THE MORRILLS

AND

REMINISCENCES

THE MORRILLS AND REMINISCENCES BY CHARLES HENRY MORRILL UNIVERSITY PUBLISHING CO. CHICAGO AND LINCOLN

COPYRIGHT. 1918

BY C. H. MORRILL

INTRODUCTORY

OR a number of years my children and friends endeavored to persuade me to write reminiscences of my life. I refused to undertake this until the year 1916, at which time I was nearly seventy-five years of age. These pages give a fairly clear record of a part of my life's work. Among other things I have visited every state in the United States, studying social and economic conditions, as well as soil, climate, and production. I have visited manufactories, mines, agricultural regions, and every important irrigation system in the United States. I have noted with interest the growth of villages, cities, and educational institutions in the several states where my work lay, and have watched the changes wrought in the material welfare of people incident to the introduction of labor saving devices, railroads, traction lines, means of communication, lighting, heating, and general sanitation. It has been a source of unending gratification to note the success that attended the efforts of our hardy pioneers who rose steadily from want to positions of influence and even affluence.
     For many years I was instrumental in purchasing wild lands in western Nebraska, Wyoming, Colorado, and Montana, and afterward in cultivating them. These purchases aggregated more than one hundred thousand acres. To improve and develop new wild sections of the West, and to endeavor to make "two

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INTRODUCTORY

blades of grass grow where but one grew before," was always an interesting and alluring work to me. The hardships of frontier life were tempered by its various attractions and limitless possibilities. For forty-five years my work was largely on the western frontier. As I grow older, my chief regret is that age prevents me from continued participation in this work. My extended acquaintance with the people of the frontier, often isolated and remote, a hundred miles or more from railroads, has left many vivid impressions and memories.

CHARLES HENRY MORRILL.

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