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     I have been impressed for a number of years that I ought to tell the story of my life. I believe that such a book written in the language of the common people and illustrated by pictures would do much good and perhaps meet with a ready sale. My life has been somewhat out of the ordinary. From a little child I have had an especial call of God, and as I look over my life it has, even for me, great interest, and I am sure that God has had a plan in my whole history. He has shielded me from danger and has ofttimes closed my eyes that I might not see sin. How can I praise God enough for all His wonderful mercy to me? From my very heart I look back and magnify the divine grace bestowed upon me.

WAS born on October 24th, 1850, in New Vienna, Clinton County, Ohio. My parents had married five years before. Their marriage occurred on November 20th, 1845.

     My father was about 22 years old, and my mother was about 18. Father worked at the carpenter trade and did some contracting. He was born at Allentown, Monmouth County, New Jersey, on December 26th, 1823.

      My father, Rev. Charles H. Savidge, was a remarkable man. At 17 years of age he was converted at a meeting held in his native town, and at once began to live an earnest Christian life and to realize that he was called of God to preach the Gospel. He began prayers in his own father's house and in many ways made himself felt as a Christian. He learned the trade of a carpenter in the city of Philadelphia and soon afterwards went west, settling, as I have said before, in the new state of Ohio.

      My mother, Mrs. Julia A. Savidge, was a very beautiful woman in her early life, and had high aspiration for herself and for her children.

      I think that very much of the energy of her sons was inherited from her. She was naturally proud and fond of dress, but being a Methodist preacher's wife and the mother of a large family, her tastes were not much grat-

ified. She always encouraged her children in education and in right living, and in following out the principles of a Christian life.

      I can remember when she started to hold family prayer in our family, it being the time when my father was away in the army, and she feared that we children might grow up to be wild and reckless. This was a great task and cross for her, but she did the best she could.

      When my father and mother were first married they had little or nothing of this world's goods. If the young people of this day could have looked into that home which my father and mother started in Ohio, they would think it poor enough. They had a table and a couple of chairs, a bed, a stove, a few dishes and a small amount of cash to get provisions for the present.

      But they lived together sixty-five years and raised a family of thirteen children, and if they ever quarreled their children never knew it, and they were never divorced.

      Mother died when she was a little past 85, and father when he was 87. Mother went first and father followed her within five weeks.

      When I was born I was an unlooked for and an unwelcome child.

      My brother Samuel, afterward Judge Samuel Savidge, of Kearney, and my sister, Sarah Helen, afterward the wife of Dr. Henry Goodsell, had preceded me into this world of trial and tribulation. My mother had her hands full with these two children and she had not spent any time praying for more. But I came on schedule time.

      When my people saw what manner of child I was they were surprised and somewhat disgusted. I only weighed three pounds, and my mother said that at that time she had a small coffee pot in which she used to make coffee. It was very diminutive, and she said she could have put me in that little coffee pot and shut the lid down and I would have rattled around in it.

      I was certainly unpromising, but remember this: "He who of greatest works is finisher, oft does it by the feeblest minister." God can take a crooked stick and

strike a straight blow with it, and He is the only one who can do that.

     When my grandmother Savidge, on a visit from New Jersey, saw me, she turned Episcopalian long enough to exclaim, "Good Lord, deliver us!" The old lady actually thought I was the last run of shad.

     But here was a very remarkable thing, and it carries out my contention that God had a plan in my life. My mother fully expected that I would die, and she did not know and nobody else knew that I had any especial work to do. She has told me that not until I graduated at the University of Minnesota, when I was 26 years old, not till then, did she realize that I might have a special calling of God.

     Frequently my mother got ready for my funeral, had everything clean in the house and the undertaker engaged to bury this little, measly kid. I took mumps, measles, scarlet fever, and everything a child could take, and took a relapse on pretty near every one until I was 7 years old, and since then up to my sixty-third and a half years I have had no disease nor have I touched medicine. Doctors would have to go into agriculture or business if every person treated them as I have. The funeral arrangements were contemplated, but never consummated; I simply wouldn't furnish the corpse. My mother thought if I could die and would die, it would be well, for then she could have a chance to bring up her other children and it would be a relief to me.

     But I seemed to have a will like iron, and I do believe now that the will is the driving wheel of the man. Nothing stands against or finally opposes a man with a fixed purpose and an iron will.

CAN remember quite distinctly my life in Ohio. When I was about 6 years old my father and mother removed from New Vienna, Clinton County, to Hillsboro, Highland County. My first days in school are very clear to me. I sat on a plain seat, very unlike the beautiful school furniture of the present day. My seatmate was a boy by the name of George Ship. George had a practice of saying things in time of school that were exceedingly funny and ludicrous to me. The teacher appeared to be averse to such levity as I manifested, and many a decided reproof and sound whipping did I get for things my seatmate did and said. I would like to see George now and talk this over with him.

      When my father talked of going to Minnesota he purchased books and maps descriptive of that new and wonderful state, having lately been admitted to the Union.

      I took, as a child, very much interest in those accounts, and I told my young companions where we were going and some things about the country, and I certainly think I did not underestimate the wonders of the country. I told them glowing accounts of the Indian tribes that inhabited that land and the wild beasts that were there. I was hardly conscious of it at the time, but I gave some of the wild animals that are inhabitants of Africa a home in Minnesota.

      I told the boys that I proposed to catch a lion and ride him back, and that I would ride through the town of Hillsboro, and when I did ° I would not let one of them ride, and for this remark I received another beating. The day

came when we said good-bye to the friends in Ohio and turned our footsteps westward. We went to Cincinnati where we took boat to St. Paul, Minn.

      The journey on the boat is not very distinct in my mind, except that our big black dog fell into the water, being chained on the inside of the boat. That incident impressed me very much.

      As a child my appetite had been poor and my health frail and delicate, but while on the boat it seemed impossible for me to get enough to eat.

      I remember very well the early days in Minnesota. My father first settled on a rented farm near Hastings, Minn. The Vermillion River greatly pleased me; the water was clear and beautiful, and filled with fine fish.

      One day my father hitched up our team and said he was going out to look up a farm to buy for his own. He went to Cleveland, Le Sueur County, Minnesota, and bought 120 acres near the village. In a few weeks he took his family to that farm. The house was built of logs and was one that the people of this day would not care to live in, but we made the best of conditions as we found them.

      I wish my parents could have realized something of the wonderful possibilities of that new country. The lakes of Minnesota are admired and visited by thousands every year, but fifty years ago they were in their virgin beauty and glory; they were filled with fish of the choicest kinds, and on their banks and stretching away in the distance were the most beautiful trees that God ever planted. They were elm, oak, maple, linden and ironwood. The waters in that day were much more abundant than now. Many of these lakes are dried up and they are marshes from which hay is cut.

      These lakes in autumn and spring were filled with ducks and geese, and the timber abounded with the most lovely pheasant and deer. In the winter of 1858 the wild deer were accustomed to come and eat turnips from a turnip patch which had been cleared in the timber, and I have more than once killed three ducks at a shot of the big Mallard variety. The prairies of Minnesota in that

      We were a healthy people; such a thing as sickness in those early days was almost unknown. We took no drugs and were far removed from a physician, and we needed not his ministrations.

E MOVED to the Cleveland farm in 1858. Only a small part of this farm was cleared. Almost the whole country at that time was covered with a heavy growth of timber, but the people did not value it; they cut down the trees and burned them up in great log heaps. They needed the land to raise crops for their families.

      The people on the prairies of Minnesota planted trees and soon had nice groves around their houses, but the people in the big woods cut the trees down and burned them up. They afterwards came to regret this.

      We worked very hard in the clearing of our land. Sometimes we worked far into the night burning brush and logs.

      Boys had to work in those days. My back has often ached as I helped in the work of clearing the land and weeding turnips and digging potatoes, but I afterwards found this a benefit rather than a detriment; it kept me out of mischief and strengthened my body.

      In the winter there were splendid sports; skating on the ice was fine and the sleigh riding was very enjoyable and continued for months. We would take a wagon box and place it on our bob sleds and fill it with straw, and hitching our horses to the pole, we young people piled in and away we went to the music of childish laughter and the sleigh bells. I think young people should enjoy their young life; indeed, we should enjoy every part of life.

      My spending money was scare (sic). About the only way I had of earning money was by digging Ginseng, a root which grew quite abundantly in our woods. It had a peculiar appearance, having about a dozen leaves, on four sterns which grew from a central stock, and in the center of this stem were found the seeds of the plant.

      As the season advanced, the leaves of this plant

became a beautiful yellow and the seeds were red. We marketed the roots of this plant in our village and received a small compensation for the same. I was told at that time that opium was made from the Ginseng root. In this way we earned our spending money and also our clothes and shoes as well.

      I shall always believe that a farm is the place to bring up children. There we were always occupied and we had no money to spend for pleasures and the things that harm children.

      We went to school about three months in the winter, the balance of the time was put in in work. But I noticed this, that when we children left the farm we were all healthy and we had a knowledge of, and an ability to do work, and were not helpless as many of the children and, young people are today in our cities.

      We did not get rich on our Minnesota farm, but we did raise enough to eat. We had corn, wheat and potatoes in abundance. We raised one kind of potato that was my favorite, viz., the Blue Mashanic. When they were boiled they would break open and were perfection. We raised our own pork, and I was always especially fond of the gravy. It appeared to me that a person that had the sort of potatoes that I have just named and pork gravy had a dish fit for a king. Then I must say a little more. We had no apples in the early days, but we did have red and black haws, which were delightful, and we had an abundance of wild plums; they were very nice in their season and mother used to can and preserve them.

      "About the only way
I had of earning money
was by digging Ginseng."

© 2003 for the NEGenWeb Project by Pam Rietsch, Ted & Carole Miller.