Autobiography of William Ambrose Pickens

Autobiography of William Ambrose Pickens

Memoirs of happenings or incidents of my life. The idea is to note down the things remembered. I will divide it into chapters each covering a period of approximately five years.

Dated September 2, 1941

Chapter One

1854-1859

I William Ambrose Pickens, was born March 12, 1854, in Washington County, Iowa, about halfway between Washington and Brighton. My parents had recently arrived in Iowa, they came from New York. I was the second child of Daniel Pickens and Janette Eddy, my father and mother. Mary Jane Pickens, my oldest sister, was born in New York January 1, 1850, and of course, came with my parents to Iowa. My other sister Ida Ann Pickens, and brother Wheeler Bernard Pickens, were born in eastern Iowa – Ida in Nov, 1857, and Wheeler in 1861, a few months after the beginning of the Civil War. I well remember the event of the beginning of the Civil War, when the news came that FortSumpter was fired on. My father called me to him and asked me if I wanted to go to war with him, because he was going to go.

The first five years of my life were spent either in or near Brighton. My father had a sawmill on Skink River, about six or seven miles south and east of Brighton, and also a home in the outskirts of the town, with a ten-acre patch; we lived on it in the summer, and in winter we lived at the mill.

It was at the mill that an incident, one of my earliest memories, occurred. The mill, a two story structure with the saws on the second floor, made it necessary for the logs to be drawn up an inclined track from the log yard to the saw room. This was done by little cars, attached to a cable. The lumber was sent out of the mill on another track on little cars and piled up in drying yard. On the car track we could walk right into the upper story of the mill.

Father had cautioned mother not to let me go to the mill at all when the mill was running, but I managed to elude my mother, get on this lumber track, and go down to the mill. The ground from the house to the mill fell away about one story, so that the lumber track ran on a lever into the upper story. This day just as they were about to quit work I had gotten onto this lumber track and walked into the upper story or saw room. The men had just shut down, and went up to the house through the log yard, and did not see me come into the mill on the lumber track.

There was an open stairway extending to the lower room. I happened to stub my toe and pitched down this stairway head first, and struck the shingle block, which was shingle length of log, and struck it head first.

Well, when father got to the house he asked mother where I was, and she said I was out on the lumber track just a few minutes ago. He started to look for me and found me leaning up against the pitman well covered with blood. If the mill had been running, the pitman would have killed me, the pitman was a long wooden bar attached to the rim of an iron wheel about four feet in diameter, and reached up to the saw on the second floor.

I was unconscious and did not come to, they said until about two A.M. and this happened just after closing the mill for noon hour and diner. My father dressed the wound, and sewed up the gash. Now I don’t know for certain how old I was, but was somewhere in this five year period.

There were at least two other incidents that happened during this five-year period. The first stands out in my memory perhaps the brightest, happened at my grandmother’s who lived on an adjoining farm to my father’s place.

My two cousins, one John Sanders, my Aunt Luthera Schafer’s son, mother’s sister, and Llewellyn Pickens, Uncle Orange’s son, and I were at my grandmother’s one day. She had an old hen with a bunch of young chickens. The hen was in a coop inside the chicken park, and one of us cousins managed to get inside the park, and proceeded to catch the little chicks one by one and hand them out to the other two, who would pinch them out to the other two, who would pinch them by the neck until they would lie still, when we were discovered, and I remember my mother was for giving all of us a good whipping, but grandmother took our part, so we escaped the whipping.

The other incident was of nearly cutting the foot off my dog. My father had gotten me a dog to play with, and we named him Ring. It must have been in the Winter, or in cold weather, for we were on the floor close to the stove, with Ring lying close by. I was hacking on some stove wood with my hatchet, and accidentally hit my dog’s foot, and nearly cut it off. Mother was so horrified and shocked about it that I began to bawl and had quite a good cry about it. The dog was getting old and lazy, and was lying by the stove.

My father got him for me when I was a baby. He said they would not have been afraid to put me in a basket, set it in the street, and tell Ring to watch me, for he would not let anything come near me. They had so much confidence in the dog that they would not be uneasy about me.

There is not many things in my first five years that I remember, but the incidents noted above I do remember quite well, and I want to say further, this five years we lived either in Brighton or near there.

The sawmill where we lived part of the time was located about seven miles south east of Brighton on Skunk River bottom on land I believe belonged to my Uncle Shafer, but father owned the sawmill and the dwelling house where we spent a portion of the year for the first five years of my life.

My uncle, Herbert Pickens, my fathers youngest brother, lived with us until the Civil War began. He went into the war soon after my father did, and after the war ended enrolled in the regular army. I also had another uncle in the Civil War, my father’s brother, Orange Pickens. He enlisted the first year of the war, and was home, discharged for disability. He was wounded in the battle at Fort DonelsonTennessee.

My mother only had two brothers; one was too old for military service, and the other was away from home on an ocean voyage, and was gone for several years. He was gone so long and changed so much that grandmother did not know him when he returned. He came home and asked his mother for temporary lodging. She told him to go to the tavern.

There will be more about my mother’s family in the next chapter, which will cover the greater portion of the war period, or from 1859 – 1864.

Chapter Two

1859 – 1864

At this time we were still living or near Brighton, my father operating the mill a part of each year, and continued to do so until August, 1862, when he enlisted in the Civil War. He left the mill in his partner’s possession; he turned everything into money that he could, and skipped out. Father had to pay some bills that he made after he had gone into the war, the court considered them as partnership bills, I well remember one bill my father had to ay after we got to Sidney. I think it was something over two hundred dollars.

It was around the spring of 1860 that I started to school. It was while we were living at the mill. The schoolhouse was built of logs, and the seats for the scholars were slabs with holes bored in them to attach the legs. The school house was on a corner of Uncle Schafer’s farm. I just went there that spring, when we moved back to Brighton.

I went to school then remember they were building a brick schoolhouse. A four room house, where I went to school – from 1861 to the spring of 1866 – until we left Brighton to go west.

I well remember one boy in our room was a bully with boys smaller than he, or with anyone with whom he could get away with it. He had me scared stiff half of the time. Just a while before school would be out, if he could attract my attention, he would double up his fist, and go through the motions of knocking me our. Many a day when school was out I would run al the way home; he had me so intimidated that I couldn’t half study. Whenever he would see me looking his way he would double up his fist, and go through the motions of punching me. As long as we were in the same room, he had me completely cowed. I never told the teacher about it; if I had, the teacher probably could nave done something about it. But the boy would have beaten me half to death, so I was afraid to tell the teacher.

One thing about the teaching they would sing songs quite a lot. They would start: “state of Maine, Augusta on the KenebeckRiver, state of Vermont, Montpelier on the OnionRiver, and so on, until they got all the states in the union. And they would do this every day. I knew all the states and capitals before I could read very well, just by hearing them sung – better than I know them now.

I well remember when my father went away to war. His company was made up in and around Brighton: left Brighton in August, 1862, and went to Washington, the county seat about twelve miles away. They went in wagon, I remember.

There was considerable excitement in Brighton. There were lots of women crying. My father was home once on a furlough, and was home discharged in the spring of 1864. He was wounded in November on Missionary Ridge, he thought about midforenoon. The first wound was about four inches below the knee of the left leg; both bones were shattered. He lay for sometime between the two battlelines; as he lay there he received the second wound, which was in the right leg, just back from the knee cap. It nearly severed both cords.

While he lay there on the battlefield, a straggler came along who had gotten lost from his command. He was bareheaded, and had lost his hat, but he seemed unconcerned, as he was whistling and singing. Father flashed the Odd fellow distress sigh; it happened that the man was an Odd fellow. He stopped and said to my father, “Buddie, you seem to be in a bad position. I’ll see what I can do to better it.” He was, my father said, a bit Pennsylvania Dutchman. He took my father up carefully, and carried him quite a way back of the Union lines, laid him in a little swale, or furrow, piled up rocks along the side that most of the bullets were coming from, and went to try to find his command.

Father lay there until about midnight, when he was picked up by an ambulance crew. He was taken to a large old plantation house where they laid him on the porch with a lot of other wounded. It was about midnight when he was picked up about two hours before anything was done for his wounds. About two a.m. they got him on the operating table, a big kitchen table, and dressed his wounds, making him as comfortable as possible. It was late in the day before he had any further attention.

The doctors wanted to amputate his left leg, and father objected. They neglected him because of his objections until his wound finally became infected. Then father gave up to let them amputate. They got him on the operating table and began to administer an anesthetic, when father balked, as he knew his heart would not stand it. They argued, but father would not stand it. They argued, but father would not give up, so they put him back to bed. When he saw the condition, and wouldn’t do any more about him until my father’s colonel came to see him. When he saw the condition of the matter, he raised cain with the surgeon, telling him to give father the attention he should have, or he would be reported. From that time on he had better care, but it was not until the next spring that he was able to leave the hospital and go home, about six months after he had been wounded.

After he came home, I watched him dress his wounds. He had a probing needle with eyes like a darning needle. He would thread a soft strip of cloth in the needle, and draw it through his leg to clean the wound. I remember I could hardly bare to see him do it.

It was in the spring of 1863 that my mother’s folks went to Oregon. Grandfather and Grandmother Eddy, Aunt Diana Kaufman and her husband, Aunt Zippy Custer, and her husband, Tom Custer, and Aunt Ruby, who was single at that time. Aunt Luthera Shafer and my mother stayed in Iowa, that is Aunt Luthera Shafer did, and my mother went to Minnesota. All my mother’s brothers-in-law were southern sympathizers, and that was the reason Uncle Kaufman and Uncle Jake Shafer, Aunt Luther’s husband was, I think, past age for military service. At any rate, he stayed in eastern Iowa. Mr. Shafer was quite wealthy and he wanted father to leave me with him. He insisted, begged, and made promises, but no go – father would not let me stay with him.

My grandfather Eddy’s family consisted of he and grandmother, two boys, and six girls Israel, Wilber, Luthera, Janette, Diana, Zilphy, Martha, and Ruby. Martha died when quite young, about seventeen or eighteen years old. I was so young that I can’t remember her at all.

When they went to Oregon they drove oxen to their covered wagons. I think they were about three months on the road. After they crossed the Missouri River, nearly every letter my mother got from grandmother, she would say she expected that might be her last on earth, as the Indians had followed them all day. They could see them on either side a following them, but they got safely to Oregon, and lived there a good many years before grandfather and grandmother died.

My grandmother was a night walker, that is a somnambulist, or sleep walker. One night in Iowa she got up in her sleep and hid quite a sum of money that for some property he had sold, and my recollection is that they never found it. They watched her other times, thinking she would go to where she had hidden it, but she never did.

I never heard directly from my grandfather or grandmother. I was only nine years old when they started in the spring of 1863. I believe my mother got letters from grandmother, at least for awhile. It was the next spring that father came home from war, discharged because of disability from wounds.

Chapter Three

1864-1869

We still lived at Brighton in WashingtonCounty till the spring of 1866. My father was convalescing from his wounds, and settling up his affairs preparatory to emigrating to the west part of Iowa, or to Sidney, Iowa. I spoke in the first chapter about my father’s partner disposing of everything he could that they held in partnership and abscounded while father was in the war. But after father came home he sold out what he had left, and paid a lot of bills.

With what was left he bought a span of mules and a span of stallion horses, and loaded his division of the household goods in a covered wagon, and headed for the west. Father drove the four horse team, and I drove a nice big bay mare to a light spring wagon. We were two weeks coming from Brighton, Iowa to Sidney, Iowa. We all slept in the covered wagon.

We all went to Uncle Shafer’s stayed there overnight, and started from there the next day. My mother and Mary Jane, my oldest sister, went in one wagon, and started for Minnesota, and father, and I and my sister Ida, and brother Wheeler started for the west. I was twelve years old, Ida was in her ninth year, and wheeler was in his fifth year.

These last two years before we moved to Sidney I went to school in Brighton and in a new brick school house that had just been built; it was a two story four room school building. My father the most of this time went around on crutches – I mean the two years before we started for the west after he had been discharged from the army.

Father drove the four horse team or span of mules which were Wheelers, and span of stallion horses in the lead. The team attracted a lot of attention in every town that we passed through. The stallions were half brothers, and looked very much alike. I remember in every town we came to, a crowd would gather round that team and begin to ask questions, and it was that way all the way till we got to Sidney.

After we crossed the Des Moines River at Ottumwa, the country was not settled so thick. Many of the streams had to be forded: no bridges. There were no railroads west of the Des Moines River. The two weeks that it took for us to go from Brighton to Sidney was in the fore part of May 1866 just a few days after the middle of the month.