Orville Southerland Cox, Pioneer of 1847
Date: 2015-10-27T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Cox; Orville Southerland; 1814-1888; Pioneers -- Utah -- Manti -- Biography; Latter Day Saint pioneers -- Utah -- Manti -- Biography; Manti (Utah) -- Biography

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Title: Orville Southerland Cox, Pioneer of 1847

Author: Adelia B. Cox Sidwell

Release date: October 27, 2015 [eBook #50322]
Most recently updated: October 22, 2024

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Margaret Willden, Mormon Texts Project Intern
(http://mormontextsproject.org)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ORVILLE SOUTHERLAND COX, PIONEER OF 1847 ***

Biographical Sketch of Orville Southerland Cox, Pioneer of 1847

The Pioneer Spirit

The Pioneer Spirit that mastered things
And Broke the virgin sod,
That conquered savages and kings,
And only bowed to God.
The Strength of mind and strength of soul—
The will to do or die,
That sets its heart upon a goal,
And made it far or high—

—Clarence Hawkes

Orville Southerland Cox

Biographical sketch of Orville Southerland Cox, Pioneer of 1847, partly from a sketch written by Adelia B. Cox Sidwell for the "Daughters of the Pioneers", Manti, Utah, 1913.

Orville S. Cox, was born in Plymouth, N.Y. November 25, 1814. He was one of a family of 12 children, ten of whom reached maturity. His father died when he was about fifteen years old. And he was then "bound out"; apprenticed to learn the trade of a blacksmith under a deacon Jones, who was considered an excellent man as he was a pillar of the church. The agreement was that he was to work obediently until twenty one and that Jones as to give him board and clothes, three months of school each winter, and teach him the trade of blacksmithing. No schooling was given or allowed, and one pair of jeans pants was all the clothing he received during the first three years of his apprenticeship, and his food was rather limited too. The women folks ran a dairy, but the boy was never allowed a drink of milk, of which he was very fond because the Mrs. said "it made too big a hole in the cheese." He was indeed a poor little bondsman, receiving plenty of abusive treatment. As to teaching him the trade, he was kept blowing the bellows and using the tongs and heavy sledge. But the deacon sometimes went to distant places and then the boy secretly used the tools and practiced doing the things his keen eyes had watched his master do. During some of these hours of freedom, he made himself a pair of skates from pieces of broken nails he gathered carefully and saved.

Also, he straightened a discarded gun barrel and made a hammer, trigger, sights, etc, to it, so that he had an effective weapon. These things he had to keep hidden from the eyes of his master and associates, but secretly he had great joy in his possessions and once in a while found a little time to use them.

Occasionally the monotony at the bellows and with the tongs and sledge—was broken in other ways;—for example—at one time oxen were brought to the shop to be shod that had extremely hard hoofs, called "glassy hoofs". Whenever Deacon undertook to drive a nail in, it bent. Cox straightened nails over and over, as nails were precious articles in those days and must not be discarded because they were bent. After a while, the boy said "let me". And he shod the oxen without a bending a single nail; And thereafter Cox shod the oxen, one and all that came to the shop.

One other pleasant duty was his: that of burning charcoal, as coal was then undiscovered. He learned much of the trade of the woodman while attending to the pits in the depth of the might New York Forests, as well as having an opportunity to use his skates and gun a little.

He acquired the cognoman of "Deek" among his associates, and when he had worked for something over three years, he came to the conclusion that was all he ever would acquire, along with harsh treatment; so during one of the Deacon's visits to a distant parish, he gathered together his few belongings and a lunch, between two days, shouldered his home made gun and "hit the trail for the tall timber", that being the route on which he was least apt to be discovered. He made his way toward the Susquehannah river. First he reached the Tioga River, which was a branch of the Susquehannah. He began reconnoitering for a means of crossing or floating down the river and soon discovered a log canoe, "dug-out" as it was called, frozen in the mud. He decided to confiscate it as "contraband of war" and pried it up, launched it, and was soon floating and paddling in it down toward the junction of the Tioga and the Susquehannah.

Shortly he felt his tired feet being submerged in cold water. Stooping to investigate, he found that the log was leaky and rapidly filling with water. He also found an old woolen firkin, a small barrel, that he at once began making use of, bailing the water, alternately paddeling, steering and bailing. He continued down the stream, keeping near the shore as possible, in case the old dug-out should get the best of him. The second day he heard "Hello, there, will you take a passenger?" from a man on shore. "Yes, if you'll help bail, steer, and row." "Barkis is willin", came the reply, so there were two in the log canoe.

Then they made better time. Nearing the confluence of the rivers, they saw a boat preparing to leave the dock for a trip up the Susquehannah, a primitive stern wheel packet of those early days (1831). He and his passenger applied themselves to their paddling, bailing and steering, signalling the boat to wait; just as she started he drew near enough to leap from the dug-out to her deck.

A free boy! For now he was sure pursuit would not overtake him. His passenger called "What shall I do with this canoe?" "Keep her or let her float" shouted Cox. (If the owner of that dug-out will send in his bill for damages, O.S. Cox's children will cheerfully settle.) As for food on this trip with the canoe, game was plentiful and he was a good shot. While on this boat, he must have worked his passage, for he had no money.

On board that boat with a Cargo of Southern Produce, he, for the first time in his life, saw an orange. He remained on this little river packet some distance up the river, then lended and found lucrative employment at lumbering and logging, and sometimes at the blacksmith's forge. Soon he had the good luck to find his two brothers, Walter and Augustus, rafting logs down the river. He was an expert at this himself.

Now he learned that his mother, and her younger children, Amos, Harriet, Mary and Jonathan had gone to Ohio under the care of his older brother, William U., via the great world famous Erie Canal; (at that time the largest canal in the world.) So by slow degrees and hard work he began to work his way toward Ohio. Usually he worked for lumber companies. His two brothers did likewise. They literally walked wall the way through the forests, the whole length of the state of New York. Finally they were united as a family in Nelson, Portage Co. Ohio, the former home of his future wife, Elvira, although she was at that time an emigrant in Missouri. The eight Cox boys continued their westward course; some of them reached California during the gold stampede. Charles B. Cox was elected Senator from Santa Rosa Company for a number of terms. William U. had put his property in a concern called the Phalanx and was defrauded by the officers of every cent and left in debt $3000.00, an enormous sum for those days. Orville's mother Lucinda, and her family went to Missouri. Walter had receive the gospel in Ohio previously. Orville heard terrible stories of the outlawry of those "awful Mormons"; but he became personally acquainted with some (Among them a Sylvester Hulet). He decided they were sinned against. He lived in Jackson County for a time, and ever after Jackson County Missouri was the goal of his ambition; He believed to his dying day that he should one day return to that favored spot.

Orville met and loved Elvira in Far West, but was not baptized. He said he didn't propose to turn Mormon to procure a wife. When the Saints were driven from Missouri, he located near Lima, Illinois, with a group of Mormons and helped build the Morley settlement.

Nearing his 24th birthday, he was a thorough frontiersman, forester, lumberman, a splendid blacksmith, a natural born engineer; in short a genius and an all around good fellow. He was six feet in his socks and heavy proportionately.

While here he won the heart of the orphan girl, Elvira P. Mills, who was living with her uncle, Sylvester Hulet. But she hesitated about marrying a gentile. October 3, 1839, however, she yielded, and they were married in Father Elisha Whiting's home, at the Morley Settlement by Elder Lyman Wight.

The two newly weds, on October 6, 1839, drove into Nauvoo twenty miles away, and Orville S. Cox was baptized by the Prophet Joseph Smith. He went a gentile and returned a full-fledged Mormon, so short a time it takes a woman to make a convert. He was a faithful L.D.S., full of love and zeal. He was a member of the famous brass band of the Nauvoo Legion. When the Prophet and his brother were killed, none mourned more sincerely than he. He assisted those more helpless or destitute in the migration from Nauvoo. His stacks of grain were burned at the Morley settlement by the robbers, and they fled to the City of Nauvoo, he with his wife and two children—the oldest child had died when an infant as a result of its mother having chills and fever, and from exposure resulting from mobbers' violence.

He attended the meeting where Sidney Rigdon asked the Saints to appoint him as guardian, and where Brigham Young claimed that the Twelve Apostles were the ordained leaders; and many times thereafter he testified that he saw Brigham Young changed to appear like Joseph and heard his voice take on the Prophet's tone. And after that manifestation he never doubted for a moment that the rightful leadership of the Church was vested in the twelve, with Brigham Young at their head. He remained in Nauvoo till almost the last departed. He assisted Browning in transforming the old rusty steamer shafts into cannons that were so effectually used by Daniel H. Wells at the Battle of Nauvoo.

Leaving Nauvoo with the last of the Mormon exiles, he crossed Iowa and settled at Pisgah, where he served as counselor to Lorenzo Snow, President at Mt. Pisgah. In his devoted attachment to Lorenzo Snow, he was an enthusiast; also to Father Morley and he would follow their leadership anywhere. Orville and Elvira had their two children, Almer and Adelia.

An incident that illustrated the pioneer life of 1845-6 is told in the story of the "Last Match." In the winter of 1845-6 Orville S. Cox and two Whiting boys, cousins of Elvira, went from Pisgah with ox teams and wagons down into Missouri with a load of chairs to sell. Whitings had a shop in which they manufactured chairs. Being successful in disposing of their chairs, and securing loads of bacon and corn, they were almost home when an Iowa blizzard, or hurricane, or cyclone, or all in one, struck them. Clouds and Egyptian darkness settled suddenly around them. They had not modern "tornado cellars" to flee into and no manner of shelter of any kind. The cold was intense; the wind came from every direction; they were all skilled backwoodsmen and knew they were very close to their homes; but they also knew that they were hopelessly lost in that swirling wind and those black clouds of snow. They and their oxen were freezing, and their only hope of life was in making a fire and camping where they were. Everything was wet and under the snow, and an arctic wind in the fierceness of unclaimed violence was raging around them. At first, they unyoked the oxen that they might find some sort of shelter for themselves. Then with frost-bitten fingers they sought in the darkness and storm for dry fuel. The best they found was damp and poor enough—and now for a match. Only three in the crowd, and no such matches as we have in these days either. Inside a large wooden bucket in which they fed grain, they carefully laid their kindling. Then turning another bucket over it to keep out of the falling snow, and hugging close over to keep the wind off, they lifted the top bucket a little and one of the Whiting boys struck a precious match. It flickered, blazed a moment against the kindling and was puffed out by a draft of wind. Another match was taken, and it died almost before it flared. Only one match remained to save three men from certain death. Their fingers were so numb they could not feel, and every minute increased their numbness. "Let Orville Try; he is steadier than we", they said. So Orville, keenly sensing his responsibility, took the tiny splinter of wood and struck the spark; it caught, it blazed and the fire lived and grew.

Now they were in the woods and the fuel was plentiful and soon a roaring blaze was swirling upward. The cattle came near, and although their noses and feet were frozen, their feet grew new hoofs and their noses healed of frosted cracks. When the storm broke and light appeared, they found themselves only a few rocks from their home fences.

For a good reason, Orville was not in the Battalion draft. The Whiting boys, Sylvester Hulet, and Amos Cox were. But Orville was very busy manufacturing wagons. It was told of him that he found a linch pin and said, "I'll just make a wagon to fit that pin". He prepared as good and serviceable an outfit as his limited means would allow for the long dreary journey to the mountains. Two home made wagons, without brakes—brakes were not needed on the eastern end of the journey—two yoke of oxen, three yoke of cows, a box of chickens on the back of a wagon, a wife and two children, with bedding and food, was the outfit that started across the plains the last of June 1847, singing the song "In the spring we'll take our journey. All to cross the grassy plains." He travelled in the hundred of Charles C. Rich, known as the Artillery Company. Cox was captain of one of the tens. Oh! the seemingly endless level prairie! The monotony was terribly wearing. When Independence Rock was sighted, and again when Chimney Rock was sighted, it was wonderful relief. Great land marks they were, in that unsettled country. Now they were sure they were approaching the Rocky Mountains, especially the children longed for that goal.

One evening at camping time, 4:00 P.M., a herd of buffalo were sighted about two miles away. The people were very hungry for a piece of fresh beef, so Father and one companion shouldered their guns, snatched their percussion caps and powder horns, and started to "try a hunter's luck." About sunset they got their steak, a generous load of the best cuts from the Buffalo, and started for camp. On and on they went. What they thought was a two mile stretch lengthened and lengthened, and their loads of meat grew heavier and heavier. They began to think they were lost; but the camp fires and stars told them they were going in the right direction. Finally they decided to fire their guns. This they did, and it filled the camp with alarm, least the hunters were in danger. Two or three men rushed away in the darkness to give aid, and they fired their guns to locate the hunters. Several shots brought them together. "Help us with this grub pile", they said. Help was given. They reached the camp at 11:00 o'clock. It must have been six miles or perhaps ten to the herd of buffalo. They were now in the clear air of the up-lands and could see much farther than they had been able to see in the Mississippi valley.

The next morning all in the camp had a feast of fresh meat.

After leaving the Platte River, while travelling along the sweet Water River, the company met General Kearney and his company of Battalion scouts with their illustrious prisoner, the great path-finder Freemont.

(When California was freed from Mexican rule, Freemont and his little band, who had helped to free it, were greatly rejoiced; and in their enthusiasm his followers proclaimed Freemont governor. General Kearney arrived and expected to be governor by right of his generalship. He was very angry and had Freemont arrested and sent to Washington.)

With Freemont's guards were Sylvester Hulet, Elvira's Uncle, and Amos Cox. They had traveled many weary months in an unknown, lonely country; and C.C. Riche's company were also travel weary. To thus meet relatives so unexpectedly was a joy unspeakable to both parties.

Now the battalion men heard from their families left in Iowa, for the first time in more than a year. And tears of joy and sorrow were freely mingled. A daughter of Amos had died. Sylvester's wife had gone to New York where the Whitmer's and her father and brothers lived; so he decided to return to the Rocky Mountains with the pioneers, and Kearney gave him his discharge. Amos Cox continued with the prisoner to Fort Leavenworth, where he received his honorable discharge, and then went to his weary waiting family in Iowa.

The pioneering company continued on westward. At Green River, near Bridger's Station, they met pioneers who had reached Great Salt Lake Valley and made a start toward a new home; and were now returning to the camps in Iowa, with more definite knowledge and instructions to impart to those who were to come to the mountains next year. They told Rich's company many things regarding the way that lay before them, and it was a great relief to know that they were nearing their destination.

From now on the mountains were on every side; frowning cliffs looked ready to fall on and crush the poor foot-sore travelers; for people raised on the plains are apt to have a shuddering of such sights. C.C. Riche's artillery company rolled into the valley of the great Salt Lake. They were only two or three days behind Jedediah M. Grant's company of one hundred wagons.

Being expert in handling lumber, Cox was immediately sent into the canyon for logs. Houses must now be built. Among other timbers, he brought down a magnificent specimen of a pine for a "Liberty Pole", which he assisted in raising on Pioneer Square. It was the first pole to carry the stars and stripes in the city. One had been raised on Ensign Peak before. They wintered in Salt Lake Valley. There another son, Orville M., was born November 29, 1847.

Very early in the spring of 1848 father moved from the Adobe Fort with his wife and three children, and began farming in Sessionsville, Now Bountiful; He was the first bishop of the ward. There they had the famous experience with the crickets. He devised the broad paddles, as well as the oft mentioned methods, to try to exterminate them; and then came the Gulls. He raised a crop in '48 and '49 there; also he dug the first well in Bountiful, and struck water so suddenly as to be drowned by it before he could be hauled up. In the fall of '49 he was called to go with "Father" Morley's company to colonize the valley of Sanpitch.

He arrived at the future site of Manti November 19, 1849. The journey from Salt Lake City to the Sanpete Valley occupied one month, breaking new roads, fixing fords, and building dug-ways. The forty families worked industriously, sometimes only movin' forward two or three miles. One six mile stretch in Salt Creek Canyon occupied them a whole week. The only settlement between Salt Lake and Manti was Provo, consisting of a little fort of green cottonwood logs.

After getting through Salt Creek Canyon in two weeks, they worked to their upmost strength for it began snowing on them there; and it was far from being a desirable winter's home. That winter was one of the hardest with the heaviest snow fall for many succeeding years. Arriving at their destination, camp was made by the Morley's company on the south side of Temple Hill which was a sheltered spot. Now they must do their upmost in canyons, raising log cabins, sowing lumber on the saw pit, which was the most primitive of saw mills.

Orville was an expert at hewing and squaring the logs with his ax, and making everything as comfortable as possible in their home. All winter long they had to help the cattle find feed by shovelling snow in the meadows, as the snow lay four feet deep. It was May before the snow was gone so that the men could begin to clear the ground and begin their farming. Then there came irrigating ditches to dig and the usual labor of clearing, plowing, and planting.

Between their individual duties, they found time to build log school, and a bowery, and then a meeting house. They felt that it was quite commodious. Here in the long evenings of the winter of 1850-51 Cox taught a singing and dancing school. Sarah Potty was the first school of Ma'am. In the winter of 1850-51, school was taught by Jesse W. Fox. In 1850 he was elected Alderman.

O.S. Cox married Mary Allen about 1854; he served many years as the first counselor to Bishop Lowry; and he was captain of the Militia. He was very energetic in the performance of his duties, especially through the protracted period of the Walker war. He married Eliza Losee about 1857-59. He served under Major Higgins, and old Battalion veteran.

To be sure, nobody appreciated more than he did a liberty pole, and all that it typified, so he was commissioned to find one at the earliest convenient moment for Manti; this he did in 1850. Ten years he labored faithfully for the upbuilding of Manti, and then like Boon and Crockett, "he wanted more elbow room" and moved to Fairview, Sanpete County. He also moved part of his family to Gunnison (Hog Wallow, it was called then) and raised two crops there. In February 1864, he moved part of his family to Glenwood, built a cabin there and raised a crop. He sold out and moved elsewhere to engineer ditches. He engineered over forty ditches in Utah and Nevada, as near as his children can remember in 1910, as well as doing all other kinds of pioneer work.

In 1865 he was advised by Lorenzo Snow to move to the Muddy, a branch of the Rio Virgin, a stream running through Moappa Valley, to assist in surveying and making irrigation ditches there. The soil was very rich, but there was so much quick sand that it made it almost impossible to build a dam that hold or to irrigate without washing away the soil. So he went south into southeastern Nevada. He thought that was the route the saints would travel going back to Jackson County, so he was that much nearer the final home. He labored here for six years, and engineered a number of dams that would hold against the floods and treachery of quicksand. They had only poor home made plows and a few other tools to work with, and no cement or modern building material. He also built cabins and cleared and tilled the land there. In clearing the land, the "Mesquite" brush root was the hardest digging they encountered. St. Thomas, St. Joseph and Overton, the 3 towns in the valley were partly of his building. The first trip, he took with him his third wife, Eliza, and her one child, a little two year old girl; and Walter, a 14 year old son of the first wife, Elvira. The following year, after crops were in and the spring work done, he returned to Fairview after another section of his family—Mary, the second wife, and her five children. From that time on O.S. Cox's life is a volume of tragedy and hardship. The life in the burning desert is always more or less unpleasant, and pioneering is excessively hard. And he was past fifty years old.

During his absence, Eliza's little girl Lucinda, took her little pail to the creek to get some water; the quicksand caused her to slip and she was drowned. They took her out not very far from down the stream, but could not resuscitate her. The poor mother, among strangers and homesick, was unconsolable in her sorrow. Walter, seeing his little pet companion stricken in all her robust beauty and health, was wild with grief, and could not be comforted. After a time the neighbors concluded that Walter would die if some change did not come to get him to sleep and eat. They told Eliza of their fears for him, and so the disconsolate mother tried to hide her own grief and comfort him. It is said it was the saddest thing the woman there ever saw, to see the brave mother and the boy trying to comfort each other in their loneliness. Fifty years later, it was a nightmare to Walt.

Almer, Laun and Walt all went to the Muddy in 1867, the year Mary was moved. In 1868 Philmon, fifth son of Elvira, a very promising lad of thirteen, died of appendicitis, at that time called inflammation of the bowels. Then Mary lost a little daughter, Lucy for whom she grieved many years.

Financially the prospects were more promising than ever before. They had planted a large orchard, and a vineyard that was just coming into bearing. Then a new line was run between the states of Utah and Nevada, which gave this section to Nevada, and Nevada demanded back taxes; and they amounted to more than their farms and houses were worth. So Brigham Young said, "Come home to Utah." They came.

Elvira, with Orville a grown son, Walter 17, Tryphena, Amasa and Euphrasia, returned to the old home in Fairview, leaving all of their beautiful peach orchards and vineyards, fields of cotton, cane, wheat and the comfortable houses in the most fertile of lands, which they had subdued and made to "Blossom as the Rose" by seven long years of toil and privation. They rendered absolute obedience to their great leader; and so they hitched up their teams, took their most choice belongings, and wended their way back to Utah, leaving their settlement and farms to pay Nevada the back taxes it had demanded.

One company which had thoroughly learned the trick of building a dam in quick sand of the desert, stopped at an abandoned settlement in Long Valley, Kane County. O.S. Cox and sons began the engineering of irrigation canals and dams, and so on, as they had cleaned and repaired the deserted cabins, so that they offered partial shelter from the February storms. The people named this town Mt. Carmel.

When the former settlers learned that they had builded dams that would stand, they came back and said, "Get Out, this is ours," So the weary pioneers moved again, this time only a few miles farther up the valley into a pleasant narrow cove, and went to work to build more dams, more ditches and more cabins. In one place the water had to be carried across a gulley, and it gave more trouble than all the rest of the canal. After a while Cox, without comment or consultation, went into the timber and found a very large log and felled it, made of it a huge trough, placed it across the gully and it reached far enough to secure a solid bed above the quicksand. Thirty years later, this "Cox Trough" was still doing successful service as a flume.

In 1875, when Brigham strongly taught the principle of Cooperation, this company of saints were organized by unanimous consent into the united order of Enoch, and named their town Orderville. Their little property, mostly cattle, horses and wagons, were owned jointly. Twelve years father labored joyously and unselfishly in the "Order". The town grew and thrived; the arts, schools and trades were remarkably well represented by the young. Prosperity and a measure of plenty was there, in spite of the fact that there were more infirm people in that ward than any ward in the church.

Then dissatisfaction and disunion came, and the "Order" broke up. There was not a great deal of property to divide, although some people came out with more property with others, according to the amount they consecrated in. Mary and Eliza, father's second and third wives, each received a team and wagon. Mary and her family located in Huntington, Emery County, Eliza and her family in Tropic, Garfield County. Father well along in years, and broken in health, could do little more than advise his sons. Eliza was dying of cancer. In 1886 Orville S. Cox came to Fairview to the best-provided for branch of his family. One year he remained an invalid, and on July 4, 1888 he laid his exhausted body down to rest. The passing was quiet and peaceful. His two wives Elvira and Mary and many of his descendants were with him at the last.

The following are some of the thriving towns O.S. Cox assisted in founding: Lima, Ill.; Pisgah, Iowa; Salt Lake City, Bountiful, Manti, Gunnuson, Fairview, Glenwood of Utah; St. Thomas, St. Joseph, Overton of Nevada; Mt. Carmel, Orderville and Tropic of Utah.

If man ever earned his salvation, surely O.S. Cox did. Always found in the van where the hardest work was to be done, and if he advanced the cause one iota, no matter at what loss, or cost to himself, he considered he had been eminently successful. Never was there a murmur from him.

To illustrate the ingenuity of O.S. Cox's ditch making, here is the story of the Pig Plow as told by an old settler of Fairview, Pappas Brady.

"When the ditch was first laid out that was afterwards called "City Ditch", every man and boy was called on to come and work on it every day til it would carry water. This was in the spring, and it had to be finished before the fields were ready to be plowed and planted. The men turned out well with teams and plows, picks and crow bars and shovels. There was a rocky point at the head of the ditch to be ut through, and it was hard pan, about like cement. Couldn't be touched by plow, no siree; now more than nothing. We was just prying the gravel loose with picks and crowbars, and looked like it would take us weeks to do six rods. Yes, six weeks. Cox looked at us working and sweating, and never offered to lift a finger. No sir, never done a tap; just looked and then without saying a word, he turned around and walked off. Yes, sir, walked off! Well of all the mad bunch of men you ever saw I guess he was about the maddest. Of course, we didn't swear; we was Mormons and the Bishop was there, but we watched him go and one of the men says, "Well, I didn't think Cox was that kind of a feller." His going discouraged the rest of us, just took the heart out of us. But of course we plugged away pretendin' to work the rest of the day, and dragged back the next morning."

"We weren't near all there when here came Cox. I don't just remember whether it was four yoke of oxen or six or eight, for I was just a boy, but it was a long string and they was every one of a good pulling ox. And they was hitched on to a plow a plumb new kind, yes sir, a new kind of plow. It was a great big pitch pine log, about fourteen feet long, and may have been eighteen, with a limb stickin' down like as if my arm and hand was the log and my thumb the limb; he had bored a hole through the log, and put a crow bar down in front of the knob; and cross ways along the log back of the limb he bored holes and put stout oak sticks through spikes. They were the plow handles; and he had eight man got ahold of them handles find hold the plow level and he loaded a bunch of men along on that log, and then he spoke to his oxen."

"Great Scott, ye oter seen the gravel fly, and ye oter heard us fellers laugh and holler! Well, sir, he plowed up and down that ditch line four or five times and that ditch was made, practically made. All that the rest of us had to do was to shovel out the loose stuff; he done more in half a day than all the rest of us could a done in six weeks."

"Why didn't he tell his plans the first thing, so we wouldn't be so discouraged, and hate him so? Why, cause he knew it wouldn't do a might of good to talk. He wasn't the Bishop; and even if he had been, plans like that would sure be hooted at by half the fellers. No, siree! His way was the best when a bunch of men and a thing a workin' they see believe; yes, sir, seein' is believin."

The Pioneer Mother

Upon a jolting wagon sent she rode
Across the trackless prairie to the west,
Or trudged behind the oxen with a goad,
A sleeping child clasped tightly to her breast,
Frail flesh rebelling, but spirit never—
What tales the dark could tell of woman's tears!!—
Her bravery incentive to endeavor;
Her laughter spurring strong men past their fears.

O to her valor and her comeliness
A commonwealth today owes its white domes
Of State, its fields, its highways, and its homes—
Its cities wrested from the wilderness.
Its bones in memory above the hand
That gentled, woman-wise, a savage land.

—Ethol Romig Fuller

Transcriber's Note

The original pamphlet contains many images that were omitted in this electronic version. Scans of the original work can be found at archive.org. The poem "The Pioneer Mother," originally presented in a sidebar, has been moved to the end of the work for improved readability on typical e-reader devices.

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Table of Contents

- Biographical Sketch of Orville Southerland Cox, Pioneer of 1847

- Orville Southerland Cox
- Transcriber's Note
- THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE