farm at Wilson, Kan. This year [1888] my wheat crop wasn’t so very good and the corn crop was again a failure.
In the fall, after all my work was done, I made up my mind that this would be my last trip north to husk corn. Also I did not go as far north as I had on my previous trips. I went up into Republic county only, where the corn was good. There I husked but one week, when I became ill. Before I got well again I was in a hole. Now being closer to my parents in Nebraska I made a trip there and stayed with them until the next spring. In Nebraska the corn crop was pretty good, but I was unable to husk any that winter.
Early in the spring of 1889 I again drove from Nebraska to Wilson, Kan. I said before this that I was never going to make any more trips to Nebraska, because I figured on getting married. So on April 22, 1889, I married Anna Robas, of Wilson, Kan., and on April 23 I brought my wife to my rented farm, and from that time on I had a partner to share my troubles.
All the property I owned at this time was a team of horses, one wagon, two cows and a few farm implements. That year the wheat crop was pretty good, but in 1890 it didn't amount to much. During the year the owner of the farm I was renting wanted to sell the place, but I had no idea of buying it. A little later on I heard of another farm for rent out on the Cow Creek Flats, seven miles northeast of Wilson, and I leased it for three years. So after our wheat crop was harvested we moved to the new farm on Cow Creek Flats. During that summer and fall I plowed with a walking plow seventy acres of ground for wheat.
In 1891 I received a letter from my father telling me that my stepmother was dead. He wanted me to go to Nebraska and farm his land for him. This I did not want to do because I wanted to try my chance in Kansas. Later my father thought the matter over and sold his farm. The money received for it, after deducting enough for his living, was divided among his children, and in 1893 he and his two youngest sons came to Kansas.
After my father came he wanted me to buy a farm of my own, and he told me that he would lend me his money, also the money of his youngest son who was only thirteen years old, and that by giving my brother a mortgage on the farm for nine years I could keep his money until he was of age. So under these circumstances I bought a farm. Right across the road from me was a tract of land for sale. It contained one hundred and sixty acres, with one hundred and five acres in wheat, and I figured that this, with the one hundred acres in wheat on my leased land, ought to give me an average crop. But my wheat crop was a failure off of the two hundred and five acres I did not receive one bushel of wheat.
My father began to feel sorry that he had come to Kansas after he saw how everything was, and one day in 1894 he asked me if I could give him the money that he loaned me on the farm. I did not have it, so I told him to take the farm, but he would not do that. He wanted me to sell the place, but I told him that after the failure of crops I would not receive enough money for the farm to pay my debts, and that the money I had put in would be a total loss. After studying the matter over I offered him a second mortgage on the farm for five years, which he accepted. Then he went back to Omaha, where he bought a house and lot with money belonging to his daughter and son who were not yet of age. While in Omaha he lived off the interest which I paid him annually for the use of his money.
