo dig it all out of the 
 land; tliat the way they met their payments, 
 they sold lands and made it out of their com- 
 missions." 
 
 Now if you are figuring on locating in this 
 country to make money on either a limited 
 capital or a large capital, it might be well 
 for you to make a careful investigation before 
 so doing. Take this little work as a guide; if 
 you find it true, tlien I have done you some 
 good; if you find it otherwise, I trust you will 
 feel that 1 only delayed you a little. 
 
 May 2S. 1911. — Thermometer showed at noon 
 100 degrees in the shade, at 1 p. m. 103 in the 
 shade and 113 in the sun, and in this low alti- 
 tude. 332 feet above sea level and such a 
 humid atmosphere, it was almost unbearable, 
 'then we had these HOT spells nuinerous times 
 throughout the season, for on the 4th of June 
 it was 100 degrees in the shade, on July 2d it 
 was 101 degrees, July 3d 101, and July 4th 
 104; on Aug. 8th it was 100 in the shade and, 
 while the temperatures did not run this high 
 in the meantime, yet It was awfully hot and 
 dry weather. I note on the 17th of June we 
 had the first real rain for 48 days, so when 
 anyone tells, you that the heat is never ex- 
 cessive, that there are always rains when need- 
 ed, just remember this part of my record, for 
 I kept it day by day for my own satisfaction, 
 and now I am giving it to you without any 
 great cost to you, trusting you will profit 
 thereby. 
 
 June 2, 1911. — Now I know that hogs die 
 with hog cholera wherever hogs are raised, but 
 what makes the disease more easily communi- 
 cated in this country is the fact that, owing to 
 the stock laws permitting all stock to run at 
 large, the sick hogs wander up and down your 
 "lane" and, while you may be ever so careful 
 to keep your stock up and feed it, yet the 
 danger exists from the animals in the lanes, 
 and on this date I first heard of the disease 
 being in the neighborhood. And on the 23d of 
 June I lost my first hog out of a bunch of 45 
 and until the 15th of September buried 36, 
 leaving me 9 hogs. It was general over the 
 community. You might wonder why there were 
 not some of us advanced enough to try vaccina- 
 tion, but to get the serum was the question. 
 
 It is the pride of most every farmer in 
 "Swamp-east," or was, that he is never both- 
 ered with clods, but this conceit, if that is 
 the right name for it, was all taken out in 
 this corn season — that is, the corn . season of 
 1911 — wlien clods was the prevailing condition 
 of the land. 
 
 June 6th, 1911, rolled around, but we were 
 still the possessors, or in charge of the farm. 
 The Smith Land Co.'s contract expired this 
 day, and. while they had led us to believe that 
 we would be sold out sure by this time, yet 
 such was not the case, and we had many anx- 
 ious moments before we were. 
 
 June 8, 1911. — To Sikeston and made settle- 
 ments. Sure, there was a lot covered by that 
 short, terse statement. To make settlements, 
 as a rule, you must have some money, and to 
 get that money to make settlements we had to 
 and did make some real sacrifices. Before 
 coming to Missouri we had invested a sum 
 in a hotel property in a northern Indiana 
 city and it gave promise of large returns, but 
 we had to and did sell it to get money to pro- 
 tect our Missouri investment, and, while it did 
 give us a longer lease of life on our invest- 
 ment down there, yet it cut us off from par- 
 ticipating in the "cutting of the watermelon," 
 so to speak, in connection witli the other in- 
 vestment. Now. what were these accounts in 
 .'-!iker.ton tliat were so troublesome? Well, one 
 was brought about in this way: I bought a 
 
 team of mules — old ones — of Mr. E. J. Keith of 
 the Hoosier Land and Investment Company; 
 one of them died and I sold the other one 
 back to Mr. Keith, leaving me owing him about 
 .$45, for which I gave him my note and a chat- 
 tel mortgage on a cow. The note was due. 
 Mr. Keith, needing his money for house fur- 
 nishings, had traded the note to the Way Fur- 
 niture Company, and Mr. Way was going to 
 collect it, and I was mighty glad to be able to 
 get the money to pay it without further costs. 
 
 Another pressing claim was my grocery ac- 
 count — now, mind you, I was doing my dealing 
 ALL with the Farmers' Supply Co., and they 
 held a mortgage against all my crops, and I 
 was fully tied. Now, you cannot run a farm 
 without supplies. I was paying my help in 
 groceries and we needed a few for ourselves 
 also, and this was an ideal time to try a fel- 
 low out to see if he could raise any funds, and 
 I was mighty glad I could raise them, even if 
 I did have to sacrifice to do it, and by paying 
 a part of my grocery account and leaving the 
 chattel mortgage stand against all I hoped to 
 raise this season, I was able to continue to get 
 supplies. Now, read this over again, friend, 
 and when you go to "Swamp-east" Missouri to 
 farm on limited capital remember what I have 
 here told you and be careful how you tie your- 
 self up, for your best friehds and business part- 
 ners (Mr. Matthews had called it a partner- 
 ship between us) sometimes will try to settle 
 with you when you are close vtp. 
 
 July 23, 1911. — Right on threshing day our 
 eldest boy took sick with malarial fever and, 
 besides his suffering and care to nurse him, was 
 deprived of his help at this, the busiest time of 
 the season's work. Called doctor from Sikeston, 
 and they sure know how to charge $12 a visit. 
 In going into a new country, did you give 
 yourself a chance to observe their ways and 
 customs, hear their conversations among them- 
 selves, you will learn more than it would be 
 possible for anyone to tell you, no matter how 
 hard you were trying to find out everything 
 to your advantage. 
 
 I have in mind a conversation that took place 
 between a couple of tenants' families one morn- 
 ing and will give it here, just as I heard it, 
 other tlian different personal names. 
 
 At this time of year — August 1st — just when 
 malaria, chills and fever are getting a real good 
 hold for the season, as a rule, then such con- 
 versations as this are quite common, and they 
 do not confine themselves just to the tenants 
 on the farms, either. 
 
 "Hello, Mame, how's th' old man?" 
 "Oh, he's all right." 
 "How's the rest of th' folks?" 
 "Oh, they're all right. How're yure folks?" 
 "Oh, they're all kicking, but Mam's got th'ir 
 chills." 
 
 "That's tew bad; is she doing envthing fur 
 'em?" 
 
 "Yep, she's gittin' better naow, since she's 
 take'n Thedford's Black Draught for the Liver." 
 Malaria, chills and ague, as we all know, are 
 products of swamps, stagnant w^ater and poor 
 or insufficient drainage, and I fear will be a 
 prime asset of this country for years to come. 
 
 Until a way is found to keep the old Missis- 
 sippi from covering this country, in part, at 
 least, once or twice each year with back water 
 and the sloughs and other low places drained 
 other than by evaporation, a person or family to 
 stand this climate needs either to be immune 
 to the malarial, ague or chill germ, or able to 
 withstand the effect on their constitutions of 
 the many antidotes for those poisons, such as 
 arsenic, strychnine, quinine or their many com- 
 binations. 
 
 Aug. 7, 1911. — Just to show you the wide 
 range of prices that a farm can be bought at 
 in this country, Mr. Matthews informed me that 
 he had tried to sell my farm to a gentleman — 
 Wade Sitz — for $80 per acre. Now, we had cut 
 our expectations down to $85 per acre net to us, 
 so that the land companies might be able tr. 
 find a buyer for the property, and they were 
 wanting and asking all the way up to $105 
 lier acre for it. and here wae Mr. Matthews 
 liimself offering the farm to a prospective buyer 
 
 18 
 
fur $.sii, wiik-h in-ice, had he taken it, wuuUl 
 liave allowed us $5 per acre for all the work 
 we had put un the land. 
 
 AuK'. 'M, llUl. — The poisons taken into the 
 system in this malarious country manifest 
 themselves in very different ways. Some peo- 
 ple shed tills poison by the real malarial fever 
 and some lose it by "risings'" and some by 
 "chills and fever." and that is the way our 
 youngest boy decided to pass his off, and on 
 this day he shook and shook like a miniature 
 earthquake, and no amount of covers seemed 
 to check the "shakes." His antidote for the 
 poison was quinine and calomel, and by "a 
 round of medicine" he succeeded in getting 
 over the chills for a time. 
 
 Sept. 2, 1911. — As I have spoken several times 
 in this narrative, stock run at large in this 
 lountry, and to tell yours from other people's 
 you are expected to mark them and register 
 your mark. The gentleman — Mr. .Taper Dover — 
 whom I bought out sold me soine cattle and 
 hogs, and as they were marked by his mark 
 I asked him to explain it to me, and for jour 
 benefit, in case you go to "Swamp-east," I 
 will give it to you here, and a number of other 
 marks that I took off the register at the county 
 seat, and if you do not know all about marking 
 aniinals you can study up on them and not 
 have to show as much ignorance on the subject 
 as I did. Mr. Dover's mark was "a swallow 
 fork and under-bit in the right and a slit and 
 overslope in the left." Now, as to other mark- 
 ings, they are practically a variation of the 
 above. 
 
 October 5, 1911. — To show you the great care 
 some people will take to see that they lose 
 nothing, and especially was this true with Mr. 
 C. D. Matthews, on the above date he called 
 me in to talk over my financial affairs with 
 him, and as I had a very good prospect for 
 corn, more possibly than my store account 
 would amount to, and to make himself sure 
 that he would get all of it applied on his ac- 
 counts, he reques^ted me to and I did sign a 
 note and chattel* mortgage to him for .$1,200 
 against my corn crop for the interest due on 
 the land notes. This satisfied him, and as 
 I was not on the beat I had no objections to 
 giving it. 
 
 October 28, 1911. — It seems in this country 
 that there are more pests work oh the crops 
 than in more northern climates — for instance, 
 there is a silk worm that works on the corn 
 that spoils a great deal of the corn. We have 
 so much worm-eaten corn, and naturally spoiled 
 grains which animals eat, and doctors say that 
 is the cause of "pellagra," that causes the 
 death of numbers of animals in this country; 
 and right along at this time my neighbors lost 
 several valuable horses from this disease or 
 from the actions of the animal when sick, which 
 staggers around seemingly unable to see where 
 it is going, and they call it "blind staggers," 
 and when once afflicted with the "blind stag- 
 gers" they seldom, if ever, recover. 
 
 Dec. 8. 1911. — We thought sure that the out- 
 come of this day's work would be the beginning 
 of the end of our stay in Missouri, for early 
 in the day I received word from the Smith 
 Bros. & Co. Land Co. that ere the day passed 
 Mr. C. M. Smith, Sr., with a gentleman by 
 the name of P. B. Harcourt of Rochester, 111., 
 would be out to look over the farm and that 
 I should stick to the price of $100 per acre if 
 I was asked what I wanted for the land. They 
 came and we looked over the land, had dinner 
 and visited together, and when they left Mr. Har- 
 court had the understanding that whatever he 
 cared to do about thfr purchase of the farm 
 that he could arrange with Messrs. Smith Bros. 
 & Co. Land Co. Well, he went away without 
 making a deal for the property, and a short 
 time after I received the following letter from 
 Mr. Harcourt: 
 
 "Rochester, 111., 1/8/1912. 
 "H. Sturdebaker, Matthews, Mo. 
 
 "Dear Sir — Mr. Smith of Sikeston was here 
 last Monday and I asked him if your land could 
 be bought for even money, $20,000, and he said 
 he had quoted lowest price. 
 
 "If you should care to take less than $97.50 
 
 at any time before .March, please advise me. 
 and if I have not jiurchased in the meantime 
 xve might trade. V'ours, 
 
 "F. B. HARCOURT. 
 
 "P. S. — We have cokl weather here at pres- 
 ent; 22 below yesterday a. m. H." 
 
 Now, friend, you will no doubt gather from 
 the above what there would have been in it 
 for the Smith Bros. & Co. Land Co. had they 
 been able to close the deal with I\Ir. Harcourt 
 At $97.50 to them and $85 net to us they would 
 have made $12.50 per acre, while we would 
 have had $10 per acre fqr our cleaning ui; the 
 farm and getting it in shape for sale. $.'0 per 
 acre on 215 would be $2,150; $12.50 per acre on 
 215 would have been $2,687.50 for selling it, 
 to which add the commission I paid of $1,07.^, 
 for being shown to the farm, would have made 
 $.3,762.50 that this farm had paid in commis- 
 sions in a little over three years. But this deal 
 did not go through, and if you are not weary 
 of this narrative by this time read on and I 
 will show you how this farm paid a greater 
 commission than the above when it did pass 
 title. 
 
 Dec. 10, 1911. — This is no country for pul- 
 monary troubles, tuberculosis, or in plain lan- 
 guage consumption, and on this date a young 
 man, Gus Albright, a neighbor, passed away 
 with it, and this leads up to the custom yet 
 . in vogue in this country of taking the corpse 
 to the cemetery in a farm wagon. Of course 
 it does not matter with us when we are dead 
 as to how we are taken or even laid away, but 
 it does look hard to haul off your friend, broth- 
 er or relative to their last resting place just as 
 you would any of the stock on the farm. 
 
 Dec. 30, 1911. — Now for your benefit, friend, 
 not mine, will show you how my business part- 
 ner, Mr. C. D. Matthews, held me up when he 
 was fully aware that I was in his power. Hav- 
 ing sold my corn and going in with him to 
 settle, I turned over all I had and did not have 
 enough to comply with my contract. Now to 
 make it plain to you just what I mean when I 
 say I was held up, I will enter into a little 
 detail of my deal so you will know the facts as 
 well as I. 
 
 I bought this 215.04 acres of land of Mr. 
 Matthews at $75 per acre on the 30th of June. 
 1909, and on the 30th of June, 1910, was to pay 
 interest on the deferred payments — I paid $2,000 
 down — at the rate of 6 per cent and pay 1/10 
 of the amount due on the farm. Well, I was 
 not able to make this payment, and in fact not 
 near all of the interest, and at this time — Dec. 
 30, 1911 — I had had a very fair crop and was 
 able to take up a little more than this year's 
 interest, then to pay him for not closing in 
 on me, which he could do in 25 days under 
 tlie Trust Deed, he demanded an extra 2 per 
 cent on all back payments due and unpaid in- 
 terest, so instead of paying 6 per cent, as I 
 had bargained in the contract and Trust Deed, 
 to keep from being closed out I was compelled 
 to and did pay this extra 2 per cent interest, 
 amounting to at this time about $30.00. 
 
 Now by the sale of this land to me and my 
 working it, Mr. JMatthews changed a property 
 that was paying him $3.50 an acre gross rental 
 on whatever the tenant succeeded in getting in 
 to $4.50 an acre NET rental on the entire acre-, 
 age. He was relieved of the expense of look- 
 ing after it, of the depreciation of the improve- 
 ments on it. Being an owner and wanting to 
 make the farm do all it would, I cleared off 
 the timber and removed at least a thousand 
 stumps; gave him all my store business, even 
 bviying the groceries for my help at his store; 
 sold his mil]iing company all my giain and 
 paid him the interest on all the mone$ I needed 
 to finance my crop, and for the privilege of 
 being able to continue this arrangement to his 
 benefit until I might succeed in getting some 
 one to take it off my hands, at this installment 
 he took something like $30 away from me. This 
 was just a starter, though, as I found out later 
 on, and if you continue to read this sketch of 
 my experiences in the New Madrid Earthquake 
 Country A'ou will find out. 
 
 Jan. 2, 1912.— On the 1st of January, 1912, I 
 had a mule note due for $469.50, given to the 
 
 19 
 
Grant estate for mules I had purchased at the 
 public sale held by the administrator of this 
 estate in April, litll. and when I was settling 
 with Mr. C. D. Matthews he asked me what 
 else I had to meet besides his claims, and I 
 told him nothing but this mule note and the 
 one 1 owed A. J. Matthews, and tliat I would 
 expect him to help me care for it when they 
 became due, to which he made me no answer, 
 but as we were "jiai-tners," as he had said, and 
 I had made a very fair crop and turned him 
 over all the proceeds of it, I did not think 
 there would be any difficulty in raising the 
 money to care for this paper, as I would still 
 have the stock to offer as security. Well, on 
 this date, Jan. 2, 1912, I went in to see Mr. 
 Matthews about it, and imagine my surprise and 
 feelings when he told me he could not do it, as 
 he had no money to loan. Now, I had paid 
 
 did get a little concession in the same, as I 
 had the right to sell the farm myself, which 
 1 did not liave in former contract. At last, 
 after a couple of weeks of worry and effort, I 
 had gained, as the prisoner would say, a post- 
 ponement of my execution, and so I returned 
 to the farm to recuperate and continue to await 
 and try to help bring about the time when 
 that other fellow would come along and relieve 
 me of my burden. 
 
 Now, 1 have shown you that it does get HOT 
 down in this country, and as 1 kept the dally 
 weather record all the time 1 am in a position 
 to and will show you that it sure does get 
 cold in this country also. Jan. 6, 1912, ther- 
 mometer showed a temperature of 3 degrees 
 below zero and snow on the ground, just like 
 a northern country. Jan. 7th at 6 a. m., 15 
 degrees below zero; 7 p. m., 3 degrees below. 
 
 BIED Of PNEDHON^ '£^ff3:%^^'^'S:^.i:^V^^ 
 
 ■Esc; 
 
 - St., 
 , .scaped 
 
 1 ateJy . ___^, 
 
 Taken To Tennessee 
 
 Liwle, Mjtrtle. Virfiinia- Irenheiirtr I 
 daughietof Mr. and Mrs. H, G Icenl 
 ttIS%- J"*' f '•'■'"'O'own r.eiehhorl,ood. 
 '(Ue(\ Wednesday morning atC:30oVlo( k 
 
 Donal Ozement, son of Mr. and Mis. 
 Heze Ozement, is seriously ill with 
 pneumonia. 
 
 ' pneumonia' 
 
 r; '".■■^■="»J' ■""riling an ;;iU0Cl0(k. | Of. J rf rj, .^~^^^^^^^^^^^ 
 
 Pneumonia was the cttU8« of death i too „. *'"">OrmZ!!^^^^ 
 
 which rame only after the chid wa.^ ' ' l"' ""^ Of He U J ""' ^^ Mats, i 
 saved from diphtheria, only to be taken <»r«Ur coun. '*»«''ng pbo-,„. 
 down with imenmonia. Th.- Iitlle-cirl i Dli^n^ *'*'"»'J, la reoati^^ ^"^^^ 
 «a3 two years, three months, an.f 14 " '"'*'"nonia. ''Ported H, ^^,^,^ 
 
 da.v.ofae. The remain* were taken 
 MA"'T.r'^y'.'^*""- f^' int-rnient 
 
 I": ?l^_*'^^,J."^^'"''-e<--r came to thi. I r Orval K,n/ ," 
 
 unfu ^. *"® or 
 
 of 
 
 \ evening. 
 
 rJn ^ r^'^'t""? """*■ ^* moirths; 'county d?*"%,o' McMui„„- „ | John Alb«rt r 
 
 the girl a father, in.ne up fr..„, (. ^ , Morliv '"■'^' took „!. Jmeu- J ^^fe. '8 Sick with « liVhf .f, ,7 
 
 bourn Sond^ ^ 1 ""'''« >' cemetery. °' P'^^e »t the jpneunioni» "gPt«t tack of 
 
 bourn Sunday. 
 
 I YYill Brown, a farm hand about 30 
 'years of age, married, died Tuesday 
 night at Bertrand on the farm owned, 
 by John Lett. Brown had just recently* 
 moved to the farm and was taken down 
 with pneumonia. He was buried yester- 
 da> at Oak Grove cemetery 
 
 Mi 
 
 msMt 
 
 ,f w 
 
 (- 
 
 . Robert HiUeman was with his 
 mother, Mirs. Louisa HWleman, of 111- 
 I mo. a couple of days recently. She 
 I has pneumonia. * \ - /- V '/■ ' I i 
 
 1 J. N, Heney, age 54. died at 
 Elvln*. Jan. 19, of pneumonia. He 
 ■had been, deputy marshal of ElVins 
 a, numiber c^f times. , c' .^'. ^^, '^^ 
 
 cemetery. 
 
 Miss Emma H e uchan died at the h ome 1 
 
 'of her brother; K."b. H^ui^han. Sundal 
 morninKal4a m She took with a 
 headache and developed pneumonia 
 which lasted only a few days. The 
 Horal ofTerings from friends and the 
 
 frm^h'^M'^i-"'':* ''^^"tiful- Funeral 
 tri.m the M. t. church Monday after- 
 noon at 2. 30. Int.rn.ent at (5ak Dale 
 
 ■motery. 
 
 ^IP*^^' . ,,u sons. Lawrence 
 
 ««°^f""H^hn attended the -- ^11 1 "^MM - 
 
 ''"'', ^? A berrHahn. a nephew of the j „^^ ^ ^, ^^^.^^^ ^^^ ^^^^^ 
 eral of Albert n Monday at O'^ lously ill this week with pne.imoi 
 
 larst named, who die? ^^„ was|^^ 
 
 Hamburg. Th® >" ^^^^^ wa« 
 
 tweuty years ol age ,.• /■/ V 
 
 I aZ» to pneumon ia, h^^^^dtm^m 
 
 ' Don Well* is reported gettinp 
 weii of purii 
 
 J,*l' l"i'* '^''"Khter of Riley Mason, a 
 chiMof T. M. Bugf. and two children 
 'ot ivirB. ArmatronET. a widow, were very 
 HI this week with pneumonia. 
 
 ■Su^da^■^&>; d,'«„^, at Flat R.ver 
 . ,' Pneumonia. 
 
 Some Pneumonia Clippings. 
 
 him every cent I had realized from my crop, 
 not even retaining enough to meet the interest 
 on these mule notes, and then to be thrown 
 down this way at this time did not seem right, 
 but he would not let me have the money, so 
 Mr. Moser and I started out to find it some 
 place else, as he was on tho Tire'' wit^^ me 
 to the Grant estate, and neither one of us 
 wanted to be sued. I went to the People's 
 Bank and explained the situation, offering the 
 mules and Mr. Moser, who was well worth sev- 
 eral thousand dollars, as security, but when 
 they found out I was farming a farm bought of 
 C. D. Matthews and did all my trading with 
 him they sidestepped the accommodation by 
 saying they did not have the money. Then Mr. 
 Moser took a hand, and he found the money 
 for me of C. M. Smith & Bro.; also they had 
 me renew their option for sale of farm, but 1 
 
 Jan. 9th, .5 degrees above: Jan. 11th, 10 de- 
 grees above, snowing — an awful wind, in fact 
 a regular blizzard; Jan. 12th, 6 a. m., 3 de- 
 grees below and 3 inches of snow on ground; 
 Jan. 13th, 6 a. m., 12 degrees below and 4 
 inches of snow; Jan. 15th, 7 p. m., 2 degrees 
 above; Jan. 16th, 4:30 a. m., 4 degrees above; 
 Jan. 19th, 7 a. m., 20 degrees above; Feb. 3d, 
 7:30 p. m., 10 degrees above, snowing and blow- 
 ing a gale; Feb. 4th, 6:30 a. m., 3 degrees be- 
 low; Feb. 5th, 6 a. m., 15 degrees above; Feb. 
 6th. 5:30 a. m., 15 degrees above; Feb. 10th, 
 5:30 a. m., 7 degrees above. As a matter of 
 course there was a slight rise in temperature 
 between these dates, but it was real wintry 
 weather, and how the people — tenants on some 
 of the farms — in the straight up and down 
 board shacks, as well as the stock in the fields, 
 did suffer. 
 
 20 
 
.Tan. 19, 1912. — Roads — Highways — "Lanes." — 
 I have had a g'ood deal to say about in this 
 booklet, and pardon me coniing batk to the 
 subject, but if you so down there to live for 
 a season, or work for some one a year, as 1 
 have suggested to you that you do before in- 
 vesting: in a piece of land, you will not wonder 
 that they are on my mind to such an extent 
 that I can hardly forget them. 
 
 Well, us Northern people had taken so man.\' 
 exceptions to the honible ccmditions of the 
 roads, and how a Northern farmer who had 
 been used to gravel or stone roads would pa>' 
 more for lands did he have a good road to 
 travel over, and this seemed to break throug'h 
 the moss, and so along the King's Highway for 
 a distance of 10 miles and 1.000 feet south of 
 Sikeston they organized a Road District for 
 the improvement of this historic "Lane" with 
 a stone road. I do not wish to enter here — to 
 burden this booklet with a long-drawn-out de- 
 scription of how the specifications were pre- 
 pared or what they were — how that to file a 
 bid you had to put up a large certified check 
 as a forfeit — how that the contract was to be 
 let as one entire contract — how the success- 
 ful bidder had to give a $50,000 bond, etc. — but 
 it is sufficient to say that on the above date — 
 Feb. 5th. 1912 — the contract was awarded to 
 the Murray Construction Company of Sikes- 
 ton. Mo., who was composed of. as it was gen- 
 erally known, Mr. A. J. Matthews & Sons, and 
 M. S. Murray, Civil Engineer, Surveyor of Scott 
 County, of Sikeston, Mo., at a bid of $88,000. 
 which would make, as you will see, $8,000 a 
 mile cost of construction. Now, should thi.s 
 contract be carried out and this road mac- 
 adamized — it has been in litigation ever since 
 the awarding' of the contract to determine the 
 legality of the building of it and issuing of 
 bonds — you ought to lide over an excellent road 
 for that money, as you farmers who live in a 
 macadamized road country no doubt know. I 
 hope they get the improvement, for if ever a 
 country needed roads. "Swamp-east" surely 
 does. 
 
 Schools. — No doubt should you go down to 
 this country on a prospecting tour your atten- 
 tion will be called to the school buildings of 
 Sikeston, and I will admit they are g'ood, but 
 get out in the country and study the school 
 condition among the people that are not able 
 to and in many cases too indifferent to care 
 about their children's education. 
 
 Out in the "swamps," where you will live 
 should you buy some of this new land and move 
 on to it yourself. 
 
 Mrs. Studabaker and I counted up one day 
 the children in our community that we knew of 
 school age and were not going to school and 
 we had 15, and among them we knew of one 
 girl 14 years of age who did not know her 
 A, B. C's, so we were informed. 
 
 I»ook well into the school facilities of the 
 community where you expect to locate before 
 you do, and on this point the trying out of 
 the country, so to speak, as I have all along 
 sua-gested, by going down there and either rent- 
 ing a piece of land for a year or working for 
 somebody will give you that much desired op- 
 portunity. 
 
 It seemed to us that the matter of educating 
 the rising generation was not so much of a 
 public question as it ought to be — that is, it 
 looked as though the people that had this 
 care of the future men and women were in- 
 different as to whether they could read or 
 write, just so they were able to drive a team 
 of mules or do the housework in a way was 
 all that was going to be required. Other peo- 
 ple would do the figuring for them. 
 
 Jan. 20, 1912.— On this date I called at the 
 Bank of Sikeston — that is, Mr. C. D. Matthews' 
 bank — for my abstract of title of my farm, as 
 I wnshed to make a copy of it to send Mris. 
 Studabaker's relatives at Eluffton, Ind., who 
 were trying to find the money to help me carry 
 the proposition until I could sell it. I had left 
 the abstract here for safe keeping, but it could 
 not be found, and I was compelled to and did 
 go away without it being found, with the un- 
 derstanding that I come in again in a few 
 
 days, and when I did return in a few^ davs 1 
 was informed that it was in the hands of the 
 C. M. Smith Bros. & Co. Uand Co. Now, when 
 1 wanted it incorporated in the renewal of my 
 oiition to this company to sell my farm that I 
 wanted the right to sell my land myself, there 
 were strenuous objections raised, but it was 
 granted, and to come in here and find my ab- 
 stract in their hands did not look right to me, 
 for to go and get it would at once notify them 
 that something was doing. I passed up get- 
 ting the abstract and my Bluffton, Ind'ana, 
 friends did not get me any relief; and I merely 
 put this in to suggest to you that in case yoii 
 go down into this country and have any papers 
 pertaining to the title of your property and that 
 are rightfully yours, and to which you may 
 want to refer to most any time, that you keep 
 them in your own immediate possession. 
 
 Feb. 3, 1912. — Lost another mule with "blind 
 staggers." 
 
 Feb. IS. — Along about this date there was a 
 gentleman by the name of .Joseph Schencks of 
 Cypress, Indiana, visiting his old friends and 
 neighbors in this community by the name of 
 George Greig and Augustus Gable, and they 
 were trying to get him interested in our farm 
 and he had been here several times to see the 
 land and talk with me about it. I asked him 
 $90 per acre for it, as we were anxious to get 
 all we could for the land, and besides, the 
 land company had the farm for sale at $85 net 
 to us, and if we offered it at the same price 
 they would have a just complaint against us for 
 so doing. Finally on the morning of the 20th 
 of February Mr. Schenck called at the house 
 and asked me if I would take $85 for the land, 
 and I told him I could not afford to. He went 
 away without buying anything in the com- 
 munity, and in talking with Mr. Gieig and Mr. 
 Gable about the matter afterward they told 
 me that the reason Schencks would not buy 
 the farm at $90 was that Mr. J. F. Cox of the 
 Hoosier Land and Investment Company had 
 told him that he could buy the farm for $85. 
 Mr. Greig told me that he was present when 
 Mr. Cox told him that. You can readily see, 
 friend, why they would make such a statement, 
 for should I have sold the land direct to Mr. 
 Schencks they would not have been entitled to 
 a commission and, so far as caring if I ever 
 did succeed in selling out at a profit. I don't 
 think any of the real estate men that were 
 instrumental in getting me to make this deal 
 ever lost any sleep over it. 
 
 Feb. 22. — In to see Mr. C. D. Matthews and 
 give him a note and chattel mortgage for $1,200 
 against my wheat crop, $400 of which was to 
 be credited to me in the store, so that I could 
 trade against it, and the remainder — $800 — was 
 to be held in trust until I paid the note out of 
 wheat crop, when it was to be credited on my 
 land notes. You will notice from this that Mr. 
 Matthews was taking no chances that any of 
 the proceeds derived from the sale of crops 
 was wrongfully applied as this was arranged 
 for and applied four months before crop was 
 made. 
 
 Feb. 23, 1912. — As I have shown and told you. 
 under my contract of sale of farm, or option 
 as they termed it, with the C. M. Smith Bros. 
 & Co. Land Company I had the right to sell 
 farm myself, but did not dare to allow any 
 other firm or real estate agent to act as agenr 
 for me, so when the Hoosier Land & Investment 
 Company asked me about showing up my farm 
 I told them of the contract I had with thy 
 Smith people but as I had the right to sell the 
 farm myself, I also told them that any time 
 that they wanted to buy the farm to come and 
 see me and I would sell it to them, and acting 
 upon this they never had any hesitancy in 
 showing up the land, relying upon the fact that 
 should they find someone that wanted the place 
 they would come and buy it of me and then 
 sell it to the other party. Well, on this date. Mr. 
 E. J. Keith of the Hoosier Land & Investment 
 Company called at our home and told me that 
 he thought without a doubt they would want 
 us to deed the farm to him before night; that 
 he would like for us to be at home in case 
 they wanted to see us, but not to come around 
 
 21 
 
where they were should they come down in 
 that i)art of tlie country witli strangle people 
 that day. Well, we did not give tlie people any 
 chance to talk to us and tlie\' never boutrlit the 
 farm. 
 
 Feb. 25, 1912.— We had one of the rains that 
 you read about and the whole country seemed 
 to be afloat. 
 
 March 23, 1912. — Paper.s over tlie country be- 
 
 Back water from the Mississippi River, 12 Miles 
 South of Sikceston on the King's Highway. 
 
 gan to note general high waters and from this 
 date on till near the last of April we were 
 much worried from this cause. On the 27th 
 of the month we went to New Madrid, the 
 county seat of New Madrid County, which is 
 situated on the banks of the Mississippi River 
 near the site of the other New Madrid that 
 
 The Rapids. 
 
 lippi^liver 
 the great earthquake in 1^1-12, and the water 
 had jost began to come up into the streets and 
 on the 30th it was three feet deep in the 
 streets, then on the 31st it was so high that 
 
 traffic on tlie Frisco Railroad was stopped — all 
 but a little local traffic from Chaffee to Kewa- 
 nce. which condition existetl vmtil near the last 
 of April. On the 3d and 4th of April was doWi. 
 below Kewanee where the Ijack waters from 
 the Mississippi broke through the railroad grade 
 and never had I expected to see anything so 
 near like the rapids at Niagara Falls as I saw 
 here. We took Kodak views of it, one of which 
 is reproduced here, and it is much more pleas- 
 ure to look at this pictui'e now than it was the 
 real waters. You see we lived west of this 
 great Sikeston Ridge and thought we were high- 
 water-proof, but when it broke through here 
 and began to inundate this west swamp, we 
 dill not know so much about it. The water 
 v\'as also beginning to seep across the Ridge 
 in several other places farther north and while 
 it brought death, loss and disaster to the in- 
 habitants of the country that was protected by 
 the Reelfoot Lake levee on the other side of 
 the Mississifjpi River, yet it was a Godsend 
 to us when that levee broke, for the water 
 around New Madrid and to the east of us fell 
 six inches in the one night and gave us thp 
 relief that we had to have to keep us fron. 
 being drowned out. Friend, you may have rear? 
 of this FLOOD in the papers, or you may havo 
 had a friend or relative in this district, 
 but to you who never heard of it, should you 
 be contemplating buying property along this 
 great river, take my advice and be sure to live 
 a year either as a tenant or a hand in the 
 country wherein you expect to purchase before 
 you do, for it will give you a chance to learn 
 all about the country and its possibility of 
 overflowing and drowning you out before you 
 are tied up. 
 
 March 24, 1911. — Our youngest 'boy had a chill 
 today and it took lots of hot water, covers 
 and Jamaica Ginger to warm him up. 
 
 While this sandy land will stand a great 
 quantity of water and yet you can work it, yet 
 it seemed it would never let us get at our field 
 work this spring. I give you a list of the days 
 that it rained and they sure were a plenty. 
 March 2d, snow storm that was a snow storm. 
 March 5th, snow, high wind, etc. March 11th, 
 sleeted all night. March 12th, cold, drizzling 
 rain from northwest. March 14th, rained like 
 fury this day. March 1.5th, misting all day. 
 March 21st. cold rain from northwest with a 
 29 degree temperature, turned to sleet and ice. 
 March 23d, rained all afternoon. March 24th, 
 rained, turning to snow. March 28th, rained 
 all day. April 1st, rained all day. April 6th, 
 raining again. April 9th, raining. April 10th, 
 raining. April 12th, a heavy rain storm. April 
 13th, rained more today. April 15th, rained 
 and hailed some. April 17th, more rain. April 
 19th, more rain. April 21st, more rain. April 
 22d, rained hard in the night. April 25th. rain- 
 ing off and on since 2 p. m. April 26th, rained 
 awfully hard all night and very high wind. 
 April 28th, another very hard rain with sotne 
 hail. April 29th, a very hard rain last night; 
 there is a great amount of water on the ground. 
 We had no more hard rain from April 29th 
 until May 10th, but during all this time the 
 ground would no more than get so that we 
 thought we could plow when another rain and 
 we began to wonder if we were going to be 
 allowed to plant any crops at all. 
 
 On the 15th of April our youngest boy had 
 another very hard chill. 
 
 On the 2d of May worked some in our potato 
 patch, most of the time killing bugs. This is 
 certainly potato bug paradise, for the weed 
 known as "Bull Nettles" has a jelly leaf very 
 similar to a potato plant leaf, so, therefore, Mr. 
 Beetle is not entirely dependent on the potato 
 patches for the continuance of his family, and 
 it matters not where you make your potato 
 patch with reference to where it was last year 
 you will find that Mr. Potato Bug and family 
 will be there to keep you and the other pests 
 company. 
 
 There is another pest in this country known 
 as the "Bull Nats" that are about as trouble- 
 some as anything and they affect not only your- 
 self but your animals and they frequently cause 
 the death of your animals by getting into their 
 
 22 
 
nostrils in great numbers. If you go down 
 there to work a season you will get aciiuainteil 
 with them, all right. 
 
 June 7, 1912. — To town for groceries and it 
 was on the trip home that furnished me witli 
 the opportunity for the opposite picture. The 
 roads or "lanes" of this country are very nar- 
 row — need the ground to farm — and when a 
 mud hole is developed it is not long until it 
 is a case of go through it and here on the 7tli 
 of June stuck in the mud with less than 80ti 
 pounds of a load. 
 
 July 12, 1912.— Wheat threshed and while we 
 were expecting a good yield of from 25 to 3vi 
 bushels to the acre, as the straw was there, 
 yet we had to take 11 bushels and a reduction 
 of 15 bushels to the acre on 120 acres rather 
 iiurt my paying powers for the year's work. 
 
 This was a loss to us of right at $1,800 and 
 \ou know what that means, especiallj' when 
 "you are already close up. 
 
 Aug. 2, 1912. — For some time I had been run- 
 ning along under no special option or contract 
 with the "Smith Bros. & Co. Land Company 
 other than the fact that they carried my note 
 of $500 on land commission of $1,075 that 1 
 had not been able as \-et to pa>' the interest on 
 and the further loan of $500 to take up the 
 mule note of Grant estate, which was made in 
 the form of a one -day note and it looked to 
 me as though any day that I showed a ten- 
 dency to jump sidewise it would be like m\' 
 trust deed on the land — made efferti\'e. 
 
 Well, on this date they called me in and 1 
 follow with the new contract or option that 
 I signed. 
 
 "Sikeston, Mo., Aug. 2, 1912. — This is to cer- 
 tify, the undersigned, Hugh D. fetudabaker of 
 New Madrid County, Missouri, does this day 
 option to C. M. SMITH BROS. & CO. of Sikes- 
 ton, Scott County, jMissouri, all of my following 
 described real estate, lying, being and situate 
 in New Madrid County, Missouri, upon the fol- 
 lowing conditions, to-wit: 
 
 "That said C. M. SMITH BROS. & CO. push 
 the sale of my land so as to net me $85 per acre, 
 paying all their own expenses while showing 
 and trying to sell my land to their prospective 
 land buyers, free of expenses to me. 
 
 "I also further agree to accept half cash, 
 balance on terms to suit the purchaser, bearing 
 six per cent (6%) interest from date of deferred 
 payments as set out in the DEED OF TRUST 
 to the purchaser of C. M. SMITH BROS. & 
 CO. 
 
 "And I also agree to give C. M. S'MITH 
 BROS. & CO all over $85 per acre net to me for 
 their commission and services rendered me in 
 the selling the land herein described, free of 
 expenses to me. 
 
 "Said land is described as follows: 
 
 "All that part of the south half of section 7, 
 township 24. range 14, lying west of the right 
 of way of the St. Louis & San Francisco Rail- 
 road, containing 215.04 measured acres. 
 
 "And it is further agreed by the undersigned, 
 Hugh D. Studabaker, am to have the right to 
 sell the above described land myself but not 
 through any other agents or real estate agency, 
 except C. M. SMITH BROS. & CO.. who are 
 my sole acting real estate agents. 
 
 "I also agree to pro rate the corn rent with 
 said purchaser of C. M. Smith Bros. & Co., at 
 the rate of one-third delivered to market or 
 $6 per acre cash rent, either way said pur- 
 chaser inay elect at date of his purchase. 
 
 "This option to expire .lanuary 1st, 1913, at 
 seven-thirty p. m., on that date, and shall re- 
 main in full force and effect until said above 
 date. 
 
 "Hugh D. Studabaker, 
 "C. M. Smith Bros. & Co. 
 
 "By J. E. Smith, Sr., Mgr." 
 
 You will notice from the above contract that 
 I had the right to sell this land myself, BUT 
 not through any other agent or agents. Still 
 it does not specify just who I dared to sell it to. 
 
 In to see Mr. A. J. Matthews and Mr. Mat- 
 thews gave me his views on life's trials and 
 sucesses — not very many suc;cesses but mostly 
 trials. We talked on general topics for a while 
 and finally he took up the above topic and 
 
 likened our success in life to the feeding of 
 your little dog "Towser." Now, as he said, 
 Towser was a good dog and you thought lots 
 of him but when you came to feed him you 
 could not resist the temptation to have a little 
 fun with him. You would take a piece of meat 
 and hold it up and say, "Come. Towser, let's 
 see how high you can jump," and when Towser, 
 who was yet active and able to jump, was 
 about to get his breakfast you would hold it 
 just a little higher. Trying him out, so to 
 speak. Well, I could not help but apply it 
 locally and wherein he was doing the holding 
 up of the "meat" he would not have to stand 
 up on the rounds of a chair to get it out of 
 most any fellow's reach as Mr! A. J. Matthews 
 is a vei-y tall man. 
 
 Now, if you go down to this country, as 1 
 have been suggesting all along and try rent- 
 ing for a season or work for somebody before 
 investing "your little roll. " You can make the 
 acquaintance of Mr. A. J. Matthews and learn 
 to know him as I know him, yourself. 
 
 On the 5th of August, 1912, Mr. A. J. Mat- 
 thews and his son, Emory, came out in their 
 automobile and took a look at our farm. Com- 
 plained that I had the farm mostly in peas 
 instead of clover and as I told the folks I sus- 
 pect that had I had the land mostly in clover 
 thev would have suggested that it would have 
 been lietter had I had it mostly in peas, for at 
 this time of the year peas show up by far the 
 best. Well, the upshot of their visit was that 
 they offered me $80 per acre for the farm. 
 After our near four years' work, cleaning up the 
 farm, building it up with pease and as North- 
 erners said, making it look like an Indiana 
 farm, thev would offer me only $80 per acre 
 for it. I told them I trusted I would not have 
 to take that for it and while I did finally sell 
 it for $85 per acre to W. P. Lindley of the 
 Hoosier Land & Investment Company, yet the 
 conditions they compelled me to sell to them 
 under, as I will show you when I get to it, 
 did not make me much more than that. 
 
 Now, most of the land in our immediate 
 neighborhood was on the market and my neigh- 
 bor to the north, Joe Weedman, had his farm 
 on the market. Joe was great on "share crop- 
 pin'," as they say down here, and one of his 
 share croppers had a very poor piece of corn. 
 It was "some yaller," it did not look good to 
 a native and you might imagine how bad it 
 would look to a prospective land buyer. Well, 
 as Joe was going to sow wheat here, anyhow, 
 he plowed it under. 
 
 Aug. 9, 1912. — Had a rain and hail storm that 
 did a great deal of damage to the corn. 
 
 Aug. 19. 1912. — Rode to Matthews with Frank 
 Parsons and another one of Mr. Twitty's help, 
 who are all from Indiana and their experience 
 with the chills and fever had them very much 
 discouraged, Mr. Parsons being almost blind 
 from taking quinine. 
 
 Aug. 20. 1912.— Mr. C. M. Smith. Sr., and 
 party of land men hung up in mud hole and 
 worked quite a time to get out. Boys and I 
 then hunted up some scrapers and filled up the 
 holes gratuitously. 
 
 Just to show you or rather emphasize what 
 I told you earlier in this booklet, if you would 
 come liere for a season and rent or work for 
 someone before tying yourself up, you might 
 miss getting tied up along side of some neigh- 
 bor that was like my nearest one. Now this 
 was in August, about the HOTTEST time of 
 the vear here or anywhere else, and a large 
 sow belonging to this neighbor died within 200 
 feet of his front door and do you think he 
 would make an effort to dispose of the carcass? 
 Nd, sir, it layed there and decayed away; 
 chickens picked it to pieces and the wind 
 blowed the red hair and bristles out into the 
 road; the dogs carried the bones away and, say, 
 -^ve were some happy people when the odor was 
 gone as it was most impossible for us to get 
 our mules past. 
 
 Aug 26, 1912. — A Mr. A. J. Woolington of 
 Champaign, 111., had written Mr. C. D. Mat- 
 thews, wanting to buy my farm and that of 
 mv nearest neighbor, Mr. Joe Weedman, and 
 Mr Mattb.ews had turned over the correspond- 
 
 23 
 
ence to me, so I wrote Mr. Woolington to come 
 down and I would sell him my farm, and on 
 this date he anived. I told him to come m on 
 the night train, gave him the directions how 
 to reach my place so he would not have to 
 make anv inquiries and thus reveal where he 
 was going and what for, so that no real estate 
 agent would get hold of him and possibly tell 
 him what a poor, old, sand farm I had, or in 
 other wavs discourage him, and he followed 
 m\- instructions except he brought a Mr. White 
 w^th him and when I found out that he was 
 trying to interest Mr. White in my farm 1 told 
 him of my contract with the C. M. Smith Bros. 
 & Co. Land Company and how under it I could 
 only sell the farm to him, that 1 would not 
 dPre to let him sell it to Mr. White or any 
 other person and so he went back home to get 
 the money to buv the farm, but I sold out to 
 W. P. Lindley before he was able to make the 
 raise. 
 
 Aug. 30, 1912. — To Matthews to meet the night 
 train and here met Mr. J. McConn and wife 
 with their child that she was taking back to 
 Indiana to try and miss a siege Of typhoid 
 fever. 
 
 Sept 2, 1912.— This day happened what proved 
 to be the beginning of the end of our stay m 
 Missouri. Messrs. White, Cox, Dunaway, Amos 
 and another man out going over the farm. Dr. 
 Dunaway came hurrying to the house for a 
 spade and asked me to help them all I could 
 to get this man Amos interested in the farm 
 and they sure would do right by me. I told 
 hint that I dared not let them sell this farm 
 to anyone as my contract with the Smith peo- 
 ple was such that while I had the right to sell 
 the farm myself, yet I did not dare to let them 
 sell it to anyone for me. Well, they looked 
 the farm over and went away and the next day 
 Mr. Cox of the Hoosiers came by and asked me 
 to go to Sikeston with him as they wanted to 
 tiy and buy my farm. I went along and we 
 partly agreed upon a contract and so I went 
 back" the next day and entered into the foUow- 
 irg contract with Mr. Dindley for the sale and 
 purchase of my farm. 
 
 'Sikeston. Mo., Sept. 4, 1912. 
 
 "It is agreed and entered into this day, Sept. 
 4 1912, by and between Hugh D. Studabaker 
 of New Madrid County, Missouri, party of the 
 first part, and William P. Lindley of Scott 
 County, Missouri, party of the second part. 
 
 "In consideration of Eleven Hundred Twenty- 
 five Dollars ($1,125), the receipt of which is 
 hereby acknowledged paid to Hugh D. Studa- 
 baker by William P. Lindley for the purpose 
 of paying one $500 note given by said Studa- 
 baker to Chas. D. Matthews and interest there- 
 on and one $500 note given by said Studabaker 
 to 'Smith Bros. Realty Co. and interest thereon 
 and other considerations hereinafter named. 
 
 Nine promissory notes of $1,412.80 each given 
 by said Studabaker to Charles D. Matthews 
 June 30, 1909, are to be assumed by the said 
 Lindlev as part payment on the herein de- 
 scribed land (said Studabaker to pay all interest 
 on said notes up to and including December 
 31st, 1912). 
 
 The balance due said Studabaker is to oe 
 paid in a promissory note dated October 1st, 
 1912, and to be due January 1st, 1913, bearing 
 interest at the rate of 6 per cent per annum. 
 This note to be less whatever amount said 
 Studabaker owes A. J. Matthews. 
 
 Making a total consideration of eighteen 
 thousand two hundred seventy-five dollars 
 ($18,275.00) to be paid as above set out for 
 215.04 acres of laid, said land described as 
 follows, to-wit: 
 
 All of that part of the south half (west of 
 the Frisco Railroad right of way) of Sec. seven 
 (7), Twp. twenty-four (24), Range fourteen (14), 
 New Madrid County, Missouri. 
 
 In consideration of the above the said Studa- 
 baker agrees to deed by warranty dee(J, free 
 and clear of all liens and encumbrances (except 
 deed of trust notes held by Charles D. Mat- 
 thews, and interest thereon to and including 
 December 31st, 1912. Said Studabaker to pa>- 
 lip all interest to January 1st, 1913. Studabaker 
 to pay all taxes and assessments falling due 
 
 in the year of 1912 and prior years.). Said 
 Lindley to pay all taxes and assessments falling 
 due in the year of 1913 and thereafter. 
 
 Said Studabaker is to furnish abstract on or 
 before fifteen days from date of this contract, 
 showing good merchantable title to the herein 
 described lands, and said Lindley is to have 
 fifteen days after receiving abstract to approve 
 same. In the event said Studabaker fails to 
 deliver an abstract showing a good merchant- 
 able title, then the $1,125 is to be refunded to 
 the said Lindley. 
 
 The said Studabaker agrees to pay to the said 
 Lindley $150 as rent on the herein described 
 land for the year 1912, but is to have all of the 
 balance of crops grown during said year. 
 
 It is fuither understood that the said Lindley 
 is to have possession of all lands not now in 
 corn, on or before October lOlh, 1912, for the 
 purpose of sowing same to wheat. And is to 
 have possession of all of the rest of the farm 
 and buildings not later than the 15th of Febru- 
 ary. 1913. 
 
 The said Studabaker is to execute warranty 
 deed, properly signed by himself and Wife, 
 and place same with copy of this contract in 
 the Citizens Bank, in Sikeston, ]\Io., to be held 
 in escrow by said bank with instructions that 
 when the conditions in this contract are ful- 
 filled then said warranty deed is to be turned 
 over to said Dindley, and whatever balance is 
 due said Studabaker (after deed of trust notes 
 and interest computed to January 1st, 1913, 
 as given in promissory note dated October 1st, 
 1912, and due January 1st, 1913, bearing interest 
 at the rate of 6 per cent, payable annually) 
 turned over to said Studabaker. 
 
 HUGH D. STUDABAKER. 
 WILLIAM P. LINDLEY. 
 
 Now this contract was the source and be- 
 ginning of lots of trouble. I did not want to 
 give that rent of $150, and neither did I think 
 it right that I should be compelled to pay 
 interest on all his paper until the first of 
 January, 1913, but Mr. White told me plainly 
 that they would not make the deal unless I did, 
 telling me that, while they expected to use 
 the farm in a trade with a Mr. Amos of West 
 Lebanon, Ind., wherein they were going to put 
 the farm in at $125 per acre and take an 
 elevator at $10,000, yet they could not make this 
 deal unless I would either give them one-third 
 of the corn or $150 in cash, and pay this interest 
 from 1st of October to 1st of Januaiy next, a 
 period of three months. For, while they wished 
 to buy the farm of me and let me out, yet 
 they were not going to take any chances of 
 losing money on it, and I did want to get out, 
 so I signed the contract, took the money and 
 went around to the Smith Bros. & Co. Land C^o., 
 took up the two notes they held against me, 
 and they turned over the abstract that I left 
 with the Bank of Sikeston, as I explained to 
 you a while ago. 
 
 Now I had my suspicions about that corn 
 rental and extra interest, but was not in a 
 position to gratify my curiosity at that time, 
 as I had my personal property yet to dispose of, 
 but the minute I was cleaned up in Missouri 
 I went straight to West Lebanon and saw Mr. 
 Amos, and the gist of our conversation will 
 give you when I get to that point in my narra- 
 ti\'e. 
 
 September 7th. 1912.— Our oldest boy, "puny," 
 as they say, with chills and malarial fever 
 working on him. 
 
 September 16th, 1912. — In Sikeston and in con- 
 versation with the president of the Hoosier 
 Land & Investment Company, Mr. W. A. White, 
 he told me of the Smith Bros. & Co. Land Co., 
 calling over Dr. Dunaway of their firm and 
 going to whip him for his part in the sale of 
 my farm, adding further that he had adjusted 
 the matter, however, by going over that even- 
 ing and agreeing to pay them a commission 
 if the deal went through, so that I would not 
 need have any fear — that was, if I had any — 
 of the Smith Bros. & Co. Land Co. making a 
 demand on me for their commission under my 
 contract. 
 
 Now. as you possibly have noticed reading 
 along in this' deal, we had not received any 
 real money, just been changing our indebted- 
 
 24 
 
ness, so to speak, yet Mr. Lindley did advance 
 me $50 on the sale, but we needed a little more 
 ready money, and Mrs. Studabaker going to 
 town, 1 told her just to step into the Bank of 
 Sikeston and see Mr. V. D. Matthews and get 
 $50, and she was veiy much wrought up when 
 Mr. Matthews would not let her have it. Well, 
 in a few days I went in and saw him myselt. 
 lie told me of Mrs. Studaliaker being in f9r 
 some money and wanted to know if we still 
 wanted it. I told him the needs still existed 
 that we wished it for; then he took up the 
 matter of my selling out and told me that the 
 Hoosier Land Company would not figure up 
 the interest at a greater late than fJ per cent, 
 and that if I expected him to let the deal go 
 through I would have to stand for the extra 
 'Z per cent he had spoken about to me. As 1 
 could not help myself, I could do nothing else 
 than comply, and here I gave up another $84 
 and some odd cents to keep from losing all, 
 which, with the -$28 I showed up as a starter, 
 I in all paid about $112 to keep from having 
 the trust deed provisions executed against me. 
 Now friend, if you want to you can get a 
 ^'EIiY cheaiJ lesson from this experience of 
 
 upon an expeiiment. I took my underwear and, 
 placing it in a large pan, placed another over 
 it, then put it in the stove oven and left it 
 there luitil I thought it was heated thiough; 
 then took them out and shook them over a 
 newspaper and counted the results. 1 had 
 thirty-tour. Should you go down there for a 
 season you might try it. Lots of fun. 
 
 Rveiy country has its peculiar songs, say- 
 ings, etc., and fiom them you get a very good 
 idea of the country. Never was this more 
 truthfully given than in the following lew 
 verses, which show up the credit class — and it 
 certainly is right: 
 
 It's "Charge It" on McFarlln Farm. 
 
 It's ovei' the hill, across the knob; 
 Go to McFarlin's to get you a job. 
 It's haid times on McFarlin farm — 
 Hard times, my boy. 
 
 Go to McFarlin's to gel you a jol), he'd push 
 
 back his hat and say, 
 "Yes, by golly, I'll work >ou a while." 
 It's hard times on McFarlin farm — 
 Hard times, m>- lJo.^■. 
 
 -^ «S^ v.^''" ,o**' 'd' V-'^ ,«N\ <ft^ 
 
 LV't.*^"":!^ 
 
 Acts on the liver and removes 
 the cause of chilis All dealers 
 will refund the money on any 
 case it fails to cure if used as per 
 printed directions. Sold by lead- 
 Bing grocers and druggists of 
 Sikeston and Scott and New 
 iMadrid counties. 
 
 'nd r'' '■"■''a;,- J 
 
 EARLY THIS WEEK 
 
 Morhet of Fjniily Succumbs 
 M^.laria-. Child Dies Of 
 Dysentery 
 
 ^^^' ^W Mrs S. McBnde. w 
 ^^[v^'" , » Bnde, died «I the coun 
 »»'",, c'" \ Ihre. milsa west of Sil 
 
 jof ■ 
 
 F D, Baughn of CansI 
 
 clack 
 
 She 
 
 .__ _ . and s 
 
 days of age and was a general favorite 
 not only in her family but with all the 
 neighbors. While she was lying ill m 
 bed her little brother Leonard, aiic 
 years of age. was in the next room suf- 
 fering with malaria, which seemed to 
 
 distress the little girl Both had ^ 
 
 inseparable play 
 
 '*• ^^i is » '•■"" an 
 
 Mr.-.. John Stall , 
 h^r bed «.,th ^7,l'r. ««'*'" 
 
 H Mc 
 
 itry home about 
 
 ^eaton Wednea 
 
 B^e of 38 yearo 
 
 ronic case of malaHa. Sh. 
 
 leaver a family of several children. 
 
 The funeral was held from the home | 
 10 Che Hari i-emetery Thursday after 
 
 'day afternoon, 
 
 Beside: 
 brothers and two 
 ..._ jrned her death. A large c 
 friendB attended tlie funeral 
 
 .jrl Little Earl Henaonwho wa 
 
 ipjill Ian week with malaria 
 
 ; 1 1 19 slowly improving this w 
 
 1 quick recovery ia expected. 
 
 sseri.u,l,i 
 menmR.tisl| 
 eek Hi.| 
 
 ■■.. ..J 
 
 Clippings of Chills, Fevers and Cures. 
 
 mine. Well, I secured this extra 2 per cent — 
 what I was back in the store — and the $50 
 cash that we needed, and had to have with a 
 chattel mortgage on all our personal property 
 that was worth anything and not under cover 
 already. I had to pay $1 for that mortgage, 
 also, and will explain that fully when I come 
 to it. 
 
 September 22d, 1912. — Well, we had our amus- 
 ing experiences as well as our serious ones. 
 Fleas were quite bad at this time. Do most 
 anything you wanted to, you could not get 
 rid of them, and, knowing that extreme heat, 
 rightfully applied, would pacify them, I decided 
 
 Mr. McFarlin claims to be boss — 
 Barrelful of money, but won't come across. 
 Hard times on McFarlin farm — 
 Hard times, my boy. 
 
 Mr. INIcFarlin pays his hands in the fall 
 And some of his hands he don't pay at all. 
 It's "charge it" on McFarlin farm; 
 It's "charge it," my boy. 
 
 I\Irs. McFarlin- she wants a new dress. 
 
 She'll go to the counter and pick out the best. 
 
 And it's "charge it" on McFarlin farm; 
 
 It's "charge it," my boy. 
 
 25 
 
Well, if you want a pair of shoes, 
 
 It's go get an order from A. J. Matthews. 
 
 And it's "charge it," my boy; 
 
 It's "cliarse it, ' my l)oy. 
 
 O soupy! O soupy! without any lieaiis — 
 O meaty. O meaty! without any lean. 
 And it's "charge It" on McFarlin farm; 
 It's "charge it," my boy. 
 
 Well, Mr. McFarlin, he thought he was rich, 
 So he ran his old thresher off into the ditch, 
 And it's "charge it," my boy; 
 It's "charge it," my boy. 
 
 About everythin.^- among these "shear crop- 
 peis" is set to the above lines of expression 
 in the way of rhyme, and if you are here for 
 a while you will learn that there is more truth 
 than fiction in it. 
 
 October 10th. 1912. — It seems that our eldest 
 boy was not to get off with chills and malaria, 
 but must shed some of his poison via the 
 "lising ' loute. 
 
 October 20th, 1912.— So far. Mrs. Studabaker's 
 affection from the climate had been confined 
 to headaches and light fevers, but this day 
 she was taken with a regular chill, and her 
 constitution was so affected by it — her fever 
 going to 105 — that for an hour her circulation 
 was hardly noticeable. Such cases need heroic 
 
 DRRvAiARMISTEAD'S 
 
 : ■. ■ MF-^sk rvi O" .*J s: ■ ._^ 
 
 i^GUE TONIC 
 
 ■■■ ; -P-LEASANT TO' TAKE , 
 . :D WILU NOT .HARM THE- MOST DELICATE CHILD, 
 
 ^:- TOMIS tf? 
 
 THEDF0RD"5 
 
 BLACKrDRAUGHT 
 
 FOR THE LIVER 
 
 TASTELESS 
 
 CHILL TONIC 
 
 TASTELESS 
 
 HILL-TQT 
 
 H1LLT6SS 
 
 uri 
 
 MALARIA 
 
 Fence and Tree Decorations. 
 
 treatment and as quickly as we could she was 
 taken to Hotel Marshall in Sikeston, where, 
 under the careful treatment of Dr. T. V. Miller 
 and a trained nurse, Mrs. Carroll, after one 
 
 more chill the chills were checked, and in just 
 a week she was able to return home again. 
 
 Now we were more than thankful that we 
 were in a position to, and could do this, but 
 did you have a good crop on your farm and 
 were able to make money out of the land, you 
 would dislike to have to pay it out for outings 
 of that nature. Her week's treatment cost 
 about one himdred dollars. You can hardly 
 realize how pleased we all were that our days 
 ill this malarious climate were numl^ered, and 
 from this time till our public sale, Januar> 
 30th, 1913, I had Mrs. Studabaker stay in the 
 north all that I could. 
 
 November 18th, 1912. — Naturally, enterprising 
 medicine companies advertise their wares, and. 
 as this is the country where malaria and chills 
 exist to a greater or less extent, and general 
 stores, drug stoies and doctors have sale f(vr 
 anything that looks like it might be good for 
 the "shakes," it is not to be wondered at that 
 signs like in the picture that I hand you here- 
 with appear on the fences, buildings, trees, etc., 
 and that is not a beginning of the chill tonics 
 prepared and sold and. for your selection, 
 should you care to lay in a supply before going, 
 if you are interested in a drug store or have 
 a friend that is, I print you a list that are 
 manufactuied and sold, I am informed: 
 
 List of chill tonics that you might wish to 
 select from: 
 
 chill-t-tonic. 
 
 armistead's ague tonic. 
 
 aspinwall's fever and ague tonic. 
 
 crabbe's chill tonic. 
 
 ford's chill and fever tonic. 
 
 greer's chill tonic. 
 
 grangp:r's aromatic chill tonic. 
 
 grove's chill tonic. 
 
 hill city chill tonic. 
 
 howell's chill and fever tonic. 
 
 johnson's chill tonic. 
 
 kidds chill tonic. 
 
 knox's chill tonic. 
 
 leonard's tasteless chill and iron 
 
 TONIC. 
 
 LILLYBECK'S "TWO-BIT" CHILL TONIC. 
 
 LOXA BARK CHILL TONIC. 
 
 MENDENH ALL'S CHILL AND FEVER 
 T(~)NIC. 
 
 PLANTATION CHILL TONIC. 
 
 PLANTER'S TASTELESS CHILL TONIC. 
 
 PLATT'S CHILL TONIC. 
 
 DR. PYNES' CHILL AND FEVER TONIC.' 
 
 RED RIVER CHILL TONIC. 
 
 RICH'S TASTELESS CHILL TONIC. 
 
 SCHAAP'S LAXATIVE CHILL TONIC. 
 
 .^niONS TASTELESS CHILL TONIC. 
 
 SMITH'S CHILL AND FEVER TONIC. 
 
 SPAIiK'S TASTELESS CHILL AND FEVER 
 TONIC. 
 
 ST. JOSEPH'S CHILL TONIC. 
 
 l^CATAN TASTELESS CHILL TONIC. 
 
 UNCLE SAMS CHILL TONIC. 
 , VICK'S LACTATED CHILL TASTELES.S 
 TONIC. 
 
 WINTERSMITH'S CHILL TONIC. 
 
 WOOD'S CHILL TONIC. 
 
 REXALL CHILL BREAKER. 
 
 November 21st, 1912. — Our eldest boy and I 
 went pecan hunting in what is known as the 
 St. John's bayou country and camped in this 
 earthquake-torn-up country on the banks of 
 this bayou where the water was said to be 
 forty feet deep during the high waters of last 
 spring. 
 
 November 23d, 1912. — As I have been showing 
 you all along, this country is mostly inhabited 
 by the tenant class, and they have city folks 
 "beat a block" when it comes to moving around 
 Some of them stay a week in a place and 
 some a little longer, and, in fact, it seems to 
 you that the country is always on the move. 
 We saw The section wherein we lived changed 
 completely, other than ourselves, for we were 
 safely tied, you know, three times within the 
 near four years we lived there. 
 
 December 6th, 1912.— While in St. Louis with 
 some live stock. I met Mr. J. F. Cox of the 
 Hoosier Land & Investment Company, and in 
 talking over the progress of my settlement 
 with them on land that I sold to Mr. Lindley, 
 he told me if I would call at the office when I 
 
 26 
 
returned to S'ikeston that the boys would settle 
 up with ine In full, as they had the money to 
 do it with. Now, to make my point clear on 
 this, will have to tell you in regards to their 
 renting the farm to a Mr. Gable, which was, 
 or ought to have been, subject to my contraci 
 that I sold out under in which I stated I was to 
 have possession of the ground and buildings 
 where we lived, and the cornstalk land, until 
 February 15th, 1913, and it seems that Mr. Gable 
 was not made aware ot this fact; at least the\' 
 were trying to get me to give up possessioii 
 and board with Gable, and let him have the 
 larni. To maiie it real effective, Mr. White 
 told me that they would pay me my money 
 if 1 would consent to do this. Now imagine 
 the situaiion, if you can— this family moving 
 in with you in a home that had not proven 
 any too large for your own family, and all to 
 get a settlement that was due you anyhow. 
 1 told Mr. White I could wait, and when he 
 saw that his bluff would not work he told me 
 to come in the first of the week and they would 
 see if thej" could raise the money. I am onl\- 
 putting you wise, so to speak, for, should you 
 go down to this country to live, you will run 
 up against some of these people and, while the.v 
 might not treat you that way, yet you will be 
 posted as to the fact of the way they treated 
 me. 
 
 December 11th and 14th, 1912. — In the rec- 
 lamation of this "S'^VAMP■' country the great 
 thing is the ditches and their permanency, foi 
 these ditches have to be made and paid for, 
 and the land has to do this out of the crops. 
 
 Novv' this country is underlaid with a body 
 of sand of a very fine nature; in fact, it is su 
 washy that it is spoken of generally as "quick- 
 sand," and, whether that is right or wrong, 
 scientifically speaking, yet it does not have 
 much stability to it, especially when immersed 
 in watei', and when, in digging one of these 
 ditches through this sand, it is not long in 
 filling up [0 whatever depth you find the sand 
 under the top soil, so when I speak of not being 
 able to maintain a ditch deeper than to where 
 you strike this sand vein, you will understand 
 what is meant. Now I was here long enough 
 to see the harm done your land and crops by 
 impossibility of water to get off in time after 
 one of these very heavy rains — to see some of 
 these old ditches recleaned, etc. One I will 
 speak of in particular was just one mile to 
 the west of our home, 1 nown as Ash slough 
 or Second ditch, and in the summer of 1911 
 it was redug and made considerably wider and 
 to a. deptli of ten feet. Wanting to give facts 
 as to the filling up of this ditch, on the 11th 
 of December, 1912, I went to this ditch at a 
 point where the section line between Sections 
 12 and 13 crosses the same, and as there was 
 a small lateral ditch dug into Ash slough here, 
 I went a few rods up the ditch so as to not be 
 too close to the inflow of this lateral, and 
 here measured it as to depth and found it to 
 be forty-four inches to the water, and water 
 eighteen inches deep, or a total depth of five 
 feet and two inches, and this after it had been 
 dug only about one year and six months, and 
 the end of the filling up is not yet. for the 
 banks are still caving. Then I went to the 
 Bank ditch, which ran through my farm, and 
 measui-ed this as to depth and found it was 
 three feet to water, and water eight inches 
 deep, or a total depth of forty-four inches. 
 Measured it about five rods south of where 
 my north line crosses this ditch. Now. as to 
 my method of measuring, I. drove stakes in the 
 gi-ound at a natural level and from their tops 
 di-ew a string taut, and then measured from 
 the point on the stakes where it was tied to 
 the .ground, and then at the banks of the ditch 
 measured down from the strin.g to get the 
 original level of the ground, and then drew a 
 string taut across the ditch and from the level 
 of this string measured the depth. You see. 
 when >ou ride across one of these dredged 
 ditches, or along them, you look down at the 
 water and are apt to think and remark as to 
 how deep they are, never taking a thought to 
 look down on the other side of the dump as 
 to how far it is down to the ground. 
 
 Now I contend that they will never be able to 
 
 maintain a depth of drainage in this country 
 unless they find a way to keep this "quick 
 sand'' from undermining the banks of the ditch 
 and filling it up. In a conversation with Mr. 
 Murry, surveyor uf Scott County and head of 
 the Murry Construction Company of Sikeston, 
 he bears me out in this, and added further that 
 the onl>' way to do it successfully would be to 
 concrete the bottoms of them, which any good 
 thinking peison will see at a glance is im- 
 practicable, not to say impossible. 
 
 I had come to the conclusion, and I believe 
 jou will also, once you go to this country and 
 study the pioposition carefully, that the only 
 time that you will^et a crop in this country 
 is when it is an ordinary dry year. 
 
 December 17th, 1912. — Into Sikeston, and, 
 even if Mr. White could not get me to give 
 Mr. Gable a room in the house to live in and 
 allow him to bring over his chickens, they paid 
 me what was coming, as shown by note on 
 the land deal, and I immediately made settle- 
 ments where I had accounts, and in taking up 
 the note given Mr. Matthews, to protect store 
 account, and the extra 2 per cent interest he 
 charged me for allowing me to sell out as I did, 
 and here I want to elaborate a little on the 
 interest question. A part of this note was 
 given for extra interest on interest, and on 
 top of that I paid interest on it and also the 
 store account. At other times I did not have 
 to always pay interest on store account, but 
 this was the last chance, so it seemed to me. 
 
 December 30th, 1912. — Went down to New 
 Madrid to pay taxes and on the way went 
 west of Kewanee to take another picture of 
 the land that I took picture of this spring, 
 intending to show \ou how effectually a crop 
 of corn hid from view the stumps in a field. 
 but, sorry to say, the field I took picture of 
 
 A "Cleared" Field, 
 
 this spring, which is reproduced here, they were 
 not able to get in, as the back waters from 
 (he :Mississippi and the' local rains kept it 
 wet too long, e\en, if it was only a quarter of a 
 mile from a dredged ditch. 
 
 If you come to this country to buy land 
 when" the crop is on, don't be afraid to care- 
 fullj' go through the field and gain a veiy good 
 idea YOURSEDF as to how many stumps there 
 is in it, because these stumps take up room, 
 or they take time and money to get them out, 
 and you can very easily buy up a big job and 
 you are liable to regret it, once the crop is off 
 and you see how you were STl'NG! 
 
 On down the Frisco right of way, to a point 
 as thej' mark it, 182-10, where the picture of 
 the "RAPIDS" was taken last spring, and the 
 
 27 
 
effects of them are still here. Ballast all over 
 the land for quite a distance— gullys, etc., 
 washed out, and, in fact, numbers of acres 
 simply destroyed as far as farming is con- 
 cerned, without a large amount of worlc. 
 
 December 31st, 1912. — While Mrs. Studabaker 
 tho^ight she was to get out of Missouri without 
 any further malarial troubles, yet in this she 
 was disappointed, for she had another chill 
 this day, and it was more strychnine and 
 arsenic, because she could not take quinine. 
 
 January 1st, 1913. — I thought that I was going 
 to escape any of the other than ordinary ills 
 incident to a change of climate li!\e coming to 
 Missouri, but in this I was to be fooled, for at 
 this time I began getting boils — -"risings" — on 
 my neck, and say, I had some "risings" that 
 was "risings" within the next thirty days, but 
 I had to keep at it, for the public sale was to 
 come off the 30th and things had to be looked 
 after, and I sure kept at it, "risings" or no 
 "I'isings." 
 
 January 14th, 1913. — While in New Madrid a 
 short time before this date and copying our 
 trust deed from the records, I heard one of 
 the deputies remark that she had an awful 
 amount of work to do that had just come in, 
 and she said A. J. ]\Iatthews had just filed 
 fifty chattel mortgages, and this party said. 
 "Oh, that won't amount to much, as you will 
 only have to register them, as he only files his 
 mortgages." I inquired what was meant by 
 "only filing mortgages," and it was explained in 
 this way: When a mortgage is spread of record 
 it costs a dollar, but when a mortgage or copy 
 is filed it only costs ten cents. This was a new 
 one on me, and as I had been giving Mr. C. D. 
 Matthews several mortgages and paying $1.00 
 each for them, I was curious to know how he 
 cared for his mortgages, and I looked them up 
 and found that he filed his chattel mortgages 
 and that I had given him seven (7) at a total 
 cost to myself of $7.00 and a cost to himself for 
 filing of 70 cents. Of course I gave these mort- 
 gages to protect Mr. C. D. Matthews in selling 
 me goods on credit, and L merely recite these 
 matters to you, dear reader, that when you go 
 to Missouri to work for a season or niake a 
 crop and have to have credit you can be in a 
 position to know exactly what other people 
 make off of your needing and accepting their 
 assistance. 
 
 Jan. 30th, 1913. Public Sale Day. I was so 
 determined to get out of this country that in- 
 stead of renting farm when I sold land and 
 trusting to following the usual custom of this 
 country of "selling out rental proposition and 
 your farm implements and other personal prop- 
 eity," I decided to make a long storv short and 
 have a public sale, and so from generous ad- 
 vertising and a very good day as to weather 
 I had a fair crowd and things sold fairly well. 
 I v,-ould not advise anyone, however, to run 
 against the usual custom of a country, as you 
 are more than apt to lose out. 
 
 February ."ith, 1913. While mv sale ad read 
 that all goods were to be settled "for before being 
 moved, yet where people were supposed to be 
 as good as A. J. Matthews, or his sons, Dvman, 
 m particular, I did not enforce the rule, and bv 
 so doing I lost out to the extent of about $12. 
 I had sorted the corn that I had— it being 
 Johnson County White— of a very pure breed — 
 and in order that people might bid on it in 
 small quantities I made 14 piles of about 12 
 bushels each and so informed the auctioneer, 
 Mr. A. A. Ebert, of Sikeston, Mo., that he should 
 sell one pile with the privilege of taking as 
 many as they wanted, and that each pile was 
 supposed to contain about 12 bushels. Well I 
 was not present when he made the statement 
 to the people as to the amount of each pile, but 
 w-as there in time to hear Lyman Matthews bid 
 off one pile at $4.00, and when Mr. Ebert asked 
 him how many he wanted, said he would take 
 them all, which made this corn bring about 33 
 cents per bushel, which was less than the feed 
 corn, which was the inferior grades out of this 
 same corn, brought. Well. I could not object 
 to the bidding of it off, neither did I trv to, 'but 
 T ^'"2" ^''*^' "°* settle for it that dav. and when 
 I had the clerks. Messrs. Deane and Case, call 
 him up over the 'phone about it, he made all 
 
 kinds of apologies, so they said, and agreed to 
 I emit for it at once. Waited the next day for 
 check to come and it did not. so as I had busi- 
 ness in Sikeston the next day, I told Messrs. 
 1 )eane and Case that I would call at their office, 
 office of A. J. Matthews & Sons, and see Lyman 
 and settle with him there, and as that was on 
 my road to leave Missouri, I did go to Sikeston 
 the next day and to their offices and when 1 
 spoke of corn settlement, he told me that they 
 had taken the corn home and weighed it and it 
 fell short quite a number of busliels, and as Mr. 
 Ebert had guaranteed it to be 12 bushels to the 
 pile that was all they would settle for. Now 
 Mr. Ebert had not been authorized by me to 
 GUARANTEE amount, giving an amount of 12 
 bushels as an approximate amount for people 
 to figure from, telling how we had arrived at 
 that amount, , but here I was— ready to leave 
 the country — all settlements made but this one 
 — didn't know where Mr. Ebert was — corn had 
 been weighed by one of their tenants out in 
 the country, just how and where I did not know, 
 so I let it go and settled with them at the 
 reduced amount by which I lost at least $12 
 on A No. 1 seed corn that they had already 
 bought at the ridiculously low price of about 
 33 cents per bushel, and then as Mr. Lj'man 
 Matthews had said that the check was in the 
 mails I waited for Messrs. Deane and Case to 
 report it, so about 7 p. m. that evening they 
 came driving in from Matthews with ths letter 
 but no check, and had to insist on Messrs. 
 Matthews & Sons giving a check for it— the 
 reduced amount — so that I might not be delayed 
 in my getting away the next day, for the boys 
 trip in — trying to help me and getting a settle- 
 ment out of these people on this small matter I 
 paid them an extra $4. Didn't get much for 
 that seed corn,- did I? Now a word to the wise 
 is sufficient, and I trust, friend, you will profit 
 liy my experience. 
 
 February 7th, 1913. From Sikeston I went 
 direct to West Lebanon, Ind., and here met Mr. 
 Charles Amos, who said he was the party that 
 had bought land of Mr. Lindley that I used to 
 own, and I told him as I was on my way to 
 Chicago I thought I would come by and see 
 what kind of a talk he had had with the boys, 
 and' asked him if he received either directly or 
 indirectly any benefit from the fact that I gave 
 up to Mr. Lindley $150 rental on the land and 
 he said he had not. Then I told him that while 
 it was not in my contract, yet Mr. White and 
 T liad talked the deal over and he told me that 
 they did not wish to buy my farm unless they 
 could resell it and that they could not resell it 
 unless they could get $1.50 out of the rental for 
 this year and 1 would have tu pay the interest 
 until the 1st of January, 1913, on the back notes. 
 Well, Mr. Amos and I went to the bank where 
 he was cashier and he read over his contract 
 and told me that he did not receive the $150 
 rental, and he had to begin paying interest on 
 the deferred payments from October 1, 1912, so, 
 reader, you can see that in addition to many 
 other things there was at least a conflict of 
 statements on this matter, while in truth there 
 was two statements — separate contracts — and it 
 was all right for there to be, for I sold the land 
 to W^. P. Lindley, and Mr. Amos bought it of 
 Mr. Lindley, and in my contract they had me 
 paying interest on about $14,000 from October 
 1, 1912, to January 1, 1913, and at the rate of 
 6 per cent interest to Mr. C. D. Matthews, and 
 on top of this Mr. C. D. Matthews had me pay- 
 ing an extra 2 per cent for accommodation — 
 not enforcing the provisions of the trust deed 
 — and on the other hand Mr. Lindley had Mr. 
 Amos paying 6 per cent on I suppose a like 
 amount, from October 1, 1912, to January 1. 
 1913, and also that $150 rental on farm was lost 
 somewhere. Now I did not want to create a 
 feeling with Mr. Amos that he had been 
 skinned, but I could see that he was leaning 
 that way, and in our talk I asked him what they 
 bad done with the elevator they had traded 
 for and he told me they had resold it and he did 
 not know just exactly what they had received 
 for it, out it was either $5,000 or more. Now I 
 had asked Dr. Dunaway what they received for 
 elevator and he said $4,000 and then I asked 
 Mr. White and he told me a little more than 
 
 28 
 
$5,000, so there are two people that mention 
 the amount of $5,000 and we will figure up com- 
 missions from that amount. The farm was to 
 be put in at $125 per acre, and there being 215.04 
 acres, we have a totai amount for farm of $26,- 
 880, then the elevator was to be put in at $10,- 
 000, which would leave the farm at a cost of 
 $16,880. Now I received $18,275 for the farm, 
 and the difference between $18,275 and $16,880 is 
 $1,395. Take this amount from what the ele- 
 vator was sold for and you have approximately 
 what the Hoosier Land and Investment Com- 
 pany received for their work in buying me out 
 and getting Mr. Charles Amos of West Lebanon 
 Interested in "Swamp-East" Mo. farm lands. Of 
 course you will have to add the little perquisi- 
 tes that they gathered up along the way, such 
 as the $150 EXTRA rental on lands— that 
 doubling up of interest on the deferred pay- 
 ments that somebody paid, and just to get a 
 clearer idea of the amount will set it out in 
 figures, which, as I said above, are approxi- 
 mately correct. 
 
 Taking it that the elevator was sold for $5,- 
 000, we will take the differences between what 
 Mr. Lindley paid me for the farm ($18,275) and 
 what he sold it to Mr. Amos for in the trade 
 ($16,880), which is $1,395, leaves them a margin 
 
 of $3,605.00 
 
 Add to this my EXTRA land rental 150.00 
 
 Add to this that interest for 3 months 
 
 on $14,000 at 6 per cent 210.00 
 
 in all that time it has not paid anything like a 
 profit. 
 
 Now, friend, the most striking lesson to be 
 learned from my booklet is right here, and as I 
 told Mr. Amos had he come down to Missouri 
 and investigated the farming land proposition 
 DIRECT, even had he stayed around there a 
 season or worked for somebody he could not 
 have made greater money, for as I showed him 
 if he would have paid me $1,395 more for my 
 farm than I received he could not only have 
 had my farm but retained the elevator himself 
 as well, as it is he has a farm at $40 more per 
 acre than I asked for it and the real estate 
 agent business has been wonderfully encour- 
 aged. 
 
 That there are numerous real estate agents in 
 southeast, or more familiarly known as "swamp- 
 east" Missouri, is not to be wondered at. I 
 see in the Sikeston Directory that there are 17. 
 that is in Sikeston alone, and you know where 
 they live, in the best of homes — have automo- 
 biles, etc., that some one has to pay the freight. 
 I herewith reproduce a picture of the fine home 
 of James Smith, Sr., said to have cost $20,000 
 or more, and also a picture of the automobiles 
 of the Hoosier Land and Investment Company. 
 The upkeep of things of this nature is immense, 
 as no doubt you can imagine if you do not 
 know, and it is necessary to be turning this 
 swamp land over pretty often to provide the 
 revenue, so if you are contemplating going down 
 
 This IS a Very Fine Home. 
 
 Now there was some commission that 
 they tried, that is, Mr. Amos said Dr. 
 Dunaway tried to collect off him for 
 sale of elevator, but which he did not 
 pay. 
 
 A total commission of $3,965.00 
 
 Very near $4,000, is it not? Well, of course 
 they had some expense in this matter, but you 
 can figure that at whatever you wish to. 
 
 Now I trust I have made this clear to you. 
 friend, as I have been telling vou all along I 
 would show you how there was LARGER FISH 
 in the DITCH than I was. Now to recapitulate 
 and show how this poor old piece of swamp land 
 is Commission ridden, will add to the above the 
 $1,075 that I contracted to and had to pav and 
 you will have a grand total of $5,040 that has 
 been saddled upon it in less than 4 years, and 
 
 here for either an investment or a home, better 
 go down awhile first and study the situation 
 and see whether or not you wish to contribute 
 to the above needed revenue. You might want 
 a little for yourself, and I have tried my best to 
 call your attention to a way fof you to reserve 
 it unto yourself. 
 
 Now I expect there will be affidavits taken 
 of people to show you that I have misrepre- 
 sented things and all that kind of work, but 
 will say to you, find out the party that made 
 the affidavit, study his interests in this country, 
 and what you would do under the circum- 
 stances. I will say to you truthfully that I 
 was so anxious to get out that I would have 
 almost made an afl^davit that black was white 
 had I been asked to. 
 
 Now, in ending up this little booklet let me 
 lead you along a short review of my rubbing 
 
 29 
 
up against these several parties and what "it 
 cost me both in leal money and worry and I 
 do not much wonder that men go to pieces 
 like "Whistling" Tom Me\ers and end it all. 
 
 The first I met up with was the Smith Bros. 
 & Co. Land Co. and this was at a time when^ 
 they had associated with them the first four 
 m.embers of the Hoosier Land and Investment 
 Co. They sold me a farm of 21.5.04 acres of 
 land at .^7.5 per acre and afterwards when :t 
 develops that I could not pay out they tell me 
 that I should not have ovei'bought myself, and 
 thinking they will nossitaly tell you the same, 
 will say that at the time I purchased this farm 
 my brother-in-law, Mr. H. D. Cook, was living 
 and as he was worth some $.50,000 and had fur- 
 nished me the money to make my first payment 
 and had assured me he would see me through 
 on the deal, I expect you would have been like 
 me and went ahead. The real tiouble came 
 when he was killed and it was a case of close 
 up the proposition. The Smith Bros. & Co. 
 Land Co. carried my land note for $500 that 
 was given them as a part of the commission, 
 and in addition to this furnished me with $500 
 
 anywhere from $2,150 to $4,300, had they moved 
 the property. 
 
 Mr. C. D. Matthews, who furnished the land 
 for the deal with me as I have previously shown 
 .\ou, had a tract of land where I bought the 
 first out of, of near 1,100 acres that he, had not 
 been able to get the land companies to sell, 
 and my purchase and efforts to sell more of it 
 caused it all to be soon closed out, and from 
 a proposition of getting about .?3.50 per acre 
 lental GROSS on whatever the renter would 
 get in, to a sure return of $4.50 per acre NET 
 on whatever acreage was sold and whatever 
 improvements were made on the property, also 
 the profit he made off my trade, off of what- 
 ever accommodations he would show me in his 
 bank, off of whatever grain I raised on the 
 farm that I always sold to the Milling Com- 
 pany that he was the heaviest stockholder in, 
 and in return for all this, or rather I should 
 say on top of all this change of investment 
 to the profit side of the ledger, because I had 
 to have accommodations, he charged me $1.00 
 per chattel mortgage, when he filed them for 10 
 cents, compelled me to pay him an extia 2 
 
 The Upkeep is What Hurts. 
 
 more on A No. 1 security to take up a mule 
 note, and I was fast getting into their hands, 
 for these accommodations I gave them options 
 on my land for all they could get over $85 net 
 to us, trusting that they would make the prop- 
 erty move. Crops were poor. I was not mak- 
 ing hardly the interest and taxes off the land, 
 to say nothing about the payments. They 
 claimed to be at the outs with the Hoosier 
 Land and Investment Company and with A. J. 
 Matthews, but they could sell land for them, 
 but while they had unlimited sway with my 
 property yet they could not sell me" out. They 
 were asking all kinds of prices for the farm, 
 while Mr. C. D. Matthews, who held the trust 
 deed, was offering it at $80, and Mr. A. ,T. 
 Matthews was out and offered me $80, so I 
 did not know for a truth where it was going 
 to end. The Smith Company offered to stand 
 between me and the Matthews people, but what 
 was the use; they did not move the property 
 now in most two years and at the rate it was 
 eating itself up, soon there would be nothing 
 to sell and I was reallv getting desperate. I 
 would not object to, did not object to. a com- 
 mission of any amount most, but wanted out. 
 and no one was happier than I when I did get 
 out. They received their money, advanced with 
 full interest, and the opportunity of making 
 
 per cent on whatever amounts I could, not meet 
 when due, which amounted to about $112.00, 
 so that he would not enforce the conditions of 
 the DEED OF TRUST. 
 
 The Hoosier Land ^nd Investment Company 
 at the time of their organization was composed 
 of Wm. A. White, W. P. Lindley, E. .J. Keith, 
 .1. F. Cox and interests were afterward sold to 
 Dr. Dunaway of West Lebanon, Ind., and .7. W. 
 Black of Indiana, and my dealings with the 
 firm began when they were yet interested with 
 the Smith Bros. & Co. Land Company, in fact 
 Mr. Cox showed us the farm that we afterward 
 purchased and Mr. White diew up the con- 
 tracts. Then when they withdrew from the 
 parent company, and at a time when I was not 
 tied up with the Smiths they had my land for 
 sale, but at that time they could not, or at 
 least did not, sell it, although they sold several 
 pieces of land in my neighborhood. When they 
 knew I was SAFELY tied up with the Smith 
 Land Co. they wei-e talking to me a number of 
 times about what they could do for me if I was 
 only loose. That the Smiths were only using 
 my farm to show and convince people what 
 other lands would look like once they were put 
 up in shape like ouis, etc., and finally I did 
 get a clause inserted in my contract with the 
 Smiths that I had the right to sell land myself, 
 
 30 
 
and then Mr. Lindley of the Hoosiers bought 
 the farm of me as I have shown you in the last 
 few pages. ^ . ^ _,. 
 
 I have shown you that my trip to Missouri 
 was a verv expensive one to me and in my 
 tabulated receipt and expenditure account that 
 follows YOU will notice amounts of my store 
 account with the Farmers' Supply Co. of 
 Sikeston, and without a doubt it will be told 
 to vou that we were a veiy extravagant farn- 
 ily.' If vou care to and will look tliat part of it 
 up I would be pleased to have you call on the 
 Farmers' S'upplv Company and look over the 
 Itemized statement of our account that they 
 kept, and if you find extravagant purchases 
 there write me about them. 
 
 Summing it all up. friend, remember what I 
 have told you, should you go down to this coun- 
 try and it' looks 'good to you don't fall in. Ar- 
 range your affairs so that you can either go 
 down there and farm for a season on a rental 
 proposition or work for somebody a year, and 
 I speak from experience when I say I know 
 that vou will pioflt greatly by it. 
 
 The matters that I have set out in this book 
 are all true. Just as they happened to me, and 
 the parties that I have spoken of lived at the 
 places that I speak of at the time I went 
 through this experience with them. Go down 
 there if you wish to. Don't let my experience 
 keep you from it, BUT PROFIT BY IT. 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 To you, Mr. Banker, trusted man of your 
 community, to whom I have mailed this little 
 booklet, full of safeguards for j'our friends, I 
 trust vou will be interested enough to read it 
 and see to it that It gets to the parties that 
 can and WILL profit by it when they read it 
 and have the opportunity to PROFIT by it. 
 You know and I know that a spirit of unrest is 
 always present in some of the people of each 
 community, and it is only natural that they 
 go to the country .that is represented to them 
 to be one flowing with milk and honey, and to 
 call their attention before it is tOo late. Give 
 that railroad sign a chance to act — STOP- 
 LOOK— LISTEN— and you will not regret it. 
 
 I have prepared this book with a purpose in 
 view of trying to save other enthusiastic people 
 from falling into the same trap that I did, and 
 as you will see from my financial statement 
 filed herewith what it cost me to go down to 
 tliis country for near four years, both in finance 
 and my children's school life, and while I am 
 anxious and willing to do this service, still 
 I must ask you to help a little, and that is remit 
 me 25 cents each for all numbers of this booklet 
 you can use. Should you not desire to hand 
 the booklets out to your friends that are con- 
 templating moving to a new country and would 
 like for them to have a copy, mail me a list of 
 addresses that you wish them sent to and a 
 remittance of 25 cents each to cover the same 
 and I will take pleasure in mailing them the 
 booklets. As to my responsibility and honesty 
 I would refer you to any of the bankers of my 
 former home town, Bluffton, Ind. These book- 
 lets will only cost you a quarter apiece and it 
 might be the cause of saving some of your 
 friends. Well, figure up what I would have 
 saved had I not gone to Missouri, and besides, 
 it would impress upon them the advisability of 
 staying where they know the people and who 
 they are dealing with. I think I have made it 
 clear enough in the foregoing pages that there 
 are people in "Old Swamp-East" Missouri that 
 are on the make, and are not particular who 
 they make it off of. 
 
 Please do not throw this in the waste basket, 
 as it is a product of my lost efforts in this 
 malarious country. Give it to some one thaT 
 can profit by it. and if they do not heed they 
 will have opportunity to compare accounts 
 some time in the future. 
 
 FINANCIAL EXHIBIT. 
 1909. 
 
 Received from sale of corn $1,825.00 
 
 Received from rent of land 525.00 
 
 Paid for corn $1,227.00 
 
 Paid taxes 159.00 
 
 Interest on Investment to .lan. 
 
 1, 1010 ^S.-.S! 
 
 Living expenses from .Iniie :;i) 
 
 to .Ian. I, lino, moving, etc, 
 
 about b 0. 
 
 S'eed wheat • 100.00 
 
 Help taking off corn crop and 
 
 putting out wheat, about... 300.00 
 
 $2,869.84 $2,350.00 
 
 Short for year lliOO 519.81 
 
 1910. 
 
 From sal'i of wheat $ - if .1- 
 
 Froni sale of corn , „ ,r.i 
 
 From sale of hogs -,,, „■ -■''•-■- 
 
 Short for year 1909 $ ol9.b4 
 
 Interest on investment to Jan. 
 
 1, 1911 ^ti^-IS 
 
 Taxes 164.44 
 
 Loss by death of animals :?c'?a 
 
 Store account i46.10 
 
 Extra help and threshing ac- ... 
 
 count 12/. 14 
 
 $2,805.20 $1,807.82 
 Short for year 1910 997.38 
 
 From sale of wheat H'-!j?.'nn 
 
 From sale of corn 'i--"ftA 
 
 From sale of pea hay lou.wu 
 
 Short for year 1910 $ 997.38 
 
 Interest on investment till Jan. 
 
 1 iqi') 967.68 
 
 Taxes ...'.'.' 206.00 
 
 Extra heip clearing land ■^^?-^9 
 
 Store account ^ni'A , 
 
 Store account 91. b4 
 
 Extra help and expense of 
 
 threshing 141.82 
 
 Extra help in taking off corn 
 
 crop and shelling llo.dl 
 
 $3,514.53 $2,959.00 
 
 Short year 1910 445.53 
 
 1912. 
 
 From sale of wheat $ ??n'nA 
 
 From sale of cow peas 14U.U0 
 
 Short for year 1911 $ 445.53 
 
 Interest on investment to Jan. 
 
 1, 1913 96(.6S 
 
 Taxes 190.36 
 
 Hulling oeas and baling pea 
 hay, also threshing wheat 
 and extra help 258. 6a 
 
 Farmers' Supply Co. (store ac- 
 count), not in following 
 note 265.80 
 
 Farmers' Supply Co. note, 
 which includes about $200 
 worth of farm machinery 400.00 
 
 $2,525.02 $ 975.00 
 Short at time of farm sale 
 and sale of personal 
 
 property l.boO.f): 
 
 1912, . 
 
 Received from sale of farm— 
 original investment ^..^.uuu.uu 
 
 Received from sale of farm— oi-aaa 
 
 increase in valuation 2,luU.ou 
 
 Received from sale of personal „ n1,^ n« 
 
 property 2,ol0.00 
 
 Short at time of farm sale and 
 personal property $l,5u0.02 
 
 Paid commission note of $500 
 and interest $101.95 to C. M. 
 Smith Bros. & Co. Land Co.. 601. 9o 
 
 Paid to C. M. Smith Bros. & 
 Co. Land Co. for money ad- 
 vanced to take up mule note 525.77 
 
 Note of C. D. Matthews cov- 
 ering store account and part 
 of the extra 2% interest 
 charged 1)17.00 
 
 Mrs. Studabaker's malarial 
 
 sickness 87.40 
 
 Baling and threshing pea hay. 110.00 
 
 Horse note and interest to C. 
 
 D. Matthews 339.00 
 
 Farmers' Supply Co., store ac- 
 count 73.68 
 
 B. Moser, for cash loaned and 
 
 interest 124.00 
 
 31 
 
MAY 3 1913 
 
 W. M. Busby, store account, 
 
 about 30.00 
 
 Remitted Studabaker Bank on 
 original loan 700.00 
 
 B. Moser, peas 65.00 
 
 llepairs for machinery, wag- 
 ons, blacksmith bill and 
 sond.^^ of Farmers' Supply Co. 
 in Novomlier 7S.00 
 
 -Xdvciti.siiig .sale and expense 
 
 of posting, etc 30.00 
 
 Auctioneer 25.00 
 
 Remitted Studabaker Bank on 
 original loan 1,500.00 
 
 Clerks at sale 19.00 
 
 Expense loading car, freight, 
 etc 82.50 
 
 Farmers' Supply Co. for ac- 
 count in December 67. SS 
 
 Cash spent as shown by in- 
 dividual cash account from 
 Sept. 1, 1912. to Feb. 1, 1913, 
 and not included in above.... 433.98 
 
 $6,960.18 $6,460.00 
 
 S'hort at closing of account. 500. IS 
 
 No doubt the reader will have noticed that 
 the revenues I have accounted for were de- 
 rived from either the products of the farm or 
 the sale of the farm and personal property, and 
 according to the above I come out $500.18 in 
 debt. Now to this I must add a difference of 
 what my original investment was — $2,800 — an<l 
 what I paid- on it — $i',200 — an amount of $600, 
 making a total of approximately $1,100.00. These 
 extra amounts being- secured from friends in 
 Bluffton. I also used some $500 derived from 
 the sale of my hotel stock to carry the invest- 
 ment along which I have not included In the 
 above. 
 
 Take it all in all I am right at $2,000 behind 
 on the deal, so I trust, friend, you will be very 
 careful in taking up a farming proposition in 
 "Swamp-Easf Missouri and follow my advice 
 to either try a rental proposition for a year or 
 work for somebody else a season. 
 
 With every best wish that your experience 
 may be the direct opposite of mine, I remain, 
 Respectfullv vours. 
 
 HUGH D. STUDABAKER. 
 
 LIBRftRY OF CONGRESS 
 
 014 572 844 
 
 32