38 WILLIAM ' H. PACKWOOD
so I accepted his proposition. I had not been on the farm long before I joined Mr. Drew and his wife Rhoda in the almost uni- versal fever and ague. It was what was called three-day ague, and fortunately we were not all sick at one time. On Ed's shaking day his wife Rhoda and I did all the chores. They had three cows to milk, quite a few horses to care for and about 50 hogs to feed. I certainly did shake good and plenty when my third day came around. We all took Green's mixture from the same bottle. It was thought at that time to be a specific for the ague.
"We pulled corn from the stock before the corn was quite dry and grated it up into mush. Milk and mush was our staple diet. The first Fall I was with Ed Drew he hitched up his two two-horse wagons and he and I hauled his produce to St. Louis where he sold it. We crossed the river on Wiggins' Ferry. Before my mother's death in '44 my father had run a dairy four miles east of St. Louis, his customers being in St. Louis. I remember the big flood in July, 1844. What is now east St. Louis, then called 'Pap's town/ was one great sea of water. East St. Louis in those days consisted of a tavern and some corrals where drovers put their stock up over night.
"Shortly before my mother's death my father moved to Col- linsville. My father and mother both became very sick and my mother died on Sept. 8, 1844. My father was not expected to live and he was not told of her death. My sisters were both sick, so I was the only member of the family at the funeral.
"After my mother's death my father, when I was between 12 and 13 years old, made trips through Southern Mis- souri, peddling and buying furs. He took me with him and I remember on one trip we went by way of Iron Mountain, and went down into the Black River country. There were practically no towns or villages and the houses were far apart. We used to see great droves of wild turkeys.
"We tried to plan it so that we could stay over night where there would be as many people as possible so that father could sell his goods. Some days we would stop where there was a
