THE PAST
As I have said, the country I traveled through after leaving Saltsburg was not wilderness, by any means, but it was only lightly settled. I often wandered most of a day without seeing any signs of human occupation, then I would come upon an individual homestead or small cluster of habitations. I never failed to find a place to get a meal and a bed (although the "bed" might just be the floor in the barn, out of the weather), but it was definitely "take what you can get."
The one exception was Indiana, a town that sprawled out over a sizeable area, and looked like it might have twice as many inhabitants as Saltsburg. It seemed to me an odd place for such a large settlement, and an odd name for a location in the Pennsylvania hills.
***
PRESENT DAY
Knowing me, and the way I usually behave, it seems highly unlikely that, at the time, I didn't ask somebody why Indiana was called "Indiana." If I did ask, then those I asked either didn't know the answer, or else I've forgotten what they said. In any case, in more recent years, I have learned that the area that became Indiana County was granted by (some say stolen from!) the Iroquois Nation in the Fort Stanwix Treaty of 1768. The area became Indiana County in 1803, and the new town of Indiana was named the county seat.
***
THE PAST
Clearly, Indiana, Pennsylvania, was not the kind of place I was looking for, and I moved on. However, I did take advantage of a pleasant hotel and a good restaurant before I continued my travels into "the wilderness." It took me a week to reach Janesville, a true example of a brand-new town. Abraham Nevling had brought his family to Clearfield County around 1850, had purchased a large tract of land from Amasa Smith (the earliest local inhabitant), immediately built two houses, and named the town Janesville. By the time I arrived in 1855, a number of other families had moved in and built houses, and Janesville was clearly on its way to being a bustling community.
***
PRESENT DAY
This story will no doubt come up later, so I might as well insert it here. From its very first day of creation, Janesville has been Janesville. The name has never changed - Janesville has never been called anything else. Abraham Nevling named the town after his daughter, Jane, and she is still around to tell the tale. Jane is about my age. I know her - not well, because just about the time I arrived in town, she married George Caldwell, a local doctor, and they chose to begin their family life at Glen Hope, a small community a few miles northwest of Janesville. But they are in and out of town regularly, and in an isolated area like this everybody "knows" everybody.
So, knowing what everybody here knows about Janesville, Jane, and the Nevlings, it was a surprise to many of us when, after the war ended, the government established a post office here, and named it "Smith Mills." Now, Amasa Smith - the first prominent settler in the area - had a grist mill. For many years, it was the only one in a wide area, and farmers brought their grain some distance to have it ground. It was located on Amasa's land, but there were no other developments. Amasa and the mill were still there when Abraham Nevling named the new town after his daughter, but the mill was just a local landmark.
So, how did the Janesville post office get named Smith's Mills? Nobody seems to know, for sure. A logical explanation dates back before there was any town in this vicinity, but there were settlers scattered among the hills, who occasionally got mail. Amasa's homestead became the drop-off point. How that name came to be prominent when Janesville was almost 30 years old in the unanswerable question. However it happened, you will find that modern-day Clearfield County maps may show Janesville, or Smith's Mills, or sometimes both. If you send me two letters, one addressed to Janesville and one to Smith's Mills, I will likely receive both. In other words, the choice hasn't mattered a great deal. It's just strange.
***
THE PAST
One of the first things I learned when I arrived in Janesville was that they had recently build a schoolhouse, and were looking for a teacher. There weren't a lot of school-aged children, so far, but new families were arriving regularly. Since I needed a job, and had a little teaching experience, I applied. I was immediately accepted. Perhaps it was because of my teaching time in Pittsburgh, or perhaps it was just that I was the only one expressing any interest. Whichever, I was suddenly Janesville's first school teacher.
In those days, in rural northern Pennsylvania, about the only expectations of a teacher was that he or she could teach reading and writing. Arithmetic was usually welcomed, but it was often hard to find anyone qualified to teach it. Other subjects could be taught, but it was always a risky business. Everybody had a particular idea about anything that could be mentioned. About the only thing one was likely to have full agreement on was that the world is round, not flat. Most other beliefs were debatable, but not open to debate. In every case, "Authority" was the family bible, and "what Pa said."
Of course I was very good on the reading and writing business. With age, I had become somewhat better at arithmetic, so I could teach simple sums, and usually work my way through an individual problem with my students. Anything else was worrisome, because I can be very opinionated, and opinions - even if good ones - were seldom welcomed. A teacher who seemed to be questioning "Pa" or the Bible might find himself without a job.
One way I tried to "teach" some history and geography, without really teaching, was to share some of my adventures. I made the telling exciting (sometimes, more exciting than it really had been), and it was a success with the students. Sometimes, the adults would come in the evening to hear some of the same tales. Even that could be a little risky, and I had more than one parent complain that I shouldn't be filling young heads with adventure stories that would only make them want to leave home!
School teaching doesn't pay a great deal, and it was still several months before the fall term started, so I needed to find other ways to increase my income. Janesville continued to grow, and my experience building houses in Oregon proved equally useful here, and resulted in a small but steady stream of cash for my labor. Also, I learned that the Nevlings were planning on opening a general store in town, and were looking for investors. I took half of the money Michael had been able to pay me in Oregon (still, mostly untouched), and offered it to them. I didn't want a partnership or major commitment, so we settled on an agreement that they would repay me in increments, whenever profit allowed, with whatever small increase could be afforded. This guaranteed me a small, but steady, income. I also asked for a job at the store, which they were glad to grant.
One other financial transaction occurred that first autumn. A family who had been in Janesville almost from the start decided to move on, leaving behind them a nearly new, large, family home. I offered them the rest of my Oregon money, they accepted, and suddenly I was a property owner.
The first couple of transactions might have seemed obvious under any circumstances, but buying a house was a little different. I had to start asking myself if I was planning to settle at Janesville. Now, that was a thought worth giving some thought to!
Actually, I'd be dishonest with myself - and you - if I didn't admit there had already been some thought given to such matters - not to buying a house, specifically, but to the possibility of putting down real roots in Janesville. I didn't have a "home," anymore, or any places I might want to move. I liked Janesville, and in only a couple of months I was already feeling like I was a part of a community. I found I was strongly feeling the need to be part of something, permanent and whole. Those feelings came together when the Stanleys came to town.
The Stanleys had been well established in Huntingdon and Blair counties - across the valley from Clearfield - but, typical of frontier folks, they developed a yen to move on to a less populated place. The Flynns had come to the area from Canada, and were establishing a major logging business, an added incentive for the younger Stanleys to move. When the move occurred, they took all the related Stanley families with them. You may remember when Jenny told me about her family - the Holts - moving from Illinois to Iowa. It wasn't just her immediate family who came, but (to hear her tell it) every Holt in the State of Illinois. Suddenly, the streets of Henry County, Iowa, were peopled with hundreds ("maybe thousands," was Jenny's "correction") of Holts. That's the way it seemed with the Stanleys - one day, Janesville had none, and the next day you couldn't shake a stick anywhere in town without it touching a Stanley.
I know that still doesn't explain how the Stanleys figure in my changed feelings, so let me go on. You probably remember the old bible story about God creating Adam in the Garden of Eden. God thought he'd done a good job, as far as it went, but he sensed something was missing. That's when he made his famous pronouncement that "a man shouldn't live alone." He set about resolving that little problem - and did - but he created a whole gang of related issues that still haven't been sorted out and corrected. Some might say he acted a little hastily - without thinking the whole thing through - and that might be true, but he did accomplish what (or, rather, who) he intended - enter Eve.
Since Jenny died, my "garden" had been empty, except for me and precious memories of the too-short time Jenny and I had together. Those memories will always be there, never to be reduced or replaced, but that was in another world. In this new territory, I was lonely. Enter the Stanleys and, with them, enter Eve, in the form of a young woman named Anna.
Anna was probably about 18 when I first started seeing her around town. I observed that she was pretty, but by then I had come to realize that all young women were pretty, and I don't think our occasional meetings meant that much to me. It was only when school started in the fall, and she appeared in my classroom with two of her siblings, that I took special note of her. She came up to me before class, introduced herself, and explained that she had already finished her schooling.
"I'm not attending your class, I just wanted to be with my brother and sister on the first day. Is it all right if I just sit in the back, and listen? I won't be a bother."
"I'm glad to have you," I replied, "And if you feel you want a taste of your old school days, just raise your hand."
She smiled at that, and took a seat in the back. I thought my first teaching day went pretty well, but I did get one surprise. Anna had said she wouldn't bother me, but I found she "bothered" me quite a lot. As I talked, I regularly found my eyes seeking her out. I don't know if it was noticeable to her, or if she was "bothered" in turn. She left with her siblings soon after, and I didn't get a chance to look into the matter, then.
She didn't come to school every day. Obviously, her sister and brother didn't need a chaperone, and if she dallied too long anywhere, they were quickly off and away on their own. Whenever she did appear, I made it a special project of mine to assure that she "dallied" regularly, so we could have chances to talk, uninterrupted. It didn't take long to learn that she was as good at reading and writing as I was, and a little better at arithmetic. She didn't share spontaneously, and I'm sure it wasn't in her character to even dream of offering me teaching advice. Gradually, that barrier was broken, and she gave me some very good pointers on teaching methods. She also taught me a lot about arithmetic that I had never known. Sharing our mutual interests in education provided an opening to talk about other things. In August 1856, just before the start of school, Anna Stanley ("Annie") and I were married.
I didn't have to think as deeply as I thought I would about a second marriage. As I've said, my memories of Jenny were safely tucked away, and couldn't be changed or replaced, no matter what I did. As I looked around me, I discovered that probably half (maybe more) of the local marriages were with a second wife or second husband. Women died in childbirth, of epidemics, of accidents and injuries and infections, and of a wide variety of personal illnesses. Men were killed in work accidents, in the Mexican War, on the way to or from the Gold Rush (some not returning, on purpose),, in epidemics, and from a vast assortment of personal medical problems. No matter how you looked at it, life was unpredictable, and always potentially short. Second marriages seemed to have about the same success (or unsuccess) rate as first marriages. In other words, second marriages were pretty much the normal order of things.
From my own standpoint, I've admitted I was lonely, and also ready for some stability within the community. Also (I told myself), having a family was just part of my obligation to perpetuating the human race. In my own small way, I was able to do that.
I haven't said much about Annie, except that she was young, pretty, and (by local standards) well educated. She was part of a family of ten children, with her being one of the older daughters of Isaac and Eleanor Stanley. She was Pennsylvania-born, in Huntingdon County, where she had lived until her family moved to Janesville. Her obvious ambitions were limited to being a good partner in a family of her own.
We quickly settled into a family life, with me working at the store, and teaching, and she managing our home, planting a garden, and such. Going to church had been a tradition with her. I had my doubts about a lot of bible teaching, and did not have good feelings about the few ministers I had known, but our local church services were pretty mild, and I had no trouble attending with her. She wasn't the type who would want to discuss any of the sermons, which saved me from expressing my more deep-seated feelings. I think that, overall, we were a happy couple.
I never talked to Annie about Jennie. She knew I had met a girl on the wagon train to Oregon, and eventually married her, but she died before we could start a family. There didn't seem to be anything useful that would come from her knowing more.
Our conjugal bed was quite different than had been mine and Jenny's. That was no surprise to me, and I was actually glad about it. Jenny's and my love-making wasn't anything that could be compared or duplicated. While Annie obviously enjoyed our time together in bed, she was definitely not romantic. Sometimes, I could tease her into "lallygagging" a little longer. She liked it fine, but it didn't come naturally to her. It was okay; I liked what she was able to give.
Raising a family requires that a family gets created. I knew how to begin the process, and we started to work on it on our wedding night. It didn't take long to find out that our initial attempts would be successful. That left me with a certain problem. I had developed some rather strong feelings about married women spending their whole adult lives just giving birth to children. I wanted children, but I didn't want to create one every time I spent time in bed with my wife. Jenny and I had figured out ways to reduce the chances of procreation occurring, but it took some planning. Jenny and I could talk such things out, something I couldn't do with Annie, in this case. I was pretty sure the only thing she would think was possible was to "let Nature take its course." I doubted she would be comfortable knowing more than that.
Although I admit to occasionally feeling a little guilt, I did "engineer" most of our liaisons, not allowing that final thrust to release my potency where I didn't want it to go. I don't think Jennie ever suspected I was doing anything differently, and she never questioned the long times between satisfactory procreation. We were both happy to mutually produce a wonderful child every two years.
***
The next three years proved to be happy and prosperous ones for us, and for our community. But there were worrisome stirrings in the background, that made us all wonder if our Union, itself, might be in danger. The year 1860 brought the test.
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